Hi everyone, Andriy from Ukraine here.
Rules said "The more the better" so I wrote 3 pages about myself, but then thought that it won't contribute to much to this forum. Instead I'll try to focus on my lessons learned so far:
I'm almost 30, obsessed with programming since middle school.
Stupidly failed at few entrepreneurship attempts for years that wasn't really entrepreneurship, but more do what you want/love. My last year long attempt got me beaten to the ground the hard way. Nothing hit the market, zero income. It was do-what-you-love huge mobile MMO, playable with 70% coding complete but few sketches and one character on the side of art. My friend wasn't so committed. He was busy selling his 120 employee 3D art company and transferring knowledge to the new CEO. I had no money to finish it on my own. Investors wanted at least part of game fully finished to even talk about something. Constant pressure from my wife forced me to abandon the project and get a job. New plan was to build some foundation for living so short-term income wouldn't matter that much.
So I spent last 4 years on nicely paying and interesting 9-5 job doing high-performance software for Wall Street companies. Somewhat free schedule, free time and nice salary almost made me give up on my dreams. Until I read TMF . Unfortunately I've understood it wrong and was looking for blockbuster ideas so all the effort on evaluating them was going nowhere.
Then Unscripted hopefully got my mind sorted. Suddenly I started to realize why some businesses pay the bills or go bankrupt while others are growing. Why I buy what I buy and why I buy it where I buy it. Why other people buy something I don't and others don't buy what I do. Why for almost every "blockbuster" idea that I've got there are multiple businesses doing well and some known failures. Why I had some successes in past and some failures. And why it wasn't real entrepreneurship.
It's a strange feeling. I don't feel more motivated, no F*ck this event or even F*ck this moment. My two nails are trying to escape limits both in skill growth and income and to spend time on doing something that matters to the world and to me. And it just seems much easier now knowing what to do.
Rules said "The more the better" so I wrote 3 pages about myself, but then thought that it won't contribute to much to this forum. Instead I'll try to focus on my lessons learned so far:
- Try avoiding making something with friends. Future vision may be different and everyone have their own problems that may stand in a way. Cost me 2 different failures and 2 years of life.
- Don't violate TOS. My project exploded with 100+ monthly subscriptions for $10 in 4 days with only one post on a forum as advertising. Then I've got banned by two well-known payment processors and almost sued.
- Taking slowlane isn't optimal. I'm somewhat slowlaner for the last 4 years. While my goal was not saving for retirement, but to have a place to live and passive income for living while grinding new ideas it still wasn't a good plan. Now I have a house and almost enough passive income for living in Ukraine. However, one of my friends in now multimillionaire playing online poker. Another one build a 200 employee software outsourcing company in 5 years. I know more living examples of fastlane success. All of them live Unscripted by now, while I'm stuck on 9-5.
- Don't be stuck waiting for blockbuster idea that either crowded or empty. While I tried so apply "lean startup" for some of them, none got to the MVP stage. While problems to solve were ok, most solutions required pivoting to crowded spaces and got dismissed at that point. So wrong...
- Most profitable offers in paid traffic affiliate marketing are scams.
- Your salary on 9-5 isn't that big as it seems. I always thought that the bigger salary the harder it is to quit job and start entrepreneurship. But scale can beat any salary with small numbers.
- Don't do what your love in any form. Help people, do entrepreneurship.
I'm almost 30, obsessed with programming since middle school.
Stupidly failed at few entrepreneurship attempts for years that wasn't really entrepreneurship, but more do what you want/love. My last year long attempt got me beaten to the ground the hard way. Nothing hit the market, zero income. It was do-what-you-love huge mobile MMO, playable with 70% coding complete but few sketches and one character on the side of art. My friend wasn't so committed. He was busy selling his 120 employee 3D art company and transferring knowledge to the new CEO. I had no money to finish it on my own. Investors wanted at least part of game fully finished to even talk about something. Constant pressure from my wife forced me to abandon the project and get a job. New plan was to build some foundation for living so short-term income wouldn't matter that much.
So I spent last 4 years on nicely paying and interesting 9-5 job doing high-performance software for Wall Street companies. Somewhat free schedule, free time and nice salary almost made me give up on my dreams. Until I read TMF . Unfortunately I've understood it wrong and was looking for blockbuster ideas so all the effort on evaluating them was going nowhere.
Then Unscripted hopefully got my mind sorted. Suddenly I started to realize why some businesses pay the bills or go bankrupt while others are growing. Why I buy what I buy and why I buy it where I buy it. Why other people buy something I don't and others don't buy what I do. Why for almost every "blockbuster" idea that I've got there are multiple businesses doing well and some known failures. Why I had some successes in past and some failures. And why it wasn't real entrepreneurship.
It's a strange feeling. I don't feel more motivated, no F*ck this event or even F*ck this moment. My two nails are trying to escape limits both in skill growth and income and to spend time on doing something that matters to the world and to me. And it just seems much easier now knowing what to do.
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