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Just to be clear, you've regretted abandoning projects every single time? Or just when a similar project took off? How often has the latter happened?

sam0x17 3y ago
Every (startup) project I've ever abandoned I've eventually regretted abandoning, over the course of my life 5 times if I'm counting right, things like "there actually was a market for that", "with what I know now [insert limitation here] wouldn't have mattered", "thing I did for someone else instead of X eventually bore no fruit but I never went back to X" etc etc etc, going all the way back to the first one in 8th/9th grade where I spent two years working on a product and gave up when I only had one sale two weeks after launch (just needed time to gain momentum, there was lots of demand but I wouldn't realize this until many years later, at which point that whole vertical wasn't really a thing anymore and it was way too late). Github projects on the other hand, some of mine I'm definitely fine with them rotting, like my crystal lang ORM for monogo db.
- hyperthesis 3y ago
  Thanks! Seems like you had excellent ideas, for all to end up being workable. I did similar at about 15yo, wrote a game, exhausted myself actually completing it. A game store agreed to stock it, I just needed to supply the game on media and packaging. I looked into it... runs of 100 copies... but didn't do it. Eventually made a pity-sale of 1 (one!) copy to a hobbiest. The lesson I took was that the business side was as important as the technical side. I noticed many startups had two guys, one in each role, since they require incompatible value-systems. Despite all the talk of "testing hypotheses", I think many of these things about the market are simply impossible to deliberately find out - just have to keep trying and learning about it: research, discovery. It requires faith/hopefulness/optimism - unreasonable, unjustifiable. With my later business that did work, I remember imagining/visualizing customers that were assessing my product and soon would buy (plausible, because the product was good; the market just needed to realize it!).

sam0x17 3y ago

Every (startup) project I've ever abandoned I've eventually regretted abandoning, over the course of my life 5 times if I'm counting right, things like "there actually was a market for that", "with what I know now [insert limitation here] wouldn't have mattered", "thing I did for someone else instead of X eventually bore no fruit but I never went back to X" etc etc etc, going all the way back to the first one in 8th/9th grade where I spent two years working on a product and gave up when I only had one sale two weeks after launch (just needed time to gain momentum, there was lots of demand but I wouldn't realize this until many years later, at which point that whole vertical wasn't really a thing anymore and it was way too late). Github projects on the other hand, some of mine I'm definitely fine with them rotting, like my crystal lang ORM for monogo db.

hyperthesis 3y ago
Thanks! Seems like you had excellent ideas, for all to end up being workable. I did similar at about 15yo, wrote a game, exhausted myself actually completing it. A game store agreed to stock it, I just needed to supply the game on media and packaging. I looked into it... runs of 100 copies... but didn't do it. Eventually made a pity-sale of 1 (one!) copy to a hobbiest. The lesson I took was that the business side was as important as the technical side. I noticed many startups had two guys, one in each role, since they require incompatible value-systems. Despite all the talk of "testing hypotheses", I think many of these things about the market are simply impossible to deliberately find out - just have to keep trying and learning about it: research, discovery. It requires faith/hopefulness/optimism - unreasonable, unjustifiable. With my later business that did work, I remember imagining/visualizing customers that were assessing my product and soon would buy (plausible, because the product was good; the market just needed to realize it!).