No link but when I was younger I partnered with a non-technical founder to build a personalised news app. He quit his job while I worked on it part-time. Despite having some users, we failed for many reasons in hindsight.
1. Not shipping fast enough. This one is standard startup advice.
2. No traction for the amount of time we worked on it. Probably caused by not shipping fast enough and not talking to users properly.
3. No conviction. I didn't really care enough about the problem to go all in. TBH, I just wanted something to work on to put on the resume.
4. No competitive advantage. There are a tonne of personalised news apps out there. We had no differentiating factor.
5. No realistic plan to monetise.
6. Finally too many co-founder disagreements as a result of everything so we called it quits.
I don't regret the experience because it taught me a lot about what not to do in my current project.
It depends how easy the setup is. If it means I don't have to spend a fuck load of time setting up and debugging the dev environment on a local machine then I wouldn't mind trying it out.
> I was hurting pretty bad, constantly thinking of what I could’ve done differently and still had many, many sleepless nights. It took those 18 months to really get it out of my system and move on.
Thanks for this insight. I recently made the leap to quit my tech job to build a startup. I keep telling myself that if it doesn't work out (which is the statistically likely outcome) I can at least go back to another tech job. But tbh, I'd probably also be devastated for some time.
I guess if you had to do something differently for your next attempt, what would it be?
1. Start with a problem, not a solution. And validate that you can reach customers who will pay for your solution to solve their problem, before day 1.
2. Don’t pay attention or compare yourself to other startups/potential competition. No good comes of it.
3. Recognize how large a factor luck is. This means preparing for things to go wrong, but also accepting that factors beyond your control can hugely impact the trajectory of your business.
Thanks for sharing. Did you feel like it was hard to get a job after you left the startup? I guess it depends what stage and size your startup was at, but did you have any problems trying to leverage your experience as a founder with potential employers?
Not hard at all. We were 3 years in and we had around 20 employees by the time I left. I was the CTO and since we didn’t have a big development team, I still coded every day so I was sharper than ever and with more experience not only in technology but also with raising money, accounting, HR, sales, etc so I had multiple offers to choose from.
That experience was super useful for my next/current endeavor with my wife and also for my next job since I had to learn and grow a lot in terms of management, prioritization and dealing with lack of resources. Skills which are super valuable to companies and teams of all sizes.
When hiring, I’m biased towards ex-founders and people who tried to launch their own products. I believe that shipping something and asking for money for it is the ultimate proof that a developer can offer in terms of how far and how much they can do/learn so I always favor people who done something even if they failed. Launching a product/company requires tons of different skills which, as I said before, I believe are super valuable in addition to tech skills.
I wish "non-tech/well-rounded" were better valued or even understood in the mainstream. People mention them as cultural virtue-signals, but it's not part of any interview or screening I've been a part of, and I've done dozens in the last year.
I don't feel that "soft skills" are sought or even desired in an engineer -- I'm only ever asked about some certain framework or technique or algorithm (lol), not even tangential open-ended stuff like "hey how would you approach a customer complaining about X" or "How would you prioritize technical debt vs features in a product's lifecycle?" or, heck, even something fun and off the wall like "you've lost your wallet in a foreign country -- now what?"
I'm glad your startup experience was useful in your own search. Best of luck on your new endeavor! :)
> I wish "non-tech/well-rounded" were better valued or even understood in the mainstream. People mention them as cultural virtue-signals, but it's not part of any interview or screening I've been a part of, and I've done dozens in the last year.
> I don't feel that "soft skills" are sought or even desired in an engineer
An engineer who can communicate well will never be out of a job.
If there is something I learned from politicians is that you should never respond to what was asked, but to what you wish was asked instead.
If you know what you are talking about you can still respond to "How would you prioritize technical debt" and offer way more than a direct technical answer. You have to take opportunity to "enhance" every question you are asked with information that portray you in a good light and directs the conversation towards where you think you can generate most value.
This is just one of many VC backed coins trying to be the next Ethereum.
These VC coins don't enable mining so there's no dilution on the initial holders. Saving the environment is just a nice alibi to lock in the cap table.
There's also no disclosure on what price did the initial round happen at. 40 cents/80 cents /1$?
If you buy Gold/Copper you have a fair idea on what the mining cost is for the industry.
These are just fairytales propagated by further vc money to build more virtual fantasies on the database they control.
And Ethereum didn't have a presale of 70%+ of the supply? That somehow didn't lock-in the captable? ETH foundation (which is completely non-transparent btw) doesn't control the trademark and employs go-eth team?
You have incremental supply on ETH available to those who deploy mining assets. This broadens ownership through dilution.
Solana has had multiple funding rounds and not just one. They can continue to have as many funding rounds as they like.
There will be never be dilution of Solana holders to allow for decentralisation. To earn coins through staking you need to be a preexisting holder.
Running a node doesn't make economic sense and there are plenty of validators which don't charge a commission for delegation.
You have no variable costs as an entrenched holder who can just stake coins for more coins till eternity.
I feel you mate. Sad part is Australia has all the potential to have a really good future but the only thing missing is competent leadership. The liberal government continues to fuck up time and time again and the Murdoch press just turns a blind eye.
Fucked up quarantine, fucked up vaccine rollout, fucked up climate policies, fucked up the news media bargaining code, and fucked up numerous policies just to prop up the housing market. And it'll be the younger generations that will certainly pay for these fuck ups.
I really hope we have an early election and Australians choose Labor over Liberal this time.
I keep hearing this every now and then, but the incompetent leadership does not come from nowhere nor has conceived itself. The country leaders have been legitimately elected, which means the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will. People consciously elect incompetence that bears the incompetent leadership, for that is what they desire for one reason or another. There are a few progressive, young parties that could steer the future of Australia in the right direction with progressive policies that make sense in the 21st century. Guess what? An average Australian does not care about the progress, they care about their real estate portfolio in maintaining the status quo for a change is scary and frightens people. Politics have become a career ladder excercise with public servants serving their own self-interest rather than working out differences between differing views and opinions and working towards a modern future of the country. Australia has been become mired in complacency, pipe dreaming and discussing how Labour is better over Liberals (or the other way around) whereas both parties are more or less the same in the grand scheme of things.
>. The country leaders have been legitimately elected, which means the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will. People consciously elect incompetence that bears the incompetent leadership
Counterpoints:
1. Australia's two big parties are closer to an oligarchy than an egalitarian system, these parties recruit from university politics so there's a whole pipeline that will seed out people who have non-party views. Having mostly uni-people will automatically restrict the party to a small percentage of the population.
2. Incompetence can be hidden from the voting populace. If you consume only Murdoch content (i.e., most private TV news, most published newspapers, public TV station boards are also getting packed with government people) then you will probably think that things are running great.
> the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will.
Every 4 years you get to influence the politicians for a few days and they do their best to make you happy. On all the other days, the lobbyists and party factions get to influence them.
> The country leaders have been legitimately elected, which means the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will.
I don't disagree. Although influencing the people's will is a lot easier when the main stream media is monopolised and heavily biased towards one political party. If we want a government that truly reflects the people's will we need a diverse media landscape. Also a reason why I support Kevin Rudd's push for the Murdoch royal commission.
We also need a population that takes an interest in what's going on an will vote out a corrupt politician regardless of their party. Most will excuse anything if it comes from their side.
I'm in SA and I do what I can to support Rex Patrick as I see strong independents like him being the only hope in the immediate future.
I don't want to single you out, but the monomaniacal hardon that middle aged Redditors and Kevin Rudd (same thing) have for Rupert Murdoch is fascinating from my outsider perspective. It seems like a relic of a bygone generation—think 2003 and "Faux News." Like, it's not the wrong news that's turning Australia shit. Mean old Newscorp didn't force Labor to vote for increased surveillance, to leave negative gearing alone, or to go soft on coal lol.
"Mean old Newscorp didn't force Labor to vote for increased surveillance, to leave negative gearing alone, or to go soft on coal lol."
On the contrary, Newscorp does exactly that. It's called wedge politics, and Newscorp is highly competent at wielding the stick that ensures that anyone who doesn't toe the line with the conservative parties is deemed a threat to the nation.
I would say a great deal of it is the media. Almost all the large outlets now are basically operating through a pro-Liberal/National political filter and pushing misinformation about the Government on people. There is huge complacency about the Government, and I think most of that is because many people literally have no idea what's going on. Probably less than one or two percent of the population would have actually heard of any of these mass surveillance or "national security" laws, the "eSafety" censorship laws, etc.
It used to be better, but Fairfax which had some fairly decent papers got bought out by Nine Media, whose chairman is retired Liberal party Treasurer Peter Costello. The paper's reporting has shifted to a very pro-Liberal Party bias since then. The News Corp papers were always politically slanted towards the Liberal/Nationals. ABC has been cowed by funding cuts and undermining by the Government appointing terrible board members and chairpersons, and they have literally pushed people out because they didn't toe the line (like Nick Ross, because he reported accurately on how bad the Liberal Party's policy on the NBN was, or Emma Alberiche because she reported on the fact that corporate tax cuts generally haven't been shown to increase economic growth when corporate tax cuts were basically the only policy the LNP had).
We'll see what happens this election. Murdoch might temporarily switch sides for a couple of months like they did in 2007, because he hates backing a loser (and I think Morrison's and the rest of this terrible Government's incompetence is a bit too obvious despite the protection racket the papers and TV news try to run). But if they do, almost as soon as Labor gets in, it will likely be back to attacks and undermining of Labor and pro-Liberal/National party bias...
> The country leaders have been legitimately elected, which means the leadership is the direct reflection of the country people's will
I think this is only true if the Australian voting system is Condorcet based. Otherwise I think technically you can elect someone overall less popular, but that has a very strong base of dedicated voters.
For US folks, The Liberal Party is Center Right and further to the left than the Republicans, Labor is Center Left and further to the left of the Democrats.
This isn't quite accurate. Really, Labor over the last five or six years (but mostly in just the last two) has actually moved basically centre-right as well, but still to the left of the Liberal/National coalition.
In terms of the Liberal and National parties (who are in coalition Federally, and the two state branches merged in Queensland), while they are slightly left of the GOP overall, there are definitely a fair few MPs and senators in the party that are just as far right-wing. For the 'moderates', they're mostly captured by business interests (especially the resources (coal, oil and gas) and property lobbies).
For Labor, the shift right is because a massive media campaign spread lies about some of their slightly more progressive policies last election, so instead of trying to correct it, the leader of the opposition who replaced the one who ran at the last election just decided to drop the policies. Also, Labor have voted in lock-step on all the mass-surveillance laws, censorship laws. Finally, despite being on about climate, they have voted for increasing grants and subsidies to new coal and gas exploration, such as in the Narrabi and Beetaloo basins, against the wishes of much of the population, farmers in the area, and the First Nations traditional owners of the land.
They are definitely the "lesser of two evils", but where I would have laughed at the thought of not voting 1st for them ten years ago, now I give my first preference to a minor party or independent (preferential voting is seriously a good idea, by the way).
Under the current leadership the LNP inches closer to the GOP with each passing day, so, I don't expect they'll be perpetually to the left of the Republicans.
Sorry if this is a silly question but are the LP and the LNP the same party? When I try to look up LNP I see references to Queensland which confuses me if it's a national party. If not are they related?
> .. Labor is Center Left and further to the left of the Democrats.
Do you think? I'd have pegged things like Green New Deal, fairly strong consensus around fossil fuels and renewables, as strong US Democrat party line -- compared to AU's Labor being still wedded to a fossil fuel future, still keen to satiate Murdoch and co.
What broad policies / positions are you suggesting indicate AU Labor is more left than US Democrat?
On a lot of things, universal health care, how strongly they are in favor of nuclear disarmament, gun control, etc. Remember President Biden is the head of the Democratic Party, And the US itself has been pushed further to the right by a conservative dominated supreme court.
Sure, and that's objectively a weird position to take for someone who appears to be as empathetic as he is.
But it (as you observe) does not reflect 'the party policies' - simply the current elected leader. And while that's obviously important, it doesn't necessarily define policy of either party of (current) administration.
The fact it's at odds with what the majority of the rest of the party would advocate speaks to my earlier claim / question.
People don't appreciate how left the Democrats are because almost everyone's political opinions are 5-10 years behind reality. The Democrats are one of the most successful left parties in the world currently; as soon as you count "respecting immigrants" then e.g. Europe loses cred no matter how good the healthcare systems are. And those systems weren't designed by the current generation.
> The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the Bill, with a total of 60 amendments, and while Labor has thrown its support behind the Bill as a result of the amended document being a "better Bill", the Australian Greens have not.
This is a very closed minded view. You're basically saying that every inefficiency in the current financial system is justified and we shouldn't try and change them?
I had this exact same idea not long ago but with PSA graded Pokemon cards. Essentially a reserve for digitising real world assets and collectibles. The challenge would be convincing everyone that your reserves are always secure and properly backed.
1. Not shipping fast enough. This one is standard startup advice. 2. No traction for the amount of time we worked on it. Probably caused by not shipping fast enough and not talking to users properly. 3. No conviction. I didn't really care enough about the problem to go all in. TBH, I just wanted something to work on to put on the resume. 4. No competitive advantage. There are a tonne of personalised news apps out there. We had no differentiating factor. 5. No realistic plan to monetise. 6. Finally too many co-founder disagreements as a result of everything so we called it quits.
I don't regret the experience because it taught me a lot about what not to do in my current project.