by mrandish | 2025-05-04 22:27:22+00:00
As someone who eventually 'got rich' (to a very comfortable FatFIRE level) after decades of high-tech startup entrepreneurship across three startups and over a dozen new products, my primary objective was never "get rich". It was to earn a good living, making cool things, in ways I found interesting, in collaboration with people I liked, for customers I liked (<--- that last part is important). While I knew making better-than-good money was always a possibility, it was never the deciding factor in choosing what to do, how to do it, who to do it with or for.

> trying to come up with multi-million dollar ideas

In my experience, starting with that mindset is unlikely to work - and worse, its focusing on the wrong thing. If you can see the multi-million dollar idea - so can other people, including competitors with more money and momentum than a new startup. I approached it differently.

The general pattern which had the best success rate for me was applying a new technology (or old tech in a new way) which I found intriguing or cool to solve a real-world problem in a new or different way that was both better and cheaper than existing solutions. One important element was validating very early on that this problem actually existed and was important (ie high-value) to real potential customers. This meant actually meeting these people and sharing a non-functioning demo or conceptual prototype able to get them interested enough to want to test prototypes as the product evolved. If your non-functioning solution demo doesn't get real potential customers almost pleading to get in the beta - then you don't yet have the right problem, solution or customer.

Developing solutions to solve real problems for real people whose names, needs and preferences we already knew made development both easier AND a lot more fun. It kept us focused and grounded in ways that were transformative. Note: I didn't say there had to be a million customers with a validated TAM of zillions of dollars. Just a handful of real customers in enough need to want to spend their limited time guiding some startup's non-existent product into existence. They're not doing it because they're nice, they're doing it because they're not happy with what they've got and want to ensure your solution arrives in a form able to solve their problem. I never spent a lot of time validating there was a huge market beyond the first pool of customers. I felt okay as long as there was plausible evidence of some reasonably sizable number of customers beyond our handful of "new best friend" customers. Doing it this way ensured we'd make some number of early adopters delighted as well as there being a high probability of at least enough early customers for a two-pizza-sized company to survive for a while.

While this was no guarantee of eventual riches, it did help ensure we were making something of real immediate value for at least some real customers who'd pay for our solution - and that alone put us past about >80% of the early issues that kill startups. The "riches" possibility is innate because once you're successfully applying an interesting new technology in new ways to solve a real problem that at least some real customers will pay real money for - there's probably at least a 10% - 20% chance you're one pivot (or less) away from an emerging new market you can be on (or close) to the ground floor of. So - once you're nearing first delivery to your "new best friend" customers, start keeping your eyes peeled for that emerging opportunity that's somewhere nearby in the same or an adjacent market. If it's not there, you've still got a lifestyle-sized business that's either breaking even or close to it, and that alone provides options. You can decide there's potential and work toward turning that break even into profit and growth or you can pivot to something adjacent with the benefit of some cash flow, real customers and the momentum of a shipping team. And that alone tends to get the attention of all the VCs who previously wouldn't return your calls.

> I hate the business side... actually figuring out how to make money... That's the hard part.

I doubt you'll be able to make it as a tech startup entrepreneur until you re-frame that. I used to jokingly say "If you solve a present and painful problem for your customers, it's hard to get them to stop throwing money at you." While an exaggeration, there's serious truth there. As for making money, until you find engineering a business model that actually works just as fascinating as engineering any other machine into actually fucking working - you'll suck at doing it and keep hating it. If you don't see a 'business model' as just another interesting, tangible and tractable engineering problem to be instrumented, debugged and solved - you'll probably have a better time working for other people.

> I like building stuff with my friends

Okay, when you guys are done playing with yourselves, maybe try playing with someone else... or, even better, for someone else. Like real customers. Helping nice people in real need is way more interesting, challenging and emotionally rewarding than playing with yourselves. And having an audience who's invested in the quality of your performance is a wonderful way stay grounded in what matters. I got into this as a 20 year-old introvert who liked nerding around with computers, but on the journey I ended up meeting nice people with interesting problems and discovered I kind of liked using my nerd powers to 'save them' from the shitty, costly or annoying problem making part of their day miserable. Give it a try. Frankly, if solving interesting problems in cool ways for nice people doesn't light up some chunk of neurons in your skull, then maybe entrepreneurship isn't for you.

Bottom line, the way I eventually managed to "get rich" was by not trying to get rich. Instead, I changed my definition of success to: having fun with my friends solving real problems in technically interesting ways for real customers we liked. I emotionally came to peace with the reality that, if all I managed to do was solve problems for enough people to pay our rent and bills with a few bucks left over - that alone was enough. Not only enough to be worth doing but enough to be morally and ethically "Good". Sure, more financial upside would be nice if it happened but, the reality is, some of that will always be out of our control. Your post sounds like you're basically giving up on playing the tech startup game. Before you do, at least consider there may be ways to redefine the game so that it matters to more people than you and your friends, so that money is not the only metric and so that "winning" is mostly within your control.