5 ms·

This is a lesson that a ton of developers / engineers can learn, and it's hard to truly learn it via any other way but The Hard Way and I definitely sympathize

This is a lesson that a ton of developers / engineers can learn, and it's hard to truly learn it via any other way but The Hard Way and I definitely sympathize with OP; making a great product isn't always the same as making a profitable product and a great business. Once you get to "selling something on the Internet", it gets a lot harder and the rubber hits the road, so to say. Thanks for the insightful write-up

anton-c 1y ago
Things like 'the cost of doing business' didn't make full sense to me until I was running a small one. I agree some lessons aren't easily taught unless you have skin in the game or some kind of first hand experience. As a loose analogy paper trading can work great as practice(and if done right is supposed to help with this). Yet when u apply your system and stuff goes sideways, you're sweating and emotionally(as well as financially) impacted for real now, not just on paper. Those losses are real and paper trading would never 'hurt' like that.
captn3m0 1y ago
I also like to emphasis the corollary for this: You can build so much more if you remove the “be profitable” constraint. Building a profitable business reduces both the problem and the solution space by a huge margin, and if you can find a way to get rid of that, the space opens up. As an extension, taking VC money reduces the problem space even further.
- ignoramous 1y ago
  > Building a profitable business reduces both the problem and the solution space by a huge margin, and if you can find a way to get rid of that, the space opens up. That's one way to look at it. Usually though, for upstarts, what's paramount is not the profits part, but the risks inherent in working on a solution for a perceived problem (or worse, for customers one is ill-placed to sell to [0]). I like what Seibel recommends: the v1 must solve an acute problem for the customer to pay up [1]. From there, building out a holistic product may put our upstart on path to growth & profitability while simultaneously expanding the scope of the problem space building such a product brings [2]. [0] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13109480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13109480 [2] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024

anton-c 1y ago

Things like 'the cost of doing business' didn't make full sense to me until I was running a small one. I agree some lessons aren't easily taught unless you have skin in the game or some kind of first hand experience. As a loose analogy paper trading can work great as practice(and if done right is supposed to help with this). Yet when u apply your system and stuff goes sideways, you're sweating and emotionally(as well as financially) impacted for real now, not just on paper. Those losses are real and paper trading would never 'hurt' like that.

captn3m0 1y ago

I also like to emphasis the corollary for this: You can build so much more if you remove the “be profitable” constraint. Building a profitable business reduces both the problem and the solution space by a huge margin, and if you can find a way to get rid of that, the space opens up. As an extension, taking VC money reduces the problem space even further.

ignoramous 1y ago
> Building a profitable business reduces both the problem and the solution space by a huge margin, and if you can find a way to get rid of that, the space opens up. That's one way to look at it. Usually though, for upstarts, what's paramount is not the profits part, but the risks inherent in working on a solution for a perceived problem (or worse, for customers one is ill-placed to sell to [0]). I like what Seibel recommends: the v1 must solve an acute problem for the customer to pay up [1]. From there, building out a holistic product may put our upstart on path to growth & profitability while simultaneously expanding the scope of the problem space building such a product brings [2]. [0] https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want https://www.michaelseibel.com/blog/users-you-don-t-want [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13109480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13109480 [2] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024 https://apenwarr.ca/log/20211024