
How My Fears Doomed My First Startup - rmason
https://dsdoes.com/how-my-fears-doomed-my-first-startup-81d7e3f0c47c
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gumby
Here's a way to think about your fears that may help (easier to say than do,
so if it doesn't work for you don't be discouraged).

If there were a fire in the corner of the room you'd rush towards it and
smother it. You wouldn't wait. If there were a big fire you'd get out (bcause
you can't even see the whole problem), get help, and figure out what to do.

Yet somehow we all (me included!!!) don't use the "obvious" (almost automatic)
approaches with more abstract fears. The big fears are the worst, as we're
often afraid to ask for help and are overwhelmed by the risk.

It has worked for me to think of them as literal fires, which eventually led
me to convince myself that the sooner I deal with them the sooner they'll stop
bothering me. I literally think of a problem with an employee as a fire
burning in the corner of the room, which if not addressed will spread. Nobody
wants to deal with a fire any more than an uncomfortable conversation (maybe
the latter even less) but the visualization seems to work.

I am sure this doesn't work for everyone but I was given this advice years ago
and was able to "trick" myself into dealing with many scary things.

~~~
awicklander
It’s comments like these that keep bringing me back to HN. Love this, thank
you.

~~~
gumby
Just passing it along -- got this advice about 25 years ago from someone else.
If it works for you, I hope you pass it on again!

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yakshaving_jgt
A product is one part of a business. It isn't everything.

I built a product, and I've managed to sell it to some companies and turn it
into a small business. It's been making me some pocket money for about 18
months now. But still, when I think about it, I'm always excited to get up in
the morning and hack on the project. What I'm _not_ excited to do, is to pick
up the phone and sell it to people.

I realised this towards the tail end of 2017, and decided I should co-found
companies instead. I can take care of building the product, and my co-founders
can do the business/sales/marketing stuff that I hate doing.

I've since started two companies with co-founders. I found all of them (or
rather, they found me) through Co-Founders Lab (I have no affiliation with
CFL, and I don't pay for my account, and they don't pay me).

One of the projects is bootstrapped; I put my time into writing the code, and
my partner has put about £10k into various costs, and he's spent his time
negotiating deals with companies.

With the other project, I am writing all the code (at least for now), and my
partners are pitching investors and building business relationships with what
will be our first beta users. We have funding committed from investors, and we
have large companies who have agreed to be beta partners.

Would I ever have achieved this on my own?

No. Never. No chance.

------
ericabiz
> After a few late nights of coding Dave’s Debugger worked too! It helped
> users quickly diagnose PC blue screens.

Dang! I actually would have paid for this. We run repair shops and it would be
useful as a tool to train our techs with. We train non-technical people in our
shops, so having something for them to go off of instead of spending time
Google searching and reading through forums would be useful.

It's a good reminder to anyone reading this who has built something but hasn't
launched it--if it solves a problem, there's probably someone out there
willing to pay for it.

------
god_bless_texas
Startups aren't for everyone, and especially if you haven't worked in one or
understand what it means to "hustle". The odd thing is, his next startup will
be a rocket ship because now he knows the most important fact - have someone
willing to pay for what you're doing.

~~~
mooreds
Actually, he might have had a successful startup in between 2010 and now,
because he's now an angel investor: [https://dsdoes.com/behind-the-scenes-my-
angel-investor-check...](https://dsdoes.com/behind-the-scenes-my-angel-
investor-checklist-c266135b2bbd)

~~~
rhacker
I wonder if he was an early bitcoin investor - his tag at the bottom says
bitcoin (heart) before it says "father" so maybe his path was paved with that?

Who knows.

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cyberferret
I've got a similar timeline as the OP, however in my case it wasn't fear that
held my startup back initially, it was a reliance on 'old school'
methodologies.

In my case, I built an app about 15 years ago that was purely Windows based,
and it sold like hotcakes into the small/medium business market. I then
thought I could do the same 3 years ago by writing it as a cloud based system
that worked on the web, and sales were _way_ off what the previous system sold
for.

Reason? Because I was trying to sell it the 'old' way, and customers had moved
on and were more informed now and had _far_ more choices. It took me a while
to re-learn how to do it the new way, and now sales are picking up at a steady
clip.

------
tzhenghao
> I avoided what I didn’t know. I avoided what scared me.

Startups are hard, but it's even harder to fight human psychology even if you
knew you should be doing the complete opposite.

Kudos to the author for writing this up.

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LaundroMat
I have been toiling away at a side-project and recently realized I postponed
talking to customers all the time.

As a test I forced myself to include a demo of that side-project in a
presentation on a related topic to product managers (my side-project's target
audience).

What I found out is that the fear that kept me from talking to customers is
the fear of feeling exposed.

It's fascinating how strong and immobilising that fear is. It's stronger than
the will to help people, improve the world and/or earn more money.

------
rb808
My view is also that selling developer tools is a really hard road. Developers
always want stuff for free, people would rather work an hour a day all year
than figure out how to get a $50 tool through purchasing.

~~~
zukzuk
Not when your employer is paying. And your employer will usually be happy to
pay, as from their point of view buying things off the shelf is cheaper than
having their devs build it from scratch.

~~~
taneq
My experience is different - I've often seen employers be ridiculously "penny
smart and pound foolish", saving $50 here and $100 there at the expense of
hours and hours a week wasted.

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theyoungwolf
i wouldn't even call this a startup

~~~
jmcgough
It could have been a startup if he wasn't too afraid to market and sell the
software.

~~~
luigi23
Not necessarily, it could be also just a piece of software, OSS, or just a
flop. There’s a long way to startup, escpecially when OP is a nerdy man
without startup mindset.

I just dont like that nowadays “any potentially useful software project =
startup”.

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z3t4
There are plenty of hustlers out there who would love to become the next Steve
Jobs or Bill Gates, so I suggest teaming up with one of those. However when
the team grows, make sure there's at least 10 engineers for each "business"
person.

------
Navarajan
You did what you loved, that's not wrong.

The wrong part is, you should have handed with a buddy who loves to sell and
do marketing.

I believe you still have a chance for a v2.0!

------
feistypharit
Great to see more folks in Michigan!

