I bet the additional friction of asking for an address means most people don't bother doing anything.
Look at how many people nowadays just send a Facebook Happy Birthday message instead of a real card. In fact, I bet there is even an autoresponder in IFTTT to help send auto birthday messages.
Who know's what is real nowadays.
If it only takes 4 clicks to send a real gift to thank someone (or wish them a Happy Christmas), then this little app might be easy enough to help more of us connect with our virtual friends
I'm not trying to whine, I saw a problem and I'm asking for help fixing that problem in return for my time and money. Also, I have a job.
Me and my girlfriend have a great relationship and I do everything I can to make sure she's happy.
I have a lot more than $5000 to show for it. That's is just what I have for a side project.
I don't fail at everything. I'm only 23, and I think I've achieved quite a lot for my age. I wouldn't say all of my ideas have failed, but I aim high and I feel like I'm failing overall.
What do you do to make sure you're happy? No one wants to hang around with, invest in or buy something from someone who isn't happy.
Find yourself first. Everything else will fall into place. I'm not saying you need to break it off, but put yourself on equal ground and see what happens. You'll learn a lot about yourself and her.
Personal stuff aside, heed the advice of so many others: Get a job, be great at it. Take every opportunity to learn and think of new ideas, new ways to create value and grow.
Wow, maybe if you're in it for the short term, but if you want a long term relationship or marriage, that "make, sure I'm happy" mantra sure ain't going to work.
Imagine if we had that attitude with our children? Or mother?
If you're not happy, whatever you do, your unhappiness will be contagious, and people close to you will catch it too. Have you ever talked to someone unhappy pretending everything is fine, and how comfortable were you in talking about happy topics about you to said person, and were you tempted to ask the other person what's bothering them?
Therefore, for others to be happy, you must be happy first. You cannot rely on other's happiness to lift you up and IMHO you should not let your own unhappiness fester and drag everyone around you down.
Imagine a child, whose parents come home in a bad mood everyday, though they do everything to make the child happy except changing their own mood, will the child grow up as a well-rounded individual?
Eh, your above comment was still pretty misguided:
> That's the wrong way around. Do everything to make sure you are happy, with or without her. It's up to her if she wants to be happy with you.
...though you're pulling in the right direction here.
It's not either/or; you & your partner have to take care of yourselves, in the context of taking care of your entire family unit. I've been married for 14 years and have 2 kids. If I ignore the balance and either forget to suss out (and attend to) the needs of my partner & kids, or if I try to "do what they want" with no attention to my own needs, it goes poorly for us all. My wife has to do the same thing.
There's work and short-term sacrifice involved; sometimes I do things I wouldn't do, on my own, because I have longer-term goals in mind that rely on my relationships w/ wife & daughters.
But the same applies to us all, and this is something we discuss with our kids all the time -- e.g., "sure, I could clean up all this stuff myself, but I'm probably going to be cranky about it, and we'll have less time to read together this afternoon...".
The truth is that overwhelming majority of businesses fail. Entrepreneurs are not usually excited to brag about their failures publicly so we mostly see the hopeful beginning of all these ventures and not the sad, quiet ending. Though you do get occasional post-mortem stories here on HN (which I think are nice for balance) it is easy to forget about those and get a false impression that you are failing and everybody else is constantly succeeding. If you measure your own experiences against it you can wind up feeling stressed and depressed.
If you do think that the entrepreneurial spirit is something that is burning inside you, and not just peer pressure (of sorts) then I would say, just keep dreaming, keep working and don't dwell on failed projects. Find a personal itch that you would like to scratch. Good luck to you!
Man, the HN crowd is always rough but I agree with the whole "look for a job" advice. Maybe just for a little while; it's not that bad, haha. You're only 23 so you have a lot of time to figure things out. Plus, you'll learn a lot from mentors there too.
I work as a web developer. I have been building eCommerce sites since I was 15~, I'm 23 now! I can do frond-end and back-end development, although I think I'm better at back-end development. I have good experience with HTML/CSS/Javascript, PHP/MySql, Java & Node.js. I also have some experience in building AI systems using ANNs, GAs, etc.
Come on man—you're 23! how many real problems have you even encountered in your life? Let me rephrase that in a way that sounds less dismissive of any personal problems you may have in your life (which are important but not the basis of a startup)—how many problems have you encountered in your life that could be solved by technology or automation that are also shared by people with money who are willing to pay for them?
Get a job that pays well. If you can get a job that pays you well enough to save a little something AND lets you work part-time, that's even better. Take the extra time to work on your ideas, work on learning a new language, read up on things you know nothing about. Because THAT'S where successful startups play. Until you get out and see the world around you, you're not going to see problems you can solve. Its the biggest mistake I made in my 20's, and the biggest mistake I see most people your age making. Work at a crappy job for awhile, learn an industry that has a lot of sucky parts to it, and figure out how to make them better.
Also, FWIW (and something I wish I'd figured out a lot sooner)—most of your friends probably don't share your values, so find some that do, and things like paying your rent and going on vacation to Germany with your girlfriend is as much her responsibility as it is yours. Don't be that guy.
Email's in my profile, feel free to contact me for lots of cranky-old-guy advice.
Do you mind if I ask where you're located? These sort of skills are definitely in demand in plenty of early stage startups that have a toehold, but not a solid position, in a business environment. I'm shooting from the hip based on other responses you've mentioned so far, but it sounds like you've never really had a "real job", where you're putting your skills to work for someone else. Would it be so crazy to suggest you try working for someone else's startup before going off all on your own? That takes a lot of the pressure off of you to have all of the big ideas, but still allows you to work on plenty of interesting problems and see how a business is built.
It sounds to me like you've got plenty of technical experience and might need a little more of the business side of things - how to show the things you've built are valuable. I'm in Cambridge, MA, and I can say with certainty that there are plenty of software shops around here that would claw over each other to get to someone with your skillset.
I'm the least experienced entrepreneur on this website, but if it's help of that sort you need, you've definitely come to the right place.
Both. I learnt to program at 15 when I taught myself PHP to set up an eCommerce site that could automatically create new voice server instances when a user placed an order. I guess you could say that was my first startup.
Since then I've worked with a few different companies on eCommerce sites doing a bit of everything including marketing. I have quite a lot of experience with SEO, pay-per-click and social media marketing. One of my failed startups was a social media marketing startup.
Thanks for the advise and you're right, but this isn't my usual nightly routine. I took her out this weekend, like I do most weekends and I'm taking her away to Germany this summer - she wanted to go ever since I've known her. I'm not the perfect boyfriend, but I really do love my girlfriend and I do everything I can for her. Mine and her happiness comes first, period. The only reason I'm up tonight is because I wish I could give her more.
It sounds like her expectations are way too high, and it's taking a toll on you. Is she your girlfriend, or your wife? It might be a good idea to think long and hard about that.
