Let’s start with the beginning, back in February I decided to start a charity pool that will donate every epoch no matter what to charity voted by the delegators. So, I’ve created the website (https://charypool.com) and then defined my roadmap (CHARY Pool). Because the actually voting system was a little bit tricky I’ve set it as a goal in the future if all things go as planned (good that I’ve done it like that!! - I saved some work).
Then I’ve created all the social media relevant accounts (twitter, fb, telegram…) and lastly I’ve started to build the stake pool following coincashew guide - btw, great guide (Guide: How to build a Cardano Stake Pool - CoinCashew) .
It took me 1 week to have it up and running with 2 relays and 1 bp (block producer) and in the mean time I’ve already spoken with some friends that I knew they have ADA to delegate to my pool. Surprise surprise, they were locked in a Binance pool until end of May (Yey! - very fair, decentralised and good for the network).
Then I learned, that actually doesn’t make any difference if you have your active stake 0, 1.000, 10.000 or 50.000 ADA, because there is a very little chance to actually mint a block. And because of that I’ve started my pool with less than 1000 ADA and hopping to get people on my pool that they wish to donate. I know, you will say there are a lot of charity pools (you can find some MDPs here: https://missiondrivenpools.org/ ), but for me was hard to find a pool to support some of my favorite charities. Even trying every day to get in contact with people and go on twitter was unsuccessful, who will delegate to a new pool that you get 0 ADA back? In a way I get it - so basically I’ve tried that for almost 2 months and in this time I always kept donating to a random picked charity (CHARY Pool) - even if I didn’t mint any blocks.
When I’ve done some polls on the Cardano forum to pick a charity to which the epoch donation should go, no one bothered to vote, but had 1xx views (was just one click!).
Now I deregister the pool, had an experience with this, all the server costs will go to donations and I’ve picked a MDP pool to delegate.
Conclusion: if you don’t have time, connections, >1.000.000 ADA don’t do the SPO thing, its too late and in way I’m disappointed that this cool project doesn’t support small pool operators more to truly keep it decentralised and not having Binance1, Binance2, Binance2000.
sorry to hear that u retired the pool
I was looking into starting a pool, but I do not have such a deep bag to place even half a mil of Ada, I was hoping to also start with about 1-2k of ADA. Thank you for letting us know what you have learned. I will have to think about this a little more, it is a pity that small stake pools are not working so well. I feel like the Decentralization would be stronger if it was easier to get in, ADA is no longer a penny coin. 
Sorry to hear you retired your pool. I know how disappointed you must be. I had seen your project and I was impressed of your dedication to donate even without any rewards.
I feel the same disappointment every time I see the likes of BinanceXYZ. However, luck has favoured me and I can survive for at least a year running the pool, so I am not going to give up just yet.
Unfortunately it is a very tough game for late starters. No matter if you have a mission driven pool or the amount of effort you spend on promoting.
This poll from MEME stake pool shows that delegators just care for their ROS, which I guess is fair enough.
It seems that unless you start a pool with a minimum of about 30k, with the return being around 180 days to get a block, and are able to run it correctly for a full year then I guess it might not worth it.
Maybe this info should be sticked somewhere so future potential SPOs will be aware and avoid disappointment. I find the statement that anyone can start a stake pool and be successful, kinda misleading under the current market conditions.
Running a stake pool vs. just delegating is covered here. It also talks about one way of staying competitive as a small pool and (if you don’t want to make the rich even richer) where to delegate to without loosing out on ROA.
I am really sorry to hear your story. But, to be honest all small pool are struggling. It is between continue or just close down the pool. Then I came to a conclusion, if you want to start a pool, you better have minimal of 1million ADA or your friend have it, otherwise it’s better to delegate.
hmm, or if u are lucky enough you can receive delegation from IOHK or CF. Anyway it’s required a lot of work to attract delegators as a small pool …
Agreed… a lot of effort to survive.
I don’t agree.
Anyone CAN start a stake pool and be successful. The success just doesn’t come falling from the air. Just as being successful running a business; In the beginning your costs will be higher than your profits. But if you have something others will appreciate you will attract their support. If you want to be successful you need to work hard and have some added value. If you do this you will get delegators. I don’t think that just donating is enough added value.
Even if you have a 1m pool, your delegators will still get 30% less ROA than they would by delegating to a much larger pool. IMHO, running a pool with < 10m requires some creativity that effectively lowers the cost for the delegator.
I am agree with you,
Just be persistent and do the hardwork, set every goal and reach them one by one.
That is how to persistently growing 
I find this to be a bit of an insult to the OP as well as to other SPOs that have worked really hard and didn’t succeed!
Working hard is just only one component!
I think you have to be lucky to keep receiving that delegation from IOHK, because on the long run that doesn’t bring that much money and without the delegation you will have again the costs. So the only hope is to gather enough delegators to sustain over time your pool.
You are right about the added value and that donating is not enough you also need to be Binance and have 20 pools and $. Why is there not a limit to stop the big pools having more pools? But then you have some parameter to keep the optimal pools to a certain number, that is too low.
I appreciate more any single SPO that are running and having delegators, especially the ones that are MDP, so now I just wait to be able to delegate from my wallet to different pools from that list, not just one.
Sorry to hear that. I wanted to start a pool but realize the same thing you encountered which is why I haven’t. Current parameters just need adjustment to incentive decentralization better. Also, updating nodes should be a simple update manager like all other major software programs. Daedalus does it. For now, I’m going to wait until the system changes. Best wishes.
Hey Chary, sorry to see you go. I agree with everyone here. It really depends how bad you want something. I made it a long term commitment by reserving 3 year instances on AWS (quite expensive for something I made nothing from at the moment).
I still consider my stake pool extremely small ($160k) but after we actually found our first block last epoch. I think consistency and not giving up is key. We might have it a little worst since we started later than those earlier (during the testnet phase) but you know what they say:
Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
Best of luck on your feature endeavors!
Once the system changes and favors the small pools, why would someone delegate to a pool that has no reputation? The reason I started my stake pool despite the odds being against me was because the stake pool needs reputation.
Things always come with sacrifices at the beginning, and I hope they eventually take into account days in operation, blocks founds, other factors,. etc
Skin in the game is the other reason to attract delegator, which is why I’m looking for a significant increase in the importance of pledge and a massive reduction in saturation level. I have no skills as a marketer and don’t want to put energy into that. I can’t pledge the 2M+ to mint every epoch but can pledge significant amount, so left in no man’s land.
yeah, it can be rough for sure 
but I agree the system can be improved by penalizing those with 2 Ada pledge (i.e., Binance1, Binance2, Binance3, …)
sorry to hear that, in fact it makes sad and pissed off because right now, I was reading a post of some influencer reading to open his third pool and asking his delegators, to move from one pool to another because it was becoming saturated…
there’s nothing Cardano can do in terms of parameters, tweaking variables whatever to fix that.
its a social issue, and social issues are faced doing conversations, campaigns, educating people.
staking is a new concept even for veterans on crypto. people just don’t get it.
we must do something but as a community, not asking changes in the protocol because its already works very well. the saturation wasn’t created for people splitting pools but to others have a chance to mine blocks.
only delegates have the power to change.
sorry to hear this…