I've come to terms with the fact that I'm a shitty entrepreneur.

Reminds me of an old joke:

What do you call the guy who graduated med school at the bottom of his class?

"Doctor."

In all seriousness, $150MRR is no small feat. You're an entrepreneur. Full stop. You built something and released it, and other people out there want to pay you money for it. No middle-manager asked you to make something; no CEO created a company-wide plan that spurred you to do this. This was your own initiative, your own knowledge, and your own execution, start to finish. That's worth something.

The only reason you feel like a "shitty" entrepreneur is because you're comparing yourself to something that's not even tangentially related to you. The competitors you mentioned? Maybe they're reporting false numbers. Maybe they had a financial boost from mom and dad. Maybe (probably) they have a completely different roadmap for their product, or have tapped a unique network of people that allows them to scale in a way that's different from your own.

Point is, comparing ourselves to others is how we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We've already done so much to win, and yet we sabotage ourselves into defeat.

Keep at it :) You may feel like a loser from your vantage point, but not from mine :)

I spent 8 years, built and launched about 25 products, none of them made any money, all failed pretty miserably. Learned a ton, then launched Logojoy (now Looka) and we're doing $10M+ ARR. It just takes time. Keep on keepin' on.

There's a bunch of related content & comments on this post: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/im-lost-somebody-please-mentor-me-de1fe4802d

@schoon essentially said: "A product doesn't get users just because it's made" and "It's normal that my product is not popular currently".

One of the quotes that pops up while IH is loading is "struggling looks a lot like failure right up until it's success".

These days getting anyone to open their wallets for anything is extremely challenging so the fact you have $150 MRR is absolutely a win.

Keep going, you'll get it. And feel free to post here if you need help or support, that's what we're here for.

First of all, I want to say I'm your fan! I was always a shitty student in my life. I remember in high school seeing other students shining, and I kept telling myself I didn't care, but the truth I did care.
I launched my first startup in my twenties. I worked for months coding and building the product by myself. After launch, I did all the marketing stuff, some growth hacking, and a few months later I reached 10k MRR. I started building a team and I was very excited to "build something big". The company started to grow, I started to get more and more confident. I got an acquisition offer at that time from a small-medium company. They offered me shares to work with them. I turned it down because I wanted to be bigger than they were. I was very committed and confident that I could achieve that. A few years later, I was stalled. In the first offer I received, I sold the business for almost none.
Oh, that first company who wanted to acquire me? Yeah, they IPOed at NASDAQ at $15 billion valuation. I felt like I bought a pizza with Bitcoin in 2010 (at least the pizza was good).
I joined another startup as CTO/partner, we went from 6 to more than 100 people working in less than 2 years. Wild ride. I got some experience and decided to quit, move to another country, and start a new project. I spent more than a year coding and building the product. After launch, no one interested. Did some marketing and stuff, 6 months later… ZERO customers, ZERO revenue. That was devasting for me!
My takeaway: sometimes you can have experience and be smart, but there are a lot of random variables involved in whatever your call success.
Being an entrepreneur is like playing a card game. The more you study and practice the better you become, but it doesn't guarantee that you are going to win that game. I got a good hand in my first attempt, but maybe I didn't know how to play that well.
I believe the most important thing is to stay in the game, the right set of cards will eventually come to you. You seem to be a very smart guy, be gritty, and I'm pretty sure you will get your desired outcome.

I've launched like 6-7 projects in the last 10 years that didn't generate anything until I hit something good.

I felt really bad during all those tries but each time I learned something. I'm sure that without those experiences I couldn't be where I am right now.

You say you're persisting and moving forward, but are you focusing on the right things? A lot of folks build shit and expect people to come.

You mention bumping around in the dark, what's your last 6 months of effort even looked like? Are you building content? Are you trying to figure out if you have product market fit? Are you spending more time building than you are marketing and doing sales?

Why do you think your competitor is doing so well? You say they deserve it, but why is that? What did they do differently than you did?

I've failed more times than I've succeeded, but when I've succeeded, it's been worth it. Not trying to humblebrag or anything, but the real of it is that every time I've fallen on my fucking face, I've learned something. And every time I've learned something, the next thing I've done is orders of magnitude better.

Have you learned anything from this or are you planning to go through the rest of your life thinking you peaked in high school?

$150mrr is better than loss. My past project in 2 year of hardwork make only $0 and I try to move on, learn from mistake and don't compare yourself with other.

I am like you, thinking my conventional achievements like being the class topper and countless medals and achievements meant I can succeed at something as unconventional as entrepreneurship. But the conventional and unconventional world are completely orthogonal. I learned that my past achievements helped me get this far, but they've served their purpose and won't take me farther. You're at the edge of a frontier. Nothing will help you besides the brilliance that you have which was acknowledged by others through them giving you awards!

Reading this all feels very familiar to how I felt when I was in my early/mid 20s with the same struggle. Lots of other comments have great business advice, so I'll just share some mindset advice that I found very useful then, and still do today.

There's a part of all of us that links our self-worth to our success in business. Sometimes I think business success will prove people wrong who doubted me, or it will impress women, or make my parents proud of me. It will confirm the story I've been telling myself about who I am since I was young - smart, successful, good.

A lot of your emotions right now seem to be driven from that place too. You made the link early on that "I did good things in school" therefore "I am a good, successful person".

I think that's true for lots of us. And it carries into adulthood as:

"A successful startup" = "I'm a good person."

This can give us drive and ambition, but it can be surprisingly destructive if we don't recognise it. Essentially we think we're trying to build successful businesses, but we're actually trying to prove that we are successful people, and (more often than you'd think), those goals actually conflict with one another.

I'd often put the pressure on myself to have the exact right idea and the brilliant solution. Because that's what proves I'm a very smart entrepreneur, right?

But this just made me much less likely to seek negative feedback on my project, to change when things weren't working, to listen to what customers really need.

The business needed all of these things to grow and succeed, but they were in direct conflict with my (subconscious) personal goal of being the smart one with the right ideas.

So much of the language in your post was focused on you, not the business you were trying to build.

"I'm a painfully-average person"
"if anyone can be anymore average"
"what did I do to suck so freaking badly?"

I feel you bro. I do this too. When I think of my entrepreneurship as a way to prove my self-worth to myself and others, it feels good at the start, when you're imagining how successful it will be. But it always leads to misery.

Imagine telling that voice in your head that needs the personal validation to take a back-seat for a while, then rewriting your post from that mindset.

It would probably be an excited post, about how you've solved $150/mo worth of customer problems. That's clearly not enough, but it's a start. That's relationships that have been started with customers. What more do they want or need? Maybe it's tweaks to this service or maybe it's something new. Doesn't really matter, because you're eager to solve interesting problems, you don't have anything else to prove.

i feel as if i wrote this for you:

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/lets-keep-building-4bd79e293b

i love you. keep going.

$150 MRR. Right.

First thing is first. You did a great job, success is relative. Some people don't even have the guts to build anything. You crossed the first hurdle.

If people are willing to give you money for your product, chances are that there are many others like them. You just have to find them.

Treat your current customers like your idols. Get as much feedback from them. See what they like and how you can improve. Turn them into your ambassadors.

Your competition is making $5K MRR? Why? Better product? Improve yours. Better marketing, learn marketing and enlist the help of other people. I am sure there will be IH that'd be willing to give you solid marketing/growth tips for free.

Customers and Mentors will give you blunt responses and help you figure out what is wrong.

Failure is synonymous with entrepreneurship. Rising from failure is what matters. To be honest, you aren't a shitty entrepreneur. Never allow yourself to be sucked up into the self pity party.

Take it as a challenge and see how you can improve. If things don't work out, it doesn't matter. Take what you have learned and do something new or join another team.

one of my favorite quotes, often attributed to churchill or lincoln, is

success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

gotta keep hustling until something works. if it were easy, everybody would do it! :)

a lot of us are all in the same boat... i've made countless websites and iphone apps that have generated little to no profit. finally my 5th app seems to be getting a little traction (not even $150MRR though!), but it's headed in the right direction and i'm getting ready to market hard once the quarantine is lifted. and i launched it june 2018! XD

we have to remember why we're doing it, for the low days. you might make and print a "moodboard" to hang above your computer, with all the reasons you're hacking away; maybe it's to spend more time with your family, or for a dream house, financial independence, time to travel, etc. whatever it is for you.

Omg I dream of $150 MRR. Been at it for 6 years. Best outcome was 3 sales totalling like $20 for the whole duration of the project. I'm sure we're not so different, so I'll remember my words here when I finally do get to $150 and feel disappointed :D

You're being way too hard on yourself, plus your past doesn't have anything to do with your entrepreneurship. You're clearly not resting on your laurels because you're trying. There's nothing wrong with being average even if you were, it's a strength if you want to "get" the majority of people. $150 MRR is awesome!!! You made money appear from nowhere basically just your hard work.

P.S. "Comparison is the thief of joy." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d49sNUAfERQ

First year I didn’t make more than 300 mrr. I read the same success stories as yourself. I guess I was just in awe that I was making money on the internet from a product + developing and building my own apps.
I think expectations run pretty deep psychologically and can really colour your perception of things.

Also, if you do succeed eventually. Software is a very different business to the majority. 90%+ profit margins, very small risk as a boostrapper. Compared to opening a restaurant or many others

Good luck mate.

There is no bigger achievement than learning from our failures, whatever the failures might be.

With very little context, I just think you're yet to hit your peak. But if you keep going, you surely will. Now is not the time to feel down, mate. Btw, what is your product about?

"Remember that failure is an event, not a person." - Zig Ziglar.
Dude, can you hear that cracking sound?
That's my heart breaking from this post.
I won't repeat all the amazing things everyone is saying, that $150MRR is pretty great for 6 months, or that you have to be of growth mindset, all true!
I will say one thing - please go back to loving yourself!
You are awesome, you tried, you had some success, you're still learning, and most importantly - you're awesome!
If you feel like talking, hit me up on https://calendly.com/jonathanoron and I'll do my best to give you an adrenalin boost.
Shit, I hate these moments, we've all had them, find someone to give you a hug man, catch your breath, and remember that you're awesome!

No worries buddy, been around a year with https://www.colorsandfonts.com and I just made 78 Euros...

Edit: despite I get from 300 to 600 users daily and 750 subscribers..

Sometimes success isn't measured by how much money we make, but maybe by all the lessons we learn along the way. My last startup had funding, at one point had over $100K MRR and still shut down. If what you are doing isn't working, maybe it's time to pause, and perform a self-retrospective/post-mortem of all the efforts you believe were unsuccessful and make some tough-to-do adjustments.

I personally took the shutdown of my startup pretty hard. The best thing I was able to do was to figure out what mistakes I made, fix them and continue forward as quickly as possible. I feel like I wasted 6 months just kind of sitting there, being hard on myself for no reason at all, other than my own thoughts of failure.

Keep trying your best. Don't believe in your "peaked in high school" story. I didn't even graduate high school. You can do it.

I think the average is close to $0.
$150 MRR is already way above average.

We are on the same boat but we have to keep our heads high and keep the focus on the price
Since I started making passportlist.co in Jan, I haven't yet earned any Adsense money from it but I am hopeful to make it big!!!

Do you mind sharing your product? Maybe we can share some pointers.

Since you posted this to "Self Care", i can strongly advise you adopt a different mindset. Develop a postive, growth mindset.

Be grateful for the 150$ MRR you have. Apparently your product dosent suck if you have customers.

Don't feel like you're entitled to making millions without putting in the work and doing smart things. Benchmark your competitors.

You think you're a shitty entrepreneur???

I reckon, it's ONLY IF YOU QUIT! But don't listen to me. Listen to this other dude instead. He seems to have figured it out (with an emphasis on seems).

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

― Calvin Coolidge

Learn from this, everyone's experiences are different.

Suggest looking at those who are inferior to you and not looking at those who are superior to you. Otherwise, you feel upset.

The key of the improvement is being grateful. What you have is much more than nothing!

P.S. From a guy with similar background. I missed those years in which I was the most successful student too, but the game was easy for us at that time. Now, we need to deal with the uncertainty, the failure and most importantly, our biggest obstacle which is definitely ourselves.

Hey, I am at $40 after 6 months :D

What is your product? How are you marketing it?

Either your product is not good and no-one wants to pay for it, or people don't know about it.

You may want to verify if you actually have something people are willing to pay for. This needs to happen as soon as possible - 6 months is a long time to go without validating your product has a maket.

That's definitely not average. If you'd write a script to scrape project income data and calculate an average, the script would start contemplating the futility of existence and eventually delete itself. But event if you were to be average, I don't think there's anything wrong with that at this stage. To be average in a new domain within six months is quite an accomplishment.

Amazing! $150/month. You have an audience! :D

Have you asked them why they chose you? Did they consider your competitors before coming to you?

If there's an enquiry form or mailing list, can you ask what's preventing people from choosing you? Perhaps there's one feature that a competitor has that is essential for their use case?

I've read so many stories of people who have struggled to get an extra $5 MRR a month, but they keep chipping away at understanding their customer. Then in the space of the month they increase their MRR by 20% without doing any advertising, and it just snowballs from there!

It's not a failure... it's a success in progress!

6 months is nothing, especially for your first business.

$150 MRR for your first business is pretty good going. Heck, even $1 for your first business is a good achievement. 1 USER is good.

The majority of people in society create NOTHING. By contrast you have achieved a lot.

Experienced entrepreneurs also launch failed products. Choosing the right product is incredibly complex and there's no easy and sure-fire way to do it.

I've been product-entrepreneur for 10 years and have shipped a lot of things - most of them have failed, while a minority have been successful.

I've shipped things in the past year that make less than $150/mo. You can't determine your success as an entrepreneur on one product, unless you get extremely lucky the first time.

Your current situation may be down to your inexperience, but it also may not, there's so many factors. How much experience do your competitors have? Is the market big enough?

Will there be an inflection point? It's hard to say without knowing what your product is and understanding the market.

Even if there isn't a turning point, don't give up – you've done great to get this far and should be proud of that. If it was as easy as investing 6 months and making $5k/mo everyone would be doing it.

I will offer you a painkiller. You're not a shitty entrepreneur, you're not an entrepreneur at all, accept that! Labels force us to project ourselves to archetypes, that's a gamble "until" you address your own fundamental character.

And if it helps, 2 years back I just got over building MVPs for other people over last 8 years and not seeing any future effort. Some made it to marketing them, I've seen them evolve.

2 years into my own product, I face 2x of usual challenges being physically bound in a godforsaken geopolitical boundary, not that there are no opportunities, but having learned already a year back that there isn't a signifant PMF to be found here without pivoting regressively. And as much as digital marketing is affective, you need physical proximity for early customers, at least in retail industry that I know of.

I'm laying foundations to mitigate that, at the same time trying to not halt product development having 0 resources other than myself in that department.

Rule #1: Always provide a link to your app when you mention it in your post.

You've managed to create a popular post here on indie hackers and you forgot to provide a link. I looked at your profile. No link. I scrolled through all 13 other posts you've made on indie hackers. No link.

I wanted to take a look at your app and maybe provide my thoughts on why you're struggling. Unfortunately I can't find the app anywhere but I think ironically that in itself is a very important lesson ;)

There's a pretty simple lesson here and hopefully you've already caught on but let me spell it out for you anyway. It is very likely that one of the reasons you're app isn't succeeding is because you're not talking about it.

You could have the best app in the world but if people can't find it how do you expect them to take the next step? Heck, I don't even know what it's called and I actively went looking for it!

Listen, I know "marketing" is sometimes considered a dirty word but it doesn't have to be ads and cold calling. There's plenty of ways to provide a link to your website without being considered an a**hole. It takes 2 seconds to paste your URL into a bunch of places and you'll be surprised how much difference it can make.

Be happy bro... just imagine others are earning way less per month ... (me)

That's still $150 MRR more than I've ever made with any app (because I haven't launched anything paid yet). Maybe if you look at it that way it doesn't sound too bad. Now of course, if your entire livelihood depends on it, that's kinda tough.

You just have to stick to it, and it will grow in time. Just keep in mind that more ventures fail than not. Personally I try not to get my hopes too high at any point.

Haha! Welcome to the team, mate! I am the same! I've got $0 🤣
Maybe we should partner up and fail together! I launched in October last year so it's been six months too!