Nothing prevents you from doing both in all likelihood.
Enjoy working 2 jobs and making 1 income. If you quit, you'll still be working 2 jobs but with no income.
Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#32What's wrong with working the corporate world, and moonlighting your SaaS business? If it ends up taking off, then quit. I don't understand why it has to be either or. I run multiple side gigs, while keeping the safe corporate job, for now.
Good for you! A load of people struggle with this, and I think you're downplaying how hard it is for them. It takes a load of energy to work a full-time job, then come home and work on your side gig. I used to come home from work and not have anything left in the tank. I couldn't imagine working on a project alongside my current startup without sacrificing growth. It's also a big social sacrifice. People have familie…
I don't see how quitting your job to jump into something you've not even built is going to help any of those reasons. Sure you'll have more energy to devote to it, but now it will sapped away by the stress of having no choice except being successful in your venture. Steady paychecks are a good thing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#33I have said this before in other topics when someone is getting fed up with their job and want to try their hand at making a company. Get the business started, running, profitable and automated (with humans, bots, or scripts) and then quit. Do not remove your major source of income which also happens to be your major source of investment and start the clock that runs until your bank account empties and you need to lo…
This. Yeah, I made that mistake. On one hand, working on building a company full-time was the best time of my career. But it failed, and I lost a lot of money in the process. And going back to the corporate world was... demoralizing.
(As an aside, I think the biggest problem I had was lack of a committed co-founder. I had help and support, but it's not the same. Later, I tried pushing again with potential co-founders, but they got distracted and lacked commitment when I really needed them.)
edit: I do plan to get back to it soon. I'm taking a forced six month hiatus to reset that concludes in July, and I'm kind of chomping at the bit for it. But only while doing my dayjob too! Not going to leave that again until I have paying customers.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good for you! A load of people struggle with this, and I think you're downplaying how hard it is for them. It takes a load of energy to work a full-time job, then come home and work on your side gig. I used to come home from work and not have anything left in the tank. I couldn't imagine working on a project alongside my current startup without sacrificing growth. It's also a big social sacrifice. People have familie…
I don't see how quitting your job to jump into something you've not even built is going to help any of those reasons. Sure you'll have more energy to devote to it, but now it will sapped away by the stress of having no choice except being successful in your venture. Steady paychecks are a good thing.
The stress of having no choice except being successful in your venture can be a huge forcing function / motivator. Steady paychecks are comfortable. Comfort isn't motivating for me.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#35What's wrong with working the corporate world, and moonlighting your SaaS business? If it ends up taking off, then quit. I don't understand why it has to be either or. I run multiple side gigs, while keeping the safe corporate job, for now.
My biggest concern is sneaky, vaguely "the company owns" everything agreements, even when the HR department/owners tell you "Oh, it's just for work-related stuff".
I have nightmares about this.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#36What's wrong with working the corporate world, and moonlighting your SaaS business? If it ends up taking off, then quit. I don't understand why it has to be either or. I run multiple side gigs, while keeping the safe corporate job, for now.
I tried this and ended up burnt out and sucking at both. It also took a personal toll on relationships with friends and was just too much to juggle. Your side gig better be light, or your office job unambitious and coast-able for this to work.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#37Not leaving a corporate job, but slowly transitioning from freelancing to working on my SAAS business (https://www.scraperapi.com) full time. I'll throw out the suggestion that maybe you should seek a bit of freelance work on the side so you can have some level of income while you work on your business. Even if it's just 5-10 hours a week, if you can get $100/hr from someone for that you can cover a large portion/all of your living costs if you live frugally. Good luck!
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#38You won't regret it if you go to entrepreneurship and ship. The problem is not about entrepreneurship but in not planning for failure and having backup plans. John Carmack: "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." [1] From personal experience, I can say go for it not because you hate corporate, but because you want an end to end experience, then come b…
Nothing worse than shipping and having absolutely no sales.
Not true. Not shipping at all is much worse. Shipping and having no sales is how every business starts. The next step is learning WHY. Talk to people, iterate, and repeat. That's business.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#39I started a SaaS business, which is now my full-time gig -- I would say don't leave a job until you have something producing a ramen-noodle level salary for you. When I was able to pay myself $2,000/month it was enough to live on for my situation at the time. I was working 80 hour weeks in my underwear, scrambling to answer support requests, fix bugs, and move the codebase forward. If I had to do that while also trying to find product-market fit and worrying about running out of money, I might have broken down.
No regrets with my decision now. Once my business slowed down (read: I automated much of it), I actually went back and spent two years at a startup + 1 year contracting to bring in some extra money and get new experiences. The extra cash was certainly nice, I used it to setup a nice start on retirement and buy a house. Ultimately, though, my hatred of corporate politics and building wealth for the capital class without equity of my own led me to re-focus on my SaaS app. I've been enjoying the freedom and challenges ever since.
Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?
#40I left my "real job" for entrepreneurship about 8 years ago (at age 23) and haven't looked back. I've run several small companies since then, with a game server host[1] being the most recent. I'm pretty happy with how it's gone and I have no regrets over leaving. I was happy and well-treated in the real job, but nothing beats the freedom to work on what I want, when I want, using whichever technologies I want. The bi…
This is great advice. Did you work on your first business part-time while working your last "real job"? I feel like I'm in a similar boat and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm 24 and I work for a great company with really smart people whom over the past two years I've learned from quite a bit, I've always wanted to start a business though, actually in college I did just that to earn money. I created an app development business targeting Windows Phone and was able to build a pretty sizable passive income stream which kept me satisfied throughout college. I'm now debating finding a new job but really what I'd love to do is go back to entrepreneurship, yet on the other side I know how valuable learning from people in the industry actually is.
Any advice?