[blaisio]

> I had around $12K in savings. Enough to cover a year of expenses and a bit more. I stopped spending money on almost everything.

Yeah, that sucks. I'm sorry you had a bad experience.

I think one thing for the community to take away is you need to be in a good position financially before you can start a startup - unless you can get funding. Especially for indiehackers who don't usually take outside investment, $12k in savings is not enough. It is not normal to have to stop going out at all or to be pinching pennies. Not everyone can afford to start a startup. For some reason, this concept is almost never talked about in the startup community, but it's really important.

[itake]

I don’t see that takeaway at all. He didn’t fail because of lack of money. His life is not worse due to spending his savings. He still has a highly valuable skill set and can easily replace that with 1-3 years of working at a company.

If he has $500k, spent $20k living cheaply for a year, I’d bet he would be in a similar position that he is in now and choose to re-enter the workforce after a year of failure.

[tmpz22]

> He still has a highly valuable skill set and can easily replace that with 1-3 years of working at a company

1-3 years of work is not a casual expense.

[Invictus0]

I think if he had started with more savings, he would have been less bitter about the failure. He still would have been able to take his girlfriend out for dinner.

[bagacrap]

This complaint made no sense to me. What was his girlfriend doing? Why does she rely on his largess to go out? Is she also a failed indiehacker, or was she using her own income to cover rent and all shared expenses? I think it's irresponsible to take a big risk with someone else's finances, and becoming bitter as you lose that gambit just makes you seem out of touch with reality.

[axetheone]

No doubt about this, when I reached that part of the article I was startled with that relatively low amount of savings and the courage on starting a venture like that... It can not be understated on how having enough money saved up really helps not only enduring periods with no money but also a much lower anxiety associated with that (you need to be in a good mental shape in order to do things after all).

[Aeolun]

Depending on what point of your life you are at, $12000 could be quite a chunk of money.

When I was 21 that would last me probably 20 months.

At 25 it’d be down to 12.

At 32 (with a family) I wouldn’t last more than 3 months.

Luckily savings more or less keep up with spending :)