[ipaddr]

Having a successful startup is like winning the lottery too. Getting funded if you are not in a circle of reputation is like winning the lottery. Getting into ycombinator is like winning a lottery then you get to win another.

Any business is like a lottery. But some have better odds like setting up a plumbing service in a growing underserved town.

[lukasb]

Well, no, winning a lottery is one in a million. A successful startup - assuming you get funding - is more like one in ten (that's not exact but no more than an order of magnitude off.)

[pavlov]

There’s also the time and effort that you need to invest.

You can buy a lottery ticket every week and it costs $2 (just guessing — I don’t buy them). With that minimum spending over three years, you get 150 shots. You paid $300, but no time or effort.

A typical startup takes three years, and you pay for it in both real money and opportunity cost.

Let’s say your chance of getting funded is 1:100 (assuming you don’t have an existing network). And then your chances of success are 1:30 (a more realistic figure for first-time founders than one in ten, IMO).

That means the odds are 1:3000 with great personal investment, versus the lottery where in the same timeframe you get to take 150 shots at a 1:1,000,000 chance at no personal cost.

Looking at these numbers, it does feel a lot like lottery.

Of course I’m downplaying the career growth value of a startup. You learn nothing from the lottery, but going through the startup grind offers experience that you can’t get elsewhere.

[lukasb]

Let's say I grant (though I don't believe it) that a startup is also a lottery ticket. What are the factors that make an indie app a lottery ticket? That's my question. Is it just that, absent the funding gate startups have, that there's a lot of competition?

[pavlov]

Apps as a platform are at a disadvantage. The bar for entry is roughly as low as creating a website, but for users it’s a higher bar to install an app.

Yet the app doesn’t offer any intrinsic advantage in discovery or marketing over a website. (You’re not going to get any organic traffic from app stores, unless maybe if you have contacts at Apple who can get your app into their promotions — unlikely for an indie dev publishing their first app.)

So if you’re making an app, you need to be sure that users in your niche will see enough benefit that they’ll want to install an app when your competitor is probably just a website.

[mnahkies]

This is an interesting take, because whilst I agree, generally what I've heard from the market is "we want an app not a web app/pwa"

Whilst I'd rather not have to install <random overly specific app> to go to a sporting event or whatnot, that's the reality, and also generally what I hear businesses want.

Is my perspective just different as a techie or are businesses misreading what consumers want?

[fhd2]

More risk, more reward - it's usually that simple. That last example is closer to the security of a job than the lottery I'd say :) The likelihood of getting fired from a job is probably not that much lower than a plumbing business not working in an underserved area.

I've built a pretty low risk business to get cash flow going and am starting to tackle more high risk stuff. There's safe strategies to play the lottery in a way where you can afford to lose.