

Ask HN: You were and entrepreneur and now you're not. Why? - fivedogit

Success and retirement? Gave up? Different path opened? Decided having a family was important?
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ChicagoDave
I started Textfyre in 2007. At first I was just trying to build Interactive
Fiction (text story games, also known as IF) games and sell them. Once I
realized there was no captive audience for such things, I nearly quit. But
then I noticed my kids elementary school textbooks. They sucked. I also noted
how stressful the entire testing regiment had become.

So I thought maybe IF could solve the problem. So I pivoted to an ed-tech firm
and though selling games to schools was a better model. This led to actually
getting a team together. I had a CEO, CFO, teachers, marketing help, testing
expert, and many supporters. We had the basics of an "embedded testing" web
application built. We actually managed to get the attention of The Gates
Foundation and talked with them for several months.

In the end, The Gates Foundation focused their efforts at the big players
(like Pearson) and we were left out in the cold. My team disbanded and I gave
up.

Of course now "embedded testing" is all the rage (there was just an NPR story
about it), but unless you're one of the big players, you're not getting
anywhere.

I have another idea I'm researching, but I'm much more pragmatic about it than
I was with Textfyre. I'll build it on my own, spend as little money as
possible, test it, and see what happens.

It's very hard to be a first-time unproven entrepreneur. If you manage to
succeed and get one exit, you're golden and investors will hand over money
without really asking any questions. Once they know you can "execute", they
will support you 100%.

The trick is to learn how to execute. I'm still learning.

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dqdo
The grind is quite difficult and long. It can take 1-3 years for a good idea
and a good product to gain traction. In the mean time, you have to reduce your
spending and work crazy hours in order to stay afloat. The previous comment
about it being lonely as a founder is very true. Typically founders and other
corporate leaders have no one to discuss their problems with and few people
who understand their unique challenges.

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smt88
I can't speak for myself, but I've done quite a few one-off MVPs for people
who stopped being entrepreneurs.

The most common reason is that they weren't willing to sacrifice the
time/money involved in starting up, and then they quit. They typically had
high-paying corporate jobs and weren't willing to give up the income.

A lot of people have an "if you build it, they will come" attitude about _any
good idea_ , not just the ones that people are truly clamoring for.

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thesmileyone
I am an entrepreneur still.

It is a hard long lonely slog. You spend most of your daylight hours working
and most of your weekends working too. When your friends are all out partying
you are catching up on sleep. BUT you obviously have a far greater chance of
the big payout than they do...

My company is semi passive income so thinking of a "normal job" on the side
just to interact with others.

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MichaelCrawford
It's lonely.

I'm looking for a job so I can have coworkers.

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fivedogit
OP here. Personally, I came to believe that the expected payout of
entrepreneurship is not anywhere near break even. Just like a roulette wheel
is expected to pay out .97 for every dollar over that long haul (.03 house
cut), accounting for all possible outcomes, including "jackpots", I started to
feel like the expected payout of any given entrepreneurial effort wasnt worth
the investment. Sure, some end up like Uber or Paypal. But the vast silent
majority are failures.

There is some nonmonetary value in giving it a shot, I guess, but that value
diminishes with each successive failure, even as the chance of success
increases as a function of one's previous experience.

A friend and I were remarking recently that for all our entrepreneurial effort
{10+ years each) and meeting with other entrepreneurs, we don't know _anyone_
who has "made it". (A guy from my class in college sold a company for 170 mil,
but I didn't know him before.) That's dozens or hundreds of people trying and
zero successes.

In short, I think the odds are much longer than most are willing to believe,
and that sapped my motivation to keep trying.

