> If you're not from the UK I'd highly advise not considering coming here.

London still commands high salaries and options for tech work relatively to the rest of the UK and many other countries in Europe

> I've listened to Nillay refine this article piece by piece for weeks.

What do you mean?

Nilay has been discussing these ideas on podcasts hosted by The Verge over the last few weeks. I can tell it's something that's been top of mind for him especially on his podcast series Decoder where he interviews CEOs about their approach to integrating AI in their products and how consumers feel about this.

> kind of proves that there is demand?

It proves that there's demand but you might not get a piece of the cake. That's being able to sell/speak to the people in your market is so important

> I think the biggest downer was when I built the coolest SaaS for martial arts academies. I thought it was guaranteed success, as I am involved in these communities, know a ton of owners. I reached out to all of them. Offered a free setup/trial. None of them cared, or even attempted to use it.

Did you speak with them about the idea before building the platform?

Some of them, yes. It seemed like they'd use it. I don't know. Maybe bad execution, or something. Although, maybe I should try again. Perhaps they were busy. I also didn't market beyond reaching out to people (which involved the people I know + cold email outreach).

It’s hard for these companies to switch once they’ve picked a platform. Just an idea, but I’ve seen people have success by looking up new business registrations. Get all new martial arts gyms daily, and try reaching out to them.

> both camps, but the problem is that they contradict each other

They don't strictly contradict each other because they are not mutually exclusive. Both methods are valid

> This leads me to believe that most people either get lucky and then apply a framework in retrospect to justify their luck

Definitely a thing. Survivorship bias.

> tried to build, calibrate, engage in SEO, talk to customers, but I can't seem to find traction

Are you speaking with people? Face to face, in person. That's more important than the online marketing methods at first. Manual onboarding.

Can't say why but I enjoyed so much reading this comment

> The Industrial Revolution - the greatest thing ever to happen - required the British govt to deploy more troops against Luddites than they had fighting Napoleon at the same time

Source of this claim?

E.P. Thompson, „The Making of the English Working Class“.

It is admittedly a specific cherry picked point in time at which this was true, but useful to illustrate the issue.

I had a look out of curiosity. The book has:

>“In the summer of 1812 there were no fewer than 12,000 troops in the disturbed counties, a greater force than Wellington had under his command in the Peninsula.”

But for that year Wikipedia has

>Wellington's 48,500-man army... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamanca

If I remember correctly it was true for a short time when it was compared to a small expeditionary force, that quickly grew. That is why its cherry picked.

The point being made by use of colorful anecdote is however that industrialisation led to internal unrest which required considerable force to manage, and whose ultimate outcome (unprecedented rise in living standards) is much preferable to it being stopped in its tracks. A story that repeats itself again and again, check the American longshoremen union for an especially crass recent example of it.

FWIW, I think nothing is wasted time if you enjoyed the time when you were doing it.

That’s an interesting POV. But, looking back, I feel like I could have invested even 15% of that time into something more productive.

Same thoughts as soon as I saw the code in the readme

I wish