This is very useful. I tried Pyxel a few years ago, but it wasn't documented well. There were some resources in Japanese, but I don't know it, unfortunately.
I've helped build several other startups since 2012 but this was my first time solo founding.
Mid last year I had a lot of runway and had been meaning to learn Flutter for a while. I decided to build project that had been floating around my mind for a few years.
My largest mistakes were:
* Choosing 3 different revenue streams instead of just 1, which meant I was building for 3 different customers. I'd interviewed a few dozen people early on and identified those 3 key pain points, but I should have just left two as an optional pivot. This also meant that I was juggling too much and context switching too often.
* Choosing a technology stack I'd had minimal experience with (mobile & Flutter for the frontend), so the MVP that could have taken a month to build took around 4 months. There are so many annoyances to deploying mobile apps that don't exist with web apps. Nobody but friends want to install your app just to try it out. Use technology that you're already familiar with so that you can move fast.
* Getting a shitty MVP version onto people's phones. Note: Good luck getting your shitty MVP onto Apple's App Store. Google's store had some decent functionality for running a closed-alpha. Overall web is a much better platform for testing ideas with minimal friction (imho).
* Spending too much time integrating Segment, Stripe, and all the other swag you can get as a startup these days. Each new integration has their own learning curve and every new one slows you down.
* Wasting time meeting with and talking to investors when I knew deep down that I wanted to bootstrap. I met some cool people but I should have been laser focused on iterating instead.
* COVID happened and my app depended on countries not being locked down, so as a precaution against burning through my runway I put the startup on hold and took on another contract to increase it instead.
I've had some ideas for a pivot since February along with a few other things in different spaces that reuse what I've got so far. I'll try out some experiments to try over the new year period, so I don't consider it failed yet, but it does feel like I'll almost be starting from scratch.
edit: I might as well talk about other startups I've worked with that eventually failed.
* A: After raising a seed, instead of using the money to fund development, it was used to bring on big-name executives in the hopes of raising a larger round. The next round was successful but nothing had been built, so milestones were missed and investors pulled out. The company lasted a little bit over 1 year.
* B: After a few months the founder brings on a CFO who thinks current devs are too expensive and wants to outsource to India. A handover occurs and it goes as you'd expect. The company lasted around 2 years.
* C: The CTO lacked the technical experience to realise they were over-promising and lacked the humility to receive constructive criticism, then went on a power trip which led to an exodus. Yes-men devs were hired from a different part of the country and completely isolated from the rest of the company, so that the CTO could have complete control over the flow of information, then those devs were unable to deliver what had been over-promised. Fast-forward a year or two and there's an external audit to find out what's taking so long, investors discover they'd been paying for unicorn farts, they pull out and publicly fire the CTO on their way out. The company lasted around 3 years.
Thanks dang! I lurk 24/7/365 and rarely login to comment, but I always see you posting helpful things in threads, referencing other pages when comments get too long, editing titles to be more helpful, keeping discussions from devolving into arguments, and just overall keeping the quality of HN high. You're doing great and everyone here appreciates what you do!
I think we also need to highlight that Dang is also responsible for creating the mechanisms and rules for an environment which nudges everyone to be better (manner-wise, research-wise, skill-wise) without breaking their soul. On the contrary, it's one of the most well-mannered/civilized discussion environment and, one of the handful places which improved me in many fronts.
Of course there are exceptions but, it's much better than some of the places which just punish you for being late, being a beginner, making a mistake or just thinking differently.
He might be the sole reason that I'm attached to this place like a koala defending his branch.
@antirez Thanks man! Maximum respect for everything so far, and for your honesty over the years. I rarely login or post on HN but I have just for this post.
I've been using redis since I think 2.2 and have learned so much from your posts over the years! More than just about redis. Are you able to post links on your site to the videos you're making? I don't speak Italian but I'd love to learn from subtitles.
I'm really excited for you and look forward to whatever fun things you decide to do next!
Greets from NZ
How did Atlas Shrugged change your way of thinking? I've read The Fountainhead, but felt like Officer Barbrady when I started Atlas Shrugged many years ago. Maybe it's worth another shot?
While I'm not the OP, I'll answer anyway. It changed how I thought about Atlas Shrugged; previously, I thought it was some kind of political tract cum morality tale, but after reading it I thought it was a fairy tale and was slightly concerned at how seriously it was taken.
The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene.
I began reading it with a "know your enemy" frame of mind, similar to why I read some Ayn Rand, hoping that I'd better understand why some people behave certain ways.
As I got further into the book I began reflecting upon the past, becoming consciously aware of all the faux pas I've made over the years.
I started identifying with all the honest, outspoken historical figures that would speak their mind and end up without a head.
I used to pride myself on my honesty above all else way of life, thinking how virtuous it was to be like Socrates or Galileo. Now I realize that more often than not, I'd just seem like a dick, and probably wouldn't have a head if the guillotine were still in use. Now I put more energy into understanding others points of view, and understand others better as a result. Much of my old behavior was childish.
Others that changed my way of thinking in some way or another:
Rework, Getting Real, and the recent Reconsider post - DHH & Jason Fried:
I'd always considered external funding as the best way to grow things I've built in the past, and wrote off the few bad experiences with this approach as being outliers. After also reading others' bad experiences throughout the year, now I'm wondering if my experiences were perhaps representative of the industry as a whole. Confirmation bias? Maybe. I'm sure there are the rare few good angel/VC's somewhere out there (no doubt someone will reply with "YC"). However, after watching several things I'd passionately built over significant amounts of time be driven to failure by others, I'd much rather bootstrap future projects. I learned a lot from each failure, but trial and error is a shitty way to spend years of your life. Far better to learn what worked from those who succeeded.
Business Adventures - John Brooks:
Until this book, reading about businesses was one of the most boring things I could imagine. Some of it is dated, but there are also many valuable gems that still hold true 50 years later. I now see that with a good storyteller, even seemingly boring subjects can be fascinating.
Freshbooks: Breaking the Time Barrier - McDerment & Cowper:
This tiny book (free from their website) helped me think of new ways to improve my consulting services and emphasize value instead of focusing on hourly rates, which made it easier to make more money.
Various online sales & marketing resources: My viewpoint on the importance of sales & marketing has also completely flipped since the beginning of the year. I used to have the mental image of a used car salesman whenever I heard the word sales, and of Mad Men when I heard marketing. Now I understand that if you don't market what you build, nobody will know that it exists. If you don't experiment with different sales tactics, you'll miss out on a huge amount of users who would otherwise love using your product, but who avoid it because it's priced wrong, or you're unable to convince them of why they'd want to use it.
What are your peak memory, cpu, and bandwidth requirements? GAE is expensive for what you get. Have you considered dedicated hardware to offset hosting costs?
I'm using GCE (=Google Compute Engine), not GAE. I considered using GAE long ago (seriously testing it and writing a first version), but was scared off by the vendor lock in. I don't want anything to fundamentally depend on a 100% open stack. GCE's pricing is competitive with AWS and Azure.
I did run SageMathCloud on a lot of dedicated hardware that I hosted at Univ of Washington from March 2013 until May 2015, but had to stop due to University rules. I had planned to buy computers and rent hosting in a data center, but when I looked into the costs of commercial dedicated hosting, bandwidth, and the time and people required to maintain physical hardware with the availability requirements I have, it started looking much worse than using GCE (especially as GCE prices kept dropping). I don't have any employees at all, so when something goes wrong with the hardware, I would have to drive there and fix it myself. What if asleep or traveling across country? No matter what, the odds GCE will fix any problem in a timely manner is much higher than the chances I will. The middleground is something like Rackspace, etc., which doesn't look that much better regarding cost than GCE. Of course, the price of hosting on GCE is a lower order term compared to the price it would cost to pay myself to admin everything, if I wasn't doing it in my spare time.... and then there is development work too.
They may be useful to someone here if not too much has changed with pyxel since then.