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Ask HN: Advice
3 points by taurinz359 18 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments
Hello, everyone! I hope you're having a great day. I’ve been reading this resource anonymously for a long time, and I really like it. The community here is interesting, so I decided to write my first post/question. I’m looking for advice, though I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask. Still, if you have something to say, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m deeply interested in startups or, as it's often called these days, indie hacking. I enjoy programming and creating something of my own, and I’d love to fully dive into this if it could bring me more income than my current job.

I’ve tried launching a few projects of my own. My first attempt was a complete failure, probably due to a lack of resources and project management skills. It was a social network for gamers, where people were supposed to share posts and interact. But when I faced reality, I realized that growing a project in that niche was extremely challenging and required substantial investments. I spoke with owners of similar projects and learned that running such a platform demands constant content updates, which means hiring people—and paying them. My illusions were shattered.

My salary wasn’t enough to sustain the project, let alone expand it. I held on for a while, hoping someone would notice me, but the miracle never happened. That’s when I made my first tough decision: to shut everything down. It was heartbreaking, and I felt both depressed and empty afterward. But I quickly bounced back—or, as they say these days, I felt the “entrepreneurial itch.”

My second project was more successful compared to the first one, though I wouldn’t call it a major success. It was essentially a parser for finding and downloading books—but on steroids. That’s when I got my first users. However, I know this type of project isn’t exactly legal. Initially, I created it for personal use, but I decided to share it, and some people liked it and stuck around. That’s how I gained my audience.

Still, I realize this project has no sustainable future for two reasons:

It’s in a legal gray area at best. The project could be shut down or deleted at any time. I genuinely enjoy working on it and helping people, but I know it’s not the kind of project that will help me achieve my dream of living solely off my own ventures.

My third project was born out of necessity—both for myself and my friends. We needed a VPN because so many essential resources are blocked these days. Plus, the growing lack of internet freedom is frustrating. However, I completely missed the market with this one. The competition is fierce, and the project being useful only to me and my friends doesn’t align with my dream of building something bigger.

And now, I’m at a crossroads, unsure of what to do next. I look at the current market and the kind of projects other startups are launching, and it feels surreal. Everyone seems to be selling APIs for OpenAI with custom prompts. I can’t bring myself to care about such ideas because they lack depth or long-term value (at least from my perspective).

Maybe I’m fooling myself, and I’m not really an entrepreneur. But deep down, I still have hope. Hope for my own project. Hope for a future where I have my own team—a team I can call my team. The problem is, I don’t know how to get there.




I understand the frustration you feel when things you invested time and money don’t go the way you hoped but this is just how things are and this is also what makes the people that succeed so special. The best advice I can give you to find what to do next, is to simply sit down cut all unmeaningful connections and stay with what matters for example your job, this might sound a bit strange but the best way to start doing something is by doing nothing just sit down and think. There is no one here our anywhere that will be able to tell you what to do that’s a question only you can answer but I can give you some guidance, you have 2 paths to choose from related to a way of making a living of your projects:

1- Offer a service our product to the masses. This is the market where you offer something that more people are interested in, for example VPN’s but also this is the one with the most competition, and most of the times your competition will have a better product our better publicity. If you want to take this route you will need a very good business plan to convince other entities of funding your project.

2- Offer a specialized product our service to a small group. Let’s say you find a solution to a problem most people don’t face but you know the people who have this problem, this is the option I would recommend you take since there is much fewer competition and the people that face this problem will reach to you instead of you having to invest time and money into convincing someone into buying it.

I think I have over resumed what I wanted to say but yeah, my advice is you take some time off and when you find something you want to really put the effort into make sure is something that people will actually be willing to pay for. Speaking of this there is a high demand for people like you in other places on the internet that are more “under the radar” and are more that willing to pay someone that’s able to solve their problems. :)

Hope you have a nice day!


Thank you so much for such a detailed and thoughtful reply. You might actually be right, and I would like to ask you a couple of questions: Could you please explain what you mean by there being a high demand for people like me in other places on the internet?

If it’s possible, I’d like to talk more with you in private messages. Could you share an email address for further communication? Of course, I understand if that’s not convenient, but I’m genuinely interested in hearing more of your opinions.

Thank you again, and have a great day!


pick something that gives u joy even if it doesnt succeed

that'll give it the spark that's necessary


Thank you for the advice. But right now, I don't even know what to do, so to speak, no ideas. Maybe I'm in a bit of a depression, haha.




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