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“I immediately knew I was onto something.” Every successful bootstrapper who I know personally says this. The ultimate success didn’t happen instantly but the

by makk 2y ago

“I immediately knew I was onto something.” Every successful bootstrapper who I know personally says this. The ultimate success didn’t happen instantly but the product/market fit was obvious on day one. And they didn’t iterate their way to that point. They walked away from whatever they were doing before, restarted with a blank sheet a paper, and the new thing immediately resonated.

flawn 2y ago
Watch out for survivorship bias though, everybody might think that but a lot more still fail.
- j45 2y ago
  The issue is too many startups can be solutions in search of a problem. It's not uncommon to become attached to something. I've done a lot of B2B tooling and the percentage and risk of failure goes down significantly if you are ruthlessly focused on only solving problems that cost time or money for a business, and being flexible to pivot. In the B2B space, there are absolutely 100% instant revenue generating needs and solutions. I'm packaging a rather boring one right now. Getting out of the building before writing any code, what so ever is critical. Building before learning is the cart before the horse and limits shelf life, runway, and ability to learn. One could easily cowboy code or over architect something that prevents you from trying the very thing that will take off because it's too difficult to now implement in your formerly simple codebase of patch work that is now too complex. They often can get discovered while doing a bout of consulting (aka paid market research and customer discovery), or solving one problem sheds a light on something near by that look subtle but critical and a no brainer. My personal experience has been people will actually say the phrase "I'm trying to find a way to give you money to use this" when you may show them a prototype. This didn't seem like it actually happened, until it did.
  - flawn 2y ago
    What do you mean with building before learning?
    - makk 2y ago
      I think they are alluding to the sorts of things that Steve Blank teaches in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. If you're unfamiliar, it's worth a read IMHO.
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  There is a whole category of people that just try to brute force finding both a problem and then an accompanying solution. And I’m sure that can work. But what I’m saying is it’s definitely not “everybody” that thinks that.
- mattgreenrocks 2y ago
  Business is rife with survivorship bias, and indie hacking, doubly so. The really honest ones will tell you how much of a role luck played. Most, however, will be quick to take credit for luck's role, often deluding themselves.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    > Business is rife with survivorship bias, and indie hacking, doubly so. Indie-hacking-projects have the benefit of a dignified exit by open-sourcing - a lot of whatever value in any technology/code/designs was created will be preserved - which is a good thing. It's a shame that oftentimes the "best" outcome for a startup or small software/tech company (where they get acquihired by Apple specifically) is not only their product/service gets shut-down, but all traces of it are systematically removed from the Internet and everything the company's founders do is effectively memory-hole'd - the _Dark Sky_ app is the textbook example of this. ----- Separately, when a company is small, stable and profitable it isn't a failure as far as the bank is concerned, but not exactly a hyperscaling unicorn - so when the founders/owners want to exit their only real option is to sell-out to either their competition for a managed wind-down-and-migration - or worse: an M&A firm (which will only make a lowball offer, then replace staff eng with a skeleton maintenance crew, and mis-manage the company's products/services for a decade as they hemorrhage-out loyal customers due to declining product quality). Required reading: https://pivotal.substack.com/p/the-worst-outcome-is-a-mediocre-success https://pivotal.substack.com/p/the-worst-outcome-is-a-medioc...
- rtpg 2y ago
  Well at least you might be able to apply it the other way around? If you don't feel immediate PMF then maybe your idea is garbage (for surviving as an entrepreneur anyways)
hermitcrab 2y ago
IIRC PayPal started off as an encryption library and went through more than 10 iterations before it became what it is now.

by makk 2y ago

flawn 2y ago

Watch out for survivorship bias though, everybody might think that but a lot more still fail.

j45 2y ago
The issue is too many startups can be solutions in search of a problem. It's not uncommon to become attached to something. I've done a lot of B2B tooling and the percentage and risk of failure goes down significantly if you are ruthlessly focused on only solving problems that cost time or money for a business, and being flexible to pivot. In the B2B space, there are absolutely 100% instant revenue generating needs and solutions. I'm packaging a rather boring one right now. Getting out of the building before writing any code, what so ever is critical. Building before learning is the cart before the horse and limits shelf life, runway, and ability to learn. One could easily cowboy code or over architect something that prevents you from trying the very thing that will take off because it's too difficult to now implement in your formerly simple codebase of patch work that is now too complex. They often can get discovered while doing a bout of consulting (aka paid market research and customer discovery), or solving one problem sheds a light on something near by that look subtle but critical and a no brainer. My personal experience has been people will actually say the phrase "I'm trying to find a way to give you money to use this" when you may show them a prototype. This didn't seem like it actually happened, until it did.
- flawn 2y ago
  What do you mean with building before learning?
  - makk 2y ago
    I think they are alluding to the sorts of things that Steve Blank teaches in his book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. If you're unfamiliar, it's worth a read IMHO.
teaearlgraycold 2y ago
There is a whole category of people that just try to brute force finding both a problem and then an accompanying solution. And I’m sure that can work. But what I’m saying is it’s definitely not “everybody” that thinks that.
mattgreenrocks 2y ago
Business is rife with survivorship bias, and indie hacking, doubly so. The really honest ones will tell you how much of a role luck played. Most, however, will be quick to take credit for luck's role, often deluding themselves.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > Business is rife with survivorship bias, and indie hacking, doubly so. Indie-hacking-projects have the benefit of a dignified exit by open-sourcing - a lot of whatever value in any technology/code/designs was created will be preserved - which is a good thing. It's a shame that oftentimes the "best" outcome for a startup or small software/tech company (where they get acquihired by Apple specifically) is not only their product/service gets shut-down, but all traces of it are systematically removed from the Internet and everything the company's founders do is effectively memory-hole'd - the _Dark Sky_ app is the textbook example of this. ----- Separately, when a company is small, stable and profitable it isn't a failure as far as the bank is concerned, but not exactly a hyperscaling unicorn - so when the founders/owners want to exit their only real option is to sell-out to either their competition for a managed wind-down-and-migration - or worse: an M&A firm (which will only make a lowball offer, then replace staff eng with a skeleton maintenance crew, and mis-manage the company's products/services for a decade as they hemorrhage-out loyal customers due to declining product quality). Required reading: https://pivotal.substack.com/p/the-worst-outcome-is-a-mediocre-success https://pivotal.substack.com/p/the-worst-outcome-is-a-medioc...
rtpg 2y ago
Well at least you might be able to apply it the other way around? If you don't feel immediate PMF then maybe your idea is garbage (for surviving as an entrepreneur anyways)

hermitcrab 2y ago

IIRC PayPal started off as an encryption library and went through more than 10 iterations before it became what it is now.