Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?

[asdev]

How long did it take? How many ideas did you go through? What made you stick to an idea vs pivot?

EDIT: People keep asking about the definition of success. Success means you had a venture that was successful from your perspective. Whether that's a small business that generates enough income to replace a day job, or a million dollar exit. I don't consider a side project a success though, would need to be full time

[sivers]

I started cdbaby.com in my bedroom, just me, fulfilling orders myself.

It got an immediate great reception from a few people, very thankful, happy to pay for the service, and telling all their friends. So that's how I knew it was worth sticking with.

But still, it was very VERY slow going, like even after 9 months I was only getting a few orders a week. After a year it was a few orders a day. That's when I hired my first employee.

It didn't really take off until FOUR YEARS later, of this continuous slow growth.

In hindsight, looking at the numbers, it doubled in size every year for 10 years. But that didn't look like success until year 4.

So when people say, “I started my business but it's been a few months and it's not a success yet!” I have to tell this tale.

[asdev]

what a cool business. were you in the music world before starting this?

[rasulkireev]

if you don't know Derek's story you are in for a treat...

i don't want to speak for everyone, but to me he is such a huge inspiration, not only business wise, but also personality wise.

[cpursley]

https://sive.rs :)

[quirk]

Dude I loved CDBaby. And yes, even 4 years is kind of a short time to be successful (profitable, sustainable).

[tomcam]

What do you mean by succeed? To me, it's very specific. It is to live without debt or a mortgage in a safe place where I can afford medical insurance (which currently costs me $65,000/year). It also meant being able to spend as much time with them as my children required.

I guess you could say it took me from ages 21-38. If you count study as a child, 12-38.

However by the time I was 23 I was already super happy. I had a good job and could afford to take my girlfriend out a couple times a week. So the times from 23-38 were fulfilling and very enjoyable even though I didn't feel I "made it" until 38.

12: Started reading business books & biographies

16: Kicked out of high school

21: Dropped out of college & started to teach myself programming.

21: Fired from my first job as programmer

23-31: Worked as computer programmer, moonlighting journalist & got lots of free learning materials. Also spent all extra money on books.

25: Got angel funding for a business that sort of failed 3 years later

28-31: Programming jobs. Fired from another one.

34: PM job at Microsoft. Everyone sold their stock options due to dumb things Marc Andreesen said but I kept it all. Stock went up 1300% in the next 4 years. My friends who had been there much longer all seemed to listen to Marc.

38: Retired to due handicapped kid born. Stock was worth $1 million, had to sell it when I left. So $600K after taxes.

40: Bought a business, fixed it up, and it supported us beautifully for the next 20 years. Spent a lot but also saved a lot. HN calls it a lifestyle business. I made, say, minimum salary for an NFL football player. We bought our house for cash in a neighborhood where one of my favorite guitarists lived, but they couldn't make the house payment and moved out. Same for a local newscaster. I bought another house in the neighborhood for cash as an office.

60: Sold the business, now live off investments. Traded the houses for a farm in town.

[y-curious]

Can you give more details on the business you purchased? Any resources you found useful to learn this process? It’s something I’d like to do after waging away

[tomcam]

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3gbx78/til_t...

It was an eBay-related business that I had used many times. The resources I used were common sense and a realistic perspective on business, neither of which I was raised with :O. I went in knowing it might be a ripoff so I didn't go into debt. Just used up some of my retirement account.

There was little time for due diligence so I developed a relationship to the owner of the business to help calm my nerves.

[dieselgate]

> farm in town

Genuinely curious where this might be, the only place I can think of might be Tillamook, OR!

[tomcam]

Redmond, WA

[wewewedxfgdf]

You have to define succeed.

I have had small business success in that it gave me and a small number of other people a really good ordinary income for 20 years.

I have never had a breakout success that accelerates to something much bigger than that, despite trying for a very long time.

[asdev]

I would define that as success. My definition is the feeling of success in the eyes of the founders, not millions of dollars or whatever hyped up benchmark

[jason_zig]

You should almost always stick with an idea for longer than you think. I've had 3 successful projects (one making over 100K MRR[0]) IMO the main differentiator between winning and losing is how fast you are iterating based on customer feedback.

I think about it like throwing a dart at the dartboard. You might hit the bullseye in one shot but usually you'll just hit somewhere random then it's up to you to iterate and find the version of your idea that the market will actually pay for. This is the feedback part of the equation and giving up and throwing random darts may never pay off.

[0]https://www.zigpoll.com

[asdev]

were your projects in spaces you were familiar with? I feel like that makes the dart less random. Also I feel like it's hard to get customers/users on calls

[jason_zig]

well they were all websites so they had that in common but not much else. I would recommend starting off with an app store of some kind since getting initial customers is a real pain unless you already have some lined up due to past work experience / networking. That said, with enough time and screaming into the void you will get someone to walk through the door. Best to ask them as many questions as you can while they are hanging around!

[asdev]

where did you get your ideas from then? did you have domain knowledge already? can DM you if you want

[jason_zig]

you can email me if you want: jason[at]zigpoll.com

Ideas came from building something that I wished existed. Honestly I didn't overthink any of them and I'm glad I didn't. If you do too much market research it tends to make your vision seem less exciting IMO.

Either way my whole point is to just iterate on your initial idea for long enough that it goes from being "your fun idea" to "your fun idea that people are willing to pay for". Then just repeat that loop until you retire :)

[thiagoperes]

People usually think of "making it" as a single point in time that's binary. Granted, there's some truth to that: most people will feel fully comfortable with a few millions in their bank account.

But in reality, success can be savored a lot more pleasantly if you allow yourself to be conscientious of milestones and include having a great process of getting there as the definition of success.

I've met so many people (myself included) that burned themselves by thinking they will spend only a few years grinding to reach a certain milestone, and get frustrated when the narrow definition of success they've created for themselves isn't met.

I've also met a few others that have realized the above, usually with burnout then self-discovery, many which also "made it" by the standard definition, but have a strong sense of fulfillment.

Naturally the question is how. For myself, what worked is a mix of taking more risks (becoming a founder at 35+), experimentation and using various techniques (therapy, meditation, the usual suspects) to find what can drive me to work hard but with purpose or joy.

[syntax-sailor]

I am a middle aged man who lives on a sailing boat. A decade in early stage / founding without an exit that's closer to a car crash. Still trying, I don't have the temperament for consulting or corporate.

[cultofmetatron]

> I am a middle aged man who lives on a sailing boat.

literally my goal. hopefully we can meet up on the strait of malaca at some point

[cromka]

Unironically, living on a boat and working on my own thing is my dream right now.

[sublinear]

There's gotta be a ton of people in their 20s working remotely and living on a boat right now. They don't have to bust their ass like an entrepreneur either. They're just normal employees.

What is it with boats anyway?

[cpursley]

They are RVs for the water. Pull up anchor and bring your living space with you.

[sublinear]

Yes, it is dangerously adjacent to being the trailer trash of the sea.

Having a new deck and topiary does not make it a luxury yacht.

[sublinear]

What.

[cromka]

WHAT

[cpursley]

What?

[syntax-sailor]

A machine for living. I like sailing, it's just very expensive and time consuming..

[bckr]

Still haven’t succeeded! I’m on my 8th business since being a teenager. I have lost quite a bit of money. I’ve earned some through consulting. I think for those of use for whom it doesn’t come easy or natural (and maybe, for everyone) you have to identify as an entrepreneur—wanting and even trying isn’t enough. Then let go of all outcomes. Then just move forward every day.

But I haven’t succeeded yet, so I might not be giving the best advice!

[idw]

The saying goes: it takes ten years to become an overnight success.

As for the stick or twist question, if your only goal is to make money then twisting whenever it seems to make that more likely makes sense. Most people thrive on doing work they care about enough to stick with when it is hard, and my guess is that gets better results over time.

One bit of practical advice: celebrate the little successes on the way to whatever you may think a big success looks like. Wherever the journey ends up, it's important to enjoy it as much as possible.

[Shitty-kitty]

It's very important to know when to call it quits. If you are at the point where it feels like there is nothing more than you can do other than wait for a lucky-break, give yourself a hard deadline for an exit and stick with it.

[cj]

This is what scares me about people raising insanely large $10 million seed rounds. It's too much runway. Takes too long to fail.

It took me 4 years of working on 3 different startups, with 2 different set of cofounders, before I landed on the idea/business that finally became successful.

Two of those failed companies were part of YC. Thank god every investor turned us down. It allowed us to shut down and move on to the next idea way faster.

Edit: If you're a founder sitting on a giant bank account with a startup that you're losing faith in... remember you aren't obligated to spend all that money. Investors will respect you for returning the money and admitting it's time to try something else.

[e9]

Founding engineer 8 times. 5 exits(2 sold shares back to investors, 2 acquihires, 1 acquisition). Never really made any significant money. I would make 10x more if I spent same time at big tech. Milage may vary but my 2 cents if you want to be entrepreneur or work for a startup:

1. Enjoy the process (You can push harder and longer if you enjoy what you do and at the end it won't matter if money doesn't come because any time spent enjoying what you do is already a win)

2. Work with people you like (For founders: don't be single founder, 90% of the times single founders either don't know how to share or no one wants to work with them)

[spking]

Nothing wrong with being a solo founder and I doubt the two “90%” reasons you cited are true the majority of the time.

https://solofounders.com/

[e9]

World is large and I only get to see and experience slice of it. Thanks for sharing the link.

[asdev]

Why didn't you found yourself at any point? I understand gaining experience as a founding engineer, but after a certain point, you need to work as hard as the technical founder, take the same career risk, for way less payout

[e9]

I founded 2 of the companies above (1 acquihire, 1 sold big portion of my shares back to investors when I left).

Yes I agree founding is much better than being first engineer. Reason I kept joining as first engineer is because I found product market fit for my self (it's funny to say that haha). I was able to pitch myself as first engineer that builds first product and first teams. Someone super technical who likes to grow code and grow people is actually pretty rare in startup world so I was able to ask for high comp and choose to work on interesting projects.

[dools]

I've bootstrapped a telecommunications product[1] to low 6 figures in ARR. It's the most successful venture I've had. I started the very first version in 2018, and released the first version of the app in 2021 (before that it was entirely done using off-the-shelf tools). I'm mid-40s now, and have been either freelancing or trying to launch products since I was mid-20s. I still have a job, but it's a good one that I enjoy doing and it leaves time for my business stuff. I would be better off financially if I had just focused on a traditional engineering career path and invested regularly in broad based, index fund ETFs after finishing university in my mid-20s, but whatever. I own a house in Australia which is an achievement on its own. I have a lovely wife and 2 teenage kids. We're all going on a 2 week holiday to Greece later this year. I have 2 new cars (financed) and a nice office in the city. I have always been the primary income earner for my family of four. Life gets more expensive as my income goes up so I don't wind up with much left over even though I'm earning considerably more now than I ever have. I'm pretty happy with how things turned out and I've always enjoyed the various challenges I have attempted, but on the other hand I look like I'm about 60 and I've lost a lot of sleep!

[1]https://www.benkophone.com/

[simonswords82]

It took me about ten businesses and over 20 years to "succeed". I wanted to retire at 35 for as long as I could remember, missed that by 7 years.

Sold Staff Squared in 2022 for a good sum (7 figure), reinvested most of it into Fundipedia.

Sold Fundipedia for life changing (8 figure) sum in 2025.

All businesses were bootstrapped, reinvesting profits to grow them organically.

I'm now angel investing and consulting. I'm posting more about my journey on my personal website over the coming months https://www.simonswords.com

Rough timeline:

2000 - started a computer hardware company called Atlas alongside a speed dating company (that's not a joke, I ran a speed dating company and some other weird businesses).

2002 - switched Atlas to designing websites, stopped selling hardware and associated support - fed up with call outs to fix networks at the weekend.

2004 - started to design AND code websites, grew Atlas out as a custom software shop - had about 10 employees. Made about 10% margin on a good year. Tough business.

Around 2006 - Vowed to find ARR working with our team on various software solution ideas.

2007 - built first version of what would become Fundipedia - a data management platform for buy side asset managers e.g. HSBC/Barclays/LGIM etc.

2011 - got fed up with internal HR admin as we took on more staff. Built internal HR/time off tracking system that would eventually become Staff Squared - a SaaS HR solution for small businesses.

2012 - 2016 - ran Atlas, Fundipedia and Staff Squared - not very well, but never made a mistake that killed these businesses. Although it nearly killed me - super stressful.

2017 - Fundipedia showed signs of promise as clients were coming to us via word of mouth - we did not market it at all. So I put a plan in place to grow Fundipedia and take on challenge of learning more about the asset management space.

2021 - landed massive Fundipedia client. Sold Staff Squared to a private buyer, wound down Atlas clients.

2025 - With Fundipedia leading the sector it was in - busting the rule of 40 it was now a real threat and an opportunity to our larger competitors in the space. I sold to FE FundInfo (who backed by Hg Capital).

[c0nrad]

First company was csper.io (2019), took maybe 3 months till I had my first customer, and then around month 6 I started getting ~1 customer/week, and continued scaling after that. Felt pretty comfortable with the idea and didn't need to pivot/drop.

Second/current one, dmarcdefender.io (2025), took maybe 6 months till I had my first customer, but now it's growing much slower. There's a lot more competition and still trying to figure out where I fit in / how to market it among all the competition. I was originally positioned as a security focused product, but now pivoting to more of a marketing/deliverability product. But to be honest not really sure where it's going, but still fighting the fight.

[fellowniusmonk]

Overnight with a really solid idea with good timing where I understood the space.

The same idea with bad timing (rentry after a fantastic exit that I juiced with a condition to not renter the space for 3 years and a subsequent launch just prior to covid), never, because I'm not going to spend my own money on getting it off the ground again post covid.

I've got 3 things working now that are 10 years in the making if they ever succeed.

I tinker. Ideas aren't actually worthless like so many people say but the devil is in the time/space/implementation details.

I think the slowdown with ycombinator successea is exactly because they went hard in choosing teams over ideas when the ideas and their framing are in fact reflective of the teams.

[asdev]

Can you clarify more on your "overnight success"?

[fellowniusmonk]

Yeah, I worked for a company in a relationship/middle man space that solved a major discovery problem at the time.

Due to some perverse incentives in the industry as well as some protectionism and legal chilling none of the players actually solved their customers fundemental problem. They got stuck as these weird tweener lifestyle companies.

I quit, moved to a cheap studio apartment in Brasil for 3 months (we still had a bully in the space put together a bs packet and used their connections to get some FBI agents to show up on our doorstep only to drop everything after our little interview), coded out a marketplace play and launched it.

Ycombinator flew us out but declined and a group in a smaller market gave us the only money we ever had to raise. Due to the fact that we built a legitimately fun marketplace play that solved a lot of frustrations in the space Scott Hanselman tweeted us out to his followers and that was all we needed to get the exposure and google juice ball rolling.

Due to the industries continuing perverse incentives, I could start the same company again tomorrow except it would take a big ad words dump of cash and I don't want to pull out of my own pocket yet again (I did just prior to covid but it's an industry that was totally shut down during covid and I no longer have the appetite.)

So by overnight I mean, we started generating huge buzz in the industry and 10x traffic of established players overnight and middlemen don't have motes so we never really had to raise, it was just the time to code out the platform and get it populated with data at the MVP level.

[0x20cowboy]

To help with any survivorship bias, 30 years in still no where close to success.

[krschacht]

I’ve been starting companies my whole career. My first real one was a software dev shop while in college, I sold it my senior year and dropped out. It wasn’t much of a financial success but it was more fun than typical college job. So sure, a success by my standards but not by most others.

My next one paid me a salary, but I had a falling out with my cofounder and sold my shares for very little to get away. Success? I felt like it, again, maybe externally.

Two duds after that, one I raised money for so I got paid a salary and I sold it to recoup most of investors money.

The one after that was a big hit: we grew to 50 employees, 8 figures in revenue and 9 figure exit.

I like to say: if I could find the perfect job, it’s much easier to work for someone else than start my own thing. But I have specific interests I want to chase so creating a company is my way to create the “perfect” job for myself. If you take this approach, it’s much more likely to be successful in your own eyes.

[d--b]

It took about 2 years to succeed in letting go of that business idea.

[stldev]

I started coding AddonInteractive/AddonChat in 2001 shortly after graduating. A simple Java-based chat SaaS. When I felt it was good enough I put up a web site and started marketing.

Within six months of starting development I had my first customer- who hated my product's bugs, but helped me find and offered ideas for improvements. A year later I was at $30k ARR. That doubled year after year for some time before leveling out. It was enough to live comfortably for ~15 years, but nobody mistook me for wealthy.

No exit opportunities.

I didn't start by dwelling on ideas. Some parity has to come first, then add value. I looked at companies building things of interest to me that I knew to be attainable wrt time and money. I emulated in my own style what they did best, I avoided or improved upon what they did poorly and I shouldered my way into the market. Above all, I listened to my customers and followed their lead.

[1970-01-01]

About a year for positive ROI under this weak definition of success. Just make something useful that solves a problem and keep the price(s) reasonable. That's really all there is to it.

[mlitwiniuk]

Define "to succeed".

Had one business (dev shop) that was successfully aqui-hired - but it took my 10 years to build it.

For last two years working on a startup, pivotel last year to GRC / compliance management. Finally with profit and growing number of paying customers, but still waiting to pay myself a decent salary. Moments of doubt are hiting more often recently, but I still think it's worth it.

[asdev]

To succeed, I mean product market fit, or the business being healthy enough from the founders perspective with minimal(always non zero) doubts.

Did you have experience in that space? Are you a solo founder?

[mlitwiniuk]

Had experience with compliance before, now building on it and learning a ton. Growing number of customers suggest I’m onto something, so doubts are minimal

And yes, solo founder.

[nubb]

i decided i’ve succeeded, took myself out of the rat race, spend my days golfing and day trading.

maybe you’ve already succeeded and don’t know it

[pryelluw]

Been working on something since 2020. Working on another thing for the past three. Just soft launched the later. Will launch the older project later this year. Been using it daily since 2020 as a way to dog food it. If you take the long way there it’s more fun.

[guybedo]

i'll tell you if it ever happens

[Cider9986]

I'm not an Entrepreneur, but I will probably become fairly well-off, slowly by following the Bogleheads strategy.

[30minAdayHN]

There is a huge assumption here that being an Entrepreneur, the only desire and success definition is to become well-off. Assuming your statement in good faith, it is not the only outcome. So offering Boggleheads strategy as an alternative or get the same outcome as Entrepreneurship is misinformed. I've come across a few friends when I shared I was building something or working for a startup, their immediate question was "Did you not get a job at Google?" :)

There are many people out there who enjoy building. Even if it gets very low traction and doesn't make them life changing fortune, people enjoy it. Along the way, they might make some money. Of course, there are also a lot of people who get on to this journey with the primary goal of making it big. We should not look at the "side-effects" and think that is the cause.

[Cider9986]

You're right in that I made the mistake by not responding to the original prompt of the thread, it was specifically directed at entrepreneurs, so I shouldn't have answered with a passive wealth building strategy. I totally took it off topic, like if a diabetic asked how to manage diabetes, I essentially answered that if you don't have diabetes, you don't have to worry about it.

I more latched onto the time and succeed part, that's why I answered at all.

But, I never said that entrepreneurship is only about money, or that it can be replaced, I simply shared a way to succeed in life, which I think is cool.

There is something to be said for wealth equaling success, however. If happiness is success and wealth buys happiness, which it does[1], then wealth is success, in my book. Success is relative, for someone, they could be poor and unhappy, but have lots of kids and think that's what success means. I think it's about happiness in life.

I think it's cool that people can succeed(gain happiness from not worrying about finance, among other benefits of wealth) even without taking on all that risk and burden of entrepreneurship.

I definitely respect people building things. I was just sharing my personal path.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2024/02/12/money-b...

PS: It seems I started a trend of "entrepreneur" being capitalized, whoops :)

[downbad_]

Which is?

[Cider9986]

Here[1], you can learn about it. It's simple, but not easy.

For me, it means buying Fidelity 0 funds in a Roth IRA and not selling them.

[1]https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_...

[alphawhisky]

Autoinvest diversely and don't sell. Minimize transactions. Never invest based on the news.

[aristofun]

I was successful since the moment I was born.