alt Hacker NewsRunning a Business Means Contact with Reality
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Some real honest and actionable advice here. I think the natural course for intelligent people that enjoy crafting things is very much in conflict with the real world. We care about the things we are building because we see them as an extension of ourselves. Anxiously perfecting our creations in a safe place, obsessing over ever smaller details of finished portions; working on detailing while ignoring the missing half of the ship. Its an ego thing. We see these things as pieces of ourselves, we’re afraid that the world won’t accept them, and by extension us. It’s not real though; nothing and nobody is perfect, and its okay.
I have a deep feeling that i can “do it myself”, yet i work for companies because deep down I like the anonymity and the safety of it; at a big company we get to be part of something established, we don’t have to show our own faces to the world.
After 20 years building software for other companies, I started my own thing a few weeks ago. The reality check hit fast. When you're an employee, you can hide behind process and blame the market. When it's yours, every signup or lack of one is direct feedback. No buffer.
Seems the page is down. So, yes, Reality is where money is. For money to reach you, you need to setup the pipelines, or poke a hole in an existing pipeline.
Maybe that's old-school. Youngsters seem to argue that they don't need to move out of their den, to start and run a business. And they were right some times.
Archived Copy https://archive.is/3scj5
Getting hacker news'd is also contact w/ reality for your website/hosting platform :-D
well... it's a certain KIND of reality... one where numbers fight with "common sense"...
examples... a large paying customer can kill a business... tiny or free users can be great for free marketing and product testing... a weird channel partner can make a business... obscure cashflow and accounting can make/break a business... product development or inventory can require fundraising which comes with wild "strings attached"... and and and...
(having started a number of both self-funded and venture-funded business, in tech small format retail and more...)
Unless it's an AI business
Thoughtful piece with a different and engaging tack to the “Developers don’t understand marketing” commonplace. Kozlowski describes indirectly his mother’s professional organizing business, which indirectness asks readers to consider the churn of consumer culture and the goals (if any) of capitalism.
It’s just a trace, but the following paragraph (quoted in part) hits hard in this season of thanks and bounty. Thank you, Fred K, for writing it.
> The business has been a giant blackpill on Temu. Seeing people pay my mom to throw away bags full of internet purchases has been depressing. Bringing yet cheaper goods into the States hasn’t actually increased quality of life whatsoever over the already cheap goods on Amazon[. . . .] Unfortunately — despite the very real benefits that mass affluence and consumer culture have, it’s difficult in my position to not think that we’ve gone too far.
I haven't been someone else's employee for 20 years, so the title immediately drew my attention.
One click later, "Error establishing a database connection". HN seems to have hugged this guy's site to death.
Running a business means contact with people's opinions. Having your server fall over when you post it to Hacker News means contact with reality.