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Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

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Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#21
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it is not. You can read my question as how long did it take you to get enough traction in your side project to became a full time job. And still the answer will vary depend on how much do you spend in your side project, the market, your goals, etc. I hope no one decides to go full time with their pet projects because of the time they have spent on them!

Perhaps the post has changed but this is the title I see: "Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?" Adjusting it would definitely helps clarify if that's not what you meant. Perhaps, "How successful was your side project before you went full time?", or "How much MRR / traction... ?"

What I wanted to know it is the time. Any metric I ask about a project is not going to be good. MRR -> it depends on your expenses and if it is a peak of a trend or something constant; active users -> depends if you are building the next facebook or a Saas business; etc... Any metric is deep linked with the project and doesn't say anything by itself without a good understanding of the project and the market. I just wanted to know the time because I was curious about it, but you cannot claim any conclusions based on a single metric and without a deep knowledge of the business.

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#23

28 months a mean of 2~3h per day. Now It's my full time job and 3rd Start-up. The most time consuming part until now, finding good partners, product definition, market research. So far so good, but it confirms me that Europe is slower for firing up a project.

Can you elaborate on the Europe is slower part?

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#24

18 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.

What was the project?

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#25
post #19
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patrick, do you intend to continue doing side projects with you new role at Stripe? Best of luck at this new role :)

I'm going to keep writing/speaking, but probably not launch any new for-money style projects. Partly this is out of respect for the day job's wishes, partly this is out of desire to maintain free hours for spending with my young family.

Great. Glad to hear you'll still be writing. :D

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#26

28 months a mean of 2~3h per day. Now It's my full time job and 3rd Start-up. The most time consuming part until now, finding good partners, product definition, market research. So far so good, but it confirms me that Europe is slower for firing up a project.

Can you elaborate on the Europe is slower part?

My opinion (which may differ from the other user), USA is a big market with a lot of similarities (a common language). Europe is a set of different countries which can be very different and do not share the same language among other things like the laws, bureaucracy, culture, etc. And there are more startups in USA, the ecosystem is more mature. I think all this factors make USA more atractive to get traction

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#27

28 months a mean of 2~3h per day. Now It's my full time job and 3rd Start-up. The most time consuming part until now, finding good partners, product definition, market research. So far so good, but it confirms me that Europe is slower for firing up a project.

Can you elaborate on the Europe is slower part?

Sure !

There is not a big entrepreneurship culture in general (at least in Spain & Southern France) so starting a startup, learning through others experience, next steps etc.. It's harder.

Also the social pressure is a big reason why entrepreneurship is hard. While in USA, failing and starting over is seen as something natural, in the various Spanish and French communities I have lived is seen as a disaster. Even more in some places is seen as an intent of showing everyone that you are smarter than them so you create your own product/service in stead of working in making better the existing ones. I think it's a cultural thing.

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#28
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the Europe is slower part?

My opinion (which may differ from the other user), USA is a big market with a lot of similarities (a common language). Europe is a set of different countries which can be very different and do not share the same language among other things like the laws, bureaucracy, culture, etc. And there are more startups in USA, the ecosystem is more mature. I think all this factors make USA more atractive to get traction

Thank you for this. That makes sense.

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the Europe is slower part?

Sure ! There is not a big entrepreneurship culture in general (at least in Spain & Southern France) so starting a startup, learning through others experience, next steps etc.. It's harder. Also the social pressure is a big reason why entrepreneurship is hard. While in USA, failing and starting over is seen as something natural, in the various Spanish and French communities I have lived is seen as a disaster. Even mor…

Thanks for this. It really didn't occur to me (as an American) that starting a startup somewhere else could be more difficult, but thinking about it more and trying to think of each of the steps required to even launch an MVP, I realize that these things have been made easy for Americans because of those startups who came before us.

Re: Ask HN: How long did you work on a side project until it was your full time job?

#30

Probably 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 gene…

What's the app?
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