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Like, thank you. Obviously. This is why I don't want to start a public facing business and why it's almost impossible for a person with some good ideas and a mo

Like, thank you. Obviously. This is why I don't want to start a public facing business and why it's almost impossible for a person with some good ideas and a modest savings account who could build something better to do it without putting themselves in a compromised position by taking investment. If you go it alone, you basically have to put your entire net worth on the line to see whether something works, and then the second it takes off, God help you you are going to be litigated or bullied into the ground. But I still kind of have some of that old 90s / early 2000s faith that I will one day hit upon the Big Idea that I can code and bootstrap myself, and turn a profit from day one when I launch it, and never need investors. I doubt a home camera system is the one. But I have a whole wall in my office with taped-up post-its and index cards and papers, each with hand-written startup ideas. Any of which I could conceivably code and profit from if I wasn't afraid to spend 6-12 months on it and thought it could survive the regulatory environment and everything else that might come with releasing it onto the world. And that's not my job - I just keep those up there and add to them for inspiration. I just want to make shit, not deal with the business of navigating the whole corrupt world of funding and kosherizing it. Anyway, thanks.

fragmede 9mo ago
> Any of which I could conceivably code and profit from if I wasn't afraid to spend 6-12 months on it and thought it could survive the regulatory environment and everything else that might come with releasing it onto the world. The problem is, you have to be young and dumb and oblivious enough to think that your idea is golden, while also being old and wise enough to be able to implement the idea. You don't want to wake up one day, a decade later, and someone's independently thought of the same idea, and gotten rich, and you're still driving a taxi. My email address is on my profile page. Email me.
- noduerme 8mo ago
  Friend, while I was driving a taxi in 2001, I conceived of a system that would let anyone directly order a taxi driver from a pool of drivers who signed up through a central SMS messaging system and updated their zip code when they were waiting for a fare. The main problem with that idea was that it was completely illegal because it was outside the licensed taxi system. When Bitcoin emerged, I wrote a gambling site. That also was illegal in America, so I kept it closed to the US but tried to get my original games licensed in Nevada, which was a fool's errand since it takes $500k just to get them to look at a game and there's a 3 year waiting list, mostly Bally. And look where we are now with online gambling. The lesson of my life isn't that I need ideas with a bigger moat. It's that being able to code my ideas well is meaningless compared to having half a billion dollars to buy off a legislature. I'm a coward, I guess, because I never wanted to break the law. Now I live in a timeline where every major company in those two sectors achieved market dominance and legality because the people who started them were willing to flout the law, raised enough capital and fought off lawsuits long enough to bribe their way into legitimacy. I have a fantastic idea for an AI service, too, and it wouldn't be hard to implement... but it will almost certainly raise dozens of legal issues until someone with more balls than me comes along and just does it. Money is nice but I don't need that kind of trouble. That's why those ideas stay on the wall.

fragmede 9mo ago

> Any of which I could conceivably code and profit from if I wasn't afraid to spend 6-12 months on it and thought it could survive the regulatory environment and everything else that might come with releasing it onto the world. The problem is, you have to be young and dumb and oblivious enough to think that your idea is golden, while also being old and wise enough to be able to implement the idea. You don't want to wake up one day, a decade later, and someone's independently thought of the same idea, and gotten rich, and you're still driving a taxi. My email address is on my profile page. Email me.

noduerme 8mo ago
Friend, while I was driving a taxi in 2001, I conceived of a system that would let anyone directly order a taxi driver from a pool of drivers who signed up through a central SMS messaging system and updated their zip code when they were waiting for a fare. The main problem with that idea was that it was completely illegal because it was outside the licensed taxi system. When Bitcoin emerged, I wrote a gambling site. That also was illegal in America, so I kept it closed to the US but tried to get my original games licensed in Nevada, which was a fool's errand since it takes $500k just to get them to look at a game and there's a 3 year waiting list, mostly Bally. And look where we are now with online gambling. The lesson of my life isn't that I need ideas with a bigger moat. It's that being able to code my ideas well is meaningless compared to having half a billion dollars to buy off a legislature. I'm a coward, I guess, because I never wanted to break the law. Now I live in a timeline where every major company in those two sectors achieved market dominance and legality because the people who started them were willing to flout the law, raised enough capital and fought off lawsuits long enough to bribe their way into legitimacy. I have a fantastic idea for an AI service, too, and it wouldn't be hard to implement... but it will almost certainly raise dozens of legal issues until someone with more balls than me comes along and just does it. Money is nice but I don't need that kind of trouble. That's why those ideas stay on the wall.