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Ask HN: How do you decide when to start your own business

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Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when to start your own business

#11

Post by muzani »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #8
muzani wrote: post #7

It's like having kids. Logic says that it's better to do it later on in life but the best time is a little earlier than you think you're ready. Some people are disciplined about it. They plan and save years in advance, build skills and connections, then build a company after a well planned ritual. Some people cheat on their day jobs, working on a side project at night and on slow days at work. One day, they wake up a…

If you have 10k users and you still need a day job, you don't have a business.

I've seen a startup bootstrap up to 400k monthly active users before anyone would give them seed funding.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when to start your own business

#12

Post by hufx56 »

Learn how to work with people. There are too many people around here who sit in front of a comp the whole day, and develop the misguided notion that developing their sw skills is all that's required. But in a few years some kid is going to come along and do whatever you are doing faster and better.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when to start your own business

#13

Post by sbinthree »

chrisabrams wrote: post #6
sbinthree wrote: post #2

In my experience, you learn useful things faster when running your own company, compared to working for someone else. Pretty much by definition, you tend to specialize when working for someone else. You can get unusually good at a certain thing, but you miss out on other things that you could be learning. The thing you specialize in gets boringly easy (from the perspective of what is good enough for the employer), an…

I sell crypto market intelligence; I've never put any effort in sales. Good work simply markets itself in the right scenarios. Yes what I do is very niche, but simply pointing out that in the right market conditions (huge demand low supply) you don't need sales.

I meant to add a caveat that you can also commercialize b2b if your audience is technical without sales or with much less one to one sales. Stripe has sales people but they also have a good number of people just find them and start making API calls. But there are always exceptions too, just much less common.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when to start your own business

#14

Post by quickthrower2 »

muzani wrote: post #11
quickthrower2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have 10k users and you still need a day job, you don't have a business.

I've seen a startup bootstrap up to 400k monthly active users before anyone would give them seed funding.

It is hard to determine what to make of this anecdote, without more information.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide when to start your own business

#15

Post by RepressedEmu »

chrisabrams wrote: post #6
sbinthree wrote: post #2

In my experience, you learn useful things faster when running your own company, compared to working for someone else. Pretty much by definition, you tend to specialize when working for someone else. You can get unusually good at a certain thing, but you miss out on other things that you could be learning. The thing you specialize in gets boringly easy (from the perspective of what is good enough for the employer), an…

I sell crypto market intelligence; I've never put any effort in sales. Good work simply markets itself in the right scenarios. Yes what I do is very niche, but simply pointing out that in the right market conditions (huge demand low supply) you don't need sales.

Do you have a website or email I can contact you at?
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