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Ask HN: What are your founder's resolutions for 2024?

• jansan 3y ago
  Release my product, even if it is only in beta.
  • virczl 3y ago
    Good luck, launching fast is really the key!
    • hutzlibu 3y ago
      "launching fast is really the key!" That is todays Mantra it seems. But there is no second chance to correct a first impression, if your rushed prototype was too rushed and no one gets the value beneath the flaws. It really depends on your product and market.
      • virczl 3y ago
        Of course, this is an MVP, so it has to work and be decent, and it also depends on the market and product. But when you launch your product, you're not really making a first impression on the whole world - only a few people will actually try it out. Having people try out your beta version helps you build in the right direction. Otherwise, you risk spending years building a product that nobody is interested in.
• t-writescode 3y ago
  I was one of many, many people laid off in 2023. I have about 6 months of unemployment, and my state supports entrepreneurship in its unemployment system; so, I am giving myself 6-ish months to release a product enough that it can start taking income and see how it goes. That’s my mission for 2024 :)
  • harrymit907 3y ago
    Great. Do you mind sharing what location it is?
    • t-writescode 3y ago
      Washington State
• jddj 3y ago
  Can absolutely relate to the linkedin cringe. I need to continue to increase my presence there, and I feel an almost physical resistance. Feel dirty whenever I put my marketing hat on and wade into that pool of narcissists. I'm seeing as many people as I can in person to try to keep myself sane, and in the meantime reminding myself that most of the stuff on there is (thankfully) paid/ghostwritten/chatgpt and not organic.
  • kristiandupont 3y ago
    >I need to continue to increase my presence there I am curious why you are concluding this if you dislike it so much? I am not judging here, I definitely recognize the feeling..
    • jddj 3y ago
      The honest answer? There are some people who have climbed to relative positions of power not by producing value but by playing the business social metagame. It's not about having the best quality product, there are two ways to reach those people. They need to either see you as a means to an end for them (caveat: they only deal in shallow self-promotional narratives, not nuance or detail), or they need to see you as one of them. If the competition weren't happily(?) playing the game it wouldn't be necessary, but given that they do and that I have an obligation to shareholders I have to play along.
      • throw_pm23 3y ago
        That's not an honest answer. The question is why _you_ are doing it.
        • jddj 3y ago
          As in, why am I not paying someone? For menial tasks I typically do them myself for a while before I outsource them. I like to understand what's going on.
      • muzani 3y ago
• sum1ren 3y ago
  Focus on one side project and one side project only - I think the concept of trying to create 12 products in 12 months is probably counterproductive (for me)
• fredwu 3y ago
  After having worked at many startups for two decades, most recently as CTO, I had finally started building my own SaaS (https://persumi.com https://persumi.com, a blogging/audio platform and https://rizz.farm https://rizz.farm, a lead generation platform) in 2023. So for 2024 I'd love to start monetising them and turning them into real businesses. Fingers crossed.
  • namanyayg 3y ago
    What does Rizz.farm do exactly? What role does AI play?
• vasco 3y ago
  > Commit to regular posts on LinkedIn and Twitter, even if I think I'm cringe every time I do it. Is this what people that create all Twitter and LinkedIn cringe content tell themselves? Why do it? You really can't come up with any way to market your company that feels good? Can't you think a bit more about the problem and frame it as "what can I do that is net positive, doesn't make me feel like crap while doing it and will still get the word out"? Why does it have to be "beat myself up continuously until I'm as bad as the other bad guys"? Is it just because it's easy to do cringe posts in 30seconds on LinkedIn? I think it is.
  • hashtag-til 3y ago
    Regular posts on LinkedIn as a goal seems backwards. Here are examples of what not to do -> https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/
  • zer0tonin 3y ago
    It's weird, because it's not even cargo cult since all the really succesful founders I know don't ever post on LinkedIn
  • _xivi 3y ago
    Well, cringe is subjective, especially when they've a different target audience. I can't blame them if it's working. The fault here is on the platforms, they reward these practices, or maybe they just don't interfere and that content is really what drives people to interact with the content. Either way, when you're playing a game, you reinforce what's working. When you watch your competitors eating your cake, unless you manage to come up with a strategy of your own, you end up going down that route sooner or later.
    • bottled_poe 3y ago
      Is there any data that this is “what’s working?”. Seems the most engaged are the least influential.
      • 3y ago
• lijok 3y ago
  > Commit to regular posts on LinkedIn and Twitter, even if I think I'm cringe every time I do it. If marketing is making you cringe, you're marketing to the wrong audience
  • virczl 3y ago
    It's not really marketing posts, it can be anything. Like saying we are attending this or this conference.
    • lijok 3y ago
      That's marketing
• saq 3y ago
  I'm on that LinkedIn train also. As founder I would really need to build an audience there, but can relate to comments about feeling physically bad about it. I really would like to be original myself but feels like it is total waste of time with all the algorithm hacks and "top 10 thing to do to get audience" bs. If any of you solves this I want to jump on that train too.
• erru 3y ago
  We've finally managed to close our first customer with our tiny bootstrapped AI sales bots project - so, the only resolution I have for 2024 is to scale that stuff to more customers (never gotten to that stage before, so this is going to be first for me).
• cl42 3y ago
  To have more fun and to enjoy the process of working on things, not focusing on the end result.
  • fhd2 3y ago
    Refreshing take! I feel like the last years the tech industry has been increasingly obsessed with outcomes and moving KPIs at all costs. I've seen pretty great (not always financially successful) things come out of people genuinely enjoying their work.
    • cl42 3y ago
      Thanks! I agree with you, though this is much easier said than done. Ask me how it's going in 12 months. :-)
• yamalight 3y ago
  To finally figure out how to effectively design and test MVPs / prototypes without overdoing it. I think this has been a bane of my startup life for pretty much whole ~14 years I've been doing it.
  • dan_lannan 3y ago
    +1. I'm in the same boat. Making a conscious effort to build quick and dirty prototypes when needed and only build them after I get a potential customer to jump into Figma with me and spend an hour of their time designing something with me. If they're willing to do that the hypothesis is they actually really do want it.
  • pilgrim0 3y ago
    As someone who’s on research, I do hundreds of prototypes each year. My time optimizations include having a backing hypothesis for each prototype, and prototyping one hypothesis at a time, even if two hypothesis touch on the same domain problem, I spin a fresh new prototype for each. Usually I’m able to validate the hypothesis even before finishing the prototype, as merely getting the hands on the process reveals the answer. Also, each hypothesis lend itself to some specific kind of prototype. Some things will be amenable to code prototypes, others to statecharts, others to visual designs, etc. so getting intimate with your toolset is essential for productivity, as most time is spent with these tools. Even simple things like mastering keyboard shortcuts represent significant productivity gains. But building is not the hardest part, by far. The hardest part, for which there’s hardly any optimization is this: how to filter and select an hypothesis to begin with? Overall, I would recommend getting good at prototyping in general (as a mindset thing) and not simply trying to quickly make a particular prototype.
    • yamalight 3y ago
      Having a research background - for me, doing this in research was always easier. Because you generally have very straightforward ways to validate your hypotheses. Validating things with customers - in my experience - can be extremely tricky as they might not even know what they want
• jmduke 3y ago
  Last year my goal was "I can take off for a week or two and the technical infrastructure is fine"; this year it's "I can take off for a week or two and the business infrastructure is fine" (meaning, there aren't enterprise prospects who are completely blocked by my absence, nor is the content/blog/changelog pipeline always waiting on me). Largely, this means finding someone who can handle some of the higher-touch parts of sales & onboarding and be a little more proactive in terms of writing.
• jongjong 3y ago
  My resolution is to seize every opportunity I have to acquire as much money as possible by whatever means necessary and at whatever cost within the confines of the law when stretched to its absolute maximum capacity.
• autotune 3y ago
  Escape the complete corruption and chaos that is Charleston, SC. I was recently arrested for waving hello to a police officer with presentable clothing on. That is how corrupt this place is. You could argue Detroit is worse, but at at least lead levels are detectable. This place you don't realize how corrupt it is until you follow your parents out to the suburbs here on your last paycheck to be recycled into the service industry forever, while you freeze and die on the streets without support.
  • withinboredom 3y ago
    I left there in 2018 for the EU. Never looked back. That place is messed up.
  • virczl 3y ago
    wow
• dan_lannan 3y ago
  - Splitting my time 50/50 between building and business. - Holding myself and my co-founders accountable with metrics. If we say we're going to reach out to potential customers there will be a number/time_period involved. - Doing with intention with a direct goal and deadline instead of just generally building. Last year I spent 90% of my time coding. The last 2 months of the year I talked to more businesses than I have in the last 3 years and started to see progress in idea development. My team just bought ZoomInfo and we're setting up HubSpot. My #1 goal is to spend time on the business and not just code 60 hours a week.
• t1tech 3y ago
  Release a new version of my product. If that goes well, focus on marketing.
• andyish 3y ago
  Cold outreach and marketing. Everyone I ask for advice tells me to just start with 10 a week and see where it goes after a few months. So that's what I'm going to do. Dev wise, going to try and develop plugins for more marketplaces as a means of improving the visibility of the product (confluence, slack, mattermost, etc).
• Oras 3y ago
  My resolution is to learn & reflect before executing. For the past 3 years, I was the kind of "it has to be done in a weekend", now I am trying to focus on getting it right, explore possibilities, reflect, and then execute. I also set longer deadlines for myself now (3-6 months instead of a week or two).
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• gtf21 3y ago
  I've continually been dragged back into the operational weeds of the business over the last few years (by which I mean things like running a team day-to-day, working through risk analyses on a project, etc.). This is (a) not something I enjoy; and (b) not the thing I'm best at (although I am quite good at it for short periods). I'd really like to be spending my time on things I get satisfaction from beyond "you're making your company work so that should be satisfying in itself", so this year one of my goals (sooner rather than later) is to actually make myself as operationally redundant as possible so I can have higher leverage and enjoy it at the same time.
• joduplessis 3y ago
  Actually, can anyone give some insight to if the LinkedIn (cringe) posts actually work (converting sales, etc)?
• fhd2 3y ago
  I prefer to formulate goals as something I want to achieve, not something I want to do. For me, this year, the number one goal is to become competent at marketing. When I started last year, I told myself I need to get competent at sales, or I will always need some CEO by my side and never have a business that's truly my own. Now I'm pretty decent at sales, but I can't fully leverage that since I don't have enough prospects to truly scale things. So figuring marketing out seems like my biggest lever. How, I don't know yet. Pretty sure I won't post anything on LinkedIn I consider to be cringy :) What I already did is hire a fractional CMO to coach me - getting help from people already good at this seems like a reasonable tactic.
  • virczl 3y ago
    Did you find the fractional CMO's advice useful? I'm always worried that it's too high-level or not adapted to early-stage start-ups.
    • fhd2 3y ago
      We had only two calls - I'd say it was pretty eye opening so far, for someone pretty far away from marketing like me at least. She focuses on startups though. I think it'll be a few more sessions before I can really tell if it was useful. But I'd definitely exercise caution: Most marketing people I met have been the "let's do fancy rebranding, post on social media and go to events" types. Took me a while to find someone more suited to what I'm looking for. More strategic, less... arbitrary.
• lfglopes 3y ago
  Find a mentor/coach. I don't really want to play the LinkedIn game (at least for now).
• mindcrime 3y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call it a "resolution" but one theme for me this year involves picking - and committing to - a specific stack for front-end development, and really mastering it. I've spent most of my career mostly focused on backend-end / data / AI stuff and have a hole in my repertoire as far as building front-ends. I mean, yeah, I've done some basic stuff with HTML, Bootstrap, vanilla JS, jQuery, etc., but I've never really made it a point to really master a modern front-end stack. So with that in mind, I've pretty much settled on learning Svelte, Tailwind, and DaisyUI, as well as really working hard to bone up on javascript / CSS fundamentals. The goal is to get to a point where I can build front-ends for tools that I use for myself, and for products at least up to a demo / MVP level. I'll probably never be a web-design guru, but that's not really the goal. I just need to be able to build things end-to-end without needing to pull in somebody else.
• edweis 3y ago
  On my side: - Invest in a stable lifestyle - Decide between bootstrap or fundraising in 2024 - 10x profit in sales