totalmrak

'The author' had million other things to do instead of tracking AdWords policy changes every day. There was no email from Google announcing this major policy or explaining that 'free desktop software' means _all_ downloadable software. Even confirming that took two weeks because not one person from AdWords phone support support knew.

I didn't think of it this way but yes, some of the ways to expand were in front of me and were really obvious in retrospect. I can't believe I didn't think about selling to ISPs sooner. It was definitely the biggest blunder I made.

It's more of a U-turn than a pivot, at least that's how it felt for me.

Guys, I didn't write that story to show off. Sorry if it comes out this way. Of course tons of people here did much more impressive things. I see a lot of people who want to do something like start a business or change career and they get discouraged by everyone saying it's hard and not worth doing. I just wanted to motivate them and tell them that it doesn't matter what others are saying.

And I had a girlfriend at 14 who by the end of high school messed me so much that I spent first 2 years in college avoiding girls completely. But that's not a Hacker News story ;)