I am curious to know how long were you working on your side project until it was successful enough to become your full time job.
Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#2I'm probably near the higher end of the distribution to this among my Internet buddies: about 4 years. Partly this was due to it truly being a hobby, partly because bingo cards are not the most renumerative thing in the world, and partly because my skill level at the time was rather low.
A more typical number among my SaaS buddies is about 18 months of sustained effort until you hit $10k in MRR, which typically is enough (after expenses) to keep a solo founder in the field indefinitely.
The fastest I've ever seen it done is about ~6 weeks for SaaS. Even shorter for infoproducts, although depending on the dynamics of the business that might be "launch one, get relatively flush with money, buy yourself enough time to launch a second one" until you figure out some not-too-obvious things about how to sell them repeatedly.
A consultant, naturally, can hit day job equivalent levels of revenue virtually immediately after hanging out their shingle (if they've got a client lined up). A fairly common pattern is "Inform day job of intention to quit; immediately go back to working for day job as 1099 during transitionary period; start building pipeline while delivering for Client #1."
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#3I've been working on my side project since the back end of 2014. I've had at least a couple of 3-4 month breaks from it during that time.
It's only just getting close to something that I can share with people, so I won't be working on it full time in the near future (if ever).
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#418 months until I reached $4k in MRR. It wasn't enough to pay the bills, but I had a couple of years of runway.
I ended up not using my savings as the business started to grow 1k/month after I quit my job.
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#5Probably unusual, but about 10 weeks. It was a niche market paid iPad app, written and deployed in 6 weeks, and we saw immediate sales so we left off iOS contracting and began working on it full time.
That was a little more than 6 years ago and it has continued to be our full-time project. However we did add versions on most other platforms and a cloud sync service, and I'm not sure that we would've continued to generate good revenue without those additions.
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#6If side project == freelancing, i just had my first (and only) month $1k. This was though Upwork. I negotiated hard and got 75% more than the initial offer. It felt more like negotiating a commodity (my day-job) than a specific skill set.
I won't knock Upwork too much though, as I got my first freelancing gig through them without much effort.
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#7If side project == freelancing, i just had my first (and only) month $1k. This was though Upwork. I negotiated hard and got 75% more than the initial offer. It felt more like negotiating a commodity (my day-job) than a specific skill set. I won't knock Upwork too much though, as I got my first freelancing gig through them without much effort.
Freelancing is not a side project, it is actually a job.
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#8If side project == freelancing, i just had my first (and only) month $1k. This was though Upwork. I negotiated hard and got 75% more than the initial offer. It felt more like negotiating a commodity (my day-job) than a specific skill set. I won't knock Upwork too much though, as I got my first freelancing gig through them without much effort.
Freelancing is not a side project, it is actually a job.
Sure. But it felt effing good :)
To clarify: it was a project outside of my 9-5, which made it feel side-projecty. It was also something that was paid on a contract basis which made it 'somehat official'.
I negotiated almost 2.5 months to get this contract, which also made it feel real.
I may not be answering your question, but I'm sharing this so that others know that this is a possibility and also because I wanted to. :)
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#9I'm probably near the higher end of the distribution to this among my Internet buddies: about 4 years. Partly this was due to it truly being a hobby, partly because bingo cards are not the most renumerative thing in the world, and partly because my skill level at the time was rather low. A more typical number among my SaaS buddies is about 18 months of sustained effort until you hit $10k in MRR, which typically is en…
Patrick, do you intend to continue doing side projects with you new role at Stripe?
Best of luck at this new role :)
Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?
#10https://officesnapshots.com here -- I'd say it was 5 years of being a hobby before I decided to try to make it into my full-time job. Was a history teacher when I started the site.
Another 2 years or so of temping, miscellaneous web work, and anything else to pay the bills.
It has now been 2 years where the website is truly my full-time work and I'm looking to hire my first employee in the next few months. Pretty excited about that!