

The idea of giving up is worse than of it killing me (2014) - michalsobel
http://michalsobel.com/en/experiences/the-idea-of-giving-up-is-worse-than-of-it-killing-me-how-150-000-post-it-came-to-be

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themoonbus
I don't mean to be overly harsh, but I cannot figure out what's going on half
of the time in this post. I get the breezy style and all that, but I'm not
sure what happened or what the lessons are that we can take away from those
things... that happened...

Edit: I noticed there is a Czech version of the post, perhaps it's just a
lost-in-translation thing.

~~~
jnem
I completely disagree, I think the manner in which the author shared this
story is full of the sort of insight (and emotion) that is often left out of
these stories.

This is a human story, not a manifesto or technical thesis. For someone like
me who has attempted similar, and have failed similarly, its good simply to
know I'm not alone in the emotional roller-coaster these scenarios create. I
find it kind of inspirational how he found meaning from seemingly banal events
and comical misfortune.

~~~
jnem
Had to reply to my own post. After reading the rest of these threads.. damn
people, you are so cold. Lol. Sounds like the lot of you jaded old know-it-
alls. You forget that once upon a time, you too knew nothing about starting a
business. Some of the criticism here has been constructive, and kudos to those
who took the effort to comment something thoughtful.

The author made some mistakes, maybe a lot of mistakes, but we all have, and
we all will. I'm very happy for you all for your "better" methods for success
though :).

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jakejake
I have tended to feel like you become an entrepreneur because you have a great
idea - possibly from having worked in an industry and discovered an
opportunity. Declaring one's self an entrepreneur first and then coming up
with an idea seems backwards to me. But, it seems to be the way these things
happen here and I'm probably too old school.

Regardless, to anybody who puts in this much time and effort, I sure do wish
you the best and hope that project #9 is the one that takes off.

~~~
graeme
I became an entrepreneur first. The effect was that I was now actively looking
for opportunities. Most people have opportunities for making money around
them, but they don't notice, because they're not looking.

There are many hazards to this approach. I could have simply failed to find
anything, and failed. But it's certainly viable.

~~~
michalsobel
Yes, we were learning by trail & error. But if you don't know how to sell...
and don't know that is your problem, as was our problem, you're pretty fucked.

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jes5199
This is evidence that we are exporting some toxic memes out of California that
cause young people all over the world to try to kill themselves to do what we
do here with no understanding of what's going on.

~~~
jdietrich
Spot on - OP's blog sounded like textbook cargo cultism, imitating the
superficial aspects of the SV startup scene (which in itself is fairly cargo
cultish). He has learned all the right grandiose rhetoric, but seems to lack
the most rudimentary understanding of how a business operates, let alone
something as weird as a VC-backed startup.

It looks like we're right back to the bad old days of the dot-com bubble,
where there's a total disconnect between the word "startup" and building a
business that creates meaningful value for customers.

His idea of a startup seems to map exactly to the old joke: 1) Get funded. 2)
Build an UberFaceCrowd clone. 3) ??? 4) Profit!

~~~
mgkimsal
What was strange is that... after all that struggle, they seemed to hit on a
better idea, and the investors (?) dismissed it, and told them to continue to
build the original clone which was clearly not working.

Always annoys me when people who don't know how to do something are adamant
that doing what you recommend will "take too long". I don't hit to too much in
my own work right now, but plenty of colleagues hit that on a regular basis.
"Well, we can't do XYZ because the management said someone else said that
would take too long, so we need to finish ABC". WTF? ABC has been in dev for
18 months, is clearly broken, and ... XYZ is a half-done skunkworks project
that needs 3 more weeks.

Non-workers who hide behind "that will take too long" need to learn to clearly
pronounce "I'm threatened by your knowledge/ability/insight." At least be
honest.

~~~
michalsobel
I feel you.

On the other hand I understand that it is a business. So the business thinking
is „not to throw away what you do last 18 month“.

But as you pointed out, if something doesn't work, you should not be scared of
a change. Even if it mean to delete everything what you did and start over.

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intellegacy
I don't really get what's going on here. Do the OP and his friend know how to
code? If so, why bother raising money when you could bootstrap your MVP?

if not, what were you doing with the 7 projects that failed?

~~~
michalsobel
I'm a graphic designer. But my friend Premek ofcourse know how to code. But
after many small „projects“ we wanted to make it the right way. Well obviously
„the right way“ wasn't the right way, we only thought it is at that time.

And what we were doing? Well... we were stupid. We were able to produce but
not to sell.

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everyone
Funny that this is listed below this article "What Heroin Addiction Tells Us
About Changing Bad Habits"

~~~
michalsobel
Maybe if we took some heroine we would deliver at least one good product.

~~~
everyone
Hey just cus something is not a financial success doesnt mean its not good! :)

~~~
michalsobel
Well you're right. It was a source of enormous knowledge from real market. Not
just idealistic theories.

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flyinglizard
Few things that came through my mind reading that:

1\. In average you're giving each project about a year. That's not really
enough for determining if something is good or not. It seems like when you're
encountering the brick wall that's real world market penetration, you fall out
of love with your venture and move on to the next thing.

2\. You're focusing on very general problems where it seems like you either
don't have a horse in the game (as you're not suffering from those problems
personally) and don't have any kind of specialized domain knowledge. That
makes your job much harder. You don't understand the dynamics of the market,
the competition or what users are looking for.

3\. If you want to win in really big markets, you need to have a strong
financial backing from great investors, and make world-class execution.
Getting the right idea is never enough. Focus on smaller problems - or at
least less alluring ones.

4\. Being in the Czech republic doesn't help your ideas get traction, as
you're somewhat culturally removed from the trendsetters and the networked
individuals who could make your product popular.

5\. You can - somewhat - use #4 in your favor by focusing on your local market
(and to a lesser extent the EU market). But ultimately good products win
globally, which is why its best to think smaller.

6\. You may have prevented yourself precious experience and understanding of
business processes by going with the startup game too early instead of getting
some real world experience first.

7\. Don't count on your admirable determination carrying you through. You can
only stress yourself so much before something breaks. At some point you're
going to need a success to your name. Going to venture #15 might not be
enough.

Ultimately I'd advise you to go work for a successful startup somewhere like
Berlin, London or ideally Silicon Valley. Go to a place where you can focus
the same determination on your dayjob, learn and network. Save some money too.

You need a change. Different people, challenges and atmosphere. Your time and
ambition are the most precious thing you have and between these two, one is
lost forever and the other can irreparably disappear if siphoned too low. Now,
making this change is hard.

The EASY thing, for you, is to start another venture (although it seems the
other way around, even to yourself). Don't fall into the trap of starting yet
another venture instead of changing your situation around and thinking of
yourself as someone who does the hard thing, just because you chose
entrepreneurship yet again.

Keeping the same course is always easier than changing things around.

~~~
michalsobel
First of all, thanks for your detailed response!

1\. Yes! That's exact.

2\. You're right, of course. There was always bad reasons why to do some of
the projects. The term „spray & pray“ is accurate.

3\. Today I would do it differently. We made mistake on every corner we took.

4., 5. We wanted to go out of the Czech Republic, but that phase never
happened. Of course, it should be the phase one.

6\. This was an ego problem. We thought we're ready. How foolish of us.

You're right. That's actually why I left the WeLoveMail (last project that is
still in progress). There have to be some real change.

But hey, thanks again for your advice! I really appreciate it.

------
andrewstuart
"A few idiots fight for their lives while the guys at top are having fun."
Love it.

~~~
michalsobel
The Hunger Games way.

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mgkimsal
So... one lesson might be that if you drive 9 hours with the intention to meet
people, don't leave after being there for 6 minutes and not actually talking
to anybody.

Unless the intention wasn't to meet people, but to 'get in the techcrunch'. ??

~~~
michalsobel
I won't hide that the intention to get in the techcrunch was the main engine
for this.

Actually, the Warszaw story was my wake-up call that we're doing something
terribly wrong. And that we're not good enough to make this happen. Since then
I knew that this project will go to hell, because we lived in our own bubble
how awesome we are.

~~~
mgkimsal
Unfortunately, your story probably isn't all that uncommon. These stories tend
not to make the front page of any news/blog sites, though.

I really hope this serves as a wake up call to others with your mindset. Your
story hopefully will help others make corrections earlier than you did.

Thanks for the story.

~~~
michalsobel
I hope too.

Well, thank you for your feedback. I really appreciate it!

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hardwaresofton
good (but difficult) read, good reminder that not everywhere is SV, and not
everywhere is the USA, and the old "1 in 10 succeed" pseudo-statistic is true.

I do my own side projects from time to time, and seeing what they went through
is a real eye opener, maybe I'll be a little less naive when I do launches
from now on.

I am glad that they got back to a lean startup model towards the end though,
selling someone an idea is such a shaky way to do business (despite the fact
that it's used so much), it makes so much more sense to bootstrap at least a
little bit (even if it's just drumming up non-paying clientele).

~~~
michalsobel
I'm sorry for that.

I think we skipped the learning phase by „Fail fast, fail often.“ where we
should get better with every small thing we did every day. Instead we taught
we're doing it right.

~~~
hardwaresofton
Oh absolutely nothing to be sorry for -- you were writing it as you remember
it, and I thought it was worth reading to endure a tiny bit of stream-of-
thinking writing.

I was inspired by the post, glad you guys worked so hard at making yourselves
a success! Also thanks for sharing so initimately the process that you guys
went through

~~~
michalsobel
Thank you!

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brianpgordon
> assumption: java surely isn't as bad as they say. reality: it is

What exactly are 'they' saying? Java is a fantastic choice for server-side
code.

~~~
wwweston
I have worked on several successful projects with Java back ends (and even a
successful Java desktop project or two). It doesn't have to be a disaster.

Nevertheless, "fantastic" wouldn't be how I'd describe my experience. More
like this:

    
    
        http://blog.plover.com/prog/Java.html

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cubano
It sounded to me like he became an entrepreneur out of trying to be an
entrepreneur, which in the end was a pretty neat trick.

~~~
michalsobel
Fake it till you make it.

The problem was, we didn't know we're faking it back then.

------
carlob
When I read the title I thought it was some translation of what one of the
cartoonists killed in yesterday's attack said:

Je n'ai pas de gosses, pas de femme, pas de voiture, pas de crédit. C'est
peut-être un peu pompeux ce que je vais dire, mais je préfère mourir debout
que vivre à genoux.

For some reason I was really irked when I found out it was something different
altogether. I also find it a bit strange that there is a deafening silence
about this in the frontpage.

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gavinpc
The OP is a very good designer. Why does the killer achievement have to be an
app?

~~~
michalsobel
Thank you! It's simple. I don't want to be just a designer, I want to push it
to another level – entrepreneur level. But this wasn't how to do it.

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tmaly
I thought it was a good story

~~~
michalsobel
It depends...

