Knowing when to quit is an undervalued strength and not a sign of weakness. Too many trudge on even though it is hurting themselves and those around them because they are scared of the unknown beyond quitting. I think well done, and what an amazing training ground to go through. I imagine you've levelled up quite a bit from it.
Thanks for sharing this here. As the author of the blog post I'm glad to see people take something away from my journey, even if it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.
That's a fair view. Survivorship bias & distortion of how likely you are to succeed under perfect conditions seem to permeate amongst new grads, especially in CS.
Looking at the last year of my uni, there were 2 strong camps and one that balanced in between.
Camp 1 - building the next unicorn right away. The consensus that every product has to "disrupt" the status quo (from my PoV, this seems to lead to more problems, than solutions)
Camp 2 - go for established companies, that can pay you (can't fault them, a lot of them did not have the safety net required to potentially throw away a few years on a failed venture)
In-between (where I ended up) - work for corporates, startups, test the waters with small projects.
Over time, my goal became to gather experience, find interesting problems, figure out first what needs fixing, test out if there's any interest in a solution - in essence stack everything in my favour before even attempting to build something & sell it.
While I didn't maximise my gains like the ones who went 100% in on the corporate route, I got to work for a diverse variety of companies - house management, mining, banking, hedge fund, dev tech, health tech, shopping giant..
I had the benefit of seeing my peers fail & succeed (though success was quite limited). Nothing cures survivorship bias better than seeing one course mate who simply stuck to a guaranteed path in a comfy leadership position in Oracle while another one, who always was scrappy & doing stuff - trying to survive consulting (resisting to this day to work directly for anything too corporate)
It was a good choice on your part.
I remember how my friend and I created an educational startup and after 1.5 years I left, but he stayed.
All because it was difficult for him to abandon the accumulated base of readers (not monetized, since there were not very many of them, but at the same time enough to realize that this is a lot of work).
He is still engaged in this startup in parallel with his main work, although there are no new users. I think it's the fear of losing everything you've accumulated.
Personally, I felt freedom when I left him and of course I am grateful for the experience.
I feel like people fantasize the startup founder life. At the end of the day, as you said, you have to be passionate about the problem. Not about the solution, not about the lifestyle, but about the problem you're solving.
"However while both Ryan and I knew these abstractly, we didn't necessarily follow these principles" - Well, this is very relatable. So often I'll have engrained a principle or a piece of advice in my mind and yet I still trip up when it comes to applying it in practice. I now have a notion board with a brief bullet-point list of things I've learned throughout my experience as an Indie Hacker and I read the list every day whilst I drink my morning coffee - it's become a ritual. It's not just motivational quotes, it's applicable advice that I want to remind myself to apply in practice throughout the day. Even when I do this I catch myself acting against my own advice sometimes. But I'd recommend having a list of "things to remember" to everyone.
I remember when I was learning software I would keep a notebook entitled Brick Walls. Every time I got stuck for more than an hour or so (sometimes days or weeks) I would make a note of it, and the eventual solution or how I could avoid such a time sink in the future.
Nice - this is a great idea. I'm going to take a page from your book and try this. I found his point very relatable too - definitely been there, done that. If a friend had asked me, I'd give them my best advice, but applying it myself is all-too-often a different question.
This is such a great post Maaike. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I can relate to this so much. Start-ups are really glamorized, with constant news on fundraising, LinkedIn posts on crazy growth rates etc. However, the unfortunate truth is that statistically, most founders would fail due to different reasons.
Knowing when to quit is also not an exact science. Oftentimes, there is a fine line between success and failure. A start-up is like a baby that needs to be nurtured into a healthy adult. In reality, it's difficult differentiating between that "growth" stage where a lot of grind is needed to get some initial traction and when the start-up is just a no-good brick wall.
All in all, this is why it's important to be passionate about the idea you are going to work on and ultimately ready to accept whatever outcome you get from the project, even before starting.
Btw, I am working on Loopify360 (www.loopify360.com), an affordable marketing-as-a-platform for start-ups and SMBs. Feel free to check it out
Reading through the story and the pains, we first have to agree that startups are not easy decision and the pains comes with it are a package that you cannot avoid whether your startup idea is unique or failure. you have to go and live that package pros and cons till you make it or leave it for a better option.
Good ol' stereotypes. Specifically the last paragraph was a good summary.
Startups are fun and games until you're actually in a leading role, especially when you don't put 110% into it.
You have to check it off and leave it behind as a learning experience and keep moving forward with your newly aquired knowledge.
Good luck!
This hit home so hard. "I had reached a point where I was actively hoping that we would fail, so that I would have an excuse to move on from our startup and go work on something else. At that point, the worse thing that could happen is that we found more customers, found a way to keep doing what we were doing and keep moving forward."
I remember having that feeling back in college when I was freelancing for a company that wasn't paying off but I kept plugging away. It's the toughest thing in the world to admit, but so liberating once you do. You definitely don't need me to tell you that you made the right choice, but it's awesome to hear your clear and level perspective on this process.
Starting a business/saas/startup of any kind almost always takes complete dedication from the start in order to work. We need more people saying this.
just startup is difficult where ever you are , when you start a work then it means you are on the way rather than you are slow or whatever , never quit your startup and face difficulties then you will be at the point where you want to be
Hey Maaike, thanks for sharing your story with us. I think it was a great learning lesson for both of you. Didn't you guys make any analysis on competition before starting to work on the product. How did you approach customer discovery? One good advice if you ever gonna need it is to ask customers to pay for your product. If they say no, you can immediately move forward or at least ask them why they are not going to pay. If yes, you have a little bit cashflow to get an additional team member on board to put some work off your shoulders. Best, Alex.
Hey Alex, I'm the author of this blog post. Thanks for taking the time to read it. We did do analysis of our competition, even going so far as to undertake some light corporate espionage to get demos from competitors to fully see features and get insights into future roadmaps.
We found customers through a lot of cold LinkedIn messages, I think Ryan easily messaged thousands of people. From talking with them, they weren't completely satisfied with engagement solutions. They wanted more granular insights similar to how big tech companies could run people analytics (without needing to hire data scientists), and they also wanted ways to correlate HR initiatives to changes in employee feedback. Unfortunately, what they wanted vs what they were willing to pay for were two separate things.
Can the problem of "should I kill X or not" be solved by doing several things at the same time? I, from my experience, know when being in several niches at the same time there's usually one that always stands out.
Good point. Not necessarily solved, it can make the decision much easier.
I like to apply a "high availability" mindset to business strategy. I never commit exclusively to a single idea, product, income stream, channel or anything else. I like to have other viable options as a way to stay resilient to failure.
Your comment is a great example of how useful that can be. You wouldn't care about killing one idea if you were working on two or three. I've been dedicated to one idea for over 12 months but I still have backup ideas I continue to evolve, ready to go at any time.
A microeconomics teacher I used to have told us that once a product is commoditized and everyone's competing on pricing (i.e. it becomes a race to the bottom), the best thing to do is think of a complimentary product as opposed to a competing product. Because your would-be competitors then become your partners; you can piggyback on their product as opposed to race against it.
Oh, good idea! I assume it's one of those "easier said than done" things. But worth considering. So you mean, like a complementary product to a laptop could be a mouse? A compliment to a bicycle would be a helmet? Haha, random examples, but I want to make sure I understand what you mean.
Haha exactly. So, a tennis ball and a tennis racket; a burger and a burger bun; a PlayStation and games. A product that your user can use together with an existing product to improve their experience.
Knowing when to quit is an undervalued strength and not a sign of weakness. Too many trudge on even though it is hurting themselves and those around them because they are scared of the unknown beyond quitting. I think well done, and what an amazing training ground to go through. I imagine you've levelled up quite a bit from it.
Thanks for sharing this here. As the author of the blog post I'm glad to see people take something away from my journey, even if it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to.
That's a fair view. Survivorship bias & distortion of how likely you are to succeed under perfect conditions seem to permeate amongst new grads, especially in CS.
Looking at the last year of my uni, there were 2 strong camps and one that balanced in between.
Camp 1 - building the next unicorn right away. The consensus that every product has to "disrupt" the status quo (from my PoV, this seems to lead to more problems, than solutions)
Camp 2 - go for established companies, that can pay you (can't fault them, a lot of them did not have the safety net required to potentially throw away a few years on a failed venture)
In-between (where I ended up) - work for corporates, startups, test the waters with small projects.
Over time, my goal became to gather experience, find interesting problems, figure out first what needs fixing, test out if there's any interest in a solution - in essence stack everything in my favour before even attempting to build something & sell it.
While I didn't maximise my gains like the ones who went 100% in on the corporate route, I got to work for a diverse variety of companies - house management, mining, banking, hedge fund, dev tech, health tech, shopping giant..
I had the benefit of seeing my peers fail & succeed (though success was quite limited). Nothing cures survivorship bias better than seeing one course mate who simply stuck to a guaranteed path in a comfy leadership position in Oracle while another one, who always was scrappy & doing stuff - trying to survive consulting (resisting to this day to work directly for anything too corporate)
It was a good choice on your part.
I remember how my friend and I created an educational startup and after 1.5 years I left, but he stayed.
All because it was difficult for him to abandon the accumulated base of readers (not monetized, since there were not very many of them, but at the same time enough to realize that this is a lot of work).
He is still engaged in this startup in parallel with his main work, although there are no new users. I think it's the fear of losing everything you've accumulated.
Personally, I felt freedom when I left him and of course I am grateful for the experience.
I feel like people fantasize the startup founder life. At the end of the day, as you said, you have to be passionate about the problem. Not about the solution, not about the lifestyle, but about the problem you're solving.
I don't think people realize how painful startups can be.
Thanks for sharing your journey.
"However while both Ryan and I knew these abstractly, we didn't necessarily follow these principles" - Well, this is very relatable. So often I'll have engrained a principle or a piece of advice in my mind and yet I still trip up when it comes to applying it in practice. I now have a notion board with a brief bullet-point list of things I've learned throughout my experience as an Indie Hacker and I read the list every day whilst I drink my morning coffee - it's become a ritual. It's not just motivational quotes, it's applicable advice that I want to remind myself to apply in practice throughout the day. Even when I do this I catch myself acting against my own advice sometimes. But I'd recommend having a list of "things to remember" to everyone.
Absolutely!
I remember when I was learning software I would keep a notebook entitled Brick Walls. Every time I got stuck for more than an hour or so (sometimes days or weeks) I would make a note of it, and the eventual solution or how I could avoid such a time sink in the future.
Nice - this is a great idea. I'm going to take a page from your book and try this. I found his point very relatable too - definitely been there, done that. If a friend had asked me, I'd give them my best advice, but applying it myself is all-too-often a different question.
This is such a great post Maaike. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I can relate to this so much. Start-ups are really glamorized, with constant news on fundraising, LinkedIn posts on crazy growth rates etc. However, the unfortunate truth is that statistically, most founders would fail due to different reasons.
Knowing when to quit is also not an exact science. Oftentimes, there is a fine line between success and failure. A start-up is like a baby that needs to be nurtured into a healthy adult. In reality, it's difficult differentiating between that "growth" stage where a lot of grind is needed to get some initial traction and when the start-up is just a no-good brick wall.
All in all, this is why it's important to be passionate about the idea you are going to work on and ultimately ready to accept whatever outcome you get from the project, even before starting.
Btw, I am working on Loopify360 (www.loopify360.com), an affordable marketing-as-a-platform for start-ups and SMBs. Feel free to check it out
Reading through the story and the pains, we first have to agree that startups are not easy decision and the pains comes with it are a package that you cannot avoid whether your startup idea is unique or failure. you have to go and live that package pros and cons till you make it or leave it for a better option.
Good luck with your journey.
Good ol' stereotypes. Specifically the last paragraph was a good summary.
Startups are fun and games until you're actually in a leading role, especially when you don't put 110% into it.
You have to check it off and leave it behind as a learning experience and keep moving forward with your newly aquired knowledge.
Good luck!
This hit home so hard. "I had reached a point where I was actively hoping that we would fail, so that I would have an excuse to move on from our startup and go work on something else. At that point, the worse thing that could happen is that we found more customers, found a way to keep doing what we were doing and keep moving forward."
I remember having that feeling back in college when I was freelancing for a company that wasn't paying off but I kept plugging away. It's the toughest thing in the world to admit, but so liberating once you do. You definitely don't need me to tell you that you made the right choice, but it's awesome to hear your clear and level perspective on this process.
Starting a business/saas/startup of any kind almost always takes complete dedication from the start in order to work. We need more people saying this.
Great stuff @maaike
Thanks for sharing your story.
just startup is difficult where ever you are , when you start a work then it means you are on the way rather than you are slow or whatever , never quit your startup and face difficulties then you will be at the point where you want to be
Hey Maaike, thanks for sharing your story with us. I think it was a great learning lesson for both of you. Didn't you guys make any analysis on competition before starting to work on the product. How did you approach customer discovery? One good advice if you ever gonna need it is to ask customers to pay for your product. If they say no, you can immediately move forward or at least ask them why they are not going to pay. If yes, you have a little bit cashflow to get an additional team member on board to put some work off your shoulders. Best, Alex.
Hey Alex, I'm the author of this blog post. Thanks for taking the time to read it. We did do analysis of our competition, even going so far as to undertake some light corporate espionage to get demos from competitors to fully see features and get insights into future roadmaps.
We found customers through a lot of cold LinkedIn messages, I think Ryan easily messaged thousands of people. From talking with them, they weren't completely satisfied with engagement solutions. They wanted more granular insights similar to how big tech companies could run people analytics (without needing to hire data scientists), and they also wanted ways to correlate HR initiatives to changes in employee feedback. Unfortunately, what they wanted vs what they were willing to pay for were two separate things.
Sometimes a better idea comes along too—more marketable, higher profits, etc. Don’t be afraid to pivot or quit.
I killed few of my startups as well. Also, I helped few of my clients to kill their startups.
I just made this financial model tool few weeks back to help founders (and me) to have that kind of financial perspective.
the tool is here: https://increnovation.azurewebsites.net/fermi/highlevel
Can the problem of "should I kill X or not" be solved by doing several things at the same time? I, from my experience, know when being in several niches at the same time there's usually one that always stands out.
Good point. Not necessarily solved, it can make the decision much easier.
I like to apply a "high availability" mindset to business strategy. I never commit exclusively to a single idea, product, income stream, channel or anything else. I like to have other viable options as a way to stay resilient to failure.
Your comment is a great example of how useful that can be. You wouldn't care about killing one idea if you were working on two or three. I've been dedicated to one idea for over 12 months but I still have backup ideas I continue to evolve, ready to go at any time.
A microeconomics teacher I used to have told us that once a product is commoditized and everyone's competing on pricing (i.e. it becomes a race to the bottom), the best thing to do is think of a complimentary product as opposed to a competing product. Because your would-be competitors then become your partners; you can piggyback on their product as opposed to race against it.
Oh, good idea! I assume it's one of those "easier said than done" things. But worth considering. So you mean, like a complementary product to a laptop could be a mouse? A compliment to a bicycle would be a helmet? Haha, random examples, but I want to make sure I understand what you mean.
Haha exactly. So, a tennis ball and a tennis racket; a burger and a burger bun; a PlayStation and games. A product that your user can use together with an existing product to improve their experience.
This comment was deleted a year ago.