Just a comment for wakana. First, I feel for you, and would say hang in there. Most startups even from very successful people, don't work out. It's up to you, but you could pursue something as a hobby in the background of your life that won't drive you batty or present too much risk if it fails. If you pursue anything next time, do something focused on fun and cheap that you love and won't harm your mental health even if it doesn't work out.
Now, onto my main comment that I think many people here will disagree with.
Conventional wisdom in life is bullshit designed to make yourself look good: you only have to look at the dumb advice given to distraught men about pursuing relations to recognize that. To me, it sounds like you're trying to take the startup community's bullshit about how to grow your business way too literally.
The good sounding advice that all of the bloggers out there give (stuff like writing high-quality content and contributing to the community) is all well and good and something you should strive towards, but you're a sucker if you think that this kind of advice is designed to do anything but make the writer of that piece seem like a noble individual. Yeah, maybe if you're Mark Cuban wealthy you can fund a big marketing campaign for your startup and do things entirely above-board and fund it until it wins out, but that's not 99% of us who are bootstrapping something.
You know what smart business minded people do to grow their startup when they have 20 followers? They go out there and spend a few dollars to buy a bunch of fake followers to appear way more popular than they actually are. It's social proof and is designed to persuade people that you're legit.
How did Reddit get their start? Wasn't it a bunch of fake bullshit accounts posting nonsense?
How do all dating sites get started? They find pictures of hot people online and make a bunch of fake profiles.
If you're pursuing your business entirely honestly, well you might win some points with the big guy upstairs, but it's not a path to business success unless you get insanely lucky. It sucks, but this is the way the world works.
I'm not going to make assumptions about websites I don't know about, and I'm sure some companies are completely honest. Maybe the company is honest, but many of the reviews are bullshit?
But one good example of how important social proof is nightclubs keeping people lined up outside waiting even when they could easily fit everybody inside fairly quickly.
Why do they intentionally provide a shitty, subpar experience for their customers?
Social proof. They're trying to get people to wonder "Hey, why is everybody lined up outside of that club even though it's cold outside? Must be something great going on in there. I want to check it out."
Now, onto my main comment that I think many people here will disagree with.
Conventional wisdom in life is bullshit designed to make yourself look good: you only have to look at the dumb advice given to distraught men about pursuing relations to recognize that. To me, it sounds like you're trying to take the startup community's bullshit about how to grow your business way too literally.
The good sounding advice that all of the bloggers out there give (stuff like writing high-quality content and contributing to the community) is all well and good and something you should strive towards, but you're a sucker if you think that this kind of advice is designed to do anything but make the writer of that piece seem like a noble individual. Yeah, maybe if you're Mark Cuban wealthy you can fund a big marketing campaign for your startup and do things entirely above-board and fund it until it wins out, but that's not 99% of us who are bootstrapping something.
You know what smart business minded people do to grow their startup when they have 20 followers? They go out there and spend a few dollars to buy a bunch of fake followers to appear way more popular than they actually are. It's social proof and is designed to persuade people that you're legit.
How did Reddit get their start? Wasn't it a bunch of fake bullshit accounts posting nonsense?
How do all dating sites get started? They find pictures of hot people online and make a bunch of fake profiles.
If you're pursuing your business entirely honestly, well you might win some points with the big guy upstairs, but it's not a path to business success unless you get insanely lucky. It sucks, but this is the way the world works.