460 karma · joined February 28, 2008
Then again, life is short, we have to have our little pleasures. Nobody is gonna live forever anyway..
As a child, I absolutely loved, craved, was addicted to Coca Cola. A liter a day, perhaps more. Coming to the US, I noticed that it tasted different because of substituting sugar with high fructose corn syrup. No problem - I switched to Mexican Coca Cola (the one in a glass bottle) - and carried on.
Fast forward to after grad school, I wanted to get in a better shape, without giving up sweets entirely (I definitely have a sweet tooth). So the first thing I did is to not buy coke. I could still get it if I wanted - the local 7-11 was literally across the street from my place. But it was no longer convenient - I had to get dressed and cross the street, deal with the line, the cashier, pay more for my guilty pleasure, etc. I still went, but definitely less and less frequently.
Fast forward a few years and coke started to taste very "heavy" to me. It had this aftertaste that I never noticed before but could no longer shake off. I found myself frequently unable to finish a bottle of coke. My cravings started getting less and less pronounced. This downward (well, upward in terms of health) slope continued and today I no longer crave Coca Cola at all, drinking it perhaps 5 times a year, if that. And even then I can't really do more than a few sips.
I look back on this and it honestly feels a bit surreal, knowing that my starting point was (multiple) liters per day and true joy and love for that sugary drink.
So progress is definitely possible as long as I took care to make the right choice the easy choice. Don't go hungry to the supermarket. Don't buy things because that makes them easily available, testing your willpower, which is inevitably finite. Make a few basic rules to follow rather than agonize over every small decision and feel guilty afterwards (just like the article said). Simple stuff like that.
Some things will stick, others won't, but that's okay. The key is to keep trying to get better and healthier, without losing the small pleasures in life without which, let's be honest, is this even worth it?!
Good luck to everyone on their personal journeys.
I am writing to add one point I did not see mentioned elsewhere:
You are making an implicit assumption that working on a "smaller" idea (like the ones mentioned in Indie Hackers) is somehow less risky than aspiring to be the next Zuck. Empirically, this seems to be false.
I have worked for ~15 years on startups. I have many friends, who are also entrepreneurs. I have observations on all sorts of efforts - from small side projects to large VC-backed bets to bootstrapped businesses.
My takeaway is that technology startups are characterized by a tremendous amount of risk and require a lot of hard work - regardless of the type of venture. I encourage you to talk to founders (in person, not reading PR-oriented websites like Indie Hackers) and verify that for yourself.
If I had to make up numbers to illustrate this notion, I'd say that making a $1B/year business might be 0.001% likely, while making a $1M/year business might be 0.1% likely - but for all practical purposes, both are incredibly challenging to pull off. If that's the case, might as well aim as high as possible and justify the risk involved.
Turns out the one thing that really matters is having a strong idea, which is forgiving to the many mistakes entrepreneurs inevitably make. In that regard, I wish you luck and hope you end up with a strong concept sooner rather than later.
If true, this is an incredible achievement given how long they have been in the market with this product and how few companies IPO. Kudos
May I suggest this one instead https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/secretive-chinese-bitcoin-mi...
Where he basically says that Gmail's promotions folder acts essentially as a filter. I wonder if others have any relevant experience to share on the matter.
The way I read the response is the following: the tug of war between users who want to see / comment on this and those who are flagging the article is being won by those flagging it - and thus the article has fallen below the front page.
The irony is strong here. An article talking about what you can't say, being flagged to oblivion, further confirming that, indeed, some things can't be said.
Strange world these days..
If we define valuable as "profitable, productive companies" then I very much agree that there are plenty of niches out there.
However, if we are talking about startups that can actually grow big by Silicon Valley standards, I have personally come to the opposite conclusion. Ideas with the potential to become big are very much THE scarce resource.
I used to think that things like capital and teams are scarce, but it turns out there are a lot of sharp hard-working people with access to cash. By contrast, ideas that can grow to a billion dollar outcome are very few. I remember Andy Rachleff saying a decade ago that each year 10-15 companies are started that will eventually grow to become billion-dollar outcomes. My impression is that this pattern has held.
What does change all the time is where the opportunities are. Some industries mature, thus potentially closing for new opportunities, at least for a while, e.g. until a tech breakthrough. The good news is that new markets develop all the time, and the cycle repeats.
P.S. Thanks for putting this together and sharing with the community. I hope some dots get connected meaningfully.
The part that says "the outgoing administration" is demonstrably false. The facts are that the immigration policy of the US has not changed much under Obama (with a few notable exceptions like Cuba but that is not really related to the tech industry). Please stop spreading FUD.
The immigration policy is nonsensical, but Obama has little to do with it. Perhaps the only legitimate criticism you can make is that he was not able to reform it properly.
If I'm wrong, mind citing the correct sources?
That is yet another very counter-intuitive thing about the startup world. In basically every other finance vertical, terms matter greatly. Not so much with VCs. That's why a lot of finance guys make poor VCs, they fundamentally misunderstand the game.
I am personally in 100% agreement that it should be App Store simple but reality proves more complicated than that. It is disappointing but not surprising.
As an aside, it would be great if they keep up support for N1 :)
But the key thing to realize is that everyone has been there. Caterina did not start as a celebrity - she created a useful product and built her reputation, which she is now leveraging. I bet that when she was starting she was looking at articles of experienced entrepreneurs wondering the same thing that you express in your blog.
And that's what entrepreneurship is all about - finding your angle, your opportunity to create an unfair advantage. It is not easy and there certainly is no standard "here's how you do it" answer - but I hope you don't fall into the trap of thinking that as a new entrepreneur there's nothing you can do to win against more experienced folks. That's the very definition of entrepreneurship - disrupting the status quo by creating something that satisfies a previously unrealized core need.
I signed up and put the draft agenda into my Dropbox for anyone interested - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/435737/EIR%20Summit%20Agenda.pdf
For many of us - not just immigrants but also founders/managers who want top foreign talent - immigration is a hugely important issue and this event is a unique chance to contribute to shaping a better policy. I hope to see you all there.
I thought I would use this opportunity to ask the HN community: what do you think people use their iPads for? Honest question - I have had one for a long time now and barely use it as it sits in this awkward middle between a "full" PC and a smartphone. With so many millions of iPads sold and Tim Cook saying "There Will Come A Day When The Tablet Market Is Larger Than The PC Market” I am trying to form an informed opinion but just fail to see what the use case is for the iPad (perhaps reading a book? casual web browsing? netflix/youtube?).
So what do you think the future of tablets holds? Link to studies on the topic are much appreciated as well!
Personally, I am usually extremely skeptical of Gruber and about as far from an "Apple fanboy" as you can get. I also approached the show very skeptically. However, the critique in the podcast was very good. The technical and factual errors and the shallowness and the retelling are all things that many others have pointed out and they are all good points. But the critique makes a bigger point:
Namely, that Isaacson did not do his job of actually giving us important new insights into what and how Steve Jobs "ticked." There are some great examples of that point towards the end of the podcast. For instance, the point about the ad hominum fallacy is fantastic and I really wish Steve was called on that and we had a deeper understanding of what he really thought. Or the various examples of Apple building its strategy from the ground up rather than the image that the media likes to paint of Steve Jobs as the all-knowing ship captain who knows and foresees everything.
It's all too bad because I think we as a society and of course Silicon Valley in particular could have benefited tremendously from a deeper exploration of Steve Jobs.