I get that pivots happen in startups alot but when you're pivoting 3 times with an extra pivot to make mobile games, maybe it's time to throw in the towel and realize you're not cut out for it. His first venture was "TikTok for games", second venture was some devtool for Godot, 3rd was some "chat to make an app" app that according to the article is also dead.<p>My startup is bootstrapped but reading this article I couldn't help but think: "I should talk to investors, I mean they gave money to this guy"
Steam deck in the bedroom, watching starwars with the wife... in the bedroom, has a pitbull, pitbull bites your infant in the face, terrible startup ideas, and the wife airs the dirty laundry on business insider - for startup reporter clout.<p>Are these people a meme, is this story even real, and just what the fuck in general? This article isn't even really about a failed startup but rather a pair of messed up people on both sides who now expose their infant to their insanity.<p>What a pair of foul individuals.
My advice as a former programmer turned independent who is also married is to keep things safe and not aim for global success. It doesn't really matter anyway. Live more simply and create a bunch of small things that are more guaranteed to work, don't work so hard. The world doesn't need more successful people. ("Success" as defined by our modern western standards.)
When I attempted a few times to found startups, my wife was willing to support me financially if any of them were to become profitable enough over a certain agreed-upon threshold that we felt justified in quitting my job and taking the plunge to go full time.<p>Not sure if that was the best strategy, but it seemed like a decent one at the time. I suppose if I were single, maybe the decision to just quit and go full time would have been easier despite not having such a safety net.<p>It's tough when more than my own life is being affected by such decisions. I feel for the author and her husband. Who knows if my own marriage would have ended up in similar struggles if I had gone all in. I do feel like I'm probably making more money in the long run by just remaining an employee.
> My worst fear was that I'd never see him, and we'd grow apart as he became a staggering success. Late nights of toiling over code would lead to private jets and alcohol-fueled company retreats, and I'd be left behind, reading about his corporate conquests under someone else's byline.<p>I dunno.. doesn’t sound like the “support” I’d want.
I'm a founder that let starting a startup wreak massive havoc on his marriage. This shit is real.<p>My suggestion to anyone in a serious relationship that is starting a business:<p>Cofounders often layout an operating agreement when they start a company. A founder and their spouse should do the same: layout your expectations (time, money, opportunity costs, life responsibilities) and frequently have open and transparent conversations about if each party is still comfortable with the arrangement.<p>Hearing the author see his pivots and realizing he would cut off his arm before folding the company (hyperbole, I know) signals he is probably crossing the line of what would have been put in the operating agreement.<p>A good technical founder is forgoing $500k+ a year in comp for a high-percentage chance of nothing. That has an immense effect on a relationship. Watching a spouse who is that committed and failing has to be absolute hell.
~ founder - ceo of a series A startup here (raising series B soon)
~ I became a shell of my previous life.
~ barely keeping it together with my wife, 2 kids (6,10) + a large dog
~ No riches yet - just sweat, blood and tears (literally and physically)
~ took massive pay cuts, lived off of savings for 18 months before securing our first $1M in financing. This means, building back up our savings with a so so salary these days.
~ No glory until a massive exit. Until then, praying that my marriage doesn't fall apart or my health.
I feel such a disconnect with what passes as normality when I read pieces like this. The final few paragraphs are bonkers to me. Out of nowhere, they put their poor dog down because their child surprised it and it bit back and then she feels a sense of <i>pride</i> that he's stronger about putting down his dog because running a startup toughened him up? Everything this author says feels alien to me, I could believe it were transcribed from an ancient scroll.
I'd believe that most people would earn more and still have their sanity in the long-run remaining an employee. It's incredibly hard to create a startup with an exit for the founder.<p>While the EV for creating startups is incredibly high, but the median EV of the startup founder is very low.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, the article. The author makes herself and her subject sound absolutely insufferable, doing neither of them any favors.<p>Kind of a sad commentary on the tech industry and its orbiters, really.
Is this really just a consequence of terrible ideas combined with a bad mental model for execution?<p>The way I think about ideas is like the many-worlds interpretation. You want to have a superposition as broad as you can be and then narrow down into a single collapse outcome for your idea.<p>This means that every little move you make, you think about how to deliver on that successfully, but you are continously also thinking about where and how you could pivot without throwing everything away.<p>Ultimately, it boils down to the question of reversibility. So a pivot is not a backtrack, but a course correction from where you are now.<p>Trying a bunch of shit and seeing what sticks is the privilege of the wealthy.<p>A few examples of what I mean:<p>- TikTok games - did you explore adjacencies? What about a TikTok task list app? Instead of some pointless minigame, pull up the list of tasks from say GitHub issues / JIRA / Asana etc and surface that as a kind of focus-mode for your work.<p>- Chatbot -> webapp. Chatbot -> x is just a terrible idea in general. But maybe you could salvage this by thinking more about what 'x' is. But you really can't since whatever you think 'x' is, someone is already doing it. So maybe 'x' is a variable. OpenAI's GPTs is 'x' -> Chatbot. Maybe an inversion of this? It could even be simply a recommendation app. Like above Tiktok for x. Given a problem, it suggests steps / tools to use etc.
If you are founding a startup and you have a wife, you are <i>more</i> likely to fail than an entrepreneur who is single. And if you have even more commitments like kids, or other dependents, your chances only get even worse.<p>The best way to keep your chances of success high is to ensure your life is very fluid and open to change, and that there are no liabilities that can drag you down. If that is not possible, the only remedy is to be independently wealthy.