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Ask HN: How did you start your business?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#31

Post by Radim »

alfonsodev wrote: post #9
Radim wrote: post #4

Employee => academia (PhD in AI) => open source (Gensim) => ML freelancing (radimrehurek.com) => ML consulting company (rare-technologies.com) => ML products (pii-tools.com, scaletext.ai). Looking back, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to jump right into full-time products, skipping the intermediate budding steps. Is it a burden to understand the whole process, from accounting, legal, HR, management, ops, s…

How old were you when quoting as an employee and started the PhD ? Was it hard financially ? I’m asuming you had a degree already.

Quit in 2009, age 28. It was not that hard financially -- I moved to southern Thailand, worked on the PhD and Gensim there. Thailand is a pretty cheap country to live actually.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#32

Post by jacob_rezi »

I started my company, https://rezi.io, 5 months after graduating college in August of 2014

I noticed that about all of my classmates were grossly underemployed since their resumes were simply trash. They didn't understand applicant tracking systems and existing resume companies don't address the issue of resume optimization (except Jobscan, but they're a little different)

It started as a side project in Wisconsin, then in November 2016, I moved to South Korea where we've successfully supported a number of the top universities with our English resume solutions and I've been able to go full time + hire our first employee. Feels great. Such a ride so far. Here is a quick article of my time in Korea

http://www.mobiinside.com/2017/12/05/rezi-korea-startup/

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#33

Post by nickjj »

I started freelancing just under 20 years ago and have worked as a solo developer ever since.

Maybe this isn't the best advice but I think we're capable of doing pretty extraordinary things when you're thrown into the deep end. You'd be surprised at how things start to work out once you're 100% out of your comfort zone.

I'm not saying quit your job immediately while still in debt or whatever. I just think that if you're debt free and have a few months of savings you could at least give starting your own business a fair shot without a safety net. If things don't look like they are going to work out, you could always find some type of job to pay the bills.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#34

Post by Slaul »

I have a question about starting businesses...I'm getting ready to launch an MVP and it never occurred to me to research opening a specific bank account for it, whether or not I need to get a sole proprietorship (I'm in Canada, afaik this is our version of LLC more or less), etc. Anybody have any good resources for this stage of the process?

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#35

Post by trevorhinesley »

I was touring full-time in a band, while on retainer with an app agency for 30-hours/week when we launched https://soundstripe.com. I was introduced to the other two co-founders by a client, and we hit it off.

I quit touring about 10 months after we launched because we had gotten a staff of a few people and it was starting to take off. I took about a 75% pay cut to focus on it full-time until we were able to pay ourselves a reasonable salary about a year or year and a half into business. Still did some side work until then, but not 30-hours/week worth.

We bootstrapped it for the first two years (had about 15 employees by then), but just recently closed a late seed round, and have about 25 staff now.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#36

Post by spodek »

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My podcast, Leadership and the Environment http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast, emerged to help provide the leadership for cultural change, to where people want to act on their environmental values.

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Plus people are volunteering to help, leading to in-person events.

Check it out: http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#37

Post by greysteil »

Totoradio wrote: post #24
tootie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want those big money enterprise clients, add Maven and Nuget support.

I agree. If this tool does what it says, and supported .Net/Nuget, my company would throw a lot of money at it. More than the $50/month advertised.

Interesting, thanks for the validation. We have basic Maven support already, and a PR half-finished for .Net - I'll get on it :-)

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#38

Post by fecak »

gwbas1c wrote: post #28
fecak wrote: post #8

I had been a recruiter for several years, starting off out of college with a ~200 person international firm for a couple years and then a founding member of a small boutique recruiting firm for about seven years. I eventually figured out that I wasn't getting any value from my partner, so I started my own recruiting firm. During my recruiting career I was always writing/editing resumes and giving job search advice to…

Recruiting and resume writing is what entrepreneurs call a "tie shop business." The product is already well-defined, the customers are already well-known, and how to operate the business is already well-known. Even a software consulting firm is a "tie shop business." Developing new technology is the polar opposite of a "tie shop business." The product is new, the customers are unknown, and how to sell the product is…

I expect most users of hacker news aren't creating any businesses at all ("tie shops" or otherwise) but are here for interesting stories and dialogue with others.

YC's portfolio and team may be creating new tech, but HN is a bit of a bigger umbrella from what I've seen, and in my several years commenting here your comment is the closest thing to a "you don't belong here" or "stay in your lane" signal that I think I've heard.

OP's question was pretty open and didn't mention anything about developing technology. I wouldn't offer expertise where I didn't have it, but if someone asks how I started my business I think I'm qualified to answer.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#39

Post by elorant »

tn_ wrote: post #26
csallen wrote: post #3

I left my job. Or, more accurately, the startup I was doing contract work for went under, and I decided not to look for another contract afterwards. I worked on a few projects before starting my business, Indie Hackers, which I grew to just under $6k/mo in revenue (in 8 months) before joining Stripe. I've done interviews with close to 300 founders. Recently, I added a sortable, filterable directory that can help answ…

That's awesome. What is the business model of IndieHacker?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#40

Post by abrichr »

Radim wrote: post #31
alfonsodev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How old were you when quoting as an employee and started the PhD ? Was it hard financially ? I’m asuming you had a degree already.

Quit in 2009, age 28. It was not that hard financially -- I moved to southern Thailand, worked on the PhD and Gensim there. Thailand is a pretty cheap country to live actually.

How did you negotiate doing a PhD remotely?
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