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Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

(medium.com)
2101 points jamesjyu | 1 comments | 07 Feb 19 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.204s | source
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AznHisoka ◴[07 Feb 19 16:03 UTC] No.19106033[source]▶
I wasn't interested in the emotional story behind this. But I did resonate with 1 line in particular here: "It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth."

This is so true, in my experience. You hit a roadblock in recurring revenue, not because your product doesn't have enough features, or your team sucks, but simply: your market is smaller than you thought.

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1. WilliamEdward ◴[07 Feb 19 17:48 UTC] No.19106856[source]▶
This is weird because... I've noticed the opposite. Often markets are way bigger than you think; or rather, 1000 users for a product seems small but is actually quite a decent size depending on how much effort has been put in.

What it comes down to is being content that you will not always make a billion dollar product. With that in mind, a big market has many definitions. Maybe you should have paid attention to the emotional aspect.