5 ms·

I don't think "just stick with it" is a good advice in general and especially not for his projects. He was smart to abandon his minimal time tracker, minimal m

by kjksf 5y ago

I don't think "just stick with it" is a good advice in general and especially not for his projects. He was smart to abandon his minimal time tracker, minimal metronome and jobs website. BTW: he didn't get 5 users for minimal time tracker, he got 5 people who signed up for a mailing list based on screenshots of non-existing product. Even smarter would be to not do such projects in the first place. With jobs websites you need a giant, unfair advantage over all other job websites. Metronome and minimal time tracker are both vitamins, not pain killers. They don't solve a painful problem that people are obviously willing to pay for. They are also extremely competitive. The only idea that was somewhat viable was time tracker, but only if he managed to stand out from all the other time trackers and masterfully execute both the product and marketing. There is no recipe for a successful projects but there are plenty of giant red flags that you should notice and avoid. High competition is a red flag. Low value to potential users is a red flag.

xyzzy21 5y ago
Yep! You have to learn how and when to KILL YOUR CHILDREN (your ideas)! I typically come up with a dozen ideas a week - most of them don't pass hurdles of basic physics or economics, or once you research "the market" you discover there isn't one. So you plunge a knife into the idea and kill it quick. You have to learn how to do this. I do minimally document them and then file them away, however. Things can change. Then you absolutely may need to spend YEARS at the few that survive. But you are always checking, setting hurdles and milestones and being ready to kill off the idea that doesn't have any more to work. Or you discover YOU aren't the one who can take through that jungle and then you have to decide what to do about that. Sometimes you find someone who can and take a minority venture stake in what they can do with it. Sometimes you have to wait until ideas or technologies become more mature. Or you need to put it on the back burner as you can accumulate more capital to "do it right". You do need an incumbent in most cases to prove the market exists but you want to shy away from the "popular" products because of high competition you won't likely match.
redisman 5y ago
Yeah the first step if you want to be successful on some metric is to type “time tracker” into AppStore search and see that is completely hopeless and pick something else that doesn’t already have 100+ professional and commercial implementations
prox 5y ago
As Guy Kawasaki once said in Art of the Start : “You want to be high and on the right.” You make something everyone wants and is of great value, and only you can make it. The worst place is making something that 50 others do and is of no value to the customer.
- ramblerman 5y ago
  Did he also say that you want to bring in more money than you spend? Sorry for the snark, but how is this actionable advice? It's just a fortune cookie anecdote of a situation that of course would be profitable.
- zeroc8 5y ago
  The only problem is that pretty much anything I can do has been done a zillion times by others.
  - kjksf 5y ago
    I doubt that's true. I have literally hundreds of ideas. As an experiment I put them on a website for anyone to see and "steal": https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d8158c803ad1/ideas.html https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815... I'm not saying those are all great, profitable ideas. I'm saying that they are doable by a competent programmer and unique enough. Certainly not "done a zillion times by others".
    - zepolen 5y ago
      That list really drives home the 'ideas are cheap' phrase. I guess the good ideas are expensive.
      - kjksf 5y ago
        I very much agree that ideas are cheap. I don't agree that "good ideas are expensive". The issue is: we don't know which ideas are good or bad. The stats from Venture Capital markets are showing that clearly. Before someone even gets a meeting with a good VC firm the idea is already filtered 100-1 if not 1000-1. Of those who get the meeting, maybe 1 in 100 get an investment. Of those that get an investment, out of 10 maybe 1 or 2 become the really great successes and the remaining 8 are somewhere between "mild return" and "complete failure". Since even the best of the best cannot tell what idea is good and which one is bad, we value all ideas as bad ideas i.e. at zero. I'm quite sure that in that list I've posted there are at least few good ideas i.e. ideas that, when well executed, would lead to a profitable, solo business. I just don't know which ones are good.
herval 5y ago
“Stick with it” is by no means what I said. A time tracker isn’t an end-all product - you start with it, then spiral out based on customer feedback. I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts. High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver. Low value to users isn’t necessarily a issue on itself either - you start with something with low value, then value-add as you grow. There’s room in the world for vitamins and painkillers. There’s room in the world for red sea strategies and blue ocean strategies. In none of these worlds is “not doing projects in the first place” a good idea though, no matter if they fail. The best way to never succeed is to keep dreaming and never try :)
- holler 5y ago
  > High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver. I can't tell you how much this resonates with me having been slowly and methodically building a project in a competitive domain over the past two years. I have a handful of organic users who've continued to show up and inspire me to continue pushing forward, but in that time I've also had people close to me question what I'm doing and why it's taking so long (as if there is a finish line). My experience so far is that building a software product is a hard and time-consuming process fraught with obstacles of all variety. There are many instances where abandoning it will sound like a good idea, so you just have to ask yourself how determined are you to bring it to life and push through when it gets difficult? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
- brabel 5y ago
  > I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts. That would be a good argument if you mentioned which ones.
  - nix23 5y ago
    https://clockify.me/about-us https://clockify.me/about-us >>Nothing fancy or intrusive. We just needed a record of how much time a certain project took in a certain month, and how much we need to bill clients.
moneywoes 5y ago
Great points, where do you suggest reading to learn how to think like this?
wikfwikf 5y ago
The thing is he might have learnt something if he had continued the project. Maybe he would have learnt something about marketing and market positioning. Or maybe he would have learnt about delivery and server provisioning, even without any commercial merit to his product. The whole thing reads like he had a vague idea that writing a basic piece of software would allow him to retire, but could only bring himself to make a very limited effort. The rule is: if you want to get money from it, you have to be prepared to work hard, and on parts of it that you don't find interesting, with no guarantee of success. If you aren't motivated by money and ready to put a lot into it with a high chance of failure, just work on things you enjoy. You will get further and learn more. In neither case will you get much from it if you just do the minimum and then abandon the project. 'Side projects' have become the new programmer blogs, as something which everyone feels they need to have in order to get a job. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO STUFF LIKE THIS. If you're not excited by it then just don't. Just getting good at your job and enjoying your spare time will get you much further in life than pursuing things which it will be clear to an employer you don't really care about. For every employer which looks for stuff like this, there is another who just wants someone who does a good job and doesn't waste their energy on side hustles.

by kjksf 5y ago

xyzzy21 5y ago

Yep! You have to learn how and when to KILL YOUR CHILDREN (your ideas)! I typically come up with a dozen ideas a week - most of them don't pass hurdles of basic physics or economics, or once you research "the market" you discover there isn't one. So you plunge a knife into the idea and kill it quick. You have to learn how to do this. I do minimally document them and then file them away, however. Things can change. Then you absolutely may need to spend YEARS at the few that survive. But you are always checking, setting hurdles and milestones and being ready to kill off the idea that doesn't have any more to work. Or you discover YOU aren't the one who can take through that jungle and then you have to decide what to do about that. Sometimes you find someone who can and take a minority venture stake in what they can do with it. Sometimes you have to wait until ideas or technologies become more mature. Or you need to put it on the back burner as you can accumulate more capital to "do it right". You do need an incumbent in most cases to prove the market exists but you want to shy away from the "popular" products because of high competition you won't likely match.

redisman 5y ago

Yeah the first step if you want to be successful on some metric is to type “time tracker” into AppStore search and see that is completely hopeless and pick something else that doesn’t already have 100+ professional and commercial implementations

prox 5y ago

As Guy Kawasaki once said in Art of the Start : “You want to be high and on the right.” You make something everyone wants and is of great value, and only you can make it. The worst place is making something that 50 others do and is of no value to the customer.

ramblerman 5y ago
Did he also say that you want to bring in more money than you spend? Sorry for the snark, but how is this actionable advice? It's just a fortune cookie anecdote of a situation that of course would be profitable.
zeroc8 5y ago
The only problem is that pretty much anything I can do has been done a zillion times by others.
- kjksf 5y ago
  I doubt that's true. I have literally hundreds of ideas. As an experiment I put them on a website for anyone to see and "steal": https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d8158c803ad1/ideas.html https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/e4132d5a44014b2aad81d815... I'm not saying those are all great, profitable ideas. I'm saying that they are doable by a competent programmer and unique enough. Certainly not "done a zillion times by others".
  - zepolen 5y ago
    That list really drives home the 'ideas are cheap' phrase. I guess the good ideas are expensive.
    - kjksf 5y ago
      I very much agree that ideas are cheap. I don't agree that "good ideas are expensive". The issue is: we don't know which ideas are good or bad. The stats from Venture Capital markets are showing that clearly. Before someone even gets a meeting with a good VC firm the idea is already filtered 100-1 if not 1000-1. Of those who get the meeting, maybe 1 in 100 get an investment. Of those that get an investment, out of 10 maybe 1 or 2 become the really great successes and the remaining 8 are somewhere between "mild return" and "complete failure". Since even the best of the best cannot tell what idea is good and which one is bad, we value all ideas as bad ideas i.e. at zero. I'm quite sure that in that list I've posted there are at least few good ideas i.e. ideas that, when well executed, would lead to a profitable, solo business. I just don't know which ones are good.

herval 5y ago

“Stick with it” is by no means what I said. A time tracker isn’t an end-all product - you start with it, then spiral out based on customer feedback. I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts. High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver. Low value to users isn’t necessarily a issue on itself either - you start with something with low value, then value-add as you grow. There’s room in the world for vitamins and painkillers. There’s room in the world for red sea strategies and blue ocean strategies. In none of these worlds is “not doing projects in the first place” a good idea though, no matter if they fail. The best way to never succeed is to keep dreaming and never try :)

holler 5y ago
> High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver. I can't tell you how much this resonates with me having been slowly and methodically building a project in a competitive domain over the past two years. I have a handful of organic users who've continued to show up and inspire me to continue pushing forward, but in that time I've also had people close to me question what I'm doing and why it's taking so long (as if there is a finish line). My experience so far is that building a software product is a hard and time-consuming process fraught with obstacles of all variety. There are many instances where abandoning it will sound like a good idea, so you just have to ask yourself how determined are you to bring it to life and push through when it gets difficult? You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
brabel 5y ago
> I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts. That would be a good argument if you mentioned which ones.
- nix23 5y ago
  https://clockify.me/about-us https://clockify.me/about-us >>Nothing fancy or intrusive. We just needed a record of how much time a certain project took in a certain month, and how much we need to bill clients.

moneywoes 5y ago

Great points, where do you suggest reading to learn how to think like this?

wikfwikf 5y ago

The thing is he might have learnt something if he had continued the project. Maybe he would have learnt something about marketing and market positioning. Or maybe he would have learnt about delivery and server provisioning, even without any commercial merit to his product. The whole thing reads like he had a vague idea that writing a basic piece of software would allow him to retire, but could only bring himself to make a very limited effort. The rule is: if you want to get money from it, you have to be prepared to work hard, and on parts of it that you don't find interesting, with no guarantee of success. If you aren't motivated by money and ready to put a lot into it with a high chance of failure, just work on things you enjoy. You will get further and learn more. In neither case will you get much from it if you just do the minimum and then abandon the project. 'Side projects' have become the new programmer blogs, as something which everyone feels they need to have in order to get a job. YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO STUFF LIKE THIS. If you're not excited by it then just don't. Just getting good at your job and enjoying your spare time will get you much further in life than pursuing things which it will be clear to an employer you don't really care about. For every employer which looks for stuff like this, there is another who just wants someone who does a good job and doesn't waste their energy on side hustles.