Slashdot Mirror

How many kids do you have? Are you supporting a spouse?

I will readily admit that I have made monetary mistakes, primarily gambling that one of my business ventures would take off. I do not have $20,000 easily available to me; in fact I have debt that I am working on.

I am certainly not ashamed of myself, although I would not do the same things the same way again.

Your attitude indicates to me that one or more of the following apply to you:

• your extended family is relatively well off and has supported (or at least not required support from) you
• you are single with a good income and have been for some time
• you are half of a DINK couple

I would say that you also have good money management skills, but $35k for a lexus brings that into question for me. I have not spent any signficant sum on such luxuries, unless you count taking months off working for The Man to build my own projects a luxury. Which I personally do...

You're obviously a troll rather than interested in honest conversation, but someone worthwhile might be interested in the response, so I'll give one.

You're dead wrong. I have been extremely fortunate, not in my financial start (I once couldn't go to school for a week because we couldn't afford a new pair of shoes), but in my intellectual start. I was lucky enough to get a full scholarship, and I make a healthy six figures in middle America, so I'm doing fine financially.

I have taken off work multiple times and completed the work I went after (with the exception of the first time). I am no marketer, and I find the things most marketers do to be disgustingly self-serving. I have failed in business, at least so far.

Remember that the first two of those were done 7-9 years ago, so any argument that I was copying existing projects mindlessly is BS.

I am no stranger to risk. My point stands: people who can rely on their parents to bail them out if a risk fails have a huge advantage in business (and in life in general, of course). Regardless of any "fairness" issue, it is to our advantage as a society to do our best to see that people who could improve our lives get a chance to do so, with as much chance of success as makes sense when the risks & rewards are weighed.

Honestly, I probably never could have taken the risks I did if I hadn't had the genetic & environmental luck I've had - I can't see how someone living on $50k can afford to take enough time out to get anything at all done when they have a family to feed.

Of course, being 17, you probably have never thought of what taking a financial risk means when you have real responsibility.

Usually computer engineers have a very poor estimation on that part of the project.

Amen to that!

I worked on this about seven years ago: http://www.magicosm.net/
And wrote this five years ago: http://frimp.net/ (basically an easier to use version of Craigslist with better coverage)
And this about three years ago: http://www.moochmuch.com/
And this last year: http://www.itunes.com/apps/Pharce

My net *loss* for all this activity (compared to what I would have earned had I not taken a sabbatical from work, not considering all the time I worked in evenings/weekends while I had a full time job) is about $180,000.

My reasons for failure:
For the first one, I really probably have to chalk it up to idiocy on two fronts: we didn't make it playable/fun early in development and have early releases, and when Sun showed us off at the 2001 Game Developer's Convention and *offered to have us on stage at Java One*, I decided I couldn't afford to pay to stay another week in San Jose. The other idiocy was not ours: a funder expressed some interest, then when I talked to them they decided there was no market for another fantasy game. (This was before Dark Ages of Camelot and long before World of Warcraft.)

The problem with the second and third one is that I don't know how to advertise, or they were just bad ideas. The advertising income barely pays for hosting.

The fourth one may still come to something. It has certainly earned more money than the others. I still have no idea how to market/publicize/advertise effectively.

Coming up with a good idea and implementing is hard, but it is nowhere near enough to be successful as an entrepeneur. You need to either make the commitment to become the kind of person who can do sales and marketing, or find someone who is to partner with, or get very lucky.

In short: take the money. Building something great is *not* enough to be successful in business.

I'm not sure you have age on me - I'm not old but I'm not a pup. (36 yrs). I also have some very bright friends who I have a decade on who have much the same outlook as you.

If I had that outlook I think (or maybe I only hope again) I would devote my life to doing my bit to save the human race. (Confucius, Jesus and Martin Luther King did some pretty impressive stuff, and started off as nobodies.)

As it is, I think I do better to just try to raise good children and provide some services (Frimp and MoochMuch) that make the world at least a tiny bit better place.

I started a localized sale and give-away site. All of the functionality is there - list items, post pictures, print a flier, search by zipcode & range, get automatic emails when new items matching a search appear, etc.

I emailed the owners of Freecycle looking for a partnership, and got no response. My guess is that they thought a site that allowed local search would steal their thunder, and didn't want to pitch it to their users, but I think their ability for people to give people a local community of like-minded people would go great with my ability to let people search by range instead of grouping with an arbitrary boundary.

We don't support creating the flier for you yet, but it's next on our to-do list. Yes, we know the site is ugly. We're working on it. It works like a champ, though.

We use Xith3D (primary written by our main client developer), a Java3D workalike. Xith3D was spun off in response to Sun's news that Java3D would no longer be supported. Sun's decision may have been reversed; I'm not entirely sure.

Anyway, we have slick looking 3D that performs just fine; comparably to other engines. It's on top of an API (Xith3D/Java3D) that sits on top of opengl.

There have been several good 3D java games displayed at the GDCs, stuff from FullSail and GetAmped.

By the way, the project is currently going through a lull as I work on another side project (an online yard sale) and the primary client developer has had to leave the team to spend more time with his family. Send us a note at jobs@magicosm.net if you want to help out as a developer, 3D artist, system administrator, or (especially) investor!

Buy from your neighbors - it's cheaper, there's no shipping, quicker service, and a lot less hassle.

We're building a website to help you connect with your neighbors and buy their stuff. It's basically a yard sale that is always going on. Our goal is to let you sign up and have stuff for sale in less than 5 minutes, without asking for intrusive personal information. You can also just browse around to see what your neighbors are giving away for free and/or selling.

Check us out at http://www.frimp.net