How To Go From $0 To $1,000,000 In Two Years
@btmills's retrospective from 2013 captures the critical transition from initial concept to the first dollar of customer revenue.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Early traction rarely comes from passive launches; it requires direct manual outreach, personal network activation, and high-touch customer support.
Narrowing down the target audience to a specific niche allows solo founders to out-position generic horizontal competitors.
Underpricing out of fear of rejection is common; founders who set premium pricing often discover higher customer satisfaction and lower churn.
Community Debate Themes:
Discussions analyzed Show HN launch mechanics, cold DM outreach conversion rates, and the psychology of validating customer demand before writing code.
CATEGORY Zero to One →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 81 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 33 comments
While some of those are good points, I'm convinced that the successful entrepreneurs didn't start by reading a techcrunch article about how to make x amount of money. Sure some get inspired and try, but the real entrepreneurs just get out there and do it. No one has to tell them to take the leap, he (or she) has to tell others that it's perfectly normal for him to take the leap. He's convinced himself that taking a leap and doing it himself is the only way that he can be happy and successful. And that's how I am. I started working for startups as my first job out of high school, I learned a lot, and kept moving up. My parents and rest of my family and friends constantly said and even say now 'When are you going to get a real job with benefits and security?' and I politely say, never.
It's the resilience that is baked into my personality and how I work that I never give up and I always make things happen. It's quite a delusion I'm sure because I have this I can always make it work out mentality while everyone else around me says I'm crazy, but in one way or another I always manage to work it out. I haven't hit a 'home run' yet but I've always worked for myself and always managed to pay the bills. Just in the two years from being out of high school I've come pretty far by my own standards. I'm co-founding a startup now and we just launched two weeks ago at a local university, we gained 1,200 users in just under two weeks at this small college. It's a small victory in a long line of uphill battles along the way to success but it's the only thing I can imagine myself doing. And I'm going to keep doing it.
I highly recommend James Altucher's book, I Was Blind But Now I See. You can get it for $.99 on Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Was-Blind-But-Now-ebook/dp/B005VPXXVM
Its the story of how he built a web design business, exited for ~$12 million, drank himself broke and nearly to death, and then built himself back up (he is a VC now). Its about learning to be happy even though you sometimes feel like you're broken. I drew a lot of lessons from it that help me daily.
I really liked this quote:
"You don’t have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else. And when you are nimble and smaller than the behemoths that are stuck with bureaucracy, you can often offer better sales and better service, and higher touch to your customers. Customers will switch to you."
Still, coming up with the new, new thing can be the most creative & fun.
Altucher is kind of known for his sensationalist article titles. However, in this case the content of the article is solid and pragmatic, particularly the bit about "picking a boring business." If your main goal is to work for yourself, finding a not-so-sexy niche is the way to go. Potentially less competition, more room to breathe, and plenty of opportunity.
"Everyone is always on the lookout for “the next big thing.” The next big thing is finding rare earth minerals on Mars. That’s HARD WORK. Don’t do it! " ..... I disagree.
It almost feels like techcrunch is stooping down to businessinsider style sensationalism.