Startups are fucking hard.
Yes. Like really fucking hard. It’s frustrating that so many interconnected technologies and details must come together to get the simplest startup off the ground. For example, the software- let’s say it’s written in Ruby on Rails, the database structures, the database hardware, the ever-changing requirements for software stack, the DNS updates, the Amazon AWS services, the front and design and implementations, not to mention the marketing…ugh STFU already. Especially daunting when subtle implementation details change every few months as libraries, services, and APIs are updated, it is a full-time job to understand how any of the systems work, let alone to implement one and qualify it as a new product.
Yet, I like that this is hard. Yes, you read that right. Before you start calling me some pompous sod let me explain- my reasoning is that if this were any easier, if the process of creating an idea and making a business out of it took any less resourcefulness, and knowledge, then the whole prospect of doing a startup would get a fuck of a lot harder: because more people would be doing it. I like that there are technical barriers, since they can be overcome. I like that it is hard to get a message out to a market, as it can be done if you know how. I like that there are relatively few people who can pull all of this together. As a “techie”, that makes actually doing startups and being successful all the easier (which is due to a startup all on it’s own, funny huh?). Nothing makes pulling the whole chain of dependencies in a startup more difficult than being confronted with an overcrowded market of competition when you get out there and try to sell your product.
To keep things in perspective, startups are easier now than they have ever been: Servers on demand (EC2, Heroku, Linode) and rapid development technologies (Rails, Django) make it possible to develop a custom-built online platform in a relatively short time. I remember my first coding class and learning about startups back in high school (this was in California in the early 2000s), and learning that these startups were done in “Classic” ASP. These projects took many months to build, and required you to purchase physical hardware by the truckload. That was really hard. On balance I would say “the harder the better” on that front since technology problems are solvable in ways that a marketplace absolutely full of competitors doing exactly what you are doing will never be.
Rather than be brought down by your technical challenges, relish them as the gate that will keep at least some of the potential competition from sharing in the rewards waiting on the other side of getting your startup built.
I’ll leave you with a bit of advice that my mentor has always told me: “be persistent, but be polite. Be hungry, but don’t be thirsty.”
Good luck to my fellow startup colleagues :)