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Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

'I started Microsoft as a weekend project and now it's making 1B/mo'

'I started Apple as a weekend project and now it's making 1B/mo'

'I started Google as a weekend project and now it's making 1B/mo'

How the company was started is completely irrelevant to the outcome and it's clearly an 'entreporn' clickbait title. Gumroad raised millions to get started and it took 7 years to get to the point where they are now. And 350k/mo in revenue doesn't even mean that they are profitable.

If you are an (aspiring) entrepreneur, don't compare yourself to the typical story posted on IH.

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Agreed. I stopped visiting IH some time ago after finding that about 95% of the community seems to be obsessed with get-rich-quick ideas and making as much cash as possible to retire by 30 or something. This headline exemplifies that.

None of them will actually retire in any meaningful sense. You have to change so much of yourself to become that type of person that even after you reach that early, luxurious retirement number, you won't take it because there won't be anything left that you enjoy outside of work.

Perfect plan is minimizing work while maximizing income over a long career. Those that figure out how to do that will never share their secrets.

Plus, one looses so much(health and relations) in the process of making lots of money quickly that their option of coming back is no longer available. Lots of money also heightens one's expectations and comfort requirements so much that they hardly save much and, even if they do, its not enough for them to maintain lifestyle for long without new income.

I think (or maybe just hope) that I can avoid that trap by reframing how I think about retirement. Instead of thinking of retirement as not working on anything, I'll be thinking of it as working on the things I want to work on. Instead of seeing progress on the company I'm building every day, I'll be looking for progress in my mountain biking, or guitar playing, or whatever hobby I'm interested in at the moment. I'll still be working, I'll still be building things, they'll just be my things and not done for money.

Indeed. It seems the real secret to their success is ploughing a lot of venture capital into the ground for eight years. Considering that a “base hit” of capital efficiency is to reach the point where invested capital equals your annual revenue, these guys only got half way there.

TBH this is not a typical story that is posted in IH. Most of the stories there are from bootstrappers.

Yeah, the last time I saw this on HN it was a long story about a failed startup (bought out an investor for $1) that had managed to survive the failure and remain a small company. It is by no means a weekend project that evolved slowly to what it is now.

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