Ask HN: Quitting Job to Launch a Startup

1) Find a customer. Don’t worry about your website and your logo and blah blah blah. Find a customer and solve a problem for them. Then worry about the other stuff. The best way to find customers early on is connections and taking to people, not google ad words or search or whatever. Call someone you know and solve their problem.

2) The initial problem you solve might not be the problem you end up solving. That’s ok. Keeping solving problems for people and eventually you’ll hit on one that works.

3) Have happy customers. Do everything you can to make your customers happy. Don’t worry that what you’re doing doesn’t scale. If it’s totally manual that’s fine, but make them happy. Answer their calls. Connect with them. Your first customers are everything. They establish your reputation.

4) Don’t do it for the money. Do it because you want to do it. Maybe you’ll make a bunch of money. Maybe not. Starting a business is not about money. It’s about the experience.

5) I actually didn't have my business going before I quit. That's pretty common advice, but I didn't follow it and I'm glad I didn't. Trying to balance a job and a startup is really hard. If you can get your living expenses low and you don't have dependents, I'd suggest just quitting and throwing yourself off the deep end. That way you basically have no choice but to get things going. Even if your business isn't making enough money yet, you can pick up consulting work to make ends meet.

6) Decide what you want to make it. You don't need to raise VC money and make billions. If you had your own business that paid you, say $150k/year, that's success. Maybe one day you could scale it, and make millions, but pick your metrics of success. Don't feel like a failure because of money.

Good luck! It’s hard. Keep going.

Start trying to build your ideas with the coding skills you have. It probably won't be the thing you build, but working on a project to learn to program works better in my opinion, as you'll work to achieve something tangible instead of learning in a void.

0. Read Cal Newport's "So Good they Can't Ignore You":

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/14555091...

"Talks at Google": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwOdU02SE0

Newport addresses career change strategies, how to build good careers, etc.

1. Read Marc Andreessen's Archive:

Link: https://pmarchive.com/ HN commented collected links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19739943

It is a collection of tweets made in a nice format, then an ebook.

Andreessen addresses a lot of topics.

2. How to Start a Startup:

Link: https://startupclass.samaltman.com/

3. Startup School (CS183F): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZXU84_sGXo&list=PLoROMvodv4...

The list is last uploaded on top position, so first video is on the bottom "How and Why to Start a Startup". Haven't watched the series except for the ones on "How to Find Product Market Fit" and "How to Build a Product II" and some of "How to Build a Product"

Give this a read. Literally a step by step to get a successful company off the ground.

Instead, during your free time implement one of your ideas and break down the feature set into a simple MVP. Come with a timeline, implement, learn, and see if you can stick with the plan. Once you end up building the product, next you will have to work on finding users (sales, marketing) and convincing them to keep using your product and pay for it.

If you have persevered for this long and also maintained your job, you really have the passion and discipline needed to build on your vision. A lot of times I have noticed my friends (FAANG) talk about various idea, get excited for a day/week but never build it out.

PS: I quit (ex-FAANG) a few years ago to travel, relax, learn foreign languages and now currently working on some SAAS side projects. My 2 cents, you need to have a lot discipline along with tons of motivation, and inspiration to keep fueling the energy to work on your ideas.