Ask HN: What do you see as key determinants for “successful” online businesses?
Dear HN,<p>as part of my master&#x27;s thesis I&#x27;m looking into bootstrapped software&#x2F; online businesses started by tech-savvy entrepreneurs. It appears to be common knowledge by now that starting a successful venture goes beyond having a brilliant product idea and building it, yet cause and effect of determinants within entrepreneurial processes and ventures are hard to assess. I am aware that &quot;success&quot; means different things to each and every one of you, so let me specify what I&#x27;m looking for:<p>&quot;determinants&quot;: determining factors that the founder is (more or less) in control of, not external factors like timing etc.
&quot;software business&quot;: software-enabled business that centers around a mostly digital business model&#x2F; product&#x2F; service
&quot;successful&quot;: I&#x27;m specifically looking at anything from side-projects that caught on to tech founders who quit their job to pursue their own thing. I&#x27;m not looking for several founding rounds or hyper-scaling ventures, more like the kind of businesses you&#x27;d associate with Indie Hackers etc.<p>I&#x27;m also aware that attempts at defining &quot;success factors&quot; for such complex and luck-dependent processes such as entrepreneurship is a futile aspiration, but since I appreciate the broad collective experience within the HN crowd, I&#x27;d nevertheless love to have your thoughts on the question formulated by the title:<p><i>Based on your observations as well as personal and professional experience, what do you consider key determinants of starting successful (bootstrapped) online businesses?</i><p>Stories of negative influences (things not to do) are encouraged to counteract survivorship bias etc. Cheers!