
How To Go From $0 To $1,000,000 In Two Years - btmills
http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/04/how-to-go-from-0-to-1000000-in-two-years/
======
joshmlewis
While some of those are good points, I'm convinced that the successful
entrepreneurs didn't start by reading a techcrunch article about how to make x
amount of money. Sure some get inspired and try, but the real entrepreneurs
just get out there and do it. No one has to tell them to take the leap, he (or
she) has to tell others that it's perfectly normal for him to take the leap.
He's convinced himself that taking a leap and doing it himself is the only way
that he can be happy and successful. And that's how I am. I started working
for startups as my first job out of high school, I learned a lot, and kept
moving up. My parents and rest of my family and friends constantly said and
even say now 'When are you going to get a real job with benefits and
security?' and I politely say, never.

It's the resilience that is baked into my personality and how I work that I
never give up and I always make things happen. It's quite a delusion I'm sure
because I have this I can always make it work out mentality while everyone
else around me says I'm crazy, but in one way or another I always manage to
work it out. I haven't hit a 'home run' yet but I've always worked for myself
and always managed to pay the bills. Just in the two years from being out of
high school I've come pretty far by my own standards. I'm co-founding a
startup now and we just launched two weeks ago at a local university, we
gained 1,200 users in just under two weeks at this small college. It's a small
victory in a long line of uphill battles along the way to success but it's the
only thing I can imagine myself doing. And I'm going to keep doing it.

~~~
doorhammer
I would guess that the "successful entrepreneurs" category is sufficiently
diverse to resist pigeon holing. I'm personally not a fan of anything that
implies that you have to jump into a fast and loose market right out of high
school to become an entrepreneur.

I'd wager there are plenty of folks that got fed up with their jobs after
reading any number of self-help rags-to-riches articles or books and went on
to have successful self-employed careers, some of which probably ended up in
the millions of dollars.

Maybe it's because I'm corporately employed, thirty, sick of the grind and
working to get out, but the "this is who I am; this is what works, and if
you're not this, then you can't get it anywhere else" implication rubs me the
wrong way.

On a different note, I can tell how little I've replied to this sort of
article over the years by how many times I had to spell check entrepreneur
(got it that time. boom. little victories, amirite?)

[edit: I also want to say that this isn't an attempt to try and slam the OP.
Seriously, congrats on your success so far, and I hope you do just as well and
better in the future. I just think there are a lot of paths and destinations
in success, and even the cliche market of motivational memoirs and self-help
guides can kick someone in the ass occasionally and get them to make the move
they need to.]

~~~
dangrossman
Your guess is well-supported by facts.

> The average age of first-time entrepreneurs in all industries is 43; in tech
> industries, the average age is 39. Only 16 percent of the fastest-growing
> and most successful companies in the United States had venture investors. 11
> percent had revenues of more than a million dollars.

[http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/FactSheet/EntreAndEcon...](http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/FactSheet/EntreAndEcon061812E.PDF)

According to the US census bureau, about half a million new firms are
established each year (where a new firm is defined as having at least 1
employee on payroll, so this doesn't count everyone starting a website in
their spare time). 16%, 11%, these are of big numbers, bigger than the couple
dozen companies you might read about on TechCrunch each year.

~~~
w1ntermute
> The average age of first-time entrepreneurs in all industries is 43; in tech
> industries, the average age is 39.

This obviously doesn't mention how successful those older entrepreneurs go on
to be.

I'd like to know if there is a significant difference in the success rates of
tech companies started by 18 year olds and 28 year olds. Does it actually make
empirical sense to start a company when you're 18, or do those 10 years of
working drastically improve your chances such that you should hold off?

~~~
doorhammer
I'd be totally interested in (being spoonfed) research on that, just out of
interest.

I think my bumper-sticker take away, though, would be "it's never too early to
try and it's never to late to get started."

------
qeorge
I highly recommend James Altucher's book, I Was Blind But Now I See. You can
get it for $.99 on Kindle: <http://www.amazon.com/Was-Blind-But-Now-
ebook/dp/B005VPXXVM>

Its the story of how he built a web design business, exited for ~$12 million,
drank himself broke and nearly to death, and then built himself back up (he is
a VC now). Its about learning to be happy even though you sometimes feel like
you're broken. I drew a lot of lessons from it that help me daily.

------
amkassim
"Everyone is always on the lookout for “the next big thing.” The next big
thing is finding rare earth minerals on Mars. That’s HARD WORK. Don’t do it! "
..... I disagree.

It almost feels like techcrunch is stooping down to businessinsider style
sensationalism.

~~~
rhizome
That's how they justify posting every article to HN/Reddit/etc. "Online means
relevant!"

~~~
mscarborough
I hope you're not insinuating that every internal memo that Kara Swisher gets
BCC'd on isn't actually worthy of some smartass blog post.

Seriously though, it's funny to see Swisher post every lame email from Yahoo
corporate and write about it like it's the second coming of investigative
journalism.

~~~
rhizome
It's hard to be a decent journalist, sometimes too hard.

------
ChrisAntaki
I really liked this quote:

"You don’t have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing
slightly better than everyone else. And when you are nimble and smaller than
the behemoths that are stuck with bureaucracy, you can often offer better
sales and better service, and higher touch to your customers. Customers will
switch to you."

Still, coming up with the new, new thing can be the most creative & fun.

------
greghinch
Most of this advice is pretty terrible when taken generically. Really you
could boil all of his success down to "be good at selling anything".

~~~
cglee
I find generic advice like "be good at marketing/sales/etc" to be really
useless. HOW do you become good at marketing/sales/etc? Because each situation
and company is different, the how can only be gleamed from details of stories.
The meatier and more detailed the story, the more useful.

~~~
greghinch
My experience is, people who are good enough at sales to turn nothing into
major success, such as the subject of this story, aren't taught. They're
natural. They've been hustlers since they learned to talk. So you can't just
apply what they did if you aren't the same way.

~~~
cglee
I completely disagree. I've learned a lot from natural salesmen and marketers,
and have improved on both fronts due to learning from their battlefield
stories.

~~~
greghinch
I don't mean you can't become a better salesman through learning. I'm saying
you can't learn to be the kind of hustler who takes an idea you can't even
personally execute and turn it into a million dollar salary in two years. That
takes natural ability. The article frames it as if anyone can do it

Which I think is okay. The world needs less people who sell and more people
who make.

~~~
avenger123
I don't think the article makes the case that anyone can do it.

I follow Jame's blog and he definitely doesn't say anyone can do it. His own
life story is an example of this.

One message that he does try to say is the simple act of hustling.

Just do it is so cliched but why can't we take baby steps? Why not go out and
spend the next 3-6 months validating a business idea by talking to people,
potential customers, etc. Or maybe spend 3-6 months really getting in-depth
understanding of a niche and seeing if there are any gaps that technology can
help?

This advice is for myself but I think its quite relevant. For me, I have the
tendency to spend time just thinking through an idea without spending any real
effort to do a litmus test for it. I have to take a more realistic approach
which is to have mini-failures that don't cost too much in terms of time and
money and hopefully one of them will click. If this means going through 5-6
iterations within a span of 5-6 years until I "make it" then so be it. I'm not
looking to be the next anything. To me hustling is going out there and putting
myself in front of people that can help shape the idea. It is not sitting in
front of my computer and just building an MVP since I'm not looking to build a
business based on eyeballs but something that provides more direct value.

Anyway, I would suggest a more relevant article that James wrote is the
following:

[http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/the-100-rules-for-
being...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/04/the-100-rules-for-being-an-
entrepreneur/)

------
atechnerd
Altucher is kind of known for his sensationalist article titles. However, in
this case the content of the article is solid and pragmatic, particularly the
bit about "picking a boring business." If your main goal is to work for
yourself, finding a not-so-sexy niche is the way to go. Potentially less
competition, more room to breathe, and plenty of opportunity.

------
neya
While this is a really nice article, I found this comment really funny:

 _How To Go From $0 To $1,000,000 In Two Years?_

Start with $2,000,00 _

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joonix
What was Braintree's value proposition? As in, why did everyone switch to his
service? Was it lower fees? If so, how do they offer lower fees in such a
mature, crowded market?

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Quai
"Rule No. 6: Say YES!", aka. "Rule No. 6: Lie to customers."

~~~
atechnerd
Instead of "if you build it, they they will come." For Altucher it's actually,
"if you pretend you can build it, they will come."

This is a common theme in some of Altucher's other stories. I think it would
only be lying if you acted like you had already built it. However, selling
your ability to build a future product is definitely not lying.

------
arthulia
Will this work for me?

------
gesman
I love his writings!

