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Ask HN: Is it time to give up, or is it time to push on?
49 points by Curll on Nov 24, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 66 comments
Boring details: I started a company in July aimed at creating a new fantasy sports platform, focused on stat-heavy leagues, dynasty leagues, niche sports, eSports, and tabletop games.

Our CTO was hired away last month, our two other developers are learning Node and Angular, but not much progress has been made on the product. Lead developer doubts we'll get a product out before baseball season.

Haven't been able to find a replacement CTO/lead architect to help lead the development side.

Angels and VCs say we're too early, need usage stats to invest.

I'm not going to be able to make rent for January.

Stress is getting to me. I'm thinking I should just shut the whole thing down, but I've got that voice that says, "Giving up is way harder than trying".

Any advice would be appreciated.




This isn't a hard question to answer. Your prospective investors really aren't going to invest without customer traction. You have no product, and you have just a month's living expenses left.

Even with a hail-mary play that gets you some a semblance of a working product and some users in December, you still won't have a trendline to show investors.

If plodding forward doesn't really cost you anything, because you're basically insolvent anyways, sure, keep plodding forward.

Otherwise: draw up Plan B. Doing something else doesn't mean you can't return to your fantasy sports platform later on. It just means you need to figure out a way to start getting paid, and that needs to be a priority.

Due respect to the rest of the comments on this thread, but how much you believe in yourself really doesn't have much to do with your decision.


I had similar thoughts, my late fighter pilot friend used to say "Even the best pilots crash when they run out of gas."


I'm going to treasure that quote. Thanks for this one.


There's an important implication in Thomas' reply that I want to make very very explicit: The process of getting someone to sign a check is one of those things that has a tendency to drag on forever. Even if you can get an investor interested, there is no number x where the time to seal the deal is less than or equal to x days. Throw in business interruptions for the holidays, and allow room for Murphy's Law.


My impression is also that if you try to impose a deadline on the check signing that is in any way traceable to you going out of business if the check isn't signed, the check will never get signed.


>Otherwise: draw up Plan B. Doing something else doesn't mean you can't return to your fantasy sports platform later on.

Agree, with a little twist: "draw up Plan B, get a job/do freelance. Doing something else doesn't mean you can't keep your fantasy sports platform in parallel."

I agree also that this is in no way related with how much you believe in yourself.

This thread about a paper called "Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Using Wage Earnings to Support a New Business" might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8269808


Thanks, Thomas. Certainly need to get paid one way or another, and the holidays aren't conducive to being productive.

I started pinging folks who may have job leads.


This is the hardest question to answer. My startup was once at a point when any sane person would have given up, and yet here we are - alive, growing, funded. Before that there was a phase when I was all in. I was living in my car in Silicon Valley because I couldn't afford rent, stressed out of my mind, had no product, and could tell that we were a long way yet from having product, traction, and being compelling to investors (or even an accelerator). And I had zero dollars in the bank (actually significantly fewer than zero dollars).

So how did we get from point A to point B? I got a job so that I could pay the bills and think straight. My co-founder and I parted ways, and I ended up finding another. We built out the product and got enough users for an accelerator to take a risk on us, then for investors to do the same. Now, a year later, I have the perfect team with enough money and the right product.

It sounds like, if you're honest with yourself, you're a long way away from being a palatable investment. My guess is that you're even farther than you think you are, because that's just the nature of the beast.

If I hadn't taken the time to postpone - not give up, but realize the circumstances we were in weren't conducive to building a company - I'm sure we would have failed. If you're not going to make it, accept that fact, and do what you have to do to get your ducks in a row.

Sometimes "Don't give up" looks a lot like giving up, and that's the hardest part. But if you really believe in what you're doing, you do what you have to do, no matter what that is.

Just my two cents.


If your devs are learning Node & Angular on the job, it's time to find new devs. I've picked up far too many freelance projects where the devs just wanted to try a new framework, and Node/Angular are top of the list for "cool things to try".

If you're going to continue, find a dev with lots of experience in an old/stable platform (Rails, Django, etc) who can crank out version 0.1 in a month or two.

When you're this early, you don't have the resources to be educating your developers. They will bail before they're productive, and you're left footing the bill.


I think the problem is right here. Do they have a fundamental reason for using Node/Angular? It could probably be attributed to Survivor Bias by the non technical management. First question to ask is why are you using Node/Angular? If another technology stack can produce faster results, then..


I agree, hack something workable in PHP together and begin to build a audience, then if you want to pull out some cool $NewTech for version 2.0 go ahead.


"our two other developers are learning Node and Angular, but not much progress has been made on the product."

Why are they learning this stuff now while you're under a deadline and have no product?

Do these guys have previous experience with other languages/frameworks/etc that would let them focus on building instead?


It is a fair question. The former CTO set the stack and was helping those two along. They're Ruby converts.

After the CTO left, I asked if we should switch and they said switching to Ruby was more work than it was worth. The backend is pretty far along in Node right now. And we've got an Angular dashboard that we need to connect.


Another lesson that may apply: fad driven development isn't necessarily a good idea. Sometimes "old" (i.e. established, tested, widely used) technologies are better choices than whatever the latest fad offers.


Especially for a pre-investment MVP. Use what you know and are best at. You can later port to Node/Angular or whatever everyone is orgasming about this week.


Yes. There is a very high probability that everything that gets written in the early days will be thrown out. If the company fails, then there's no benefit in being in the hip language of the moment. And if the company succeeds, both scaling needs and the vast amount you'll learn about what your audience really wants mean that little of the original code base will likely remain.

If today I were putting together an MVP with an eye toward getting funding, I'd only use things that somebody on the team knew very well. Learning new stuff is great, but it means you will be unpleasantly surprised a lot more often. Those WTF delays really add up, and they often come at the worst time.


I think you mean "easy to hire"-technology. One time it was Java, then it was PHP, now it's becoming node.js and angular. Maybe it's a bit soon, but it's far from insane to bet on these technologies nowadays.


Yes, that is one very big reason to go "oldschool:" there are more developers who have more experience. It is nuts to follow fad driven development on a tight budget and hard time deadlines without significant understanding of the technologies involved. I'd argue that it is nuts in general to go with fad driven development. Choosing a technology structure based on fads is a dumb idea. One should choose a structure that makes sense for the project and team.


True, but it might not actually be a bad idea to hire based on an 'easy to hire' technology and actually use a technology that the developers are more experienced in.

For example, I've worked in a number of environments that hired for node.js, but where the devs were actually recent RoR converts who were moderately proficient in node.js and its ecosystem. In the case of getting an MVP out quick, it might still be better to use RoR.


And another lesson: the founder(s) of a startup you should probably know at least a little bit about development.


Can you adjust your v1 to be something they can reach allowing at least some weeks to reach your market and iron out glitches?

If that's impossible and you have to wait a year till next season then pull the plug and learn from it.


The question is not how far along you've come with the existing stack, it's how far you're going to get with the existing stack. Is the development stack the right one to get you to a stage where you can get outside investment? If it is, you need to make a hard choice: Are your current developers the right team to get this product to that stage? If they are, suck it up and get on with it. If not, you need to consider the hard decision of replacing them.

I can't speak to your team's competence (like a previous poster suggested) - everyone has their own situation. I'm working with a talented development team on a startup right now and I can tell you something for nothing, we're a few months in still analyzing what needs to be done and which stack is the most appropriate for that. None of us shy away from learning new technologies and all appear to have a knack for it. We've all got full time jobs and families and none of us are betting the farm... yet, we're quietly confident but it's early days. It's okay to be hungry and to believe in your dream, but leaving your family holding the bag to support that dream is not right in my mind. There will be many that will find ways to reframe this statement and disagree, but that's my bottom line.

Don't believe that because your previous CTO decided on the stack that you're stuck with it. If you can get something to market quicker and easier by changing stack and you're not sacrificing anything except the skillset and ego of the previous CTO, do it - but don't do it just because you don't have the skillset of the previous CTO.

If you've got less than no money and you're living out of your car, but you have food on your metaphorical table, then it seems to me you're not losing that much.

Not changing because "it's more work than it's worth" is not good advice because it's subjective - if you gain a product by changing and don't have a product by not changing, then it's worth it. This is your baby, not your developers; make decisions from a business perspective with the technical understanding of a developer. don't make them from a developer's perspective - never lose sight of the big picture.

What is your idea worth? $100,000? $1M? $10M? $100M? 100% of nothing is nothing - which is what you're going to get if you give up or let your developers stall your idea from getting to market. You will have incurred debt and the hardship of living out of your car. So you will have actually made a loss. Do what it takes to get your product to market on your terms, not someone else's. If that means changing stacks, change stacks. If that means sticking it out with your current stack and sucking up another couple of months of living in your car, that's okay too. Equally, don't be scared to give up because you've hit your limit. We all have limits and only you can decide what those limits are for yourself.

Don't fail because of someone else's suggestion. Fail because you tried every avenue you could see and couldn't find a way to overcome the obstacles on those paths... and then when you "fail", stop, reflect, analyze, figure out where you think you went wrong, figure out how you could have overcome the problems and go at it again with a new perspective. If that means putting the project on hold for a few months while you get a job and dig yourself out of your hole for a few months, do it. If it means cutting back to part time so you have money in your pocket while you build, do it. If the project is worth what you hope and dream it is, don't give up on it. Just find a more sustainable approach to get it out there.

This may be your only chance to make your own meaningful contribution to the world. Giving up on that is like giving up on the meaning of life itself... is that more or less scary than being in debt and living in your car?


Give up. Your current team is incompetent. They are padding their resume with node/angular experience at your expense. They should have a working demo after 2 months.


> They should have a working demo after 2 months.

While I agree with your sentiment, this sentence sounds like an overgeneralization. I can't imagine it would be that easy to put together a working demo of a fantasy sport site in two months, even with the best talent.


What kills me is that this sort of mystery is not in any way necessary. The planning methods from, e.g., Extreme Programming, are 15 years old. So that nobody else has to suffer like this, here's my 30-second intro to a basic version:

Everybody sit down at a table with a large stack of index cards, all of one color that isn't white, and n+1 sharpies. Talk about the product. As you go, every time something buildable is mentioned, write it on an index card with a sharpie. 3-7 words is enough; the cards aren't documentation; they're just tokens representing conversations. Every card should create business value that is visible to all stakeholders. No "set up the IDE", no "learn node", just business value cards.

After 30-60 minutes, put the cards in strict linear order of business desire, ignoring technical dependencies. Now take a bunch of cards, write "RELEASE" on them, and insert them into the order every time something shippable is necessary, including investor demos, user tests, private betas, and the like.

Next, look at the top 10-20 cards. For each one, ask the developers if it will take a week or more. No wizardry needed, just gut-level estimates. If the answer is yes, tear up the card and replace it with cards that are all smaller than a week of effort. Congrats! Now you have a plan that is enough for developers to get started. Make a permanent home for the cards on a table or wall with three columns: backlog, working, done.

Each week on Monday morning, everybody should sit together, look at the backlog, and take an hour to discuss everything that will likely get worked on. During the week, when people start on a card, move it from "backlog" to "working". When everybody agrees that it is completely done and the business value is has been demonstrated, move it to "done". And the end of the week, sit down together again, review how it went, count the cards completed. Protip: keep the number of cards in "working" as small as possible.

After a few weeks, the business stakeholder can look at the number of cards completed each week, look at the backlog, and make reasonable guesses as to how long things will take. And after a few weeks seeing the team deliver business value each week, they'll have a good notion of how effective their team is.

There are nuances (about which I'm glad to answer questions), but that's enough to get going. I've built a number of products this way and helped others do the same. Please, founders: adopt some simple short-cycle iterative process. It's not hard, it doesn't take long, and it will save you immense trouble.


I know the basic principles of extreme programming. But I ignored it (like most hotheaded fresh young devs are wont to do) till I rediscovered it some time earlier this year. Do you have a go to book that discusses these practices? Already have a couple in my reference stack, just asking because you seem to have grasped the practice so well.


For programmers looking to learn about XP, the book that I most recommend is the first edition of Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck, the white one. (The second edition, the green one, was rewritten for a broader audience; also interesting, but I don't think it speaks as well to programmers.)

But the book is ancient at this point, so I'd treat it more as a point of historical interest. We've learned a lot and our technology has changed greatly, so it's not something I'd recommend implementing as written.

Another easy place to start is here:

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/introduction.html

It's also out of date in some ways. For example, it talks about using a shared integration computer, but Git + AWS + Continuous Deployment have made that kinda ridiculous.

But what I think of it as the core of it is still quite solid. In particular, the notion of thinking of a project not as a waterfall but as a series of self-correcting feedback loops has been immensely helpful to me. What XP gets really right versus, say, Scrum, is focusing on the minute-to-minute developer experience as a driver of quality and economy. Test-driven development, pair programming, sustainable pace, collective code ownership: when pursued vigorously, these have made a huge difference for me both in terms of project outcome and personal experience.

My general tip for process change is for people to pick their biggest problem and then start solving it in a way that shortens feedback loops. So if somebody's getting lots of bugs in QA, then I'd encourage them to automate their tests so that developers get bug reports sooner. Or here, if the problem is long periods without knowing what's going on, it's breaking the work down into little chunks and delivering the next most valuable thing every few days. Humans are really good at optimizing short-feedback systems; we do a lot of it automatically.

Feel free to write me if you have particular questions; people were very generous in getting me started. I'm glad to pay it forward.


Thanks for posting this.


> working demo

Working is an extremely relative term. When it comes to web apps, you can usually get a workable product out there though in a pretty short period of time. If you have two developers and they actually intend to make this into a business, you can most likely get something workable in a few months.


There should at the very least be something working. Making a full backend and making the frontend after that's finished is a development strategy that's certain to fail.


A full, mature, reliable site? No. A demo? Even just a tech demo? Definitely.


5 months should have been plenty to come up with something. It sounds like your initial goals were way too complicated. You need to aim small for a version 1 and then add features later. You have now learned one of the first lessons of software development.


There's one awesome thing that is apparent here which is that you already know the answer to your question. Read your words: "boring details", "hired away", "not much progress", "developer doubts", "find a replacement", "too early", "need usage stats", "able to make rent", "stress is getting to me", "shut the whole thing down".

Your last comment is the most telling: "Giving up is way harder than trying."

When I say something is hard, what I mean is that it challenges and scares me. I live my life by one motto now: do the thing that scares you the most. It's worked so far for me - good things are happening already.

I think you should try doing what scares you the most. Is that keeping on keeping on, or quitting?


But frankly: 3 devs * 5 months and you have nothing? This is a no go for every investor, i am sure.


To be fair, the two current devs have been on board full time for just over a month and a half.

But, your point stands.


Most competent web devs can have something working relatively quickly -- even if it is an early prototype - like a week or two from a good developer. I would recommend hiring someone who already knows the stack you are using. Learning as you go, especially for the main devs, is highly problematic -- the chance they produce a pile of shit is very high.

Having a few junior devs around the experienced devs is okay, but only inexperienced devs (in the technology at hand) is a really bad situation.


> I would recommend hiring someone who already knows the stack you are using.

Or choose a stack the developers know.


Usually I would agree with this, but he states elsewhere a big part of the back end is already completed (Node) and they have a dashboard (Angular) that is (mostly?) complete and needs connected to the back end.

The two devs also come from Ruby and stated it'd be more work than it's worth to move to that stack.


Just remember this: You don't need to be the guy in charge to be successful.

It takes a long time to find a CTO; and if you can't make rent in January, you aren't going to look very appealing. Even if you find a CTO who's into fantasy sports; given your company's (cough) debt, a potential CTO might think it's easier to start over, without you, your code, and our developers.

If you like the startup scene, you can go work for an early stage startup. Chances are, there's a sports-themed startup that you'll be able to do very well in.

You can also keep networking until you find the right team of people to work with. Remember, you don't need to be the guy in charge to be successful.


How far away is baseball season, 4 months? You can't have an MVP by then with several months already under belt? Is your Minimal Viable Product minimal enough?

If you plan to continue, you might need to look at chopping your launch features down a bit.


1. Solve your financial problem first. Get a job to make rent, even if it's seasonal. Once you know you can eat and sleep somewhere, it will be easier to step back and be objective.

2. Decide if the market is there "if everything was perfect". Nothing will be perfect, but if there is no market even in a perfect world, well, walk away. If you think there is a market even in an imperfect world that you want to go after, then that's your answer. But your second step is deciding whether to move forward on the project. If you aren't going to make the baseball season (which is likely), decide if it would be better to target the 2015 football season opener or the 2016 major league baseball opener.

3. PM me anytime, I have a sports media company and I am very tech-savvy, I'm a longtime coder, I've worked for major corporations as an architect and manager, and I've worked with/advised multiple smaller 'grassroots' sports companies. I'm not offering to build your platform, but I am offering someone who you can at least bounce ideas off of that will know your market. And I'm not building a competing platform. I might not be able to solve your problems of today, but if you decide to move forward with it, I might be able to provide objective advice about your market and tech.


Thank you for the offer.

HN doesn't really have a PM system, as far as I know. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail, chad@shadosports.com, and we can chat a bit more.


Sorry, I must Reddit too much. I'll shoot you an email.


Pivot Today: Keep your team together, assuming they're good guys. Find some contract development work to bring cash-in. Carve out time to work on your e-sports platform as a side project. Recommend reading Alan Weiss on acquiring clients> http://www.amazon.com/How-Acquire-Clients-Techniques-Practit...


Reality check: Curll, if you can't fix your cash-flow problem in 30 days, then you already know the experiment requires a strategic pivot.

It doesn't help to question that.

It will have an emotional impact for you but fighting facts will not help you. Deep breath and change the perspective to see how you need to pivot. Don't narrow possibilitites. On the contrary, expand them. You might feel blind or stuck for a little but do some Customer Development (essentially listening) to get inspired again.

You need the cash-flow problem fixed and is better if you can fix it by yourself delivering direct value (AKA, your paying clients).

Even if you have to do something else (diversification) and everybody tells you that you should focus, if it's not working then is not working (AKA pivot needed).

Remember that you can always do the self-angel strategy (AKA bootstrap) and do that project as secondary thing instead of primary. Might not be so exciting but it will protect you (and reality around you is asking for it).

Do not surrender to peer pressure on cheap advice (perhaps including this one). Stay questioning and trust your subconscious intuition and discern.

What would you say to you if you were to advice your son on this?

Best!


Been there, done that. Had to make the choice between paying Heroku or my landlord, I moved out and started couch surfing and crashing with my parents. Eventually that wears thin - actually immediately that wears thin.

You have a highly in-demand skill-set and I suggest you go use it and restore your finances and your sanity. The tech world isn't going anywhere.

Spend the next 3 years applying all the lessons you've learned which are no doubt numerous. How would you have done things differently to avoid your current predicament and lack of runway? You get another chance - and in the meantime you can take a load off mentally and financially.

Edit to add: By the way, you're successful for even attempting this. Don't hang your head in shame or beat yourself up for wanting to quit, or think that something magical will materialize if you just hold on. View it as a step to something greater and move on. You'll have great stories to tell the people who've been safely ashore the entire time.


For me you are using the two frameworks harder to prototyping - this is more truth for node, in fact. (this is my opinion, take it on your own).

What I would do in your place is simplify your code. This is, change to ruby and do not use any front end framework (remove angular for now) and just stick with a simple bootstrap integration.


In the spirit of "any advice" :)

How did you fund the initial 5 months?

The reason I ask is, if you don't have a ton of people to support at this point, you might want to move into "hibernation mode" and get a job to pay your bills while looking for folks you can count on to help you advance your vision and get to a point where you have traction, users, sales, etc, something that would be appealing to an investor.

If you already have taken money from an investor though, your options will be more limited.

Take a hard look at the market you are trying to penetrate and give yourself an honest assessment of what your chances of success are. Would you invest in yourself if you were angel or VC?

Think about how long you would have to spend on this idea to reach that goal and decide whether it is something you really love or not because 'success' can involve an arduous climb of 7 years or more.


postpone.

get some money in the old way. if it is still in your head after 6-8months and dont let you sleep, you can still continue.


If you live in the Bay Area, I would be happy to give you 30-45 minutes of my time and listen to your situation. Sometimes these things can be better clarified/understood in person.

I've been helped by HN members in many ways (mostly online though, and mostly indirectly), but in this case I feel compelled to "give back".

I have a few years of mentoring experience, and I can safely promise that with whatever suggestion I will come up with, I won't make your situation worse :)

[edit] just as a last thought, in case we won't meet - it seems that with such a short runaway, there's not much to do. The question you should ask yourself is rather this one: should I simply give up, or should I "regroup" and try again in a few months (e.g. with a short consulting gig in between, to get some cash flowing)?


Thanks for the offer. I'm in Boston, however.

Regroup seems to be the way to go; much appreciated.


Sales fix everything.

Cash flow fixes everything.

If you can't generate cash then quit or pivot to something that does quickly.

Cash flow and traction leads to investors not the other way around.

Are you generating cash now? how much? what are you costs?

Focus on one thing and do it really well. I know you hear this all the time, but be the best SF Giants fantasy league.


Agree with all the first part but if he focused and didn't got useful results, continuing to be focused will only help him to do the wrong thing righter.

He's intuition is telling a lot, it's pretty clear that he needs some kind of pivot. And I would seriously consider diversifying to fix the cash-flow problem.


> "learning..."

is a gigantic red flag. They should be learning the problem domain, not technologies with which to solve the problem. I'm with the folks saying they're wanking around on your dime and time to learn a thing they're interested in - which would be great, if you weren't about to starve.

I don't really have a lot of experience with which to base this, but...

I can't comment as to whether you should abandon your idea. I can comment that you should abandon your current plan for realizing it: That plan has become untenable.

Also, learn to code, at least enough to approximate competency. (Or use the wine trick: Ask for details, and look for coherence and passion - someone who knows wine can tell you /all about it/. You just need to know enough to judge coherence, not accuracy)


Ping me – I might be able to help: I run a (new but fast-growing) consulting co, work for equity, have fantasy sports on our project wish list (you have to have a unique take, though).

That said, I think the top advice here is good.

(My contact info is at the bottom of 10x.co.)


Don't get bankrupt for this, its not worth it. Shut it down temporarily, try to make the MVP really minimal in your spare time.

The product you describe seems to have huge scope. Try to make it really focused, like an an NFL only fantasy league (the most popular sport).

You should really get developers that know already Angular and Node, those technologies are just not learnable overnight.

Other than that it seems like a nice stack, I personally would go for a backend based on socket.io and mongoose.

Any change of having people working remotelly to reduce office costs?


If you want, contact me at corey@sofetch.io, and we can talk about how far along you are? If the platform is 50%+ finished, we may be able to take it on, knock it out, and consume a hefty % of equity.

I run sofetch.io, we build and design web and mobile apps.


There's no glory in jeopardizing your wellbeing. And it's hard enough to make money in any market, especially one as competitive as fantasy sports, where all the big players have massive audiences already built-in.


Sush, you. I ain't giving up that easily :)

Though, perhaps we should merge.


Always happy to talk and help if we can ... Ori at fleaflicker.com


All you need is to find the right find of partner? Get someone in as a partner and give him lots of stocks. Make sure he knows is his technology and makes a promise to deliver (put it in the contract).


Can you get a part-time job to pay bills until you can sell the product?


I don't think you've been at it long enough to quit. Here is an idea. Can you build something smaller that will generate revenue quickly instead of a much larger fantasy sports platform site? You obviously play fantasy sports so what if you wrote down all the things that drive you crazy about the big guys sites and apps and create a small solution for each problem on paper and then fix it with an app. Or look on a few app stores and find all the problems via viewing the low ratings on all the other apps out there. This is where the pain is and fantasy sports players will use whatever they find as a solution to their problems. What if you just build a small app that helped people get an advantage over other players that was easy to create, costs a couple bucks on an app store (or links to add rev. that can be dumped into an account that is linked to a top fantasy platform) and can be done before baseball season. You may have to do some Wizard of Oz stuff to start making money and get traction until you have some dough to hire a better team, etc. Here is an idea that may work: In my business, investments (actually building an SaaS product in FinTech) there are all these sites that for lack of better words are called "Guru" sites/apps. There are probably 5 sites and 5 - 10 apps out there. It sounds corny, but what people/companies have done (Using public filings) is find what the big guys (Hedge Funds/Institutions) are buying and then wrap a service around it. So if Warren Buffet buys MSFT they send out an email to all their subscribers telling them that Warren Buffet owns this now and they pile in. People will pay a lot of money for information. Some sites are slicker, where they have a good GUI with portfolio holdings of every single hedge fund, every single trade, weightings, etc., where you can slice and dice data a hundred different ways. Some have gotten as far as trading your accounts based on their (The Gurus) trades. So what if you built the simplist version of this where all the baddest ass fantasy players were tracked (Trades, allocations, etc.)and you sold a service where they get emailed when players are moved, allocations change, trades are made, etc., but the hook is you have to track the best, or maybe even professional athlete's picks (who knows more than a professional athlete about other athletes?) or maybe coaches, who knows. But keep it small, it has to create revenue immediately so you can pay rent and it has to be non-existing and something you could possibly sell to a big competitor (or put on their site to generate split ad revenue or something) because lets face it over time you could have a site with every widget, app, stat cruncher, etc. like a mall for fantasy players that need the best tools to kill it against all the guys in their office. Start thinking outside the box, but it has to be quickly built and must generate revenue quickly and then do what you want to do. Maybe follow an MVP regimen to get it going. Just some ideas, you could always build a quick picks aggregator that takes all the picking sites lists and makes a master list. Or generate a new way to rate players with a number (1,2,3,4) or alphabetic system (A,B,C,D), or turn players into stocks and make them into charts, quotes, graphs as a way or means to analyzing them better. Don't create a "market" for players though because it's been done and the Gov. doesn't like these sites/apps because they resemble gambling. good luck - Jordan


You are speaking to someone who is going to run out of rent in two months. I see no suggestion you gave that has a reasonably-high-probability path to providing rent-quantity money in that timeframe. You have a few suggestions that involve money, but I'd estimate their most-likely return in one to one-and-a-half months to measure in the dozens of dollars.

This is not a great time to be overestimating the odds of making money.


I think getting a job at this point is obvious. I guess I should have said that in the beginning.


Fail fast and often.




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