Ask HN: Am I just a wantrepreneur?

1. Do a Google Trends research on the Linux commands people search for (and get trouble with/get confused with). Pick ~5 most popular ones.

2. Find 2-5 pages on the Internet for each command where people asked for help and didn't get a 100% satisfying reply.

3. Write a description page (or article) for each of those commands, explaining the stuff people struggle with. Publish link on pages found at #2. Unless you write something cheesy there, people will actually be helpful and won't ban you.

4. Install Google Analytics. Set yourself a proxy goal of 1000 users per day. Start analyzing: how many views per day do you get from a Linux command with score of X in Google Trends with Y links on it from other forums? Back-propagate your goal to actionable items: write N more pages on topics A,B and C, M links for each.

5. Once you get >1000 visitors/day, you can start monetizing it. A very rough ballpark estimate is $1 per 1000 views (give or take, more like 0.1$-10$ depending on a plethora of factors).

6. Once you get a flow of at least $1/day, do your back-propagation again and make a system for yourself when you can look at a topic in Google Trends, quickly search relevant forums, and know exactly how many $/month would an article on this topic bring you. Then compare this income with your effort to write and promote an article and decide whether this is a business you want to do.

P.S. You can also get traffic on writing articles like "did you know those rare time-saving features of commands X, Y or Z" and publishing them on Reddit, HN and other similar sites. Once you figure out the right style to do it so that people will consider it helpful advice and not spam, you can get decent traffic.

Disclaimer: I use those techniques to advertise my paid tool for developers. It may not pay off for a purely ad-monetized content site.

I spent a good week trying to figure out what they meant because the term never seemed to correlate to the size of the success of the pitch they were hearing.

At one point someone came in who has built some kind of underwater propulsion device which was the culmination of 3 years of work. He had a pretty polished prototype too and was currently working as an engineer for one of the big 4 tech companies making a large salary. This guy had never tried to actually sell his product to anyone. He just kept building. And I remember again Cuban calling him a "wannpereneur".

At that point it struck me that the apparent definition of wannapreneur is "Someone who wants the trappings of an entrepreneur (ie the social capital, the identity etc) and goes to all the entrepreneur conferences but doesn't actually _find customers_ and try to _sell_ a product to them." Its a threshold of actually putting yourself out there with a product and selling. Thats the line.

By this definition you definitely aren't a wantapreneur. You are an _entrepreneur_ but you haven't found your audience and product yet.

----

You have to remember that becoming good at entrepreneurship means being decent at finding cofounders to complement you (ie being easy to work with) and/or being good at a few of the things to do with business: building, marketing, sales, hiring. If you're trying to do evertyhing on your own you have to be at least average in all these areas. Are you at that point?

If you aren't then find books/courses in those areas and try to become good in those areas (very hard to do) Or find co-founders to complement you.

You're on your way. Keep your income and keep trying with different ideas.

Best of luck!

It's hard to keep anything going only during weekends as you spend 90% of your energy just trying to find momentum.

Re "But after one day of programming for my job, I am exhausted and I cannot extract any brain-juice any more. And if I try to work during the week-ends, I can't rewind enough for the next week" -- I had exactly this problem too. It depends a lot on your other commitments, but after years of failing to do anything productive in evenings and weekends (evenings, too tired; weekends, too easy to procrastinate), I partially solved this by spending 30-60 minutes every morning on side projects. Waking up earlier was hard, but I managed to get into the habit of spending some time in a cafe on my way to work. The change in environment (not home) and the very limited time (often I only have one well-defined goal for a morning session) makes me super productive.

I still battle with consistency, but I create a lot during these times. One thing I'm working on is a guide on how to start your own company in 30 minutes a day. It's still at idea stage, but there's a (currently partially broken) website slowly being pieced together[0]

[0] https://startyourown.co/

Reading between the lines a little, you seem to beat yourself up or go within yourself in response to failure. This is a common trait with perfectionists, who often want to feel like they are without flaws before they open themselves to the world.

I'm basing this on this post and the post you linked to about imposter syndrome, although that post appears to be from another user.

If my description seems accurate, I would recommend dealing with anxiety/perfectionism/self-esteem first by learning about it. If you want, throw up an anonymous website that tracks your journey. Self-help is certainly a profitable market. Developer self-help might be an interesting niche.

Without being centered enough to weather failure with grace, you're going to have a hard time being a successful entrepreneur. Once you have it worked out, you'll be a different person with a better sense of who you are and what your strengths are. And then you'll be in a stronger position to build a product that really connects to people.

I had this fatigue when I started learning too much about technology and devops like hosting a site using Docker and stuff and I soon realized that instead of working I was just playing with technologies all day and getting fatigued over nothing. My lesson, there is stuff for big companies and then there is stuff for the solepreneurs.

Also one more piece of advice is there are technologies offered these days as SaaS. You don't have to do everything. A lot of the times you can just buy a service for $30 / mo and get going. Don't wander around too much trying to reinvent the wheel. Need authentication, use auth0, need a file uploader use uploader.win, need to deliver mail use mailgun. This can save you a lot of time and headache.

So on Jan 1, 2018 I promised myself I will stick to one of my ideas. I did, now we are a tiny team seeing traction. Not revenue though. I had already started a second idea in between, that is how fickle my mind is. But I dropped it after detecting my brains own devil. So I am still sticking to the one I started this year. As a team we have good goals till Dec 2018 and then first quarter 2019. We have not planned beyond.

What I mean to say is: stick to one. Things may not go well, but keep trying solutions in the same product, experiment a lot. Give yourself at least 2 or 3 years of "honest" effort. I do not over work, strict 8 hours a day. I consult to raise the funds for our product. I have promised myself time till end of 2020 to see where this goes. I am 35 years old, been into startups since 22.

The bare minimum as of now: https://travlyng.com/

Edit: I used the wrong year 2017 instead of 2018. Sleepy head.

1. Create more niche "properties" that provide a small to medium services. focus on something people might need, be willing to pay a small amount for, and ideally can run with minimal supervision.

2. Rinse repeat #1 until a few of those are ongoing. 8 euros per month becomes maybe 800 and growing over time.

3. Don't try to be Zuckerberg. There is only one of him, thank all the gods.

4. Don't even think about the words "startup", "exit", "investment" etc. Focus on stuff that will provide you with a lifestyle of your choice.

5. Try to make each "property" the best you can. Focus on making a "Good Product" (tm). Good products have better chance of being used. Give each one the love it needs. Stay focused. Complete the project. Take it slowly, there is no rush. You have no Boss here. No deadlines.

6. One of these days, one of those niche idea becomes semi-niche, broader audience. Go with it.

7. Remember there is no magic formula, no secret sauce, luck is a huge factor and there is no guarantee for anything.

8. Aim for lifestyle. It's a good aim.

You'll know you're at the bit I'm talking about when he starts talking about the book Human Universals.

I disagree with some suggestions here that you should watch things like Startup School. Those videos, while well-intentioned, can make you feel even more inadequate and “behind” when you feel stuck.

If you’re losing a game of basketball, it’s not terribly fun to watch somebody else make dunk after dunk.

I currently run one of the largest newsletters in tech (https://techloaf.io), which I started purely as tiny side project to force me into action while in a similar rut. It started with just me writing up satirical jokes and sending out and email to a few friends each week, to now a project with about a dozen writers and a wide following.

As unhelpful or vague as this might sound, I’ve found that just doing something can have a snowball effect. Pick the smallest possible task for the easiest possible side project and start doing. For me, that was literally just telling a few people that I’d send them a funny email each week.

Best of luck, you’ll look back on this and smile once you’ve got your next project off the ground.

IMO it's a bit of a cliche, but you should find an idea that you're passionate about (that's also a plausible business plan, naturally :-) ) and follow it. Deciding you want to be an entrepreneur first, then casting around for ideas, seems desperately contrived. I know it's worked for some people, so there's no hard-and-fast law, but I personally can't see how one gets through the general grind of a startup motivated only by an abstract and rather extrinsic goal of "being an entrepreneur".

Of the many pieces of pg startup wisdom cited or linked to on HN, the one bit that sticks with me is just five simple words, from one of his early essays (1):

Make something that people want.

If you can figure that out, you'll be on the right track. You've made some mistakes; learn from them and make something better that customers truly want.

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html

So long as you’re actually putting businesses out into the universe you’re a full fledged entrepreneur.

I can’t tell you why you haven’t been as successful as you want to be. That kind of advice is all over the place. Perhaps the comments here are right: figure out what the customer wants first and make a minimal first product. Perhaps they’re wrong and you should incubate them for longer or perhaps some third thing (partner with someone else? It’s not bad to be the drummer in the Beatles).

But I think self-doubt is a natural part of creativity and maybe even a sign you’re on the right track.

Writing code and starting a business are different activities. You need to learn how to start a business, figure out what product you want to build, find out what market you want to target, merge the product and market to get a product/market fit. Then figure out selling/marketing/funding and all the rest.

Ideas are actually the easiest thing, execution is the hardest.

You might not want a startup but a small business that can make more than you currently make, then head over to indiehackers.com

You can do it. Have you considered partnering up with someone else? It's really hard to go at it alone. Not impossible, but really tough.

2) Don't be too hard on yourself. Your brain needs some rest. Rest as long as you need. Don't ever compare yourself to Zuck, you see a billionaire now but he was a student when he started FB, and probably as lost as you are.

3) Not much time? Focus on the essential: find a real problem to solve. Maybe a problem you have, maybe a friend's. Maybe something related to your hobby. Don't focus too much on coding, maybe you can solve problems with a simple spreadsheet for now, and build a site when you have your first customers

This sounds to me like you are looking at the "skin" of what other people do and trying to replicate that instead of digging into the guts behind why their thing was successful.

I talk a lot with my sons about how dragons in fiction are "the red dragon" and "the blue dragon" and "the green dragon" etc. And maybe the red dragon breathes fire and the blue dragon breathes ice and the green dragon breathes acid, but they all look essentially identical except for the color, like you took a stamp and stamped out three dragons and colored them all differently with crayons.

In reality, if you have three species that are that fundamentally different in function, they will look vastly different. It won't be the same body, but with different skin.

You can see this readily in nature. Penguins are birds. But they are birds that don't fly, live in a very cold climate and swim. They look vastly different from most birds that live in warmer climates and fly instead of swimming.

So, no, it isn't sufficient to replicate the "skin" of a successful business. You need to do research and find out what the hidden parts are that make it actually work. This is sometimes called "the secret sauce."

No matter how much public data is available about a business, there will be things the public doesn't know -- The working guts of the business that happens behind the scenes. This is what you appear to be missing.

In my thirties, I was doing similar things. I was pursuing the trappings of a business without actually accomplishing anything.

The crux of all business is you need paying customers. You need to figure out a thing of value that people will pay you for. If you can't figure that out, the trappings aren't going to do anything. If you have that, layering on some trappings of business can improve things.

But you have to have that piece first and foremost. And from where I sit, you don't seem to be doing that piece.

As a developer who has built a few decent side projects and turned down some investment money -- if I can give engineers any advice, it's:

Stop trying to build services on your own.

Sure, if you're REALLY passionate about something SaaS-y or if you're REALLY determined to be a billionaire, I guess starting your own VC-funded SaaS is the way to go.

You seem to be like most people who just wants to build/run your own thing and make a decent living, maybe a living a bit better than what you have currently.

If that's the case, I really recommend trying to sell a product instead (and not a software one). It's not quite as satisfying, but it's much less time-consuming and the odds of generating a meaningful profit in a reasonable amount of time are MUCH higher.

Of course not! Maybe you can create a specialised BaaS that works great for the unique demands of Ruby developers, with a seamless SDK for them. There will be multiple specialised niches that Firebase does not cater to because they are so large that small niche areas are not worth their effort. But that niche might make a nice little lifestyle business for a developer! Do a good job of it and you become known as the go-to place for the Ruby community. (This is just an example, I have no idea if the Ruby community needs a Firebase BaaS)

To add even more advice to a lot of good advice already posted, I would encourage you to learn about sales and marketing as much as anything. The building is just the start. If you build something you still have to sell it. Also, set some goals. If you havent had much success to date I would suggest setting a goal of $100 to $1000 a month or whatever suites you. Now, do the work with that goal in mind. Are you going something that moves you closer to that goal or just writing more code?

Changing your mindset is the first step. Don't think that because you only have five hours a week to work on your project, that it is forever relegated to "side project" status and capped out at $100/month.

It sounds like you want to focus on web apps, many of which are heavily dependent on organic search traffic. The first thing that I'd do after reading the book is to get a SEMRush free trial - a lot of affiliate sites have 30-day free trials. Look at how many people are searching for your target keywords, the keyword difficulty score, what advertisers are bidding for the keywords, and traffic of comparable sites.

If everything checks out, look at how you can improve on the comparable sites. Everything has potential for improvement - even if your tool works exactly the same way as a competitor, just optimizing the website copy (do a ton of A/B tests and talk to your users) could yield impressive results.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

You've said yourself that people have paid for the things you've built in the past, so you are definitely more capable than you think when it comes to building stuff.

If the money you make barely covers your hosting costs, this might mean two things: 1) Not many people know about your solution, 2) you are not solving a big problem. 1 should be correct, if you've managed to make 8€/month, it'd be really odd if all the money you can make with your solution is capped at this amount. There should definitely be more people willing to pay you, you just have not managed to meet them. Maybe you should spend more time about distribution. I also think 2 might be true, too. Maybe instead of building ideas right away, you may spend more time evaluating ideas, talking to people to understand what's important.

Last of all, I think defining characteristics of successful entrepreneurs include resourcefulness and perseverance.

1. Why do you need to be an entrepreneur? If your day job is exhausting have you tried changing jobs to a more balanced work place? If it is a matter of skill/expertise have you tried investing in upskilling yourself?

2. If you dont think you are a good developer (imposter syndrome or otherwise) what makes you think you would be a good entrepreneur? I am not saying being a good dev is the only prerequisite but if you are going into be in some kind of software startup space there will be a lot of coding/dev ops/engineering/debugging/prototyping across the stack. I hope you were not looking to be a biz-guy-looking-for-a-coder.

Now despite the above if you truly truly want to be an entrepreneur (and revel in #struggleporn as suggested in another thread) try the following (YMMV):

1. Take a vacation and just unwind without thinking about work. Given your 7 years of experience I am assuming you are young and have less number of "responsibilities" and I am assuming you are living in Europe (from your donation currency) so you may not have to depend on employment for basics like health insurance.

2. If you can afford to take time off (say for 6 months) go on a reading/learning spree without actually working on potential ideas. You will be amazed at realizing that the things you dont know are not magical (they are just unknown and vast) and be pleasantly surprised at how each fibre of knowledge builds N^2 connections between your other threads of knowledge.

3. Build relationships with people in different areas outside of your immediate interest/work. Again do this purely for learning rather than hoping to turn it into a business venture.

The common thread across the above three is you are letting your brain do some garbage collection which is a powerful way to put it to good use in the future.

There are people who devote 100% of their mental energy to whatever they are doing right now. Those people are not going to be successful with side projects. When I am building something, it is on my mind 100% of the time, waking up, showering, getting dressed, driving, eating, all the time.

I cannot do 2 projects at once.

In regards to coding, being a good programmer is only a small part of running a business. Marketing, managing a team, working with designers, and inspiring others with your idea are all skills that are incredibly important.

The code needs to work, sure. And hopefully it is reliable, but just as important, the business needs to work. You need to be able to send cold emails, handle rejection, and be able to put a smile on your face on demand at any time of day at any place meeting with anyone.

Of course before you quit your day job, make sure you have an idea that people want. Throw some marketing $ at it and see what your conversion rate it, even if it is to a "sign up for more info" form.

Go out and talk to people on the street, one of the most difficult things I did, which was step 1, was literally go to different neighborhoods, walk up to people, and ask them about my product idea. Especially for mass market products, this is a quick, and painful, way to cycle through ideas really quickly.

Also, for your email address extractor, have some sample input there. It'll go a long way towards explaining your value prop.

Then I finished my education, did my years of professional work (which I think is kinda relevant to do) and realized I hate work.

Only then I found all these phrases and tips around being entrepreneur. And well it didn't help at all.

Only when I started to make things out of pure passion and being able to let go when things sucked I started to get things that stick.

And fuck most projects I start still go nowhere. However some do. And i am cool about that.

Don't give up. But give up trying to make money. Make great things that you need. Recreate things that you know you can do a lot better, and never stop. Things will eventually work out.

Honestly I would put ads on the extractemailaddress.com website and work on improving it's position on the search results. In addition to that localization to one or two other languages would probably be nice to boost the views. That "make a small donation" button really put me off.

I don't know what the answer is. All I know is, my friends with families and young kids have so little free time, they're envious of my freedom. This has given me the motivation to push myself a little even if it takes a bit of willpower and I'm sleepy.

So start by learning the problems that people have and truly validate that problem's existence and significance in their lives.

The second thing I would consider are your execution abilities. Looking at your websites, it's clear that web design isn't your strong suit; it seems your strong suit might be having deep knowledge of the linux ecosystem (taking a guess here). Then again consider your market size.

Here are some things that worked for me:

1. Get some time off. Don't work, just relax, read things, try to find real problems from people around you.

2. Start a project with someone. Anyone. Accountability works really good.

3. Try to concentrate on one things, making it good enough.

4. I've found that listening to entrepreneurship podcasts works wonders for motivation.

And to end this comment: the moment you've got $1 in your account you stopped being a wantrepreneur :)

On the context of one of your ideas: I'm going to move to Denmark for a while and I was actually recommended checking this facebook page out: https://facebook.com/copenhagenjumpingdinner/ to get to know people in the city. I'm sure that this could be made into a popular app if it is executed correctly, might be interesting for you to check it out in case it contains some valuable information that you can use for inspiration.

One idea I didn't see listed elsewhere: Try to go and work for an early stage startup if you are having trouble getting a startup off of the ground yourself. You will learn a lot more as one of the first 10 employees as you do as one of the first 10k. If you tell startups founders you eventually want to do your own startup they respect that and will try to give you opportunities and can share a lot with you about their startup experience.

Also hopefully if you are part of a successful startup exit you will get some street cred and some money to live off of. If it's a failed startup even better as you will learn even more from that experience.

An online course is a very versatile type of product, much easier to create than an ebook (or an app for that matter), much easier to promote, easier for people to consume, and much easier to monetize. Online courses are a booming trend. And you don't need any infrastucture to sell it, just a stripe account and a platform like https://www.learnworlds.com (disclosure, I am a co-founder there).

You would probably need a couple of hours to create some nice screencasts with the top linux commands. Make this a free course and share it across social media. Much easier than building an MVP app or site. If you see traction then double down and go for the paid "premium" course

Without knowing more about your skills, experience and interests it is hard to make suggestions. But I'll try anyway ...

Instead of focusing on your desire to be an entrepreneur, why don't you stop and look about you and see what problems, challenges, etc exist (there are literally hundreds if you look empathetically). Look at those problems that resonate with you and sketch out how you could address them. Not all solutions involve computers, programs and websites. Eventually you could stumble across a problem that you can see a solution to and can see how you can focus your knowledge, skills, experience and connections to implement the solution. Often times, the solution will involve reaching out to other people, etc.

1. Use my own time to learn new things while building a startup. This means I get less fatigued after s day job.

2. Focus more on solving a passion problem than being an entrepreneur. I’ve found I’m a lot happier building the right solution to a problem than figuring out how to make it a business. I won’t taint the right solution by putting business needs first.

3. Learn to enjoy the act of creating than the art it produces. This means you’ll sustain being in ‘the dip’ for longer.

4. Listen to audio books and mix it between entrepreneurship/startup topics and self decelopment. Some of my biggest improvements to happiness have come from books that help me enjoy the moment more.

5. Do one thing at a time and focus on doing it well. A fox can’t chase two rabbits, so you can’t chase building 5 parts at once. No. 3 and 4 help me do this.

6. Consider finding a cofounder who can do the bits you don’t enjoy. They should also be obsessed with solving the same problem.

7. Don’t let imposter syndrome get to you. Some people let it affect them, others don’t even consider it. It has nothing to do with ability. Learn to enjoy learning, and explore No. 4 to build your resilience to feeling anxious and how to deal with other people in a more enjoyable way.

8. Be okay with the discomfort you are felling and believe that a set of actions can solve it. You just need to experiment with different actions and see which ones fail and which ones succeed. You have a lifetime to explore this.

I was in your shoes for the past 10 years. I get distracted too easily. Since then I found a great couple of co-founders, we’ve released a beta but are completely obsessed with the problem area we’re solving. We love what we are doing and aren’t in a rush, but are hungry for success. You too can get there, it won’t happen overnight so thinking in terms of smaller wins is the best approach. The big wins are a product of lots of smaller ones.

After 2 years, I finally have a nice SaaS business that's giving me some passive income. What did it for me was that I created a solution that solved MY problem. If you're trying to solve your own problem, turns out you'll spend time on it and most likely many other people have the same problem.

My side project keeps me a bit busy (usually 5-10 hrs a week) but it's really not bad considering that I'm saving time by solving a problem I had.

Just my two cents, as it seems that coming up with the right idea is half the battle.

Maybe these are not the ultimate questions you want to get an answer for but are a great start.

Also be aware that everyone will start to realize their limits at some point. As children we could improve by endlessly repeating whatever we saw. After a while we need to work on finding the things from which we can learn and improve in a better rate. Also finding a balance between work and regeneration is key. Work efficiency and regeneration speed can be increased - thus allowing for better rate of learning. Also by not stressing over needless things you can save a lot of energy.

The more stable a system is the harder it is to rewire it - so we must sometimes start over and make things a bit unstable to find new paths.

Good luck!

Don't take this as criticism of you. On the contrary, this may be the opportunity you need to leverage your true strengths instead of attempting repeatedly to embark on a gambit that seems to be a poor fit for your personality.

I like what is described as The Stairstep Approach: https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-...

I think the thing with the most value you can build in your life is a company. One off websites can be very successful, but it's rare. You'll have higher success building a business that solves some problem for a big audience.

Come back when you've failed ten times. I'm sure even then you won't be asking that question.

Market research takes time and effort, just like programming does. If you do not already have an idea you know will make you money, you will need to put in the time and effort to find one instead of using that time making random websites. Some people do get lucky and find a niche without much effort, but that is likely not the case for most.

Yoda knows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_tYQRP4QWM

If it is for yourself, then it will be hard.

If it is for the possible customer, then it might be a little bit easier.

Read “Leadership an Self Deception” for help in changing your mindset.

- Make something you need and would pay for. If it already exists somewhere, find a good reason why you need to do it at all (and not just use the existing thing).

- No donations, let people pay for it.

There's your problem.

A key part of this puzzle is knowing what you want to focus your mind's effort on: product design, coding problems, sales, etc. When you actually meet a market, you aren't just doing whatever you want and they buy it: you are engineering the specific thing that they actually buy, whether it's stereotypical "service with a smile" or "value for money" or "niche high end for discerning tastes". And advice about finding and optimizing performance metrics is exactly what this accomplishes. You have to consciously decide which metrics you want to optimize and throw all your leverage around their improvement, which tends to also throw you outside your comfort zone.

If you don't want to do that kind of sales-and-profits hustling, you're being an entrepreneur in a more speculative, "build it and they will come" sense, which has a much lower hit rate. But that doesn't mean you can't do it at all: you still have to decide on metrics for success, you just aren't using the surface ones now. It is in avoiding any kind of deliberate improvement that you trail off into having a non-functional business, and there are plenty of companies around that are alive, have employees and turn profits, but are in a zombified state, not really showing ambition - and that's definitely not entrepreneurship.

For example: you are in the business of manufacturing and selling crowbars. You decide that you will sell "the world's strongest crowbar". OK, now you have goals that produce a lot of activity: how strong are the existing crowbars on the market? What tests should you use to determine strength? Which materials and manufacturing methods will make your product stronger? What marketing materials will demonstrate the results most effectively?

At the end of that work, you may discover that there is no market for your crowbar, but there are opportunities for adapting the process to rebar instead.

When companies grow really big, the entrepreneurial process turns to one of creating a "machinery of people", vs proving that the market for employing those people exists. It's a different skillset, and is utilized only occasionally, when the stars are right and you happen to have a business that can scale. But it's still ultimately about setting the metrics that are right for that business at that moment.

If you aren't involved with fitness/sports/athletics, it's worth doing so just to get a taste of what focusing on performance and growth mindset day after day will do.

Also realize that the game is rigged and not fair at all. You think Zuckerberg had to worry about covering hosting costs?

And I'm in the same boat you. I am so tempted to go off on my own.

edit: fixed my typo or your term :-)