Is it difficult to start a tech company.

mariaalice · 13-01-2021 10:33am #1

How difficult is it to start a tech company? and make it successful?.

listermint · 13-01-2021 10:34am

Very,

.thanks.

EndaHonesty · 13-01-2021 10:34am

It's so easy, I can't be bothered to do it...

ednwireland · 13-01-2021 10:34am

easy if you have the smarts, the money and the ability

and a 10 or 20 year slog until you get to a point where you can sell it

mariaalice · 13-01-2021 10:48am

Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and the like basically any information-sharing platform have made their founders billionaires in a very short time, so could someone found a system that could replace them.

ShyMets · 13-01-2021 10:53am

Easy. A few power cables, rubber bands, desks and chairs and you can have 10000 jobs in Longford in the morning

SouthWesterly · 13-01-2021 10:55am

ednwireland wrote: »

easy if you have the smarts, the money and the ability

and a 10 or 20 year slog until you get to a point where you can sell it

I was in a company who were in business 10 years and had 5 staff. The economy hadn't recovered and they crashed after being unable to sell.

Atlantic Dawn · 13-01-2021 10:57am

This industry moves so fast it's really hard to tell. That's why you need a name that's cutting-edge, like CutCo, EdgeCom, Interslice.

cms88 · 13-01-2021 10:59am

Well in my experience the likes of Enterprise Ireland etc will just trow money at anything that's even remotely ''tech''. I've seen it myself businesses that have no cusomets etc just an 'idea'' yet have been able to go on for a few years just based on gtants etc

Valhallapt · 13-01-2021 11:01am

If you have to ask, probably not a good idea to start one

mariaalice · 13-01-2021 11:05am

Valhallapt wrote: »

If you have to ask, probably not a good idea to start one

Trump has been effectively de-platformed could another 'twitter' emerge and give him an outlet.

seamus · 13-01-2021 11:06am

mariaalice wrote: »

Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and the like basically any information-sharing platform have made their founders billionaires in a very short time, so could someone found a system that could replace them.

A lot of these platforms are pure luck.

For every Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Insta, there are 1000 entrepreneurs who pumped months into building an almost identical site/platform that just never got the traction. Some of it is about having the money & connections to push the platforms out.

Sometimes it's pure luck that the public chooses to use yours. The one that becomes popular often isn't the best one, the fastest, the easiest to use or the most clever. The trend just picked it and everyone ran with it.

TikTok became popular because hundreds of millions in Chinese money was spent marketing it.

If you're looking to make money in tech, a social media site is not the way any more. If you do come up with a good idea, one of the big players will steal your idea and do it better than you in a fraction of the time.

The money now is in finding ways either to change a traditional industry into a technology-first model - like Revolut - or identifying existing technologies that can be made a lot better - like Stripe.

mariaalice wrote: »

Trump has been effectively de-platformed could another 'twitter' emerge and give him an outlet.

That was already tried. A platform called "Parler" set itself up on the basis that it wouldn't censor people like Twitter does, and it became very popular with conservatives and bigots for a while.
Parler was pulled down after it became clear that the platform was being used to incite and organise violence.

There's a fairly constant rule in public platforms that Parler missed; To maintain a healthy "melting pot" of voices, you have to carefully moderate the content. If you don't, eventually bias creeps in as one point of view begins to dominate and all of the others leave. In particular, completely unmoderated platforms always end up with nothing but racism, violence and child porn.

PhilOssophy · 13-01-2021 11:07am

Easy to start any company.
Hard to be successful.
Also it can be hard to decipher what attracts people to some companies / platforms. Zoom is a perfect example, it had absolutely no USP yet once Covid hit, a previously unheard of platform was a world-wide brand. In spite of Skype, Google Hangouts, etc having been in that market for years.
Revolut is another good example, and now the banking sector here is trying to come up with a counter-plan to go head-to-head, but Revolut might just have too much of a foothold in the market?
Another good example is Microsoft and their browsers, no matter what they do people don't want to know about Edge.
Sometimes, it is just a bit of luck that a tech company needs.
What are you trying to do with this company OP?

listermint · 13-01-2021 11:08am

mariaalice wrote: »

Trump has been effectively de-platformed could another 'twitter' emerge and give him an outlet.

Was waiting for this

Knew it from the first post.

PhilOssophy · 13-01-2021 11:11am

listermint wrote: »

Was waiting for this

Knew it from the first post.

Any company that would hang their name, reputation, etc on Trump right now, would need their head examined.

B.A._Baracus · 13-01-2021 11:13am

mariaalice wrote: »

Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and the like basically any information-sharing platform have made their founders billionaires in a very short time, so could someone found a system that could replace them.

Something will replace Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.
Facebook took Bebo and MySpace market share. There was actually another video sharing website a few short years before YouTube but most of the world didn't have broadband connections / decent connections at the time.

The problem is the companies that will replace are in fact one in a billion. Their stars will align right. Like there are thousands of Facebook clones out there by people who had the same idea of being the next Facebook. They weren't.

It's Survivorship bias - We only look at, or even hear, those who are successful. But we never hear of the thousands (more even) who fail.

So to answer your original question of is it hard? - it is extremely hard. However, should you not try then it is impossible. But most of the companies that will become the next big internet thing have millions invested in them to grow. Again, Survivorship bias that we could focus on those three ex-google employees who set up YouTube from their garage.

mariaalice · 13-01-2021 11:14am

listermint wrote: »

Was waiting for this

Knew it from the first post.

It interested me. I would also be wondering how come so many of the companies emerge from California and to a lesser extent, China why not Iceland for example or why did Vine fail but Snapchat takes off? They are interesting questions.

D3V!L · 13-01-2021 11:19am

I started a cloud services company in my shed with 3 other like minded people. We have an amazing product but for some reason no one will take us seriously.

If anyone here is interested you can contact me directly at d3v!lsuperhypercompuglobalmega.net

Valhallapt · 13-01-2021 11:21am

mariaalice wrote: »

It interested me. I would also be wondering how come so many of the companies emerge from California and to a lesser extent, China why not Iceland for example or why did Vine fail but Snapchat takes off? They are interesting questions.

Initially a very competitive venture capital ecosystem, willing to fund these experiments in the hope that one of their investments goes big. We don’t really have that in Ireland, Enterprise Ireland poisoned the eco system.

seamus · 13-01-2021 11:24am

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

The problem is the companies that will replace are in fact one in a billion. Their stars will align right. Like there are thousands of Facebook clones out there by people who had the same idea of being the next Facebook. They weren't.

I had a family friend once get in touch with me to see if I could help him set up a social media site.

I asked for more detail of what he was thinking and it was, "Like Facebook...but for Yoga".

Facebook Pages were a thing at this point, so I asked him if that's what he was looking for, but he was insistent that no, it had to be its own site for Yoga people to join up and add their friends, etc etc. I explained it wasn't simple, but it was doable, however he needed to go off and have a proper think about what he wanted, how it should look, how it works, etc, before it can be built.

I never heard from him about it again.

beerguts · 13-01-2021 11:33am

If it is a new social media site that you are planning op there are examples of ones that are reasonably successful. I use goodreads quite a bit for book reviews and chatting to people with similar interests (sadomatist movement in 1920s imperial Japan. Pre tojo guidelines specifically ðŸ˜‚).
However a lot of the niche ones that would be popular already have options already so it might be hard to get yours noticed if it doesn't have unique features. If that is what you intend

irishgrover · 13-01-2021 11:36am

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Any company that would hang their name, reputation, etc on Trump right now, would need their head examined.

not really, ignoring the morals, there is a big potential market in American racists

ohnonotgmail · 13-01-2021 11:39am

seamus wrote: »

I had a family friend once get in touch with me to see if I could help him set up a social media site.

I asked for more detail of what he was thinking and it was, "Like Facebook...but for Yoga".

Facebook Pages were a thing at this point, so I asked him if that's what he was looking for, but he was insistent that no, it had to be its own site for Yoga people to join up and add their friends, etc etc. I explained it wasn't simple, but it was doable, however he needed to go off and have a proper think about what he wanted, how it should look, how it works, etc, before it can be built.

I never heard from him about it again.

I bet they wanted you to do all the work for no pay as well.

AlmightyCushion · 13-01-2021 11:42am

D3V!L wrote: »

I started a cloud services company in my shed with 3 other like minded people. We have an amazing product but for some reason no one will take us seriously.

If anyone here is interested you can contact me directly at d3v!lsuperhypercompuglobalmega.net

The cloud? Ha ha ha, look at this caveman still doing things with the cloud. That's yesterday's news, grandpa. It's all about AI and blockchain. Pivot to a blockchain AI company or an AI blockchain company and you be rolling in it.

AlmightyCushion · 13-01-2021 11:44am

seamus wrote: »

A lot of these platforms are pure luck.

For every Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Insta, there are 1000 entrepreneurs who pumped months into building an almost identical site/platform that just never got the traction. Some of it is about having the money & connections to push the platforms out.

Sometimes it's pure luck that the public chooses to use yours. The one that becomes popular often isn't the best one, the fastest, the easiest to use or the most clever. The trend just picked it and everyone ran with it.

TikTok became popular because hundreds of millions in Chinese money was spent marketing it.

If you're looking to make money in tech, a social media site is not the way any more. If you do come up with a good idea, one of the big players will steal your idea and do it better than you in a fraction of the time.

The money now is in finding ways either to change a traditional industry into a technology-first model - like Revolut - or identifying existing technologies that can be made a lot better - like Stripe.

That was already tried. A platform called "Parler" set itself up on the basis that it wouldn't censor people like Twitter does, and it became very popular with conservatives and bigots for a while.
Parler was pulled down after it became clear that the platform was being used to incite and organise violence.

There's a fairly constant rule in public platforms that Parler missed; To maintain a healthy "melting pot" of voices, you have to carefully moderate the content. If you don't, eventually bias creeps in as one point of view begins to dominate and all of the others leave. In particular, completely unmoderated platforms always end up with nothing but racism, violence and child porn.

Even money and connections don't guarantee success. Look at Google Plus. It was a better product than Facebook (at least in my opinion) and had Google's weight and resources behind it and it still flopped.

irishgrover · 13-01-2021 11:53am

I've been involved in a number of different tech startups in a number of different countries (US and Ireland) in the 90's. It was very very hard work and an incredibly great crack.
I made 1.2million when I was 26

, I lost 1.16milion when I was 27

.
I also got badly burned (6 figures) when I was 32 and had a mortgage and 2 small kids.
None of these companies still exist. Some were bought out by bigger companies, some went bankrupt.
I gave up being a risk-taker when child #3 and #4 arrived. I am now a boring corporate whore but I can pay my mortgage. Am turning 50 this year, I think there might be one more mad bastard risk-taking effort left in me.

Mimon · 13-01-2021 11:56am

ednwireland wrote: »

easy if you have the smarts, the money and the ability

and a 10 or 20 year slog until you get to a point where you can sell it

Heard a commentator saying that this should not be the goal for successful Irish tech companies.

If we ever want to be on the same level as silicon valley we should be holding onto them and growing them to be giants.

Suppose tempting to get a 10s of millions buy out but we should be more ambitious than this as an end goal.

Ubbquittious · 13-01-2021 12:07pm

9 out of 10 fail.

I am trying to start one myself. Mainly because if I were to spend the rest of my days working for a boss without having tried starting one I will end up kicking myself

Am under no illusions about the thing. If by the end of the year Im able to eke a living out of it I'll call it a success. Highly doubt I'll ever be a millionaire from it and I need to do a pile of work over the coming months to get to that point.

The Tetrarch · 13-01-2021 12:11pm

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Any company that would hang their name, reputation, etc on Trump right now, would need their head examined.

How about setting up a public relations company to improve Trump's image?

zom · 13-01-2021 12:21pm

mariaalice wrote: »

How difficult is it to start a tech company? and make it successful?.

..and then sell it for pile of gold to some of internet moguls and party till the end of my life

For Forks Sake · 13-01-2021 1:09pm

irishgrover wrote: »

I made 1.2million when I was 26 , I lost 1.16milion when I was 27 .

You either bought a football club, or a racehorse

Is it difficult to start a tech company.

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