
Ask HN: Where am I going wrong? - throwaway2019a
I keep building startups and side projects, and they keep failing. Initially I was doing it to make money, now I&#x27;d just be grateful if anyone used any of the stuff I build. My first project launched in 2003. It was a competitor to bunk1.com but I couldn&#x27;t get any camps to sign up to it because I was crap at sales. Since then I&#x27;ve spent untold numbers of hours building various projects. Some, where I was in between jobs would be full time efforts. Others would be done evenings and weekends but still consume nearly all my free time.<p>There&#x27;s something about the idea of running my own software business that appeals to me in a way I can&#x27;t describe.  Now, 15 years later I have nothing to show for it. I can live with the fact that my projects have never made money but it hurts to think I&#x27;ve put so much effort into something nobody wants.<p>I used to have a &quot;build it and they&#x27;ll come&quot; mentality but I learned about lean startups and started validating ideas. Now I try to make sure there is at least some interest in what I&#x27;m building and then mention in in related forums, groups etc I usually get a positive response but this never translates into traction.<p>I often see &#x27;Show HN&#x27; posts blowing up and sometimes I don&#x27;t understand how they get as many votes as they do. After 15 years I feel like I&#x27;ve exhausted every resource and I&#x27;m just not cut out for this.<p>Where am I going wrong HN?
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acangiano
Market > Marketing > Design > Code.

I suspect you might get the code part right and fall short on at least one of
the other three.

For help with the marketing part, you might want to consider my book (the
second edition just came out in beta):
[https://pragprog.com/book/actb2/technical-blogging-second-
ed...](https://pragprog.com/book/actb2/technical-blogging-second-edition)

I understand the desire to remain anonymous here, but if you email me with
some details, I can give you more specific pointers.

------
thiago_fm
Well I'm 30 and I've "wasted" countless hours in projects as well that didn't
give me any money back. I've started coding websites since I was 10, with the
idea of making money and turning into a successful entrepreneur. Today, I
write code for a living in a company. Those "wasted" hours definitely made me
a very very competitive person in the job market, I bet that if did all those
things you mention, that will be the case as well.

That doesn't mean I'm not successful. It just didn't work out and it is
normal. For every billionaire, there is a lot of people like us.

I would also ignore the comments about not being good at selling etc, building
products and making a lot of money has a lot of luck involved. There are
things we can definitely keep improving, but that in my opinion, isn't what is
going to get us what we want. There is a good amount of randomness and luck in
this process. A lot of people are working hard, that doesn't mean a thing.
Only a few can succeed.

We're just "test subjects" in this world. Don't take this too seriously as
some type of failure. Just use your skills you got to make a living and if you
are willing, make more products, or give up, it doesn't matter, really. And
chill.

Thanks for everything that you have built that didn't work out.

~~~
open-source-ux
_" There is a good amount of randomness and luck in this process."_

I agree with this. Just take a look at 'Show HN' \- there are many excellent
projects that get no traction at all. And then there a few lucky ones that
suddenly take-off. There's no "wisdom of the crowds" moment that propels one
project to success over another because it's more worthy or excellent - it
really is random in so many cases. But rather than see that as a negative,
take comfort from the fact that everyone is in the same boat. Plus, the fact
that the original poster actually built these projects is an impressive feat
in itself. Many of us never even get beyond the 'idea-in-our-head' stage.

~~~
thiago_fm
Yeah, people need to be more chill about that

------
partingshots
Don’t waste your time building out the technology or product first. You’ll
just end up with months of work down the drain, and nothing at all to show for
it.

What you need to do is sell the idea of your product first. Get guaranteed
customers, which means, they need to put cold hard cash on the line. Putting
out a survey to garner interest is fun to do, but you’ll never really know
until you actually get a person to part with their money.

Once you have your first foundational customers, whether this be individual
people or businesses, then start going 100% on the product itself.

~~~
jryan49
I keep hearing this advice on HN, and I still don't believe it. Who is going
to pay me for software that doesn't exist yet? Can you give me some real
examples of this working? Also, how is this not literally fraud?

edit: Do you mean you get them to commit to paying you when a product is
ready?

~~~
itronitron
If you build your product on top of existing tech (i.e. open source stacks)
then that removes a lot of risk for the client (assuming they are smart enough
to even care about that). The trick then is doing this in such a way that you
retain ownership, instead of it being a freelance thing.

Companies are willing to do this because they get 100% input on the product
direction.

------
malux85
> It was a competitor to bunk1.com but I couldn't get any camps to sign up to
> it because I was crap at sales.

So you just stopped there? Moved onto coding something else, because rather
than get better at something you're crap at, it's comforting to do something
you're good at (more coding)

There's your problem.

------
nicholas73
Maybe pick something that is easier to sell. The bunk1.com idea has two
problems I see immediately: 1) You have to reach the camp decision makers,
which is a very small population and not necessarily available directly from a
contact email/number. 2) The value proposition is not obvious to the decision
maker. The last point is an important distinction, as its obviously valuable
to the parents. The app does not necessarily provide a reason for a parent to
choose one camp for another, nor does it give the camp decision maker a "win"
at her job. Actually it could be negative - it could just be more work and
compliance risk.

So actually I think the sale here is harder than it might have seemed, though
obviously someone was able to do it.

------
simplecomplex
Stop building and start selling. Sell before you build.

~~~
aryamaan
As someone who would like to start touching my toes in whole this exercise on
day, how do I sell before creating the product-- like should I demo things
made up of mockups?

And where do I sell it? I don't think (if it's a SASS) people at online
communities welcome a product which isn't built yet and they couldn't try.

------
gojuka
You've not gone wrong, you just haven't succeeded _yet_. My advice would be to
widen your vision a bit, stay positive, don't give up, and most importantly,
and be open to other opportunities to fulfill the same goal of a successful
business.

Would running a different kind of successful business be as fulfilling? While
I shared the same vision as you approximately 5 years ago (starting a SaaS
business), ultimately that particular goal didn't work out. But pursuing that
goal did open many doors for me as well as teach me a whole lot about business
and how to negotiate. Fast forward through years of attempts at making the
company successful, I now run a small consultancy that I consider extremely
successful. I owe this directly to my initial goal of starting a SaaS
business. Had I not pursued that goal, I believe my consultancy would not
exist.

"There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still."
-FDR

------
smithmayowa
Can you find a SaaS successful SaaS founders or preferable a SaaS sales person
close to you, that you could learn from cause it seems your problem is sales
and not really SaaS.

I was once in your shoes building SaaS project that never amounted to much,
what changed well I got into yc startup school last year and while my startup
failed I learnt a lot from fellow startup schoolers when it came to sales,
things like; b2b and b2c SaaS require different sales approach, cold outreach
bring in 3% of all SaaS sales,and so on. And then I joined Facebook SaaS
groups, which where filled with successful SaaS founders, where I am learning
a lot from, I even found founder mentors there, who are now mentoring me
through my recent SaaS project that is accomplishing results my other SaaS
projects never could. There are so many variables involved in building a
successfull SaaS project, so many in fact that it is a fallacy to think you
can optimize them all by yourself, best approach is to find someone who has
already optimized most of these variables and learn from them.

SaasGrowthHacks is a particularly good Facebook group you can join, it is a
closed group by the way.

------
houssem_fat
I'm facing the same experience. I see how it's exhausting and depressive the
feel of "failure". I quit my first job trying to clone some successful idea to
run it in my country with no background in marketing or business. I was driven
by dreams and hoped to be independent but there was no business vision. After
two years, i returned to work with other companies, but i continue to work in
side projects. I think the worst error that we made is the pursuit of
"perfection", trying to do what big sass companies does with hundred of
engineers. Big companies fail and fail a lot but they can surpass that by
other resources. To summarize, i think the lean startup is the basic of any
business (in software and all other business fields), it consists on building
an "ugly" solution ( for a real problem) first than sell it and than continue
till perfection. We can learn a lot from yahoo and nokia ...

------
Jackypot
The whole 'sell before you build' theme is plastered all over this thread, as
I expected. I _think_ this originates from the whole lean/MVP school of
thought but is sold in threads like these as though you can just create a
'coming soon' page with email sign up, wait for 1000 emails and then write
your first line of code. In reality it is about building _only_ what's
necessary for a minimum viable product then ship and only add features which
are demanded of you (i.e. adding value not speculating and building stuff no-
one cares about). This does require _some_ work/thought/assumptions up-front.
It's not as easy as people make it out to be!

------
BornInTheUSSR
Sounds like you have developed some great product development skills in your
time spent and learned about what doesn't work for building a business. Now
it's time to fill that gap. Some questions to focus on for now are:

* Who are the people I want to serve?

* How do I find out what problems they have that I can help?

* How do I reach them?

* What can create to help them solve their problems?

* How do I get them to see me and my products as the solution to their problems?

* How do I become trustworthy enough in their eyes to try my products?

You can learn how to do a lot of this yourself and there are many courses out
there like 30x500 that can help. As an alternative, you might want to find and
partner with a good 'Business Guy' who can bring the audience while you build
the product.

------
zepolen
Here is a post from someone else, tell me what you would tell the guy:

> I keep having ideas for startups and side projects and while I'm great at
> sales and build a ton of traction and people aching to use the app... I
> can't build it - because I'm crap at programming.

So, what would you suggest he do?

------
super-serial
I'm in a very similar position and since I also suck at sales I choose B2C
over B2B. Selling to businesses directly is hard. Why not first sell to
consumers, then have an "enterprise version" if it catches on?

So for example for your campground app - why not first solve problems of
individuals going to the camp? It could be as simple as a public map tool
where people could put/share markers for different resources on the map...
then after you provide value for free, offer premium services. I haven't been
successful either so maybe this is horrible advice, but that's basically how I
try to solve the problem of sucking at marketing/sales. (do marketing through
engineering)

------
tmaly
I have been through the same. I originally had a site to sell shell gifts back
in 2003. I sold one necklace for $12 and that was it. I even tried selling in
person at stores, but had no luck.

The best income I had was building websites early on and I made a few thousand
doing that on the side. I have for the last 7 years been trying to make
something, but have not had much success. Build it and they will come has been
a failure for me.

I am trying to use some of the methods Pat Flynn talks about in his book Will
It Fly. Look for the audience first, the one that has an existing problem.

------
imetatroll
I just wanted you to know you are not alone in trying and feeling like you
haven't succeeded. At the end of the day I've tried to realize that the things
I have pursued and will continue to pursue will hopefully have some intrinsic
value to them that allows me to be ok with the failure. Most likely you have
to push harder when marketing and selling. At least that is what I tell myself
with the current project that I am working on.

------
p0d
Maybe you aren’t cut out for it as you say? I have a sideline I would have
liked to have been a business but it remains a sideline and I’m ok with that.

Sometimes we believe we can achieve anything we want. This is compounded by
reading and listening to all the hero stories online.

I would say do nothing in this space for a while and let your thoughts get
themselves in order.

------
usgroup
I’d say that SaaS just is a lot harder than we often expect and that more than
50% of the effort is not product related.

It’s like building a car that has amazing peripherals but no engine each time
and wondering why it doesn’t go.

Unfortunately product in reality is moreso the peripheral and less so the
engine.

Didn’t build it and they still came is a thing.

Build it and they didn’t come is a thing.

------
mooreds
What kind of sales and marketing research are you doing? Are you working on
that aspect of the businesses as hard as you are the software product? Can you
afford to seek out people whose products seem to be selling and apprentice
yourself to them?

------
aliswe
Definetely recognize this. But there are tons of articles describing the "get
your first users" get your "first prototype" like the sam altmans ...
something playbook. Read that?

------
mrtdex15
Someone buys Upvotes to their posts. You can check a website as upvote.club.
So, I assume that sometimes people buy rating to get more traffic to their
website.

------
byandyphillips
Team up with a good ux designer so that you can wireframe/prototype your idea
before you spend any development time. I'd love to help - www.andyphil.com

------
this2shallPass
The main thing you've gained is sharpening a lot of skills. You can run your
own software business if you want to. You're learning the hard way. Life is a
good teacher with reflection, albeit unpleasant sometimes.

Validate even MORE about the problem, AND the solution, before building out
the solution in a substantial way, or at all. Is the problem clear to the
people who have it, and one of their top priorities? Find out by communicating
with them, ideally in person, but video chat works and written forms if that's
all that is possible. If a competitor exists, great! What's the value
proposition of your similar product/service? Why is it so good someone who
uses another should switch, or what makes it compelling for someone who is
evaluating your product/service?

Instead of positive interest, how many people will sign up in a form you link
them to, or a landing page? How many will give their email or some contact
information so that you contact them when your thing launches? How many say "I
have $x and I will pay you that right now if you make this problem go away!"?
How many people will read your blog post about how frustrating a certain
problem is? Saying "Yeah, I hate that problem", but not being willing to do
anything else. That might a dead end.

Another strategy is to build something that solves your own problem.
Minimally, it will be useful to you. If it's useful to you, you won't be
putting "effort into something nobody wants". If you have the problem, there's
a good chance others do, too, and they may be willing to use and/or pay for
your solution. Alternatively, after validating the problem and a potential
solution, you can build something for someone you're close to that solves
their problem. A spouse, family member, good friend, etc. Small frequent
feedback loops, and empathy, are key here.

Another shortcut to running your own software business is starting a software
consultancy. You can even do this while you have a day job, by hiring other
people to do parts of it, or with smaller projects. If you have many of a
similar type of customer (law offices, realtors, whatever), you can find the
right product that applies to many of them, while being paid to build other
things for your client, or this product itself. This is a traditional approach
to bootstrapping a software product, and lots of other people have written or
spoken about the it and its trade offs.

What succeeds on 'Show HN' and Product Hunt and similar things isn't
predictable. It also doesn't lead to instant success, product usage, or paying
customers. It's nice I would imagine, people have shown what it meant in terms
of visitors and traction, but it's a blip in the life of a product. Having
customers that use your product and pay you money would be better, and it's a
bit more in your control.

Here's a good link about validating without spending money or building
anything: [https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-startup-framework-
to-v...](https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-startup-framework-to-validate-
your-idea-before-you-spend-1/)

