Startups and silicon valley

>>1143595

how viable is it to launch a one man show? I'm getting by very comfortably working very little atm. Learning lots of skills in my spare time. I'm one of those guys who are absolutely not interested in ever going outside or having a life, but being the high IQ neckbeard that I am I thrive on the intellectual stimulus of learning a new skill. Currently learning C# because some anon on this very board recommended it to me.

I have tons of ideas for potential businesses. So back to my question:

How viable is the one man operation?

>>1143619
Depends who you ask. If you ask Y Combinator whether building a multi-million-gazillion company is possible as a single entrepreneur? They would say its highly unlikely and they've got statistics to back it up.. However - if you scale down your ambitions and set yourself a goal that's (arguably) more realistic like you want to create just a job for yourself based on passive income websites then yes -- highly possible. But the authoritative source on micro-entrepreneurs isn't Y Combinator - its more people like Rob Wailing (software by Rob) and other small-time Internet entrepreneurs (usually just programmers who learned marketing and sales.)

Just understand that focusing on building micro-services means that you're going to own a number of websites that turn a profit but you'll probably never be in the news like a YC backed startup would. If that's what you want then so be it - everything you need for success is already written. Check out "Start small, grow big" by Rob Wailing. It explains the whole process from scratch and advocates buying vs building (if you have the money - I'm guessing most people here don't but its still a useful book.)

>>1143638
>building micro-services

that sounds like exactly what I'm after. I'm also totally fine with not being popular or getting recognition from others for my amazing businesses (not like I have anyone irl anyway LOL). Also thanks for the book recommendation, will check out!

bump

I raised some seed funding in Silicon Valley.
My startup didn't turn out to be rocketship, it almost tanked, right now it looks more like a lifestyle business, but i'm trying to push it to make it big.

My advice: don't follow the SV hype, just work on something you feel in your GUT that it will make money or be super useful.
just do quality and the money will find you

>>1143808
Solid advice.

Do you have any advice on customer acquisition?

>>1143595
IT has alot of people with attitude problems. They get hung up over code reviews, ignore bug reports, and chase all kinds of fads while delivering nothing but excuses. But the kind of people with passion for the work get tripped up by social crap like not being into Game of Thrones so their projects are stillborn.

>>1143595
Startups require actual work, not just buying etherium and shitposting. Hence, lack of discussion. What do you do? Have a startup?

I'm currently working Growth / SEO

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I have experience with four startups. I've had two myself, my partner had a separate and I currently work for one that received 100+ million in. funding. Startup culture is incredible speculative and in my opinion a passing fad. My first star up failed because we couldn't find a direction. I sold my second one to a bigger company. My friends startup received 1 million put went down the tubes a year later. Essentially you either need to make money or have incredibly fast growth. Most startups hemorrhage money. That leaves fast growth. This is very hard to do if you have no money. Unless you come up with some revolutionary. Chances are you'll fail. You also need to have connections with investors. You will get this is you have fast growth if you don't have any. Your best bet is to create a service like gambling or online shopping. Social apps are useless because they are hard to monetize. You will have a hell of a time getting users to switch from whatever they're using to your product.

>>1144225
You also need to have a clear vision and a useful product. The simpler the better. Everyone will try and change it. You need to retain as much equity as possible. It usually ends up being 10% by the end.

>>1144219
Yeah, I am starting to think this board should be renamed to crap coins or speculating. I am not surprised though. This is 4chan so you're only going to get people who want to cut corners and think that they'll get rich from doing so.

>>1143595
>literally
Literally suck a million cocks for a dollar each.

>>1143638

>"Start Small, Grow Big"
It's Start Small, Stay Small, dumbass.

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This is one of the better general biz threads in the catalog so


I'm 24 in Oakland, CA. Neeting it up, mostly, but I have some social competency

I'm thinking of offering date coaching - 2 groups of 5 a week, $100/week per head, 3 sessions a week with all the backup support I can.
Marketing: info threads on 4chan, misc, etc -> Inviting to a Q&A webinar. Doing it for $25 a head to start off with - free if I have to. Getting people on an email list where I interact with them individually and send them videos of good sessions. I'd love to do something besides email, like cyberdust, but I can't think of anything. I'd prefer not to be shilling to the world and instead interacting with guys that are interested and potentially giving away a ton of value for free before they actually buy the course

>>1143654
Tropical MBA is a very awesome place to go
http://www.tropicalmba.com/apprentice/ --- azn guy that sells facebook ad management, taking pay for performance

http://www.tropicalmba.com/amazongold/ --- panel on selling on Amazon

Podcast this Thursday is giving away business ideas (I submit submitted a couple of my own)

I work sometimes at a commercial nursery and know a few people that grow. Aeroponic systems is something I've thought of recently. I get the feeling there is plenty of low hanging fruit in terms of modifications to be made to these things as well as a huge market ready for a conversion (everyone I know has mentioned a desire for aeroponics, none are actually using it)
You can white label through manufacturers and make small minor modifications and have them put your label/packaging on it

Curious to hear these stories, op

>>1144525
date coaching? hahaha

you some kind of chad? that's a bannable offense

>>1144525
>Dating coaching
That market is pretty saturated unless you're going for a specific niche. The irony with dating and fitness is that neither industry actually intends for the majority of you to succeed, else they would lose money. Most won't self improve enough to succeed

>>1143826
Actually this is where I struggle. But you know what? Our app got almost 2M downloads, and I'd say 98% of those downloads were organic.

People don't believe me, but we built it, did a small PR around it (at that time, I didn't even know what PR was, so we did the shittiest job you could image for our launch), and it got us started.
Because we have a quality app, we get users.

Sometimes it actually works this way, but if you want to make it REALLY BIG, you need to work on this a lot more, which is precisely why I'm struggling.

>>1143595

There's not much advice to give since it's all out there, for the most part.

I guess the one piece of often untold advice is knowing that advice from accelerators, super angels, VC's etc. all have a bias attached. They are invested in dozens to hundreds of companies. They are 100% focused on getting into companies that will be unicorns, or even better super-successes like Google and Facebook.

For you, working a few years on your company and then selling it for $50 million would be a great success. Even if you're down to only 20% ownership, that's still $10 million dollars for a few years of work, and a big success under your belt if you want to make another go of it. But this is only good for you - not for the VC's. They're not putting $10 million in to pull $25 million out, they're putting $10 million in to pull $500 million out.

So that's the main advice. You keep talking about raising capital. What the hell do you need capital for? Absolutely everything has become incredibly cheap. All you need is to work on something until you get product/market fit. Then you can decide whether to take money or not.

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>>1145229
That's good advice. If you can avoid raising capital, do it. Don't be tempted to raise capital because it looks sexy and your name will be on techcrunch.

Also, interesting thing. When I was in the incubator in SF, I got to meet some really high profile entrepreneurs/VCs/investors. The kind of guys who built billion dollar companies, the VCs with their Standford/Harvard MBA degress. I won't tell name not to be identified, but you get the idea.
Here's what I learned: they didn't impress me as much as I thought! As a matter of fact, they didn't impress me much. I'm not saying they're not smart or that I'm better than them. But you realize that ultimately it's all about YOUR intuition on how to run things.

When you pitch your business to those guys, at the end all their advices will cancel out each other. It's a mindfuck because those guys are supposed to be smart! The big lesson here is: follow your gut, your instinct and more importantly: your INTUITION.

Also: seeing billionaires made me think, heh they don't look so happy afterall, so it released a lot of pressure on me somehow.

>>1145242
>Here's what I learned: they didn't impress me as much as I thought! As a matter of fact, they didn't impress me much. I'm not saying they're not smart or that I'm better than them.

I've had the same experience. With people who had enormous success in IT. Enormous as in founding billion dollar companies - people I knew way before they did that.

They had a lot of necessary characteristics that are not that uncommon - hard working, smart (but not super-genius level) etc. I'd say they had two qualities that are important. They had initiative and they got in on a wave early. These guys went for a CS degree at decent schools. While at college, they founded companies. I mean, people I don't know did that too - Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Michael Dell etc. The key elements were initiative in doing a hell of a lot of work in fields that were in their infancy and were not obvious wins, but which they had a confidence in.

I guess something like that today would be writing apps for AR and VR. Some kind of innovative niche in Internet of Things, or 3d printing. Maybe some aspect of machine learning and AI that hadn't been touched yet - although actually we're pretty into that wave already. So it's past that point for current ML/AI probably.

I'm not talking about success - you don't have to be on the bleeding edge to have success, it's just that the big successes I know were on the bleeding edge and did a hell of a lot of work in fields which were not obvious wins back when they were spending months and years writing applications and founding companies to sell those applications.

As you said, they're not super-impressive, super-geniuses etc. The quality they share is usually doing a hell of a lot of work in a field that is in it's infancy, a field that is just about to break into the mainstream. Nowadays that might be something like founding the ultimate FPS game company for Oculus Rift or something. If Oculus Rift takes off, you'll win big.

>>1144698
I'm good looking, yeah
But I rarely go out so I'm no chad

>>1144718
The market is saturated with some odd people and quick money shills
The target niche is date coaching, the reality is social therapy - and those are By Far cheaper prices available

In general it's an industrty :^) where there is some glaring value to be added but overall, I want to use it as a platform to test things (facebook ads, split testing web pages, analytics, general marketing) and generate money for other projects (probably buying and selling shit)

>>1145176
What is the app? I'm obviously not looking to steal from you but I'm curious how I'd approach that situation/will post if I come up with anything
Facebook ads can target people who liked similar apps and you can email blog contributers. You can also do blab (periscope and meerkat are less crowded) and livestream random shit and talk about the app, preferably featuring behind the scenes with the app itself and be authentic. Lots of bored people

>>1145229
>>1145242
The founder of ruby on rails talks about this on this episode

http://www.tropicalmba.com/dhh/

I still think there are a lot of cases where taking money is a smart option. I worked briefly at a startup in sf and honestly the mvp they were selling was shit, but I really respected the hustle and the market had potential - business management for SMB's - Peter Thiel literally talks about this as being a white space in his book. I'm also really intrigued by the idea of selling something before it's profitable

>>1145252
I feel like the biggest wave you mentioned was machine learning and AI - sure the technology exists, but how much has it been applied to our lives at this point?
FPS for occulus sounds amazing, but that is definitely something that requires a lot of money and people are way into it already. Developers have already had their hands on that (and PlayStation headset etc) for some time

>>1145242
You can also do plenty of targeting and have active engagement on twitter

>>1145981
I don't think your idea is stupid at all. I probably wouldn't pay for date coaching myself but I know people who would.

There was a girl I knew who set up tons of people with girl friends and a guy offered to pay her $500 to find him a girl. She ended up doing it too but he never paid. Guess she should have taken the cash up front, but anyway - the point is that $500 is a very small price to pay to find someone who is going to be with you for months (maybe years.)

And I think to a large extent a lot of people have grown up without a good male role model who will teach them about talking to women and all that kind of crap. Maybe if I had of had a father who wasn't a complete loser I would have had the confidence and social grooming to talk to women but I have never approached a girl in my life which is pathetic but still.

I encourage you to pursue it dude.

>>1146087
Yeah I just don't want to get into fraud territory
I've fucked a girl I met by groping her on bart recently but I'm still mostly a neet shutin

I think building a cultured life for yourself and inviting people, in general, in it is better than going out like a nervous wreck and spam approaching girls
Going to a poetry reading (they're usually funny), trying the bureau510 instead of eating more in n out, indoor rockclimb at the bladium instead of going to the movies (I need to get on this)
Dating apps are a solid way to meet girls and it helps to get them out when you know about the movie theater that serves ale (parkway, oakland) or the Thai place with killer desert (house of thai, alameda)
That and maybe casually browsing pitchfork reviews and consequence of sound and you're not only 'interesting' but probably cooler than most girls

Still interested to hear about brogrammers and wantrapreneues btw

I only know basic python/interested in marketing but I've been wanting to try a startupweekend

How much percent of my seed capital should go into office space

>>1146508
I saw your other thread

you being selfish not telling us about your biz or offering us a job, bro

obviously however much you want depending on a few factors, like how much you're looking to grow talent - even then you might do better with an offce in Oakland instead of SF, with more perks

moving to Oakland for my startup soon, any tips on where to get relatively cheap food/housing where I won't get shot? Also are coworking spaces worth using as office space?

>>1147321
lying
what's your startup?

my grandpa may rent to you. I think he's only renting this space to girls but I know one is moving. its in the ghetto but your roommates would be girls and all your immediate neighbors would be normal

I don't see the value of Hub as a one man show if it isn't for networking tb.h but idk. I've been to a talk at the one in sf. seemed cozy

>>1147352
Not disclosing that lol, but it's in the cannabis industry. Yes dude weed lmao.

but I'm looking to move in the area of jack london square (not the water obviously but a cheap place within decent walking distance, I'll be spending most of my time there).

That place isn't in richmond is it?

>>1148227
that's in Oakland obviously

cannabis industry is a pretty big industry. you realize the chances of anyone stealing an idea from you here are slim to none

>>1148297
No I mean like, is your grandpa's place in Richmond?

It's moreso that I'd rather not disclose the fact that I browse 4chan haha

>>1148309
no it's in Oakland
it's near fruitvale bart

still curious to hear about your new cannabis delivery service

>>1148326
lol, delivery services are a rare aspect of the industry in that they're pretty saturated. Especially with weedmaps starting to roll out their service. If I was starting a brand or had some gimmicky grinder/bong/whatever I'd post my idea, but it's really really niche and could be easily stolen.

Happy as fuck I'll be in Oakland and not SF though, seems like the industry really gravitates around Harborside and all the testing labs in Oakland.

>>1144525
>>1145981
>>1146471
you sound alpha as fuck (it's my fetish). as a /cuteboy/, i'll come to oakland and give you 200 dollars to suck your dick :^)

>>1143595

> startups

You mean a brand new fucking business? Cause that's what it is: a new business.

I started a business. See how normal that sounds?

Fucking lingo faggots.

http://www.sidesinspace.com/blog/business-jargon-id-be-happy-to-never-hear-again/

>>1143595
>Startups and Silicon Valley.
>He doesn't know who is Michael Church.

laughingwhores.jpg

I never understand the appeal of giving your life's work away to silicon valley scumbag VCs in hope of minuscule chance of striking rich.

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>>1149041
>>1149048
>mfw I hear someone spending their (most likely parents) $$$ to fly and go talk to Gary Vee/other random "gurus" and going to "non technical hackathons"
>mfw someone spends $40k of their parent's $$$ to code their shitty app which immediately flops
>mfw have only gotten three offers for VC, all for an insane amount of equity
>mfw friends send me snapchats of their launch party in SF with a rented club, expensive alcohol and shit.. keep in mind they have no revenue yet
>mfw having to learn how to create a GOOD app and website on my own basically with two other jobs
>mfw only recreational time is browsing 4chan for around an hour a day

it-it'll pay off someday

>>1149041
is it me or he pulled off some of his articles?
I liked his theories about VC-istan, this guy is a ultra smart.
He's onto something with his post-corporate theory, or something like that.

What creeps me out in SV is the whole progressive vibe. It's so fucking politically correct. I can't even imagine what working at FB or Google must be, if you have a hint of /pol/ blood in you, you'd die inside.

Also, seriously, what's the deal with Palo Alto/Menlo Park? It's BORING as fuck. I can't believe how many funds and startups are there. I'm always sad thinking about the workers who live in the area.

>no it's in Oakland
>it's near fruitvale bart

that's pretty much the worst part of oakland. enjoy getting shot and living with mexicans.

>>1149153
>>"non technical hackathons"
holy shit are you kidding me

>>1149178
>that's pretty much the worst part of oakland
nah brah, the hills are much worse

>>1148535
well whatever. good luck
I work at a nursery as my job

>>1149153
in that regard, honestly an angel wouldn't sound too bad

>>1149178
it's definitely at the frontier