[chongli]

Seriously. I kept thinking about YouTube when reading the story. What Hardbound tried to do is get VC money for an early stage YouTube channel. That's just silly. The business model for a YouTube channel is to start with nothing, make a video, nobody watches it, so then you make another video. Thousands of videos later you have a few people watching. You get a few of those people to give you a couple bucks on Patreon. You invest the money in better equipment and polish your videos up a bit.

It's just a long, slow grind. It requires direct communication with your audience. You have to listen to what they want and meet their needs.

[nbashaw]

You're right -- it takes a long time for most media companies to get off the ground, and it's often near-impossible to raise money in the early days. But how many youtube channels that get ~7,000 weekly unique viewers are able to convert ~1,200 into paying monthly subscribers?

Consider this: you might not already know everything there is to know about my business by skimming one blog post!

[ryanwaggoner]

A piece of friendly advice: I get that you're in a pretty low place right now, and that this is your baby, but don't take comments on HN so personally.

You're coming across as pretty defensive, which is understandable, but probably not helpful. People here can see this from a perspective that you can't, and if you're defensive, you're missing out on learning something.

Otherwise, why are you bothering to interact here?

[nbashaw]

I was in a really low place a couple weeks ago, but I actually honestly feel pretty fine now. I've given myself the space I need to process it. I definitely wouldn't have been able to publish this post when it first happened.

Also, I totally get that it seems like a total waste of time to engage with the comments here. A lot of people have told me the same thing on Twitter. But the thing is: I think it's really special that someone on the other side of a computer screen read this thing I wrote and is thinking about what they would do in my shoes. Even if they express it in a way that's kind of rude or condescending, it means something to me!

I'm sorry if it seems like I'm being defensive. When I think of what the word "defensive" represents, I think of someone who is totally unwilling to consider other points of view and is trying to shut out the world. I don't think that's what I'm doing. Nothing is more important to me than learning from what happened and growing into a better, smarter person. I totally appreciate the fact that I am just too close to the thing to really understand what happened. I need help from objective third parties to learn the most from this.

That's actually why I'm replying to the comments. There's the naive DHH-cheerleading reply to anyone who is "yet another dumb unicorn chaser". But I want to go one or two levels deeper than that. I don't think those replies are particularly helpful, but I think the people that write them totally could be helpful. They just need to actually have a desire to understand in more detail what my business is/was doing. I accept that most people here will never care enough to really dig in. But I think the probability is high that some people here actually might really care. So I'm engaging here while it's on the front page of Hacker News, because I won't get another opportunity like that for a long time.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to think that through more. I hope it answers your question.

[chongli]

I'm sorry. It's all too easy to play backseat driver on an internet discussion board. It's far tougher to actually go out and build something with your real life and your relationships in the mix.

I've been part of a failed business that's left my father with a mountain of debt in his late middle age. I am in the process of retooling my life to go back to school and earn a degree. I recognize what it's like to face a crossroads in your life. It's not something that can be casually dismissed.

[nbashaw]

It's ok! And I am really sorry to hear about your dad's business. That must have felt terrible, far worse than I'm feeling right now.

We're all human and doing the best we can.