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Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#61

Post by twidlit »

fleitz wrote: post #34

May I ask why you are not cutting features to hit your launch date? I'm broke and in a startup, been at it 1 month to the day, planning a launch in early Sept. I actually need to be code complete for the 28th of Aug as I'm going to Burning Man. No I don't think it's going to be perfect and there are a lot more features I'd like to see going to launch but since I don't have a budget for a national media campaign I dou…

We changed course 3 months into the startup, and decided to line up our ducks in a row for 5 months (inc. user experience, tech, user flows, design, etc). we had a lot of mishaps along the way but i think we are on good grounds with our Sept milestones. We both actually have the same timetable. Nice advice. plan and execute. got it. :)

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#63

Post by DrJokepu »

onwardly wrote: post #26

I have over $100k in student loan debt from undergrad, and have nearly run through savings for the startup I'm working on. My loan payments kick back in in two months. We're launching in 2-4 weeks, and the nature of the project is such that if it doesn't take off immediately then it may never take off. Talk about a fire under your ass! That said, I'm loving it. I'm actually living in India at the moment, working from…

Just out of curiosity, what kind of project "never takes of if it doesn't take off immediately"? What makes you think that?

You don't need to be very specific though if you don't want to reveal secrets, don't get me wrong.

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#64

Post by javery »

joezydeco wrote: post #60
patio11 wrote: post #36

Can I recommend consulting for smoothing out cash flow issues? It has really helped me this summer -- the time it cost my development schedule has been worth the peace of mind gained by not having to either smash my piggy bank or borrow four paychecks worth of cash at consumer interest rates.

Are you consulting on the side while married with a kid? Family starts to take up a significant amount of your time once you have kids. Sure, you can be the dad-thats-never-home, but is that why you had a family in the first place? I'm just saying that the equation becomes a lot more complex at this point.

It's easy to solve that problem, work from home. I work 10-12 hours most days but I see my daughter all the time because I work from home and we get to eat three meals together and play after dinner.

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#65

Post by Hoff »

patio11 wrote: post #36

Can I recommend consulting for smoothing out cash flow issues? It has really helped me this summer -- the time it cost my development schedule has been worth the peace of mind gained by not having to either smash my piggy bank or borrow four paychecks worth of cash at consumer interest rates.

Consulting can provide an income source, and can broaden your knowledge, and can improve technical and customer skills, and can lead you into new markets and opportunities for new products.

Consulting is not without its downsides. It doesn't scale up (well, it scales up with added in-house or out-sourced staff, and the associated project management and administration), and it tends to be price-competitive if you're working in a "mainstream" area of expertise.

Consulting can be a very effective distraction to your concentration, too.

Two or three days on customer work, and some focus on billing and proposals and related administration, and then several hours or more of spooling back up to speed on whatever part of the product or debug that you had been working on when the call came in. Then you realize your week is shot.

Put another way, TANSTAAFL.

Make sure you aggregate the financial and focus costs in your estimates. And make sure you can also efficiently encapsulate and snapshot whatever you were doing when the customer work arrives; hone your process skills around in-swapping and out-swapping projects.

Consider providing an end-project summary - not just for the customer's benefit and for the marketing, but also so that you can in-swap the project more quickly if there's additional associated work. The same approach can work for a summary and status for whatever you were doing on your project when the customer call arrives, though that can be a couple of cryptic paragraphs in a text file.

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#66

Post by benologist »

twidlit wrote: post #62
benologist wrote: post #33

I'm not broke, just poor. A bit over a year into my startup, about to launch the version that'll actually make money.

How sure are you that itll make money? I mean what are you basing that on?

I have a lot of users that have known all along it'll cost at some point. That plus I'm widely acknowledged to be about 1000x better than the alternatives, and everyone's excited about the final features I'm putting in place.

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#67

Post by il »

Hoff wrote: post #65
patio11 wrote: post #36

Can I recommend consulting for smoothing out cash flow issues? It has really helped me this summer -- the time it cost my development schedule has been worth the peace of mind gained by not having to either smash my piggy bank or borrow four paychecks worth of cash at consumer interest rates.

Consulting can provide an income source, and can broaden your knowledge, and can improve technical and customer skills, and can lead you into new markets and opportunities for new products. Consulting is not without its downsides. It doesn't scale up (well, it scales up with added in-house or out-sourced staff, and the associated project management and administration), and it tends to be price-competitive if you're w…

Consulting takes time and saps your focus, but it also feels incredible to work for 1 day and make enough to pay rent for a month. When you're not stressing about whether you'll be able to make rent this month, you may find your productivity increase tremendously.

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#68

Post by joezydeco »

javery wrote: post #64
joezydeco wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you consulting on the side while married with a kid? Family starts to take up a significant amount of your time once you have kids. Sure, you can be the dad-thats-never-home, but is that why you had a family in the first place? I'm just saying that the equation becomes a lot more complex at this point.

It's easy to solve that problem, work from home. I work 10-12 hours most days but I see my daughter all the time because I work from home and we get to eat three meals together and play after dinner.

I do the kitchen-table-coding-marathon as well, but how do you get any consulting work if the only time you're available is 8pm-2am? Rentacoder?

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#69

Post by patio11 »

il wrote: post #67
Hoff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consulting can provide an income source, and can broaden your knowledge, and can improve technical and customer skills, and can lead you into new markets and opportunities for new products. Consulting is not without its downsides. It doesn't scale up (well, it scales up with added in-house or out-sourced staff, and the associated project management and administration), and it tends to be price-competitive if you're w…

Consulting takes time and saps your focus, but it also feels incredible to work for 1 day and make enough to pay rent for a month. When you're not stressing about whether you'll be able to make rent this month, you may find your productivity increase tremendously.

I agree wholeheartedly. Consulting comprehensively took my focus off new product dev the last three months, but it underwrote a huge QOL improvement (one month of time off with family) and there is major, major stress relief about not being five figures in the hole until October. Market seasonality is a pain, by the way.

Re: Ask HN: Who is currently broke due to being in a startup?

#70

Post by gawker »

mebassett wrote: post #54
patio11 wrote: post #36

Can I recommend consulting for smoothing out cash flow issues? It has really helped me this summer -- the time it cost my development schedule has been worth the peace of mind gained by not having to either smash my piggy bank or borrow four paychecks worth of cash at consumer interest rates.

how does one get started in consulting?

Yes I'd like to know the answer too. It seems like everyone says just consult but how does one get clients and more importantly get clients to trust you and figure out the pay rate and what not?
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