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How to start a company with no free time

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Re: How to start a company with no free time

#151

Post by disordinary »

dyarosla wrote: post #147
disordinary wrote: post #146

A surprising amount of developers have their own side projects. These should be encouraged by employers because a) most of these projects don't go anywhere and so the likelihood of you loosing a staff member to their hobbies is low, and b) because employees often explore new technologies and educate themselves when doing these things. It means your employee loves what they do enough to keep doing it in their spare ti…

I mean, these ideas are nice... in theory. But to play devil's advocate: a) Statistics? b) Can an argument not be made that with programming/developing/designing at work AND at home, burnout is more likely? Or that less overall effort will be spent on work related things?

The point of my post was really about playing by the rules and making sure you don't get in any legal problems by using company resources to further your own project, I guess I started on a bit of a tangent though. :)

As far as answering your questions, a) I don't have any statistics but I know a lot of people with side projects and they all still have day jobs, so it's very anecdotal. b) You could make that case, but I'd say (once again without evidence to back it up) that if burnout occurs it's going to be the personal project that is cut rather than the job that pays the bills.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#152

Post by eloff »

disordinary wrote: post #146

A surprising amount of developers have their own side projects. These should be encouraged by employers because a) most of these projects don't go anywhere and so the likelihood of you loosing a staff member to their hobbies is low, and b) because employees often explore new technologies and educate themselves when doing these things. It means your employee loves what they do enough to keep doing it in their spare ti…

Just a heads up, after passing 50 hours of assignments and interviews, I turned down an offer from IBM because they wanted to own my side project. Stay clear of big blue if you like doing side projects, their legal dept is overzealous.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#153

Post by eloff »

m4x wrote: post #114
civilian wrote: post #5

I have a related question for the author or anyone: How do you keep your energy up to code in the evenings on your own project, after a full day of coding at the office?

Often, when I'm struggling to find energy for after hours projects, I find that it's because I'm neglecting ancillary tasks such as eating nutritious meals, exercising and giving my brain down time (usually these can be combined by cycling etc), and planning my work in advance so that the barrier to start each day is low. Other times I'm overwhelmed by stress or sheer number of tasks (which can again be mitigated wit…

Also it's tough to stay really excited about something for years. I find the bursts of energy come in fits and starts. There are days the code just flows and others where I can't seem to motivate myself to work for more than fifteen minutes at a time.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#154

Post by eloff »

_faster_ wrote: post #130
logicallee wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry I didn't see your reply sooner. if you see this in time to edit, please tone it down by two notches, come on. The OP (of the article) is here answering questions, and we're one community. you yourself are the article author in a few years if you want to be. You know "what does this person do" because they are up-front about it: what they do is "Winnie, helping parents navigate the world with their children.…

How dare you. If someone wants to defend themselves they have every opportunity to do so but I (and I think the HN audience) don't appreciate being- 1. patronised about things like: "this kind of shows you the kind of audience this is written for". How pathetic, as if there are some levels of access beyond which peons like us cannot comprehend. and 2. Your concern trolling. Where I come from we believe in the scienti…

You can do all that and be civil. It's not an either/or thing. Downvote.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#155

Post by bbcbasic »

rhizome wrote: post #136
nols wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's a lot more popular than your average person, and more tied into SV than most. Her resume includes Google, Youtube, Twitter, and Postmates before founding her own company, plus she's got 35K followers on Twitter and had a TechCrunch article written about the startup. I think a lot of what she wrote is applicable but she also moves in spheres the average person doesn't.

"0. Spend your free time building your network before you don't have free time anymore."

-1 be born in USA or get a green card.

Still to be fair are we expecting a single article knocked up in an hour to apply everyone's situation? Not even a book could be that.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#156

Post by bbcbasic »

chrisabrams wrote: post #27
ggregoire wrote: post #24

I'm surprised by the points 1 and 3. I started a company 2 months ago as solo founder and I work everyday on the product (a SaaS for small/mid companies). I really have no free time to do marketing yet or promote my idea. I just focus on having a MVP. 1. "Decline invitations from VCs to drink a coffee" I've never received any attention from a VC, like probably most founders when they started their first company. It s…

I'm curious as to what the author's goal in writing this point. The point itself could have been achieved without mentioning VCs. It's pretty rare to "persistently" be contacted by any VCs, even if you live in SV. Most the startup founders I know would love to have this VC "persistence" problem.

I'm a parent who now knows about her app. If I lived in the states hell I'd probably use it

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#157

Post by manquer »

gyardley wrote: post #126

When I read articles like this, I realize just how differently I'm wired than, well, the sort of person who writes articles like this. And I kind of dislike articles like this, because there always seems to be an implicit prescriptiveness underneath them - you can start a company even when you've got no free time, and therefore you should start a company even when you've got no free time. HN, if you happen to be wire…

I think it is more trying to get across that having a family and personal constraints is not necessarily a barrier or an "excuse" to not starting up now. To me it feels like it is aimed more for those who are come up with external reasons to themselves and others why they can't do so now(If only was solved I would start now.. ) rather than admitting there are more important things to them.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#158

Post by BinaryIdiot »

ryandrake wrote: post #29
ggregoire wrote: post #24

I'm surprised by the points 1 and 3. I started a company 2 months ago as solo founder and I work everyday on the product (a SaaS for small/mid companies). I really have no free time to do marketing yet or promote my idea. I just focus on having a MVP. 1. "Decline invitations from VCs to drink a coffee" I've never received any attention from a VC, like probably most founders when they started their first company. It s…

Yea, kind of bizarre, especially as point #1. How would a VC even know you're working on a start-up? I also don't get random E-mails from VCs asking me whether I am working on a start-up and if so would I like to drink a beverage. Is this really a common problem for people?

Not sure how common but I worked on a side project at the Launch Hackathon in Feb then slowly made progress from prototype to real thing. In July I put up a website for it so people could sign up but I keep falling behind in actually launching the damn thing (and believe me I want to launch ASAP, warts and all, just need everything working first).

I have gotten emails / tweets from two VCs regarding my project and another from a group wanting me to apply to their start-up incubator. I sorta solicited one as he was tweeting "hey what's your idea and I'll give you feedback" so I mentioned it, pointed him to my website and he seemed interested in wanting to help when I was ready.

So I'm not sure. It probably depends on if a VC happens to come across it somehow and it's probably pretty rare. The 2 + incubator that contacted me, hell, they may never invest anything. I did setup a twitter account so I tried tweeting during my hackathon but after that was one it's pretty rare for me to tweet on it.

Fyi my side project is www.simex.io (yeah I know the date is wrong but I am still working on it and I did have a real working prototype; I _will_ launch but it'll likely be in January at this rate).

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#159

Post by ih »

civilian wrote: post #5

I have a related question for the author or anyone: How do you keep your energy up to code in the evenings on your own project, after a full day of coding at the office?

I've had a lot more success programming in the morning before going into the office. There might not be as much potential time to work, but I've found myself making more progress getting 30 minutes done a day every day than the intermittent multi-hour blocks I'd program when I had enough energy/motivation after coming home from work.

Re: How to start a company with no free time

#160

Post by disordinary »

eloff wrote: post #152
disordinary wrote: post #146

A surprising amount of developers have their own side projects. These should be encouraged by employers because a) most of these projects don't go anywhere and so the likelihood of you loosing a staff member to their hobbies is low, and b) because employees often explore new technologies and educate themselves when doing these things. It means your employee loves what they do enough to keep doing it in their spare ti…

Just a heads up, after passing 50 hours of assignments and interviews, I turned down an offer from IBM because they wanted to own my side project. Stay clear of big blue if you like doing side projects, their legal dept is overzealous.

Yeah, I've negotiated out that clause on a few contracts.

I think Google is the same, people who are Googlers with opensourced projects that have nothing to do with Google all have them hosted on the Google github account for this reason.

I'm not in the US but AFAIK US law (or at least Californian law) states that a company can only own what you do in your personal time if it competes with them, the problem is that for companies the size of IBM and Google that could be most things.

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