thewizardofaus

I remember trying to teach myself python when I was 9 years old. I downloaded a book and couldn't understand how while and if statements could be used to build a functioning program that does something cool... So I stopped... Learnt Matlab 10 years later for 1st year university and the rest is history.

I come up with solutions to solve my own problems. You get better at finishing things the more you finish things.

This has been my observation too.

VC backed competitors can spend 10-50x marketing spend of early bootstrapped companies quite easily.

"Once you get an offer, try to generate competing offers from your key relationships"

I've always seen the statement of getting competing offers but how does it actually work in reality?

Is it as simple as contacting the key decision maker from competitor and saying...

"I've got an offer X, what can you do?"

Not sure about conferences but I run a sports tech hardware bootstrapped business. Feel free to drop me a line (email in profile)

Solo founder; it tends to change rapidly depending on the stage of the product.

Probably 90% of the time writing code currently. Once the hardware product is released publicly it drops to 10% (maintenance) and then ramps up when new significant features are added.

Broadly speaking..

Stage 1: design specs 0% code

Stage 2: prototyping 50% code

Stage 3: the hard work 90% code

Stage 4: selling and maintenance 10%+

As much as I enjoy linux.. it's just a real pain to use daily for work.

Hackintosh a T480 and it's the best of both worlds.

Bootstrap,solo founder. Everyday is tough but I'm making it work. Had to pick up some side consulting work to make ends meet.

I had a quick skim through the paper; but I may have missed the breakdowns by sport.

It would be interesting to see the statistics for sports that pay extremely well (NFL, Soccer, etc) compared to the Tier-2 sports (Volleyball, Track and Field, etc).

Tier-2 athletes have always had to juggle the prospect of never earning enough money with their sport and hence have had to focus on education too.

It's not surprising that after sporting careers the skills of being at the top of your sport (ambition, adversity, etc) transfer to Business and Finance.

A crucial point the post misses is the distinction between motivation and discipline.

Ultimately it's easy to work on things when they are fun and exciting; but motivation will only last for so long... once that happens it's the discipline that needs to take over for you to keep progressing forward.

Started a hardware startup from my background in sport. It's very tough, especially being the only employee & founder.

This concept does already exist to a certain degree. Single Player Project (SPP) for World of Warcraft is one example.

"The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements" by Sam Kean

I am sole founder of a bootstrapped hardware startup.

My main competitor is iOS only. As I'm the only developer Flutter allowed me to create both iOS and Android apps simultaneously (with some tweaking).

My customer base is approximately 80% iOS / 20% Android.

Covid fatigue is no joke.

As an Elite Athlete I'm training 20-30 hours a week. I got covid last year (triple vaxed) and it wiped me out for a good 6 months. It took me 3 weeks to be able to walk longer than a minute without needing to lay down for the rest of the day and sleep.

I have dealt with fatigue problems for 6 months and only just now, do I feel like I'm getting "back to normal".

The most frustrating thing is alot of people are dismissive of the symptoms and generally say, "Oh yeah, I get tired too" but fail to understand the severity of it as they haven't experienced it.

I have a fairly good understanding of my body and the associated symptoms of overtraining/fatigue in a heavy training cycle but covid fatigue was soemthing completely different.