
How a non-tech, thirty-something with kids started his company - andrelayer
http://pando.com/2014/04/09/startups-anonymous-how-a-sole-income-earning-non-tech-thirty-something-with-kids-started-his-company/
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AndrewKemendo
I really wish we knew what the site was and it wasn't anonymous. Maybe the
post was premature because the author still needs to "fake it till they make
it" \- but I would imagine that it would be a little bit of good press if
nothing else.

Without knowing what the product is though it is hard for folks to compare
where they are with this narrative.

For what it's worth I am in almost the exact situation, only I have a product,
but its one of those bleeding edge situations that requires a lot of up-front
work. So this is a topic very close to home. I just wish I could figure out
how similar it is.

~~~
miles_matthias
Agreed. I wish I could reach out to the author, learn more, and see where his
product went. This is the stuff that fascinates me and something we see all
the time at work - people with ideas they can't shake and are willing to take
risks in order to see it become a reality.

I don't necessarily think building something was the right first move though.
I'm a big fan of PG's "Do Things that Don't Scale", so I created
[https://manualviableproduct.com](https://manualviableproduct.com) in my spare
time to help people like this.

~~~
anonauthor
I'll reach out to you.

~~~
ritchiea
I would also love to hear what your product is and how you're succeeding.

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anonauthor
I'm the author of the piece. I can appreciate that it's difficult to walk away
with any point of action without knowing the who and how, but I'd prefer to
stay anonymous.

My intention in sharing the story was simply to say that even if you're broke,
non-technical, over 30, etc., you can still make it happen. It was meant to be
more motivational than informative.

I'm not looking for the recognition, only to hopefully help others in the same
boat.

Really appreciate the interest and discussion.

~~~
digikata
Can you share a little more detail re: the signup/how it works pages? Did they
just describe the product and say signup if you're interested? Did you let on
that there was no product yet, or that it was "in development", or no status
at all? What does one do with 20k interested customers between lining up
investment and actually delivering product?

~~~
anonauthor
What I didn't mention in the post is that we didn't have a backend programmer
until we had 20k people signed up, so no code was a byproduct of our
situation, not a matter of pride.

Because we had so much hype before our product we had a miserable launch. We
tried to delay it as long as we could, but feared losing interest if we waited
too long.

In terms of signup/how it works, we gave people a storyline that we felt would
attract interest (which it did), we also used exclusivity. We gave a intended
launch date, which eventually bit us in the ass (will never do that again).

~~~
digikata
Thanks for sharing what you could. It was certainly interesting for me.

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sixQuarks
This is completely worthless as an anonymous post. How can we take this
seriously?

~~~
vacri
Flag it and move on. Without any detail at all, it's a worthless post. Most
small businesses fail in the first few years - saying "I'm successful!" with
zero detail does not help anyone.

Reading the article reminded me of those companies that have testimonials on
their site attributed to "Anonymous". Testimonials basically saying "This
product is so good, I'm not willing to put my name to it!"...

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palakchokshi
Without the context of what the product was all the advice he gave is just
common sense. The quote below would be spectacular if there were more
specifics on how he got featured on USA Today. Did he have a Powerpoint he
used to generate interest, did his simple website do the trick, was it the
write-ups from the less known bloggers, was it social media campaigns? It sure
wasn't a proof of concept since not a single line of code was written. See why
knowing the product would help a lot in understanding this post better?

"The results of those efforts were nothing but spectacular. Inside of three
months, while still working full-time, we were able to attract nearly 20k
sign-ups. Not only that, but we had been featured in everything from Thrillist
to USA Today. And, we were finally having discussions with investors. This,
mind you, was all before we even had a single line of code — not one."

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dmk23
TLDR version: "I was lucky to have friends who built a successful product for
me on their own time and money"

~~~
anonauthor
Actually, quite the opposite. I told them that they wouldn't have to do shit
unless I established traction for the idea first (as I mentioned in the post).

Tough to do a TLDR version for everyone else without reading it yourself.

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avalaunch
_Hit up every piece of press I could possibly get. Started with less known
publishers and continued to upgrade by leveraging the previous write-up._

Does this work - leveraging previous write-ups to get better press coverage?
That would be the most interesting take away for me if it's true.

~~~
anonauthor
Author here. It worked for us, but I don't know if it works across the board.
We looked for any angle to pitch as an exclusive as well.

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grimtrigger
> Bugged the shit out of those friends until they were convinced of the idea
> and willing to help.

What a nasty attitude and bad advice. Yes this guy ended up with a great
company, but many people in the same boat won't. They'll have burnt a bridge
and possibly lost a friend.

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stephenaturner
Interesting. A shame he wouldn't identify himself or his company in the piece
-- it seems like he's quite successful now, so I don't really get the need for
anonymity.

~~~
anonauthor
I'm the author. Not looking for recognition, just wanted to hopefully offer
hope to others in similar boat. I think my identity might distract from the
message.

------
michaelochurch
The biggest take-away for me was that, at the least, he acknowledged that it's
irresponsible to gamble his family's well-being on a long-shot startup idea.

Tech culture right now _prizes_ irresponsibility. The youth fetish is one
aspect of it, but more generally, it's founded on unrealistic (irresponsible)
promises and mostly bad decisions (drop out of school to work for a startup!
move to the most expensive city in the U.S. with no connections!) that pay off
infrequently. No one talks about how demoralizing, difficult, and wasteful it
is to rebuild your savings and career after something like that fails. It's
atrocious, but most investors have a vested interest in downplaying the long-
term risks.

There are thousands of people like me who are smart as fuck, played the
startup game unluckily, and ended up in second-tier careers compared to what
they should've had with their age and ability, and would've had, had they not
gambled stupidly. Most don't talk about it. They're ashamed. I'm not ashamed.
Well, perhaps I'm slightly embarrassed, but (a) I'm still smart as fuck and
(b) not embarrassed enough to let the next few thousand fall into the same
goddamn trap, because someone has to fucking be responsible.

~~~
sizzle
So will you ever play the startup game again? or are you focused on climbing
the ranks to your tier 1 dream job?

lastly, is it because you are 'smart as fuck', that why you are so jaded now
because the value you brought to the startup would have taken you much further
in a traditional job, as opposed to an average person who has much more to
gain from a startup being successful?

~~~
michaelochurch
_So will you ever play the startup game again?_

Maybe, but in a different way.

 _or are you focused on climbing the ranks to your tier 1 dream job?_

I have no taste for "climbing the ranks". I want to get better at stuff.
Corporate dysfunction irritates the hell out of me. It'd be so much better if
work was about work and not interpersonal manipulations.

Right now I'm looking to level up on machine learning. I'm on par with your
95th-percentile professional data scientist, but there's a lot that I still
don't know.

 _lastly, is it because you are 'smart as fuck', that why you are so jaded now
because the value you brought to the startup would have taken you much further
in a traditional job_

I spent almost 3 years building the backend for a graph-based, distributed
database in Clojure (for a startup). We ended up not getting any clients; that
was above my pay grade. (Mistake #1. In a startup, take responsibility for all
parts and _run_ from founders who try to go alone.) If we had, though, the
stuff I'd built would have made it really cool.

Then I ended up on legacy maintenance at Google. In other words, that 3 years
bought me _fucking nothing_.

