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There are two ways of approach entrepreneurship, and the conflict between each is why there's some dissonance here: 1) Do it to escape the grind, as one commen
by OmarShehata 3y ago
There are two ways of approach entrepreneurship, and the conflict between each is why there's some dissonance here:
1) Do it to escape the grind, as one commenter here mentioned. In this way, it doesn't matter what product you make, or how you make it. The goal is self sufficiency, to find a niche that you can fill, etc.
2) Do it because you're trying to effect some specific change in the world. Something doesn't exist yet, so you will go out and make it happen.
"2" is much harder, and more rare. And, if you believe 2 is the way, then it makes sense to NOT start a company & instead join an existing effort, if there are already people working on pressing problems & you have the skills to help them out.
For "1", it almost always makes sense to start a company if you can. Because that life & amenities is itself the goal.
- intelVISA 3y agoI'm #2 for the history books but #1 pays the bills. :(
- OmarShehata 3y agoOne the flipside here, you can argue that, every time you get another "1", this is great for the economy. You now have someone who's making their own money, leaving a salaried job spot open for another person. A lot of these indie hacking ventures probably wouldn't exist at all if the person making them decided not to. If that is, or for the subset of indie hacking companies for which it is true, it means this is growing the economy.
- donnythecroc 3y agoThis is a great point. He's literally created a job.
- amelius 3y agoI'm not sure if I get the logic here. If he instead wrote a bunch of FOSS tools, then that would have been a worse outcome for society?
- satvikpendem 3y agoIn economic terms where money isn't circulating, yes. Now, many open source projects are used by other companies that are commercial, so that does grow the economy however.
- dgfitz 3y agoTo take this point further, two jobs were kind of created. The vacancy left and the new job.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cornholio 3y agoIt's an illusion that 2 can happen without 1. Unless you have financial and entrepreneurial freedom, you will never change anything anywhere. Whatever social structure you imagine you might navigate, be it business, politics, public opinion, a charitable organization, the world of art, literature or academia; you will always find a pre-existing, entrenched power structure of people calling the shots, controlling key decisions and very unwilling to cut you in, because they either have their own vision to put in practice, or... they simply like the power, status and nice amenities that come with them. The business of changing the world is the business of power. You either have capital, name recognition, the largest lab, a huge social network of other powerful people in your debt, a massive amount of luck and/or first mover advantage etc. Otherwise, the powerful people of the world, often particularly apprehensive to world changing plans, will just crush you and move on.
- k__ 3y agoTo be fair, you don't need to "escape the grind" 100% to make 2 happen.
- actionfromafar 3y agoLargely correct but the margins can have unreasonably large effects, like Linux, the GNU project and so on.
- cornholio 3y ago"a massive amount of luck and/or first mover advantage"
- actionfromafar 3y agoAgain, I want to emphasise that sometimes a project or set of ideas not only thrives, but completely dominates.
- cornholio 3y agoSure, but how does that help you chose an effective strategy? For example, winning lottery players absolutely dominate when it comes to risk vs reward. But that doesn't mean playing the lottery is the way to achieving your financial goals. Without an understanding of the underlying odds of success, isolated success stories are just random noise. And you have to ask: are they really success stories? Did Linus set out to create a world known free kernel, or was ìt just serendipty, he was just a random bloke who filled a role that needed to be filled at that particular historic time, so in fact had no control over the story and did not, in fact, change the world, he just gave a name of the rough thing that was to appear at that rough time.
- brookst 3y agoI’ve lived 3 a few times: building something small that I find amusing/useful, then more or less accidentally finding a user base and business. It’s not necessarily a good thing; it can turn a fun hobby into an onerous obligation. But it is another path.