The side hustle from hell
(blog.jacobstechtavern.com)
constantcrying 9 hours ago Having non-technical founders who failed to even outsource their project is an enormous red flag. Nobody there knew how to make the product a reality and if it is you who is doing 100% of the work, then you obviously deserve 100% of the equity. "Having an idea" is not worth equity.If you thought the idea was great, there was an obvious golden opportunity for you, none of the people there are going to make this into a product, but you can. If the idea was bad, getting paid in equity means getting paid in something worthless.
The only situation where it is reasonable to deal with such a totally defunct organization is if they pay you a lot of money. And if there is a single missed payment you stop any work until you are paid.
hinkley 8 hours ago Too many fantasy tales of overnight successes out there. It takes an enormous amount of work to make things look easy - in a commercial setting. Some people just pick things up and are relatively good at them but they cannot productive it. To do so you have to be able explain it and they don’t understand it, they just do it. So they can’t make a business out of it and they cannot become top of their field because they lack the fundamentals and the work ethic.I could talk anybody to death with all of my ideas. I only get to work on very few of them. I can’t imagine how sad a life it would be to only have one. It’s great for mentoring though because there’s always something shiny on the shelf and I can let them window shop for one they like.
jakey_bakey 8 hours ago I certainly should have spotted this as soon as they offered me a contract that was a clumsily-reworded version of the contract for the awful overseas contractorsselimthegrim 2 hours ago Oh hi! Are you me?
juliansimioni 10 hours ago Like many, I also had an experience like this in my younger days: obviously unfit product, early prototype made by bottom-of-the-barrel contractors, co-founders who can't code, no salary, no users.I got lucky, and spent only a few months while not working that hard.
But at the same time, this quote hits home:
>I was doing a startup. I was executing, and for the first time in my professional life I wasn’t insulated from the results. I didn’t achieve my destiny of great things, but I’d built something.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Right? I literally can't even call it a proper warning because of how much I took out of it.My whole career was jumpstarted by my second startup (we only got to preseed but it was a great two years) and there's no way I'd have been as good a fit without this experience
bruce511 9 hours ago I think you nailed it here.>> I hope that by reading this story, I can protect some of you from 11 months of pain.
That's not how experience works. What you really did was get an 11 month business education. And again, you can tell your story, but you can't pass on that education.
I'm glad you moved on to better things. And I think you're saying that this experience prepared you for that, and you were a better overall entrepreneur because of it.
Thats how experience works.
skeeter2020 9 hours ago But maybe he can compress someone else's terrible experience down to 6 or 3 months, or stop them from sinking their own money (or that of family/friends) into an obvious faliure. There's another failures to go around; we don't all need to life every one of them.bruce511 2 hours ago It would be nice if it did, but that's not how experience works.Which is to say that yes, we can learn from the mistakes of powers, and the story is worth telling.
For 99% of people, who want safety and security, they'll just ho get a job anyway. For the 1% who want to start something new, well 4 in 5 will fail either 5 years. Those failures are the experience needed to find success. Some get there quicker, some abandon good ideas too quickly or bad ideas too slowly.
That's how we learn along the way, and yes, absorb the lessons of others.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Yeah honestly I’m not sure what someone is meant to take out of this. The experience is really useful. But if me and Gus worked this out after 3 months, we could have cofounded our own thing!bruce511 2 hours ago Yes, and no. Sure you might have figured it out sooner. But there's a lot you learned in the other 8 months which you shouldn't negate.You could have taken Gus' dad's advice - and you'd have saved some lot of time, but equally missed out on so much learning.
Look, most opportunities are bad, or at the very least risky. But if you wanted safe and secure you can just go get a job. Some risks are worth taking on, even if they look risky, and even if they fail.
Experience helps you at least identify the risk. Both in product and in people. Some products will just never work (), some people aren't worth working with.
(
) your mechanic program was likely doomed because "that's not how cars work". I was never going to be a customer because I have a mechanic who's been looking after my cars for 30 years. He always seems to have cars to work on, do I guess he's not a customer either. If I buy a car new it comes with a service plan, so I'm out that loop.In other words I suspect your app solved a problem that's only a problem to fresh grads with their first car. And they just ask their mates, or their dad.
As you discovered you can't feature your way out of the "no market" problem. You discovered that finding a market is more important than building a product. All excellent lessons.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Absolutely - I mention this at the end. This experience was a springboard into my first “real” startup, and I’ve been working my way up fast since then!
wibbily 10 hours ago Currently at a startup that did the same thing wrt having their app built overseas. Protip: don't. Endless bullshit, excruciating trying to get anything out of them. We ended up with an app just like this guy's, locked aspect ratio and all.If I find another startup whose product is an app, and they can't find a local developer to write that app, I'm running. Why outsource your core product!?
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago It's the classic case of believing that ideas at 90% of the value and execution is something you can delegate. Think Kendall from Succession.icedchai 7 hours ago This is very common. Lofty idea folks often see developers as a commodity, so why not just outsource to the cheapest bidder? You might luck out and get a smart person who doesn't know what they're worth yet... but, 9 out of 10 times, you get what you pay for.pduggishetti 1 hours ago I think there are ways to outsource too. Outsource to an international team that benefits from your success rather than viewing you as a money-making goose. Build a different incentive model, and give away some equity. Sell them the dream.constantcrying 8 hours ago Because there are legions of people out there who want to be "entrepreneurs", so they come up with "business ideas". They can't make these ideas into reality by themselves, as they lack all technical skill. This lack of skill also means that they can not manage a project, as they lack a basic understanding of how software project works.gosub100 1 hours ago I can only guess, but maybe they think the product is just something you pay some of those "other people" to whip up, and the whole game is about your business and marketing and metrics etc. The app is just some necessary cost that must be minimized to check the box on their business template.
dabinat 8 hours ago This article reminded me of the time a guy wanted to pitch his startup idea for me to develop. He wanted me to sign an NDA before telling me, as the idea was so great that I would obviously steal it, which I refused.So all he would tell me is that it was “the next Twitter”, and from what I could gather, he would retain the majority of the equity and I would do all of the work, while he lobbed ideas at me from on high.
I passed on it, but only because the red flags were extremely obvious. I could certainly see a situation where I might have been sucked into something more subtly exploitative.
bityard 6 hours ago This needs to be highlighted: Everyone who does anything at all in the realm of business or tech should basically never sign an NDA unless it is already positively guaranteed they are getting something out of it. You might be required to sign an NDA once you have been hired at a W-2 job if the company handles sensitive data. Or if you have already been offered a contract. Event then, make sure it is actually necessary, and run it by your lawyer.But if someone wants you to sign an NDA just to hear about their idea or business, or as a condition of being interviewed for a job, ALWAYS say no. VCs don't sign NDAs and neither should you. It's plain and simple uncompensated risk.
https://blog.jpl-consulting.com/2012/04/why-i-wont-sign-your...
https://www.markwelchblog.com/2009/08/26/why-i-dont-sign-nda...
ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago Reminds me of this classic bit: https://www.davar.net/HUMOR/STORIES/MS-CUISN.HTM
ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago I used to get these “opportunities,” on a weekly basis.As soon as someone hears what I do, and that I’m retired, and doing it for the fun, I hear cha-ching! in the background, somewhere, and their eyes light up.
But yeah, we’re a dime a dozen.
emmelaich 1 hours ago I've seen this on reddit or similar. Guy has an amazing idea, all he needs is a developer, sales person, finance person, management team, ....It reads like a parody but it was serious.
kjs3 8 hours ago I can't even count the number of times I've heard this pitch, complete with NDA demand. The only answer is "Thanks, but no thanks". I have never had to regret it.
kikimora 7 hours ago I’ve been running an outsourcing business for a while and can confirm - 99% of people paying for development have no idea what they are doing and how to sell it. They are destined for failure unless the outsourcing team builds a product that is 3x better than a competitor with 100x funding.Success stories I’ve seen always involved extremely active customer. They become part of the team, helping devs to build good product. Also it always took much more time and money. If you think you can build marketable product with fix-cost-scope contract - think twice.
vessenes 10 hours ago Oof. Sorry. Missed in this story because Jacob is in Europe/UK is that this level of absolute incompetence in a launch team is, in my experience, extra common on that side of the pond.There are of course some fantastic startups launched out of the UK and Europe. Spotify, Deepmind and Raspberry Pi come to mind. But, as a rule on the investment side, I'm always super skeptical. Inevitably cap tables are worse, investors have a very different view of their roles than they do in US or Asia, and there's so much less startup infrastructure than in SV or say Singapore or Shanghai that it's a very different world. Ironically, it's self-feeding -- investors think startups are shitty business, they charge more, high quality founders head for greener pastures -- rinse and repeat.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Haha to be fair I have been adjacent to lots of startups like this. I also spent a few months attending weekly zoom calls for a side hustle that was effectively some mid level bored corporate people blowing off steam. They were a few steps behind getting a bankloan.
pizzathyme 8 hours ago Rather than being a cautionary tale, I actually think this is the kind of misadventure that everybody should have. You learn so much about the real world from a failed startup where nothing is done right (at least I did). Your early 20s are the perfect time to do it with little risk. Lots of painful memories I laugh at later. Highly recommended.jakey_bakey 7 hours ago Yep this is exactly my summary at the end! I'm glad I sat on this story a few years to let it develop and let the positive career consequences play out.
jkaptur 7 hours ago > If you aren’t sure what your cofounders are doing, trust your git instinct.That's good advice to not lose your HEAD.
OtherShrezzing 9 hours ago An additional red flag - if your company lists "being SEIS registered" as a point of traction, run a mile. Literally every newly registered UK company can get this by spending 60 minutes filling out a form that says "my company is risky, I intend to raise money from VCs".jakey_bakey 9 hours ago “This will be a great differentiator when looking for funding!”
WaitWaitWha 3 hours ago Another red flag: [phantom stocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_stock).Invented a few things, implemented in product, CEO & CFO sold company from under us. Ended up with nothing.
bgschulman31 38 minutes ago Loved this article! And I appreciated the BCS references - especially the subtler ones like the use of the word 'chicanery'Aurornis 10 hours ago This is the classic dead-end startup story from beginning to end. It checks all the boxes:- 3 non-technical cofounders
- Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers
- Attempt to outsource development followed by disappointment
- Relentless scope creep
- Zero go to market plan, just an incessant belief that more features in the app will solve all problems
There is also one less obvious point that is buried in the article:
> Simultaneously, my underpaid mid-level consultancy role passed me up for promotion again. I wanted out, double-time.
I did volunteer mentoring for a while. Few people went all-in on unpaid startup jobs as their primary role, but many were tempted to do it as side projects. They always believe it’s less risky. The risk they don’t see is that it distracts them from their main job, either slowing career growth or risking a PIP or layoff.
The common thread I kept coming back to was this: Ignore the side projects. Focus on career growth at your day job. Put your primary energy into growing your career or finding a job where you can.
Something about the side hustle continues to lure people into thinking it’s a way out, until they burn themselves out and sabotage their day job while doing it.
zelda420 9 hours ago Throughout my long career in the tech industry, from established giants like Oracle to a hyper-growth pre-IPO Airbnb, I've observed a consistent pattern: engineers rarely advance more than one level above their initial hiring position, regardless of their performance or tenure.The only exception were juniors who could rise to a senior. But senior to staff, or whatever you want to call it is almost unheard of unless you jump ship.
mattgreenrocks 9 hours ago It's a professional version of "a prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives."Familiarity begets being taken for granted, and undervaluation, which hurts one's promotion case.
bathtub365 9 hours ago Over about 10 years I moved from mid level developer to director (through senior, team lead, engineering manager, sr engineering manager) at the same company. It was a small company that grew and the founders/high level engineers actually saw the value in retaining and growing people and had interesting enough work to keep people from getting bored, so we had high retention.Many of these promotions were out of cycle (because there was no cycle) and now that I’m at a bigger company I see how this would be much more difficult. There seems to be little interest in really retaining and growing engineering talent and all promotions are at the mercy of an entrenched HR org that doesn’t understand the work that anyone is doing. On top of that budgets are generally much tighter now than I’ve ever seen during my career.
It may still be possible to do this at smaller companies, with the obvious caveat that there’s always the danger of title inflation, though now that I’m at a bigger company I feel like I see more title inflation around me than I ever did at the smaller company. There are also entrenched structures of power that are obviously working against the success of the company and are causing good people to leave.
I do wonder if more companies embraced promotions it would lead to a healthier organizational culture in general since you’d have more people around who were involved in creating it.
jimbokun 8 hours ago It seems like the simplest reason for the discrepancy in behaviors is that in the small company, the higher level roles came into being organically as the company grew. Where as at the already established large company, to get a higher level role you almost have to take it from someone else. Or wait for a vacancy.
WWLink 9 hours ago Just over 10 years in space stuff, I have noticed exactly the same thing.jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Lol I have had one promotion in my life and it was mid-JuniorThat said, I have only moved jobs 2x in 9 years (my second startup failing doesn't count)
greatpostman 9 hours ago Yup. You get Bucketed and there is no growthAurornis 9 hours ago > The only exception were juniorsThe article mentions being an early career junior in the first few sentences.
aresant 9 hours ago "Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers"In 16 years on HN this is one of the best pieces of startup advice I've seen.
Default should be 10% of time on MVP and landing page, 90% on distribution until you smell PMF.
Fight violently against any suggestion you invest more heavily in product until somebody is in tears about keeping up with demand for your MVP.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Bingo. Tbh I have done personal projects where I am guilty of this.
mattgreenrocks 9 hours ago Excellent analysis.> Something about the side hustle continues to lure people into thinking it’s a way out, until they burn themselves out and sabotage their day job while doing it.
Side projects are a way to assert control. The siren song is that you can build your own way out of corporate hell and have a shot at growth (be that financial/personal/etc) without needing 10 randos and 3 committee meetings from your company to sign off on a promotion. In that light, I think it is a very reasonable response.
I think it's a symptom of how crappy and ambiguous leveling feels over the long-term. You're told that nothing's definite, just work hard and deliver results, and you'll make it.
miek 9 hours ago Side hustles can be very fruitful! While not tech related, I side hustled with a friend into starting a specialty wet wipe manufacturing business that we ran for 4 years and sold. The side hustle phase was done on PTO and weekends. We worked with the machine maker to get samples that we took to restaurant/hospitality expos to gauge demand. We made a deal with the machine supplier to send finished goods until the machines arrived. Four years later we sold it and I went back to corporate life. It was worth 100x an MBA.Aurornis 9 hours ago > The side hustle phase was done on PTO and weekends.Having a physical business and operating it on PTO and weekends is the cleanest way to keep it separate from work.
The tech side hustle mistake is to get a tech job, then think you'll do some more tech work as a side hustle. Some people can keep a clean separation, but more commonly people slide into blurring the lines between day job and side job. Trying to build a startup MVP while working a consulting job is basically doing two tech jobs at the same time, with predictable outcomes for both.
jakey_bakey 10 hours ago Amazing analysis. To be fair, I think there were a lot of reasons I was passed for promotion at Deloitte. I can grind like a mofo but am a terrible fit for client-facing roles (AuDHD).joshdavham 9 hours ago TIL AuDHD = "Autistm + ADHD".jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Same, I saw it on Twitter and just wanted to use it :D
thr0w 4 hours ago > - Relentless scope creepI'm in tears reading this, I've never seen it worded so perfectly. Have we all experienced that founder who has zero vision for what they're building and is so brutally relentless with ancillary asks?
nipponese 9 hours ago You can stop at - 3 non-technical cofoundersJuliate 8 hours ago > This is the classic dead-end startup story from beginning to end. It checks all the boxes:Oh my... I concur. I've been in the very exact same stupid play about 10 years ago. 3 cofounders, not one to understand tech, 1 hired me as a consultant, then invited me with a few shares and a salaried CTO role to build the solution, and it's been the exact same scenario.
Do not, ever, associate (figuratively or contractually) yourself with people you wouldn't go hiking with in the wild for one full week, and coming back from it craving for the next time.
Even if you can't stand being in the same car for one hour, don't work with them at all.
codingwagie 9 hours ago I think its completely possible to start a side business, people just dont 100% validate business ideas before buildingRowanH 9 hours ago > Something about the side hustle continues to lure people into thinking it’s a way out, until they burn themselves out and sabotage their day job while doing it.Sample size of 1
- Side hustle #1 funded my toy habit for a long time and gave me the confidence "I can build & support something from start to finish".
- Got to C Level working for 'the man' (aka the board). But regardless of level you're never in control of your destiny, especially with the eventuality of PE. For some that's okay, for others that's not...
- Which lead to Side Hustle #2. Left my day job 3 years ago....
Now have some of the best in our wee niche using our product, a number of team members, gradually growing it in bootstrapped fashion.
No investors, no funding rounds, no chasing growth targets. As "pure" as it can get - adding features, capturing more market, getting positive word of mouth, picking up new countries, finding new edge cases, adding new package upgrades. I think we're around 40% of new clients are referrals/word of mouth.....
In the first 6 months of turning billing on you're going "what the heck am I doing...." now I'm "oh I wouldn't give this up..." immensely rewarding bringing other new people into the business, and seeing that flow through to the finished product for our clients.
At least in NZ, side hustles are the genesis of a lot of tech companies.
cynicalsecurity 9 hours ago PIPs and layoffs happen to anyone, often randomly. A manager doesn't like you? Here, have a PIP. Good luck trying to seek justice in this situation. You could be working perfectly fine, but the company is complete trash with with hideous ethics.Side projects help finding a better job, or at the very least work on getting certifications or self-development to find a better job.
toast0 9 hours ago > unpaid startup jobsUnpaid job is an oxymoron. If they can't or won't pay you, it's either volunteer work, or a hobby. Why do charity work for a business that thinks it's going to be big; there's plenty of funding out there, let them find it and then they can pay you, and you can do work for them.
If you want to do an hour or a day or maybe even a week of work for free, ok. Maybe that's fun and interesting and you get something out of that, but after that if you're not getting anything, why would you keep doing it?
StefanBatory 9 hours ago Because you need experience. At least in my country, unpaid internships are the norm; and you won't be taught anything, or held to a lower standard. You just do the job that you'd be normally paid for, just for free.And even then, I had a few friends that had to go for another few months of unpaid job (not internship) later on. Because nobody would hire them without experience, and some companies don't consider internship to be one.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago It's easy to be naive as a dev in your mid 20s. It's easy to sell a vision of billionaire startup success to a naive person. Often we sell it to ourselves.toomuchtodo 9 hours ago Feels like there should be the equivalent of Matt Levine's "Certificate of Dumb Investment" for this scenario. ~90% of startups fail. Your equity is statistically likely to be worth $0. You will likely grind for years with nothing to show for it except the experience, your network, and whatever cash comp you collected. Proceed accordingly.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24285305
(edit: totally fine to still jump into a startup role if you're not optimizing for quality of life and economics; I did because I enjoyed the work and the team)
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Yeah, the only real regret is I could have got this experience more quickly with less pain and time not spent with my wifeEdit: just realised that made it sound like she died. She’s fine! We just had baby #2! But we could have spent lockdown making bread and playing RuneScape instead of me grinding
ChuckMcM 9 hours ago I love this story. Why? Because it is the story of so many startups. I was so perplexed in the mid-90's when the dot com "boom" had started by people who wanted to do a "startup" but had no idea what that meant. Like the author, people with a feeling of Destiny that they would be some leader of something that everyone talked about. I had the same beliefs when I left Sun where clearly I would never be "famous" but by starting a company that became big? Sure anyone could do that. And in fact, a peer at Sun for whom I felt was not particularly qualified at anything, had gone on to a startup which had then gone public and made millions! And if he could do it, well it was guaranteed for me, right? Yeah, no.At the other end of my career and looking back it becomes possible to see things that you missed on the journey, the role of luck, the difference between talking hard and working hard, and the critical importance of the people involved. A million monkeys with a million typewriters won't eventually create Shakespeare's works, they will waste a lot of resources and create a bunch trash. I also discovered that there are people who, when they speak, you really want to believe what they are saying. Being able to step back and say "what's the foundation here? Why should I believe this?" can be very difficult.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago Do you think a million monkeys with a million typewriters could come up with Oracle Database 11?jimbokun 8 hours ago Is an existence proof allowed?
praptak 9 hours ago A million monkeys with a million typewrites will statistically have one lucky monkey who creates an extremely successful product which also looks very dumb and very unconvincing ("Srsly? You want to make money from random people hosting strangers in their own rooms?" Bang, AirBnB)The problem is selection bias. A startup is 3 monkeys tops, so the chances of that are appropriately low and if the product looks dumb and unconvincing, it probably is ("...but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.")
ChuckMcM 9 hours ago There should probably be an entire chapter written on "Okay, but what if the product was desirable but not 'technically' legal, hmmm?" :-)praptak 9 hours ago It would say "we all know how it went" :)ChuckMcM 8 hours ago Had an interesting discussion this past weekend on whether or not Silkroad was a criminal enterprise or a very successful startup. It was an interesting look at the question of 'business first' versus 'lawful first' societies and their relative success through history.
jimbokun 8 hours ago I would say good luck finding enough very successful companies NOT matching that description to fill a chapter.
_DeadFred_ 9 hours ago Pitch: It's a replacement for Blockbuster. But instead of going and getting instant gratification and getting to watch the movie you want to watch tonight, you create a wishlist and we send you 3 titles off that list (normally the 3 least popular), which may or may not be what you want to watch right now, and add the convenience of injecting the United States Post Office into the process.ChuckMcM 9 hours ago https://xkcd.com/2618 right?
xivzgrev 10 hours ago I get it, why a young ambitious 20-something would be sucked into this.Sometimes you just need to make your own mistakes to learn, even if you read / hear from others that you shouldn't do that thing.
C'est la vie.
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago I would even say it was a worthwhile experience. I've built my career off the startup I landed in, I probably wouldn't have got there without being burned here.its_down_again 8 hours ago Any advice for leveraging a startup role to boost your career? I’ve seen friends turn their positions at early stage companies (Pre-Seed/Seed/Series A) into things like raising funding for their own ventures, hosting galas at SF museums, putting on international fashion shows with their alma mater, or even speaking gigs. And honestly, I have no idea how they pulled it off.dan-robertson 6 hours ago Feels like you might get better advice asking your friends who’ve done the thing you can’t understand?
eqmvii 8 hours ago Lovely article. The payoff of "I loved every minute of it" after all the agony and missed red flags really hit home.jakey_bakey 8 hours ago Thank you for reading :)
aorloff 10 hours ago Everyone wants someone else to do the hard part, but wants to "own" somethingBitches, owning something is doing the hard part !
icedchai 7 hours ago This attitude is also very common. When I see a small company with lots of "leaders" and far fewer doers, it's a huge red flag.jakey_bakey 9 hours ago I'm an entrepreneur, bitch. Ideas + delegation!
harshaw 6 hours ago This isn't so much about the Author's story but the space. He is correct that marketplaces are hell, and especially auto repair market places. I was one of the several devs that went through trying to make Openbay work (a US based market place for auto repair). We actually did have service providers signed up and we did have a way to acquire customers who wanted auto repair. So you had the illusion of product market fit - but the problem is that it's really really hard to get people to actually click "buy this brake job" and then, more importantly, they have no reason to come back to your app because 1) you don't need brake jobs all that often and 2) they can just go back to the service provider. And many shops are happy to still take phone calls as their default way of booking work.The reason the company existed is the rich founder was upset that a shop wanted to charge him a fortune to get his BMW M5 repaired. He wanted better quotes. So we built a marketplace to get better quotes. But that's not what real customers want (because most people have Toyotas not M5s). And also we didn't do the customer development / research to understand how repair shops work. You want to know how my repair shop manages their repair schedule? They have a paper calendar and write down your phone number and the job. sure there are better ways to manage the work - but this paper mechanism has worked for them for years and why change it? And you know what - I go back to the shop all the time because I trust them. Ultimately people tend to have a fairly personal relationship with their local mechanic. You can build a leadgen product but the ultimate relationship is between the customer and the repair provider.
TLDR - everyone should understand the lean startup. /working backwards model and relentlessly focus on the customer.
bityard 5 hours ago > Ultimately people tend to have a fairly personal relationship with their local mechanic.This is the money line. And it goes for all skilled trade work. Mechanics, plumbers, building contractors, roofers. Most of the people doing this work are just surprisingly bad at it, especially for how much they charge for it. It takes a LOT of time and effort to find someone good. I'd even lump doctors and dentists into this.
I don't want a marketplace to tell me who's the cheapest, I want a marketplace to tell me who's the best. And unfortunately there's no way to build that. (Why is a long story, but the short version is: because there's no way to build the correct incentives into it.)
cafard 4 hours ago > Most of the people doing this work are just surprisingly bad at it, especially for how much they charge for it.A friend quotes a sometime co-worker of his: This is C+ world, and if you can do a solid B- you won't starve.
joshdavham 9 hours ago Really cathartic read! Thanks so much for writing this. I really related to parts of this and the red flags you point out are very much the red flags I've also noticed with other startups. I almost feel like this could be "required reading" for some.jakey_bakey 9 hours ago I hope @paulg asks me to give this talk at demo dayI can make it funnier!
pavel_lishin 4 hours ago An incredibly good write-up. Had I been the author, I don't know if I could put ink to paper like this without bitterness and resentment burning through every page.firesteelrain 10 hours ago Sounds like a nightmare. Red flags were visible early on but obviously everyone was blindjakey_bakey 9 hours ago The only person you have to convince is yourself!
paulorlando 8 hours ago Liked this: "Startup pitch competitions are mostly a waste of time—validation comes from talking to users and iterating, not from impressing a judge."indoorcat 5 hours ago Extremely relatable. I was the first technical hire for a startup that ultimately failed last year. I did at least have a (below market) salary, and there were no outsourcing headaches, but I really did spend an inordinate amount of my time trying to perfect a product that the founders had no idea how to market. I certainly learned a lot, though it made me a little cynical about startups and the tech industry in general. Maybe in a couple more years I’ll feel more positively about the whole experience.bitbasher 8 hours ago The first red flag is a startup that is contingent on a two sided marketplace... damn that's a tough place to be!mandevil 6 hours ago The only times I've ever heard of this working are when you have a huge war-chest to subsidize both sides of the marketplace to come out and play on your app. If you can offer better prices than normal to both sides (with the gap made up from your raises) it can work. Otherwise? I'm not sure it can.
generationP 8 hours ago So an app that would probably serve a real need fails because the team is unable to bootstrap the two-sided market. The best dev moves to a bullshit "green habits" app that doesn't suffer from such problems because... it doesn't really do much in the first place. Not the greatest outcome for the world.jakey_bakey 8 hours ago Hey man, don't knock 2020/2021 ZIRP era projectsDon't you remember before inflation when we were able to focus on climate change!
But you totally got us there, the startup failed because we were a vitamin (and because our on-the-fence seed round was scuppered by Putin cooling some feet)
generationP 3 hours ago Yeah, not so much harping on you as on the whole ecosystem. You seem to have done your part well.
ugh123 9 hours ago > In one Monster-and-Elvanse-fuelled night of passion, I was light years ahead of a build that had taken 3 years. They were sold.MY MAN!
jakey_bakey 9 hours ago AuDHD represent :ok:
superconduct123 9 hours ago I'm thankful I got to experience working at very early startup as a summer intern rather than full timeThat gave me enough info to know I'd prefer working for a big company
cortesoft 10 hours ago This just makes me glad I don't work in the startup space anymorejakey_bakey 9 hours ago Eh, it gets better. I've gone from (this) to my own preseed, to a seed, now in a series A. It's always fun and there's always lots to learn.
htrp 7 hours ago Advisory roles only advise. Once you start doing work, you're basically an employee.Havoc 9 hours ago Well at least he took learnings from itjakey_bakey 9 hours ago Hahah it was probably just about worth it. Wouldn't if I had kids or it wasn't mostly in COVID time
gavmor 8 hours ago > The cofounders didn’t have access to the code repoGet the fuck outta here. I couldn't read past that. I'm done. Thanks for the writeup. Godspeed.
jakey_bakey 8 hours ago "This is just object code for my idea why would I want to read it"