
A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years - myth_drannon
https://twitter.com/Shpigford/status/1033032915175858176
======
WilliamEdward
One thing that separates entrepreneurs from normal people is they aren't
afraid of having stupid ideas. A good 90% of the ideas on this list,
particularly the early ones, are laughable and are ideas you wouldn't catch a
serious individual dead trying to come up with. Some people try from the start
to be perfect and always fail because they don't understand you need dumb
little ideas to be an entrepreneur.

~~~
Shpigford
So true! I’ll be the first to tell you the _vast_ majority of those ideas were
objectively terrible but every single one of them taught me _something_.

~~~
bridanp
I really enjoyed seeing the list, Josh, and I appreciate the share via Twitter
and here. My guess is that there are several serial entrepreneurs on Hacker
News, and like myself, definitely can identify with your efforts.

~~~
Shpigford
Thanks so much!

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safgasCVS
I don't understand this spray and pray approach to business - I'm not
businessman so I may be talking out my ass - but I would have thought business
is like a long term relationship. May as well have a spreadsheet of 50 failed
marriages. If you aren't in it for the long haul what are you doing?

~~~
hippich
What he called "business" others (myself included) would call "side projects"
until one of such projects would evolve into "business".

You have to start somewhere and try things out to find a business bringing
revenue. And yes, it is "spray and pray" in essence. And I see nothing wrong
with it. (probably because I tried to launch a similar number if not more of
such "businesses"/projects and continue doing so)

~~~
cylinder
He made 50 websites.

------
mshenfield
I'm jealous that he's made so many things, surprised by the small amount of
money they've been sold for, and unsure whether this is someone I should
emulate or someone I should view as a cautionary tale.

~~~
rasengan
“Working hard will not guarantee that you will be successful, but I guarantee
you, that all successful people worked hard.”

\- Coach Kamogawa thru George Morikawa

~~~
3pt14159
Honestly, I'm not really sure if that's really true any more.

I wasn't working hard when I bought Bitcoin at three bucks a coin. I was just
intellectually curious. If anything when I was working hard was two years
before that on a soon to be failed startup. We crawled the web for ads just
before the ad business went hyper targeted. I made -$20k from working hard.

I made a lot more from Bitcoin. I would have made way more if I'd put that
$20k in Bitcoin and slacked off at some day job.

I guess I don't really follow my own advice though, as I'm presently working
on a Sunday morning and I've only taken like two days off this month.

Edit:

Writing this comment briefly made me re-consider my whole life and I've come
to the conclusion that being lucky and prescient observations are more likely
if you've worked hard _at some point_. I did do an engineering degree with
some economics electives at the best school in Canada, and understanding
Satoshi's paper wouldn't have been possible without this background knowledge.

~~~
da02
How did you sell Bitcoin? For cash? Was it dangerous?

~~~
3pt14159
Well I mostly got out at $200 because I thought competent people regulated our
economies and figured crypto would be banned by regulators, so it was pretty
easy to spread it out over a couple wires. The remaining chunk I sold at the
$10k-$20k window. I still think it could hit $50k/coin, but it was too large a
percent of my assets and I figured I'd already made such a crazy return (1000x
on average I think?) that squeezing out another 4x or 5x seemed reckless.

If only I hadn't been relatively broke when I bought in. I was suffering burn-
out and basically working odd contracts here and there to keep the lights on.

------
dedupely
Haha, I love this list. I wish I remembered all the stuff I did. In the early
days (2003) I was doing flash games on newgrounds. Later turned to a hockey
card store. Then I tried a million-dollar-pixel ads clone (made nothing, big
surprise).

I also wasted too much time on stupid shit I never even launched. Like 1yr on
a flash game of my dog (never launched). Another year on a site for musicians
that never had a name or domain. A year on a bike rental directory. Another on
a CMS for mobile sites (yeah m.domain sites, my timing sucked). A year or more
on a trello-like project management app that sucked but launched with 100 beta
users.

I also did 10-20 launch pages for testing marketable ideas. Most didnt work,
and a few that did I didnt want to do (stuff like automated browser testing).

All that before hitting a product I've spent the last 4 years taking to six
figures. So yeah, results vary. But I love this list. Brings back my good
memories of wondering when I'd make more then 5 bucks on something that wasn't
freelancing.

~~~
dedupely
Oh I forgot. My "big break" product was actually from a mentor who needed the
prduct. Had nothing to do with me hunting it down. Kind of funny actually. I
can't really tell you what the secret to any success it accept seems that the
more you work in the direction you want to go the closer you get. But some of
it is just luck. Don't have any strong opinions for you.

~~~
adventured
> I can't really tell you what the secret to any success

You just did ;)

Right here:

> My "big break" product was actually from a mentor who needed the prduct. Had
> nothing to do with me hunting it down.

That's one of the great secrets to success right there, build something that
you already know someone needs. Considerably reduces the role of the luck
factor and guess-work.

~~~
dedupely
True, you hit the nail on the head. All the new businesses I start (nowadays)
comes down to: do we already have customers? Is there a real (proven) demand
for this?

Bottom line, can we prove that this won't be a waste of time?

This is why I don't open the text editor and start new stuff that I come up
with now days. I'm too traumatized from all the lessons I've learned to do
that. Getting above water is the biggest hurtle. After that you realize that
you don't need to touch anything that risks going nowhere.

------
zerr
> Amazon affiliate sites

I think this is a completely different mindset compared to engineers/"nerds",
that's why most of us work for others instead of starting our own businesses.

~~~
WilliamEdward
There is nothing wrong with working for others if it fulfills you. I envy
people who can have comfortable lives with happy families and a simple desk
job that pays for what they need. Something in my brain is telling me I need
more or I won't be happy, so I have many startups I'm working on and have
exclusively begun working for myself. The grass is always greener on the other
side, that much I can say. Enjoy your comfy engineering job and be careful
what you wish for.

If you are a nerd who wants to break into entrepreneurship, prepare for a lot
of fun, but also prepare to do work you think is stupid or never saw yourself
doing, only for it to end up as a niche product. That's fine.

~~~
andyidsinga
This! - I'm in a similar space myself. At once envious of those happy with a
decent day job - corp or whatever (one of my good buddies is a "garbage man"
and he seems pretty damn happy).

A year into struggling as an entrepreneur and no longer working at BigCo - I
couldn't be happier despite having to live with a crazy amount of anxiety :)

~~~
zerr
And there is that middle-ground of being an independent consultant from where
it is even harder to make a step, especially when taking in count your own
hourly rate :)

------
sampl
These are mostly failed consumber businesses until Baremetrics, which had
$100k in recurring revenue last month.

[https://demo.baremetrics.com/](https://demo.baremetrics.com/)

------
gumby
This is inspiring: the dominant culture today is "oh yeah, it's going great".

One quote that has stuck in my mind is from Chuck Jones, quoting his own prof
at RISD: "You have 10,000 bad paintings in you. The sooner you get them out
the sooner you'll get to the good ones."

I eventually learned to just let that dumb idea (weld, program, drawing) get
out. Some good ideas fail, and most bad ideas fail, but sometimes you can only
tell which it was (good or bad) after the fact.

~~~
lylecubed
And some bad ideas succeed. Flappy Bird and ship your enemies glitter come to
mind.

------
nedwin
Hey shpigford - curious how you made a living during this time? Was it via
these apps/projects/businesses? Freelancing? Day job?

And kudos again. Great list.

~~~
Shpigford
From 2003-2013 I split my time with consulting. Did ~300 client projects over
that time period.

------
j-f-t
They are more akin to projects than businesses. The majority of the businesses
could be categorized as small web apps and Amazon affiliates. Most appear like
he didn't find a problem to solve, but tried to create a solution. There also
doesn't appear to be much thought given to market size for each product.

~~~
Shpigford
The title of the spreadsheet is “Josh Pigford's Absurd List of Products, Apps,
Websites & Businesses”...they definitely weren’t all full on “businesses” and
the large majority of them were terrible ideas. I definitely don’t recommend
most people go the route I did. :)

~~~
palerm
Which route would you recommend instead?

~~~
Shpigford
No clue. Everybody's route is different. This is just how I've figured things
out (and I'd still say there are many things I definitely have _not_ figured
out).

------
rbucks
I interviewed Josh for my book, The Parallel Entreprener (on Kindle etc), and
can attest that he’s done all this experimentation for the love of the game.

For some of us the glory is not in the exit but rather in the building.

------
bufferoverflow
Feels like he doesn't give the businesses enough time to gain popularity. Some
of them were clearly not bad ideas, like the ad management one.

~~~
santoshalper
I noticed the same thing. The one that jumped out to me was something like,
sold before it launched for $10000. Why would you build something and take 10
grand instead of launching it? Desperation?

~~~
k1ns
I would gladly take $10k and move on to my next project over building,
marketing, sales, etc., with no promise of a return. He obviously enjoys the
inception/building phase and that time he got to build and then cash out with
very little investment. If I was very confident that my idea would take off,
I'd reject early offers and go for it. However, for many of us, everything
after the building phase is like pulling teeth. For others, its great. But I
definitely relate to that decision.

------
daveguy
Hey shpigford, I am curious about this terrible CPA that led to a $10k IRS
bill. If you had to look for a new CPA can you tell me what you would look for
and what would be warning signs?

Also, great list! Did some of those affiliate sites make money even though you
eventually shut them down and didn't sell them?

~~~
Shpigford
Main thing is finding a CPA who has _some_ experience with the type of
business you're running. Freelancer, Corporation, etc...find a CPA who can
speak the language.

It's less an issue now, but 10+ years ago, there were a lot of CPAs who didn't
have much/any experience with internet-based businesses and so they weren't
familiar with some of the additional bits to take in to account.

As for affiliate sites...I probably made a grand total of 50 cents from
them...total. :P

------
hartator
Kudos on the transparency.

Where did you find your buyers?

~~~
Shpigford
Flippa for all except TheAppleBlog.

~~~
nodesocket
Was there a lot of legal required (paperwork and lawyers) for Tutorial Outpost
for $19k?

~~~
Shpigford
Not at all.

------
ccostes
Really interesting, thanks for sharing this.

Why is it called Cedar & Sail when (as far as I can tell) it has nothing to do
with either of those things? :p

In any case, congrats on hitting it big with Baremetrics!

~~~
Shpigford
I need to come up with an elaborate story on the name...alas I just picked two
words that I thought sounded interesting together and BOOM, done. :P

------
austhrow743
Am I meant to be able to expand columns in this? It seems like I should be
able to given that there's a lot half hidden content, yet I can't work out how
to.

~~~
bequanna
Change the url so you aren't looking at the html view:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ro4QYK1raqu3pNFMAjP9...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ro4QYK1raqu3pNFMAjP9vSOft-
WndIS6nn5q4JU8TPc/edit#gid=0)

Then 'File', 'Make a copy' and you can edit and resize as desired.

~~~
austhrow743
Thanks!

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darienbc
Can you share more info about how you sold some these businesses?

~~~
Shpigford
Listed them on Flippa! The end. :)

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mxpxrocks10
thanks for sharing. Cool idea. (PS we're a baremetrics customer - keep up the
great work! :)

~~~
Shpigford
Thanks so much!

------
real-hacker
Why are the Amazon affiliate sites so unsuccessful? Are there too many of
them? or what?

