So I decided to go and do a startup with an old coworker of mine about two years ago because I actually really like programming and I had enough money to live off my savings for awhile. So I'm building an open source piece of software, we have no real monetization scheme and that's fine. Maybe some rich company will adopt us and we can get a service contract, or we can trick some investor in giving us some money and we'll burn it all on bloated salaries.

The problem is that I've been doing this for 2 years and I'm throughly burned out. I've been working like a dog, 12+ hour days, rarely any time off. I don't have any hobbies anymore and my relationship with my partner isn't great. I want this to be useful to people because it has the real capacity to make peoples jobs easier. It abstracts away like 90% of what data engineers have to do and in my opinion it is actually innovative (fully outside of capitalism). I'm just at this point where I'm mentally done with the idea and I just don't have the energy anymore to see the rest of it through. I've been getting in a lot of arguments with my cofounder recently about product direction and I think it's just me being anxious about getting this adopted. We still don't know who our target users are and I just want anyone to use it and I don't care about 'personas' and product market fit.

I'm not going to drop the link here because I don't want it coming up in a google search but you can DM me and I can show you what I've done. I honestly don't know what I should do at this point, just quit and get a real job or take a break and then just try to trudge through it.

Thanks of listening.

  • GaveUp [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Steve Jobs and Lisa Su turned around Apple and AMD when they were both on the brink of becoming bankrupt to making the best products in their respective markets today and wildly successful

    I don't remember which interview I saw but Tony Xu took on Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Postmates and won with Doordash by making good business decisions to be fully vertically integrated which they discovered with intelligent market research and understanding of their clients' needs. He explains his business strategy and it's not something everybody would come up with

    Eric Yuan used to work at Cisco as a VP and tried to convince his bosses to improve the product as he saw fit. They denied his request so he left and went on to create the most successful and by far best teleconferencing app, Zoom

    You shit on Elon Musk and you're correct. If Elon Musk was in any of the people's above position, he would most likely crash and burn the entire ship. Like he's doing with Twitter right now

    When the founders of a company are able to control what their hundreds or thousands of workers are doing, of course their decision matters a lot

    I forgot the name of the essay that I read but it talks about how it's foolish for communists to think of the rich, the powerful, and the bourgeoisie as just stupid buffoons because they don't deserve their power and wealth. They are cunning and many intelligently exploit as efficiently and safely as they can. Many prominent characters on Wall St. clearly understand Marxist theory based on their interviews. Don't do some reverse Halo Effect for the bourgeoisie

    Have you seen how US financial imperialism works? It's incredible. None of us could ever create anything near as intricate, effective, and powerful given their resources. Unless Michael Hudson is reading this