Ask HN: How do you know when to give up?

Re:Ask HN: How do you know when to give up? by robfitz on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @05:47AM (#463802)

if you haven't already, i'd first make a budget (of time, money, or whatever other resource you're consuming) and see what it might take to reach a win scenario you'd be happy with (ie $3k/mo passive income). laying it out in rows and columns with required user #s and growth is surprisingly helpful.

i haven't seen the site and have no idea of the specifics, but based on what i'm imagining, i would jump ship. the chicken-egg issue is hard for anything social (especially when bootstrapped w/ no marketing $), and gaming is a saturated space, so it'll be hard to get the user base to critical mass.

that said, if you're still excited about what you're building, that carries a lot of weight.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you know when to give up? by lionhearted on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @07:43AM (#463901)

Rob - I upvoted you because you had some great insights, but I disagree some on "making a budget of time or money until reaching a win scenario" - in my experience, success is totally nonlinear. You slave away, and then make major breakthroughs. In business, any sort of milestones that correlate to anything won't match the real world.

It's key you get some proof of concept (is this valuable to anyone? who is going to pay me? why?). Once you've got proof of concept and you're behind your idea, you then hustle like a motherfucker until you win. If your general concept is a winner, and you hustle like a motherfucker, you win eventually.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you know when to give up? by robfitz on Thursday February 05, 2009 @10:58AM (#468041)

hullo - i more or less agree. i'm advocating spreadsheets as more of a sanity check on your business assumptions than as a real predictive model.

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