

17 Year Old Developer Goes Up Against 19/yo with $1.1 Million - chrisleydon
http://psocha.co.uk/im-a-17-year-old-developer-and-im-up-against-a-19-year-old-his-company-and-a-1-1m-investment

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citricsquid
This is dumb.

> While I’m very excited for Gumroad, as someone who was just about to launch
> their startup, from a business point of view this is pretty bad. Had we gone
> with launched as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) back in November as planned,
> things would have been much better, but we didn’t. Now I see why everyone in
> the startup world seems to be saying MVP in every second sentence; possibly
> because it’s damn well important getting your product out there.

This is just not true. Sahil (of Gumroad) is a very skilled person who has
proven himself and has a lot of connections, his company (Gumroad) has been
around since before November (in fact it's 11 months old now...) and this is
such a cop out. He is not going to beat you because he has investment, he's
going to beat you if his product is better than yours. You're also competing
against kout (<http://www.kout.me/>) and I'm sure there are others I don't
know about. The fact that Sahil launched Gumroad in a weekend and you've taken
over 6 months should show you that he is not just some dumb kid who got lucky,
he's someone good at what he does.

If anything this is a fucking wonderful thing for you, your idea has been
validated and investors think there is money in the product.

If you're going to quit, quit, but don't blame the success of Gumroad for it,
that's just a cop out. Oh and stop mentioning your age, it's irrelevant. Such
a terrible link-bait title...

~~~
angersock
I was going to feel bad for the person, but then I tried to use their site and
wasn't even able to get to an "About" page without needing to give up my email
address. I literally have no idea what the author makes other than a simple
sentence at the end of their post.

To the author: Keep up the good work, kid. Starting a business is rough, and
sometimes you strike out right out of the gate--happened to my first company.

Get up, dust off, and keep going--and don't waste your time or ours by
bringing up your age, because it doesn't matter.

~~~
c16
Thanks for your comment, I brought up age as that was a big part of why I
decided to persevere; we're both of similar age, have similar skill sets and
he's been hugely successful. Is that not a big enough motivator to get right
back up and keep working at it?

Sorry about the landing page too, you should be seeing the site but we're
holding back the launch just a few more short days.

~~~
angersock
You're welcome, and no worries. :)

Hey, why not launch now? You've already waited this long, and you've got HN's
attention. You aren't going to do any harm you can't fix with good customer
support in the next few weeks.

~~~
cecplascott
Awesome suggestion, why wait? Keep your eyes pealed, we might have something
out shortly.

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mattquinn
Instead of worrying about trivial things like this, how about you focus on
actually making your site/product available? The number of ppl these days who
equate "launching" with _only_ putting up a sign-up form (or launchrock page)
is ridiculous.

~~~
cecplascott
We don't count our splash page as launching. We're talking about our physical
product.

------
pg_bot
What is your license agreement with regard to copyright? The only reason I am
hesitant to use gumroad is the following agreement in their terms and
conditions:

"When you give us content ("User Content"), you grant us a non-exclusive,
worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable (through
multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity,
and database rights (but no other rights) you have in the User Content, in any
media known now or in the future."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It's an interesting clause - often such terms are simply to allow the content
to be used on the site and nothing more nefarious. Under this clause it seems
they shot themselves in the foot. If you transfer your rights it appears to
revoke their license … I doubt that's what they intended.

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joedev
Keep on looking at it the "right way". Look, you'll rarely find a space where
there are no competitors. As you eluded to, competitors serve as validation of
your product.

~~~
cecplascott
That's a great way of looking at it! Thanks for the comment.

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idl
If I see one more 'teenage startup' post like this on HN (or elsewhere) I
think I'll be sick.

It was cute at first, but now I only cringe whenever I see a title like this.
Tech blogs do it, news sites do it, and as we can see even the teenagers
themselves do it. It's pure link bait.

As said in another comment here, it's irrelevant. Almost every single young
entrepreneur's website I see puts their age to the very forefront. "Look at
me! I'm only this age! Here's my startup!" (which, a lot of the time, turns
out to be nothing but a LaunchRock page).

An associate of mine is the about the same age as these teenagers, but is the
complete opposite. He runs numerous 'web startups' and, more importantly,
actually generates revenue (high seven figures annually). Investors would fall
over themselves to invest. Tech blogs would salivate at his story. But he
stays away from that.

The thing is, there are countless young founders like this. Generating huge
profits, making big VC deals behind the scenes, working away under the radar.
Don't be fooled by the way tech blogs and news outlets try to make it seem so
unique.

Disregard your age. Ship a real product. Get users. Generate revenue.

~~~
brackin
I know many young founders doing all of this and not creating huge hype around
themselves. I do agree with your points but you can't put all young founders
in the same boat.

Playing devils advocate, if it gets you users, press, etc why not? I'm not
using it in this circumstance but if you want to get TechCrunched, have a
great product your age will help, why not use it?

The press always needs a story, every blogpost has a story, it may not be age
it may be funding or the fact you worked for Google or though of it on a
mountain, regardless every tech blogpost has a story not just 'this product
has launched'. Blame journalism, not the people conforming to it.

~~~
idl
I fully agree with you, do whatever it takes to help your startup. And yes
that's just how journalism works.

I'm mostly referring to the young founders' perspectives. Many of them get a
false sense of accomplishment and specialness by building a half decent
prototype just because of their age, and don't understand how beneficial it is
to have killer execution. They often see getting TechCrunched as an end goal,
instead of gaining true traction and building a real business.

~~~
brackin
I see what you mean and agree. Don't let your eye off the prize. Once you get
a lot of press you get distracted. If Mark Zuckerberg had a lot of press at 16
would he have got this far?

Then again this is the same for anything. People on reality tv, competitions,
etc

------
colin8chSE
I'm not sure why you're viewing GumRoad's funding as a negative.

I look at this as even more validation for my payments startup
<http://merchee.com>, which has similar basic functionality to GumRoad, but
focuses on subscription billing, offers affiliate marketing and checkout pages
that match your website.

A bunch of really smart people, who see a lot of different products, teams,
deals- They are betting that there is a market that will deliver ROI for
innovation in the payments space, and they're putting their money behind
Sahil, who has done a great job earning their backing. Please consider, he
hasn't come out of no where, this isn't a sudden "overnight success". Even
more validating is that lot of seasoned investors are doubling down on
innovations in the payments space- look at stripe's 1st and 2nd round of
funding for example (now with a valuation of $100 Million!).

Your competitor's ability to gain market adoption, traction and to raise funds
should motivate you to raise the bar and build a great product, now that you
"know" that it's a market that can reward your efforts.

------
darwindeeds
I'm glad you came out and spoke about it rather than ranting about it.
Remember Sahil is a famous guy around the startup circle, so dont expect a
million dollar funding just because yours looks like gumroad. Have a business
model that will make you revenue and build your user base. Listen to your
customers and make it the way they want. Put some thought into refunds
policies and Rating system that gumroad doesnt have yet.

I felt that gumroad funding was more for Sahil's credentials and than for
gumroad itself, so please take that into account.

~~~
c16
Hey, thanks for your comment!

Indeed he is, however both myself and my partner are from the UK. To some
extent I believe this is a great opportunity since the London tech scene is
progressively getting bigger and it gives us a chance to grow with it. Having
someone such as Sahil of similar age and ability to look up to is something
invaluable and quite honestly very encouraging.

------
brador
How do these services deal with scammers? and on the other side, chargebacks?

Can anyone just throw up a link to an imaginary "product" and watch the $$$
roll in while delivering nothing?

~~~
c16
Indeed you can, however in our case we're hosting the files. Prior to purchase
(via PayPal, so you can still file a dispute) you are given information such
as file type, size etc... Clearly if think you're buying a PSD and the site
shows the file to be in .pdf format and 0.01mb in size, you know something is
wrong.

~~~
brador
Ah I see, so it's a digital only service? that makes more sense.

~~~
c16
That's correct :)

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corkill
If you want to hustle do it now, get aggressive, get your product out there,
make a better product, cut a better deal with influences/power users etc.

Keep working on this or other ideas and don't blame your lack of success on
external factors it is self defeating. First to market historically has almost
always lost, all about how execute it's a long long race to the top and when
you get there, better not slow down. Google wasn't first, facebook wasn't
first, apple is never first.

------
joshmanders
Don't worry about it. Competition is good for both of you, and who knows,
maybe yours turns out to be the one people like to use the most.

Good luck.

------
meow
While I do understand that there might be some complexity involved when
dealing with payment gateways etc, 6 months sounds too long.. were you
learning development on the way ? I'm honestly curious...

~~~
c16
There were multiple complexities along the way, mainly that education is still
an important part of my life. When I wasn't studying I was coding, and quite
often I'd go till two in the morning just to get back up at six and start the
day again.

Additionally both myself and my partner have learnt a lot along the way, for
instance we now have one designer we can rely on to get the job well done and
on time. Our previous one disappeared for a month on holiday without warning
and I admit, we waited too long before deciding to move on and find a new
designer. Little niggles such as this slowly but surely kept pushing back our
deadline.

We've had users persistently asking us when are we going to launch so you're
not the first, nor the last. Thanks for your interest however :)

------
OGxSWAG
Why do you feel the need to mention your age several times?

~~~
c16
The age difference is a huge motivator, with a small age gap, to me it
signifies that anything is possible for both myself and my partner. Just look
at Brian Wong from Kiip as another prime example.

I hope this answerers your question.

~~~
radicalbyte
It's great to see someone of your age taking the initiative to start their own
business. It's commendable.

However, if I were you I wouldn't make a big deal about your age & lack of
funding.

As a potential buyer, I'm not comfortable with giving my credit card details
to a 17yo kid. Especially as the problem space is such that it's really easy
to get started but pretty hard to get right..

~~~
c16
Thanks for your kind words. In regards to age and trust- we use PayPal to
manage all transactions so we never touch the money you make (payments are
made directly from buyer to seller), and amazon's S3 to host your files with
expiring download links.

If you have any other questions regarding how we manage payments/downloads
we'd be happy to answer them: hello [at] propelly.com

------
ck2
Is there any doubt we are in a bubble?

~~~
brackin
Why? Because there are young founders or something else? There always has been
and these (and many other) people have been building products before there was
any mention of the second bubble.

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redrory
Site is down; Any cached version?

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PonyGumbo
The site seems to be down.

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jQueryIsAwesome
The title sounds like tabloid journalism.

