5 ms·

My Year of Exploration

21 points by jakozaur 3y ago

sph 3y ago
I am trying to bootstrap a business, and this article presents a way to approach that challenge that I never understood at all, yet seems so very common, especially on this forum. I quote: > I always wanted to build a company. Startups are frequently the most efficient way to make a profound impact. Build something that people need. > At first, the insurance sector seemed ripe for disruption. The customer experience was lacklustre, and incumbents were reaping substantial profits. Our thorough analysis of startups in this domain revealed numerous well-executed attempts to shake up the space. [...] While we did spot some niche opportunities, they didn’t pave the way to building a billion-dollar enterprise. > Next, we shifted our focus to employment of record and payroll services, a sector that had grown post-Covid. Following a disciplined approach, we conducted customer interviews and market research. [...] Although the concept was sound, we missed the train. Our timing was too late. > Our journey led us to technological advancements that agriculture should have adopted more widely. [...] Former ag tech founders warned us about this being a dead zone. Even with the most progressive farmers, the conversations were challenging. We simply lacked founder-market fit. --- I really do not get this approach of "I want to build a business. I have no idea what. I'll try something that VCs might like the sound of, but if I can't raise money after 2 months, I'll move onto something else." This is such a common sentiment which to me does not make sense at all. Building a business is something that takes hard, hard work, long hours, fighting against impostor syndrome and the excitement of an idea that slowly fades away, while only the insurmountable mountain remains. Then the actual work of chipping away at the mountain really starts. The only way to succeed against all these odds stacked against you is to have a passion, have a vision for a product, however modest and stupid as mine might be, that keeps you going. Because the difference between a cool idea and a profitable business is not how quickly people are throwing money at you, but how much effort, blood, sweat and tears you have sacrificed for your crazy idea. People can make billions selling hyper-advanced technology as well as selling shoes or nails. The thing they have in common is the effort their founders put in their idea. Am I hopelessly naive in this belief? The entire indie hacking world seems to focus on making money as quickly as possible (the goal always being to disrupt an established player), ideally before you even have a product, and no one really seems to care about the product and effort required to build it. As much as I am a huge fan of Paul Graham and his writing, I believe this fail early-fail fast approach comes from his Silicon Valley / venture capital way of making things which has conquered the Internet and this space in particular, but is totally antithetical to how the rest of the (non-tech, non-SV) world does business, where raw effort and stubborn belief in an idea is what separates the successful entrepreneur from the failed one.
- loremm 3y ago
  I'm not really in the SV/VC world so what do I know. But I see what you mean. I actually put this in my list of articles which I call "Another planet's worldview" because the way they phrase their experiences and thoughts is entirely self-consistent but so alien to my own. No judgement and I actually find it valuable to read but it does feel a little like a "CS Savior complex" (although still less egregious than some of the AI savior complexes I see lots of places) I can read Graham without thinking he's in another planet but, as an example, George Hotz's livestream really makes me think that.
- orev 3y ago
  There are many people who go to school (or have an interest in) “business”, with the goal of building and running one. That education is about the structures of how to build/run a business, like legal structures, financing, building a culture, leadership, process building, finding a market, etc. All of those things are actual skills, and things people can be really good at, even if they don’t have an idea for a specific product or service. For those people, the company structure is the passion, and finding a product to sell is just part of the process. People who have a passion for something can also build a business, and this is who you may be thinking of, and also this is the type that’s often glorified in the tech space. But many passionate founders are quickly hampered by the reality of having to build the company structures instead of being able to focus on the actual passion/product. This is why many VCs prefer teams of founders instead of a sole one, as they can divide and focus on these separate areas. The idea of a sole passionate founder who grinds away in their garage is more of a “chosen one” trope than a common reality.
  - sph 3y ago
    > The idea of a sole passionate founder who grinds away in their garage is more of a “chosen one” trope than a common reality. There is an entire spectrum between a sole founder chipping at something in a garage, and a non-technical founder picking random ideas from a hat and dropping them with the same nonchalance. How do you think the various Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Henry Ford went about it? Dropping big names because I am certain we both know these figures, but applies to most pre-2010 company founder.
jamestimmins 3y ago
If you're open to sharing some of the niche, but non billion-dollar ideas, I'd love to hear them.
- jakozaur 3y ago
  I believe there are many specialized insurance opportunities. Things that are not insured today, but we found customers willing to pay or switch from the current offer, which was terrible. For example, pet insurance in some markets is very underpenetrated. Similar to expensive hobby items. The trick is to bundle it within the existing distribution channel and offer it as an addon.
  - jamestimmins 3y ago
    Ah interesting, thanks for sharing
madamelic 3y ago
No offense but it is astonishing how much seemingly faffing about was done all to result in "Woo! We raised money and are building a team". Like... where are the results? Where is the solution? Indie hacking has a lot of faults but at least they jump in on a solution immediately rather than spending time looking for a co-founder and to raise a round. Maybe you skimmed over a lot of actual work but this seems very self-congratulatory and like the article was written with the conclusion in mind ("join our waitlist") rather than being informative or targeted at any one audience.
- jakozaur 3y ago
  The article was already quite long, and adding Quesma's part might even double it. I spend a few months working full-time before raising the money for the final idea. Indie hacking might work for some businesses, but many companies need funding, and it is a viable path to create new companies.
  - madamelic 3y ago
    Yes, fair. Would you be willing to expand on why you feel Quesma requires funding to get started? This seems like an extremely software-focused business that could have an MVP written by the technical founder while typically I'd expect hardware, deep science (self-driving to name one), etc to need to raise money for obvious reasons. What is Quesma's planned offering that requires an initial team larger than 1 to be able to bring to market?
    - jakozaur 3y ago
      The data product has a very high-quality bar, even for MVP. You can't lose data, slow things down, need a lot of table stakes functionality, etc. I'm not even going to start with SOC2 compliance... There is a healthy amount of scepticism about one-man products in many enterprises due to quality bar, ability to have a quick turnaround, etc.
johnfn 3y ago
The article is alright, but I couldn't help thinking, while reading it, that it was written by ChatGPT (or perhaps assisted). There's nothing wrong with using ChatGPT to assist your writing, but this particular essay comes off as exceptionally robotic. This part jumped out at me: > During this journey, my co-founder and I also came to a pivotal realisation about our partnership. While we shared a great personal rapport, our business visions diverged significantly. My inclination was towards sophisticated B2B enterprise technology, whereas my partner favoured B2C models focused on operational excellence. Our efforts to align our distinct approaches ultimately highlighted our partnership’s strengths and limitations. With mutual respect and acknowledgement of our differing paths, we decided to pursue our entrepreneurial journeys separately. Who the heck writes like this? It seems like a potentially interesting aspect of the story (topics about relationships and disagreements usually are), but it's written in such a bland monotonic way that it extracts all the emotion and intrigue out of it. It reminds me of the language that businesses use when announcing layoffs.
- RankingMember 3y ago
  For real, this is egregious- OP, if you're using ChatGPT to make content, please stop.
- jakozaur 3y ago
  I used AI for copywriting. I wrote every initial sentence. The amount of facts and words is roughly same as in my draft.
  - munificent 3y ago
    In the future, please consider that any actual human who chooses to spend a fraction of their finite time on Earth reading your words deserves to have that time spent reading something you actually wrote using your own effort and mind. I read blogs to connect with people, not LLMs. I have far far better things to do with my life then waste it stumbling through mostly-meaningless machine-generated word vomit. If you don't feel it's worth your time to write the sentences, why on Earth should I feel it's worth my time to read them?
  - deleted 3y ago
anthonygarcia21 3y ago
In case anyone was wondering, the airport in the center of https://jacek.migdal.pl/images/posts/2024/ideas.jpg https://jacek.migdal.pl/images/posts/2024/ideas.jpg is Marseille Provence Airport.
- jakozaur 3y ago
  Congratulations on your geocoding skills!
dukeyukey 3y ago
Some of the wording here is awful. Like: "Following a disciplined approach" Were you not doing that before? If not, why switch now? What's the actual difference. Seems like a weird thing to say if it doesn't mean anything. It's like you're trying to boost the word count. It's not even this particular line, it's just the whole post feels like it was written for the sake of a blog post, and not much else. It puts me off reading more.
- munificent 3y ago
  That's because it was written mostly by ChatGPT.

21 points by jakozaur 3y ago

sph 3y ago

I am trying to bootstrap a business, and this article presents a way to approach that challenge that I never understood at all, yet seems so very common, especially on this forum. I quote: > I always wanted to build a company. Startups are frequently the most efficient way to make a profound impact. Build something that people need. > At first, the insurance sector seemed ripe for disruption. The customer experience was lacklustre, and incumbents were reaping substantial profits. Our thorough analysis of startups in this domain revealed numerous well-executed attempts to shake up the space. [...] While we did spot some niche opportunities, they didn’t pave the way to building a billion-dollar enterprise. > Next, we shifted our focus to employment of record and payroll services, a sector that had grown post-Covid. Following a disciplined approach, we conducted customer interviews and market research. [...] Although the concept was sound, we missed the train. Our timing was too late. > Our journey led us to technological advancements that agriculture should have adopted more widely. [...] Former ag tech founders warned us about this being a dead zone. Even with the most progressive farmers, the conversations were challenging. We simply lacked founder-market fit. --- I really do not get this approach of "I want to build a business. I have no idea what. I'll try something that VCs might like the sound of, but if I can't raise money after 2 months, I'll move onto something else." This is such a common sentiment which to me does not make sense at all. Building a business is something that takes hard, hard work, long hours, fighting against impostor syndrome and the excitement of an idea that slowly fades away, while only the insurmountable mountain remains. Then the actual work of chipping away at the mountain really starts. The only way to succeed against all these odds stacked against you is to have a passion, have a vision for a product, however modest and stupid as mine might be, that keeps you going. Because the difference between a cool idea and a profitable business is not how quickly people are throwing money at you, but how much effort, blood, sweat and tears you have sacrificed for your crazy idea. People can make billions selling hyper-advanced technology as well as selling shoes or nails. The thing they have in common is the effort their founders put in their idea. Am I hopelessly naive in this belief? The entire indie hacking world seems to focus on making money as quickly as possible (the goal always being to disrupt an established player), ideally before you even have a product, and no one really seems to care about the product and effort required to build it. As much as I am a huge fan of Paul Graham and his writing, I believe this fail early-fail fast approach comes from his Silicon Valley / venture capital way of making things which has conquered the Internet and this space in particular, but is totally antithetical to how the rest of the (non-tech, non-SV) world does business, where raw effort and stubborn belief in an idea is what separates the successful entrepreneur from the failed one.

loremm 3y ago
I'm not really in the SV/VC world so what do I know. But I see what you mean. I actually put this in my list of articles which I call "Another planet's worldview" because the way they phrase their experiences and thoughts is entirely self-consistent but so alien to my own. No judgement and I actually find it valuable to read but it does feel a little like a "CS Savior complex" (although still less egregious than some of the AI savior complexes I see lots of places) I can read Graham without thinking he's in another planet but, as an example, George Hotz's livestream really makes me think that.
orev 3y ago
There are many people who go to school (or have an interest in) “business”, with the goal of building and running one. That education is about the structures of how to build/run a business, like legal structures, financing, building a culture, leadership, process building, finding a market, etc. All of those things are actual skills, and things people can be really good at, even if they don’t have an idea for a specific product or service. For those people, the company structure is the passion, and finding a product to sell is just part of the process. People who have a passion for something can also build a business, and this is who you may be thinking of, and also this is the type that’s often glorified in the tech space. But many passionate founders are quickly hampered by the reality of having to build the company structures instead of being able to focus on the actual passion/product. This is why many VCs prefer teams of founders instead of a sole one, as they can divide and focus on these separate areas. The idea of a sole passionate founder who grinds away in their garage is more of a “chosen one” trope than a common reality.
- sph 3y ago
  > The idea of a sole passionate founder who grinds away in their garage is more of a “chosen one” trope than a common reality. There is an entire spectrum between a sole founder chipping at something in a garage, and a non-technical founder picking random ideas from a hat and dropping them with the same nonchalance. How do you think the various Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Henry Ford went about it? Dropping big names because I am certain we both know these figures, but applies to most pre-2010 company founder.

jamestimmins 3y ago

If you're open to sharing some of the niche, but non billion-dollar ideas, I'd love to hear them.

jakozaur 3y ago
I believe there are many specialized insurance opportunities. Things that are not insured today, but we found customers willing to pay or switch from the current offer, which was terrible. For example, pet insurance in some markets is very underpenetrated. Similar to expensive hobby items. The trick is to bundle it within the existing distribution channel and offer it as an addon.
- jamestimmins 3y ago
  Ah interesting, thanks for sharing

madamelic 3y ago

No offense but it is astonishing how much seemingly faffing about was done all to result in "Woo! We raised money and are building a team". Like... where are the results? Where is the solution? Indie hacking has a lot of faults but at least they jump in on a solution immediately rather than spending time looking for a co-founder and to raise a round. Maybe you skimmed over a lot of actual work but this seems very self-congratulatory and like the article was written with the conclusion in mind ("join our waitlist") rather than being informative or targeted at any one audience.

jakozaur 3y ago
The article was already quite long, and adding Quesma's part might even double it. I spend a few months working full-time before raising the money for the final idea. Indie hacking might work for some businesses, but many companies need funding, and it is a viable path to create new companies.
- madamelic 3y ago
  Yes, fair. Would you be willing to expand on why you feel Quesma requires funding to get started? This seems like an extremely software-focused business that could have an MVP written by the technical founder while typically I'd expect hardware, deep science (self-driving to name one), etc to need to raise money for obvious reasons. What is Quesma's planned offering that requires an initial team larger than 1 to be able to bring to market?
  - jakozaur 3y ago
    The data product has a very high-quality bar, even for MVP. You can't lose data, slow things down, need a lot of table stakes functionality, etc. I'm not even going to start with SOC2 compliance... There is a healthy amount of scepticism about one-man products in many enterprises due to quality bar, ability to have a quick turnaround, etc.

johnfn 3y ago

The article is alright, but I couldn't help thinking, while reading it, that it was written by ChatGPT (or perhaps assisted). There's nothing wrong with using ChatGPT to assist your writing, but this particular essay comes off as exceptionally robotic. This part jumped out at me: > During this journey, my co-founder and I also came to a pivotal realisation about our partnership. While we shared a great personal rapport, our business visions diverged significantly. My inclination was towards sophisticated B2B enterprise technology, whereas my partner favoured B2C models focused on operational excellence. Our efforts to align our distinct approaches ultimately highlighted our partnership’s strengths and limitations. With mutual respect and acknowledgement of our differing paths, we decided to pursue our entrepreneurial journeys separately. Who the heck writes like this? It seems like a potentially interesting aspect of the story (topics about relationships and disagreements usually are), but it's written in such a bland monotonic way that it extracts all the emotion and intrigue out of it. It reminds me of the language that businesses use when announcing layoffs.

RankingMember 3y ago
For real, this is egregious- OP, if you're using ChatGPT to make content, please stop.
jakozaur 3y ago
I used AI for copywriting. I wrote every initial sentence. The amount of facts and words is roughly same as in my draft.
- munificent 3y ago
  In the future, please consider that any actual human who chooses to spend a fraction of their finite time on Earth reading your words deserves to have that time spent reading something you actually wrote using your own effort and mind. I read blogs to connect with people, not LLMs. I have far far better things to do with my life then waste it stumbling through mostly-meaningless machine-generated word vomit. If you don't feel it's worth your time to write the sentences, why on Earth should I feel it's worth my time to read them?
- deleted 3y ago

anthonygarcia21 3y ago

In case anyone was wondering, the airport in the center of https://jacek.migdal.pl/images/posts/2024/ideas.jpg https://jacek.migdal.pl/images/posts/2024/ideas.jpg is Marseille Provence Airport.

jakozaur 3y ago
Congratulations on your geocoding skills!

dukeyukey 3y ago

Some of the wording here is awful. Like: "Following a disciplined approach" Were you not doing that before? If not, why switch now? What's the actual difference. Seems like a weird thing to say if it doesn't mean anything. It's like you're trying to boost the word count. It's not even this particular line, it's just the whole post feels like it was written for the sake of a blog post, and not much else. It puts me off reading more.

munificent 3y ago
That's because it was written mostly by ChatGPT.