Solo non-tech founder who launched my beta last week. My friends have barely acknowledged it. We’re all aspiring business owners & I feel they’re so envious they can’t be happy for me. I don’t need praise to motivate me, but it really hurts.


  • If you feel that they’re envious, why do you consider them friends?

    Congrats on launch, btw. I know how hard the climb is just to reach beta.

    • OP here

      I never saw this side of them, although I should have anticipated it because anytime I made progress towards the beta they didn’t acknowledge it either..or were superficial like “yay” before focusing the conversation on them..

      and thank you

  • You know what, congrats! This is no easy feat. Solo or not. Tech or not. This takes a lot and you should be very proud of yourself. I’m surprised that your friends aren’t excited for you. My friends have been asking questions all along the way and we support one another in each of our ventures. I have a friend working on a book and I’ve helped with her e-mail marketing initiatives. I have a friend that’s an actor and I go to his shows and so on. It’s worked for me to give as I have friends offering to help me – it’s been a great entrepreneur ecosystem of people with different specialties. Do I believe in all of the ideas? No. But what do I know about their market.

    • OP here (uhh the other person above is a troll)

      That’s amazing, and I wish I had that much support because sometimes things are exciting and other times it’s depressing, and being able to share it makes a different in my mental health. Knowing someone cares enough to ask you how things are going – also important. I don’t have a lot of friends so it’s hard to just say “cut them loose” – I only have 3 – but I think it might be necessary..

      • OP here (^wtf?)

        Thanks for the encouragement, it really means a lot to me. I don’t believe in all ideas either but we have to do what we got to do.

      • It’s hard when you’re alone….This site has actually really made me feel less solitary. To know that other people aren’t all shiny and bullshit.

  • Congrats buddy, launching is THE HARDEST PART. Been there too. Friends will not acknowledge your success. Even worse, they won’t even acknowledge that your startup exists, and will avoid asking about it.

    The more successful you become, the worse this will get. You’ll get sh*t like “oh I could have done his startup”, or “yea he got lucky”. People like this are not true friends, remember this. The startup journey will reveal a lot of people’s true colors – don’t let it break your stride.

    • See that’s what’s crazy to me, because while I was working on my business, my best friend launched theirs in 1 month (closed it down a few months later but besides the point). I had been grinding away for A YEAR and out the blue they launch a business and it actually made money. I was so happy and proud of them, and it motivated me more to push through. This has been my most supportive friend

      My 2 I considered really good friends, so I just don’t understand the silence. I’ve heard people say the same things you have but I never though it would apply to me. I’ve heard people say entrepreneurism is lonely and I see it now

  • As a recent non-tech, solo-founder who has launched an app – Congratulations!!

    And as far as your “friends” are concerned, I want to paraphrase the author Hilary Mantel, from her book “Six Months on Gaza Street” and say: That by going away (launching) it is as if you are offering some criticism of their own lives . . .

    • Thank you! It’s taken me 2 embarrassing years to launch for many reasons but now that it’s finally out things have been moving along. And congrats to you too man

      I love that quote and I read something similar. I’m starting to believe it’s very true

  • OP: Congrats on launching. Given your one-sided story, how do we know that you’re not a selfish/insufferable git in real life, hence their ignoring you? Not saying you are, but just trying to consider all possibilities. Eitherway, y’all aren’t real friends though, so you should cut each other loose.

    • OP:

      Honestly I’d love to even consider the possibility that I’m selfish, gloating, and insufferable because all of this would make sense and I wouldn’t feel so bad. But since I decided to start this business and actively work on it, they’ve avoided ever talking to me about it. I don’t want to make it seem like I need round table discussions on my venture, but sometimes I’d get really excited about a feature I was creating and when I’d text them about it, the response was always superficial like “awesome” – sometimes with exclamation points – and then they’d text me multi-paragraphs about what happened at their job that day…

      They know how important this is to me, and I’d love to say they know how much I’ve struggled to get it out but I never had anyone to talk to about it. Obviously, the silence about my beta launch shouldn’t come as a surprise but I just don’t get it at all. I only have 3 friends because I’m introverted and shy, only 1 has been supportive of me so you’re right I have to cut the others loose..

      • I’ve actually had the opposite response and I try to be as secretive as possible. If I mention my startup to family or friends they want to know more about it and I clam up because I don’t want them to feel like they’re a part of the process or to think that they can ask me for money later if I make it.

        It sounds selfish but I feel like unless you’re my dad, mom, brother or sister, you shouldn’t ever ask me for any money. If I give it to you, it should be out of the kindness of my heart; not because I feel pressured to.

        • LOL, counting your chickens before they hatch. BTW, if they never invested in or were employed by your company, people cannot claim a stake in it. Talk about pre-gaming selfishness. You realize you can’t take it with you though? Ie if you get rich but drop dead for whatever reason, the $$ doesn’t follow you to the other side. Also wonder what your definition of true friendship is; obviously not situation where both sides can speak freely or or ask each other for help when 1 side gets ahead.

          • Of course I know that I can’t take the money with me when I die. I plan on leaving some of it to my family and some to charity. And, yes I’m counting my chickens before they hatch, but I think it’s okay to dream big and to believe in yourself. If I didn’t think my startup would make me wealthy, then what’s the point of my doing it?

            I want to provide a valuable service for people while at the same time becoming rich. If the rich parent was not possible, I would just get a normal job because running a startup is incredibly tough; it’s less stressful to be an employee of a large company.

            As per your last sentence, I define a friend as someone who I can hang out with and whom would help me and vice versa if I really needed help like for instance if I was going to die unless I received some medical treatment.

            But, as we know from many examples, in real life most people are not that desperate, especially in America. Most of the time they would ask for money for problems that they could solve on their own. How many lottery winners have blown through all their winnings because every friend from high school and every 3rd cousin asked them for money and they gave it to them.

            It’s usually in the form of borrowing, but they then disappear. You’ve probably experienced that at least once in your life where a friend or family member has borrowed money from you but never paid you back and they stopped coming around you to avoid being asked about it. Take that and multiply it by a thousand, if I were to become a billionaire; the calls, emails, etc. would be non-stop.

            • Just a minor correction to my post above. I wrote:

              If the rich parent was not possible,

              But I meant to write:

              If the rich part was not possible.

  • What are you expecting besides a congrats? A parade in your honor? If they acknowledged it, that’s enough. Focus on your work and stop being unreasonable.

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