Any of you guys have a failed startup or business under your belt? I'd like to hear other peoples stories?
>Be me 2015 >Working in the construction industry. See the niche I could fill; metal roof conversions. >Leave my grind job the pursue starting a business. >Invest nearly $250k from savings, friends, and family. Buy tools, inventory, and get a team together. >Start doing sales. Clients are slow to convert but start getting traction. Customers are happy and very satisfied with the work. >2017, big storm comes through. Tons of roof damage across the area. Wet dream for roofers. >Tons of clients wanting to use their insurance money to upgrade to metal. I have more work then I can dream up. Will probably break a million in revenue. >Decide to bring on a second crew and move my best guy to supervise them. First big mistake. >Start getting contacted by clients that roofs are leaking, roof damage, etc. Go and check out roofs. They haven't been installed correctly. >Turns out my "best guy" had been cutting corners. Not training the guys correctly. Sleeping in his truck on the job. Fire his ass but all that profit I would have made goes to fixing his fuck ups. >My reputation unfortunately is damaged due to all the problems. Spend the next year trying to rebuild it. In that time though several other companies move into my market. >Come beginning of 2019. Look at the writing on the walls. Either kill the company now and walk away not losing anything. Or just keep coasting along and die a slow death. >Pull the plug, cash out, and go back to work as a contractor. 2020 roles around. >Fucckkkkkkkkkkk, I dodged a bullet.
Sorry to hear it fren. I have not but I've had a few ideas, one even in construction. They're just ideas unfortunately, I don't have the base of knowledge or the capital required to start it up. Trying to inch my way there, a lot of steps between me and a business because of other plans and goals. You ever read "Zero to One"?
Jonathan Evans
imagine being a wagie
Gabriel Sanders
I haven't read it. I've read a few other authors. The issue I find with many of these authors is their 99% focused on the dot.com businesses. There are few books that actually provide commentary and support for people trying to provide tangible products/services.
I got lucky raising capital. I had money tucked away, people were very interested, and I thankfully qualified for a SB loan. Just glad I was so focused on paying it off otherwise I would have to declare bankruptcy back last year to get out.
Would you be up for sharing your idea?
Andrew Jenkins
don't care didn't read but that's a nice house i think I developed some autistic obsession of houses and wanting to see what they're like inside and out but that involves breaking in and that's illegal life is rough
Lucas Gonzalez
I got fronted a pound of magic mushrooms, came home from work one day and my dog had ripped the bag open and ate half of them and scattered the rest all around my room. I invited some friends over and we just ate the rest. My dog has been really weird ever since then.
Cooper Evans
Watch the HGTV channel on Tor
Lucas Moore
Yes. Made a business starting from literally a few hundred reselling stuff on amazon and ebay. Over the course of a few years grew it quite a bit until I had a very comfortable living. I was making enough money to not have to worry about anything, was working probably around 25-30 hours a week, and had the freedom that comes with being your own boss.
Got into crypto in mid 2016. Used my earnings, savings and eventually debt to go into crypto. Towards the end wasn't really even doing anything with my business. Made a shittttttttttttload of money, all on paper of course. Didn't cash out, everything crashed and went down to like 5-10% of investment. Went back to working in my business with the delusional notion that I could make back enough to pay back the debt, but finally had to declare bankruptcy and go back to being a wageslave. Not a great feeling. With this entailed being poor again of course.
So if you'll take the advice from a rando, make sure you take profits before things come crashing down, especially if you're borrowing to invest (I see you all talking about taking loans). Don't get deluded into thinking this bull run will last forever. We've still got a bit to go though I think.
Colton Cooper
I built a rather complex food truck from scratch starting with a bare stepvan, developed a really good menu. Took nearly 2 years and it was really nice, but struggled navigate the regulations and operate realistically.. really sucked but we were able to sell and recoupe 80% of our investment.
Great learning experience
Anthony Green
Nowhere did you mention that you bought pnk. Which is why I can see the despair.
What were you reselling mainly? Yeah I made sure to at least pay myself a salary. Heard too many stories of people paying themselves only through dividends. Yet what they mainly just did was rack up personal debt, invested all profits back into the business. Then when bad times hit they had no money in the business or in their own bank account.
When you declared bankruptcy? I'm guessing the creditors took the coins?
Josiah Kelly
he OD'd and most likely has permanent brain damage now
Evan Wilson
Doesn't give the same feel as seeing it in real life. I live in a pretty affluent suburban area with most of the houses having been built in the early 20th century, and the more recently built houses are atleast tasteful and not your average American shitbox carbon copy house. i take lots of walks and constantly think "god i wanna go in that fucking house"
>Took nearly 2 years Damn, what the fuck were you doing to that truck?
Yeah I've heard from hanging around startup meetups and events food trucks are a cut throat business. Either the governments after you, local restaurants want you run out of the area, or other food trucks try to fuck you.
What was the food?
Tyler Hill
Oh it was all sorts of stuff. Mostly bought and resold from big box and discount stores as crazy as that sounds. It was mostly health and beauty stuff with a bit of grocery and toys and the occasional other random stuff. I did reinvest most of my profits back in, but it was making me more money to do so rather than just letting it sit in my bank account.
I kept my debt to asset ratio at 50% or less (in regards to inventory) until I started getting into crypto. And honestly by the time I filed for bankruptcy there wasn't much left as I'd sold the majority at a loss to try and keep things going. I wound up getting to keep some, about 500$ worth. Thankfully I've switched that into other coins that are moving now and grown that and with the major misgivings from last time around that I have, I'm fairly confident that I won't get to exuberant and make the same mistake.
Seriously though, if you're someone who wants to work for themselves and make a decent living and don't have a lot of startup capital, it's a fairly easy way to do it. There's definitely a learning curve, but that's true of any business.
Jack Ramirez
When I was 14 I saved up some money and bought a lawnmower. I would drag the lawnmower around town and mow people's lawns for 25 dollars a yard. Made a couple hundred dollars a week. One day as I was getting payment from a person I left the mower in his driveway. His retarded fucking daughter pulls into the driveway and runs it over. Completely destroyed it. And shes pissed at me for leaving it in the driveway because it fucked up her tires. Fucking bitch. The guy then refused to pay for a new one. I could have bought another mower but that experience crushed me.
Sebastian Martinez
Wait are you saying you did amazon and ebay as well?
Isaiah Long
Pizza.. which is a hard mobile food choice
About 1.5 years gutting it, installing windows, walls, electrical, plumbing, lighting, A/C, equipment, engine repairs. While working full time
Carter Young
Sounds like some fucking shitty people
Xavier Gomez
Damn that sucks user did you ever end up getting another lawn mower?
Owen Ward
No I never got into that. A neighbor of mine was from Egypt. She used to resell fabric that she imported. I know she made ridiculous margins until Amazon started dropping sellers in the last few years.
Honestly I don't really care for Coins. It maybe the future and I agree with the principles of it. I just feel it's way to full of cons right now. If I start a business it will probably be just being a general contractor again. I'm starting to work towards plumbing and concrete expertise now. Maybe a few more years.
Brandon Cook
I did for personal use when I eventually got my own home, but I never got one for mowing other people's yards because what happened was very disheartening for me. The incident also happened in late September so the yard mowing business was not as busy as it was in the summer. I didnt want to pay 200 dollars for another lawnmower when I wouldn't be able to use it for another 6 months.
Jonathan Cook
What a cunt. Sorry to hear that man.
I guess pizza ovens are heavy and hot. Plus you're then competing against a food product thats very easily delivered to locations.
Brayden Adams
I've had an idea for a while but only recently seriously decided to work on it, maybe someone can burst my bubble.
I'm a big fan of independent content, like the animations and short film stuff you see on YouTube. A lot of the creators have to be wageslaves to keep making content and people aren't prepared to shill some guy $5 a month on patreon for like one video a month.
I'm tossing up the idea of a streaming service for indie creators, so they'll get paid a decent amount and normies are more likely to pay money for the shit they watch.
Thoughts?
Liam Scott
I'm not a dot.com guy so keep that in mind. So I obviously don't have the context of effort required to create such a platform.
So you're like netflix for indie? How does the streaming service pay the creators? What assurance would there be the creators I like will be on there or stay on there? How does the service select creators or take feedback on who to get?
I mean not a bad idea I just wonder if I'll get what I would want out of it?
Easton Foster
You didn't explain how your streaming service would be great for indie creators and customers/viewers. By posting on your platform alone they will struggle to get natural traffic relative to YouTube for example.
Robert Carter
>Thread about actual business >Barely up an hour >Already dead This is why we need a /Coin/ board. Nothing on this board is about business anymore.
Connor Turner
This is one of my ventures, Sapphire crystal mouse skates. its extremely smooth and I cannot go back to using Teflon mouse skates it just has too much friction (important for gaming, fine movements). The product itself works, but it never entered the market because getting it to work was the problem, the crystals only work with certain hard resin mousepads and you have to get the weight to crystal ratio just right, add to many or too little and for some reason the friction becomes similar to the Teflon pads (Thats why pic related has 1 crystal on the top left)
oh well i only spent like $200 on the whole project. It was fun.
Yeah so you pay a monthly sub like Netflix, platform takes a cut and the rest is divvied up to creators on the platform based on how much attention their content got.
Creators would stay if it provided value, which I imagine it would for a lot of them (advertisements pay pittance and that's if you even get them, bigger ones rely on merch sales).
The pay based on attention would act as an incentive to make more videos / higher quality (clickbait being a no-no and reduced garbage as it's not a public video dump site).
Right now I'm trying to get in touch with creators through email, but I might have to try Twitter too cause they're more active there. I'm currently reaching out to small creators who are most likely to need some form of funding where patreon wouldn't work for them.
Hunter Lopez
So you looked at it from a modding position? People buy the pads and then modify their own mouses with them?
Also how expensive are Sapphire Crystals?
So effectively a revenue sharing model? Okay.
I think like this guy put it correctly How does this benefit the content producers and content consumers more than the current mediums? I can see where this might result in more content incentives for creators. Yet under the current medium like YouTube you get it all for "free". Is there enough demand to create the revenue to wet the appetites for content creators to post on your platform. Plus are they restricted to that content only being on your platform?
Luis White
I was actually thinking of doing this with myself with a smaller portable setup that could do Neapolitan pizzas, which is an untapped market where I live. Not sure about the demand though.
