I’m DONE with all these “Success Stories” Online

First of all I agree. It seems like some of the comments romanticise things tho. Don't forget that it's business. We are seeing these stories because (for whatever reason) that's what sells! The platforms don't care about what helps people, they care about what gets people to spend time there. And the creators of the "success stories" (most at least) don't care about helping people, they care about selling more.

Most of the success stories have a record of failures preceding them. People tend to forget the hard times and failures once they hit success, but if you ask, like I do, most makers will tell you the real story behind the success.

I recently saw such a success story on X, so I immediately approached the guy. What he shared, was exactly what I was expecting: it took a small team 7 years to reach their goal and earn those bragging rights.

Sometimes you have to read between the lines, sometimes you have to ask and dig deeper for information and, of course, there are a lot of people just full of BS, who just shitpost, but never had any real success (or failures) themselves.

Failure is the mother of success. We have seen so many projects with high MRR, while actually they may suffer high monthly recurring expenses as well, which may result in negative profit. This can be especially true for SaaSers, who often invest a lot even before generating any revenue.

The survivorship bias often makes us only see the shining and successful individuals, while ignoring the silent majority of SaaSers who are struggling or even consistently incurring losses. These ordinary people, the vast majority, eventually have to shut down their projects and continue exploring the next venture.

I'm working in a Chinese SaaS startup, responsible for the product. Our company has been established for three years, yet the cash flow is still negative, and we are facing significant losses every month. In a time when USD VC funds are no longer investing in Chinese SaaS industry, we are still striving to achieve profitability as soon as possible, just to remain alive for the next few years.

Failures a part of the game I agree the should be talked about but I think the success stories are what inspire people to actually try. If all people heard about was failures then no one would just go for it!

But why should we even bother with bad stories? Things are hard enough and it is better to fill your head with a good things.

As someone who hasn't had a successful exit or indie project yet, I find a lot of truth in this but also think it's missing an important aspect that success stories have.

I don't really want to hear about everyone that's continuing to fail and haven't found success yet.

I want to hear from others that have already failed but leveraged their failure to eventually find success.

Because at the end of the day, yeah, failure sucks, but it's part of building online businesses. And embracing and learning from failure is the name of the game.

So the more I can use my own failures and learn how other people used their failures to find success, the better.

I think that's why I personally much prefer success stories that tell the whole story along with their failures.

With all of this said, it can definitely be comforting to relate with others that are in the same boat as me, so I still think it's a good idea. Just something to consider! Subscribed.

I kinda agree, but consider this.

We do learn about failures but only from people that found success in the end. It makes sense since why would Forbes ask someone for an interview who couldn't pivot to something successful?

Reading your post, I would also ask yourself if you aren't spread too thin? Most people really won't be an overnight success, it took me over 4 years to get to $40k in online revenue with mainly one product and it doesn't even compare to salary.

Try to focus more on one thing at a time, don't chase success stories every single day, and take it easy. We all have a chance.

Thank God to hearing it, cause I thought I was the only one realizing that!

Survivor bias...

Love the idea - learning from failures is the way to go

I agree with you that the success porn and humble bragging is really tired. But these failed startup sites (like https://buildd.co/startup/failure-stories) never seem that interesting to me.

First and foremost, social media can really get corrosive even to smart people. For years we've heard the damage that Instagram can do to teenage girls. Well, twitter can also damage indie hackers. So get off social media like Twitter/Insta - wherever you're reading these stories.

These situations with social media and attention seem to be very driven from emotion. The trends seem to mostly capitalize on the more base, negative emotions, Success porn type posts focus on envy and greed.

A site about failed startups would seem to focus around balance, persistence, perspective. It's just not going to attract traffic. Where do failed startup sites focus to drive traffic?? The best example I can think of is Fucked Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company) which focused on fear and schadenfreude listing failed companies.

Your feelings are valid, but in my opinion a reactive move to build the site you suggest is not the best course of action.

By studying the mistakes of others, we can improve our own work. Knowing what not to do is often more valuable than knowing what to do.

Excelent! You are right, there are a lot of successful stories, but it seems that ios no failures stories.

And I am sure that there is more bad stories than goods.

Great idea with your newsletter! I will read it

I like the approach, but wouldn't this be a little depressing after a while ? Probably not, just asking. In fact reading only wonderful success stories without having yours is already despressing too.

Totally agree with you.

Reading these success stories, I've come to realize that while the tips they share work, the real substance lies in the failures they experienced and how they overcame them.

What did they fail at?
How did they fail at it?
What led to the failure?
How did they overcome it?
How should we avoid such mistakes?

These are questions we should ask.
These are questions people who run successful businesses should answer.

If a business is posting only what people think they want to see, then it shows their level of interest in the people who follow them.

Many people want to hear these failure stories but can't help watching the success stories.

If the failure story is 'pacakaged' as well as the success story, more people will watch.

I think there’s a lot we can learn from these “failed startups” I just subbed and look forward to upcoming content.

excellent. I will subscribe to that - been there many times :)

90% of startup failed, according to some data (couldn't find the source to confirm). However, a more reliable source is about 65% over a period of 10 years. Assuming cashflow is critical for survial, then the failing rate is likely beyond 70%. Even with funding, 20% to 30% of a fund I'm part of still fail in the first 2 years and we had to write them off. Bottom line: build to survive in the first few years. That is getting customers' buyin with cash and never stop to delight your customers.

Keep this in mind: even YC startups has a 20% failure rate.

That's exactly why I wrote a post on Medium about my failures.

I think we also must hear from the stories of failed business plan. We may learn so many thing from that.

Enos, I tend to agree with everything you said, but I wonder whether there is a market for the failure stories. Is there an audience who genuinely wants to read about failures weekly?

You are right. I have also not-success experience. It's absolutely ok

You make an excellent point about survivorship bias. We tend to only hear the success stories, while the stories of struggle and failure often remain untold.

As someone who has started various ventures that didn't take off, I can relate to your experience of having cool ideas and stories that will likely stay behind the scenes. The path to success is rarely linear. For every overnight sensation, there are countless others who faced setbacks and difficulties before hitting upon an idea that worked.

There is so much to learn from failures and mistakes! The problem-solving skills developed, the resilience built, the lessons about what not to do next time. Those who repeatedly try new ideas in the face of adversity demonstrate admirable perseverance.

I love the idea behind your newsletter sharing lessons learned from failed startups. Those stories need to be heard too. All entrepreneurs and creators can relate to and learn from them. Wishing you the best with bizflop! I think it could become a very valuable resource!

For me, doing 'okay' has been a failure. I'd love to hear examples of how that has been overcome.

I have had two businesses that have brought in 10K-25K per year the last four years. Most of that has been time-for-money consulting, which I want to get passed.

In my eyes, these have kind of been failures, as I haven't been able to move passed time-for-money or scale to the point of replacing my salary.

These failed ventures don't catch headlines, and I assure you, I have so many ideas and cool stories to share, but they'll never see the light of day.

Use some marketing.

Bundle up those failures into a success story so they "catch headlines" and see the light of day.

Let's do a FailConf! I have stories to share

It doesn't matter whether someone failed or succeeded, but what we can learn from their stories. Data about the high number of failures and how they failed is definitely useful.

One idea: an insurance scheme /fund for indie hackers to pay for business experiments and information about failures while also sharing in their success.

Thanks for sharing, I subbed right away. It's nice and inspiring to read stories of who made it, but I think there is a lot to learn also from those who fail, even if they never managed to build a successful product in the end.

I love this. Please don't turn into how people failed into success.. some people actually just fail, and never reach their goals. I want to hear about these. If they're hard to find then maybe it doesn't happen often enough? 🤔

It takes 99% hard work and 1% luck to make something work. To achieve this 1%, you have to fail many times to test your luck.

Everybody know failure is part of success. In fact I would argue failure was never existed in the first place if you are playing infinite game. In infinite game failure is most likely because you stop trying.

Nevertheless, people posting success story is a great thing. You have a chance to scrap their idea as you can see what working and how this guy doing it. This can give you an idea on what to do.

Of course you cannot duplicate what he is doing but at least you know people are paying and like this shits.

So you can even perform market validation from there.

You need to always find opportunity in anything and stop hating others. Hating others give you nothing.

Always finding opportunity will benefits you and help you propel forward.

Maybe you should checkout this article : Everything happening to you now is an opportunity, here how to use it .

It is about how to see the world around you and always think about opportunity.

Oh yeah, money twitter is full of scammers. I have a good deal of people blocked/muted just because if they really made as much as they did they definitely wouldn't give that information away for free.

I completely understand where you're coming from. The curated success stories online often omit the challenges and failures that are an inherent part of any journey. It's these very struggles that shape us and make success so meaningful. Let's celebrate authenticity and embrace the full spectrum of experiences that lead to accomplishments. Your feelings are valid, and your journey is unique – focus on that uniqueness rather than the highlight reel of others. 🌟

I’d love to hear failure stories. But only those that failed because of a proved reason. So I get the right lesson, rather than get biased even more. How do you plan to filter those?

Failure is good, failure is your friend.
Embrace failure. Embrace the suck!
The only rule that matters:
when you fall (because you WILL fall, repeatedly)
stop whining, get back up, and try again.
Success is not a destination, it's a process.
A learning process ... and you learn by failing,
not by winning.
Happy learning !

Love it. I hope something like this can change the perception that success comes from nothing (rather than all the hard work and failures along the way)
Reminds me of some YouTube content where guitarists show themselves learning a song, and how scuffed it is until they record the final take that ends up on their primary channels.

I can feel you, my man! All you said is the truth. Nowadays, there are lots of successful millionaires that get big money by doing 5 steps. It sounds too good to be true. Yeah, maybe they did their millions, but there are no ways that they made it as easy as they introduced on social media platforms. Keep your head up, and don't give up my man!

I am new to building a business but it does get on me sometimes. Everyone knows this but the internet (and life for that matter) doesn't show the ones who didn't make it.

I like the idea o your substack you are creating. You should listen to mikerowe podcast for some inspiration

He tells a story about an incredible story that doesn't seem anyway related to some incredible person.

Love everything about this. Signup complete. Maybe we could make t-shirts!

But here’s the thing…

We (you, me, etc) keep at it? Good grief. Sometimes I wish I could just sit for a while and read a book or watch a movie without thinking, “I wonder if X would work for Y?” 🤣

I see you, friend!

A few years ago I wrote a story about spending 5 years on an open source project and having nothing to show for it. It got on the front page of hacker news and had 12k views.

So yes, failure stories can be very interesting if told well, and there can be many great lessons learned.

For me, the lesson was something can appear to be "working" when it actually isn't creating the illusion of success and wasting a lot of your time.

Good luck with the newsletter. I don't have the blog post online anymore but I'd be happy if you wanted to republish it in your letter.

"I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work." T. Edison

I think your newsletter could be a very interesting idea! I'd love to hear about the WHY behind the entrepreneur's choice and at what point they realized that things were not really working out.

Learning to fail strategically is such a core, ninja-skill for entrepreneurs.

It gives you the superpower to implement a sort of binary algo (for my techies out there 😉) and find the right solution with the lowest number of guesses possible.

Did you like sopa operas like Dallas ? Do you know their prime market was ? poor people. Why ? Because their liked to ear things about the life of rich people. :)

With entrepreneur success stories it's the same thing. You want something more than your present condition. :)

But a failed stories in the hands of another person with a different vision could be gold. :)

So don't get mad, get even. Get going. Starting today. :)

Pedro

Luck indeed plays a big role in the success of your projects.
Since 2018, I've been trying one business model or the other ranging from fb ads to copywriting but none worked out due to circumstances.

Now I'm in my 2nd year of college, unsure of what I should do from here. Whether I should get into Indie hacking or prepare for a job? Are the process for both even different? I have no idea and honestly, am just looking for a road now.

It's refreshing to see an article that sheds light on the often unspoken side of entrepreneurship.

I can definitely relate to your experiences, having ventured into various businesses myself, ranging from e-commerce and affiliate marketing to even dabbling in the world of SaaS.

The stories of struggle, adaptation, and lessons learned from failed endeavors hold immense value, and I wholeheartedly agree that they deserve more attention. These untold stories not only provide insights into the diverse challenges entrepreneurs face but also offer a more relatable and realistic perspective on the journey.

Successes and failures are two sides of the same coin, and acknowledging both can foster a more well-rounded understanding of the entrepreneurial landscape.

Well, you are definitely right. The stories are out there though. What sells is success stories, hence why they take full front and center. The survivorship bias at its fullest.

12-13 years ago, I had a show (radio + a few talks at local marketing conferences) I called "How to fail successfully". In the notion that leaving luck aside, you need to fail before you succeed, and you need to fail in such a way that it adds knowledge to your future endeavors.

I failed at least 15 times with my companies (not taking side hustles or MVPs into consideration; if we include these, probably 60+ fails). Had 2 clear wins (successful exits). 2 mehs. In a 22+ years career as a founder.

I Agree with you.

It's a good thought, but here is another perspective ..human psychology is geared towards happy endings...so unless these stories are linked to turn arounds, it will only tell half the journey.

If i am a startup aspirant, i want to know what went wrong but i am also interested to know what were the alternatives. If one marketing option failed what else i could have done. If one tech stack was not a good fit how to overcome that so somewhere there is a need for validation which if included, this could become great resource