Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 75 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#51

Post by riku_iki »

a13n wrote: post #24

Heck no I don't regret it. Just over three years ago I left my cushy job at Facebook to start a company. It took a year and a half of grinding to make our first dollar. Now we're ramen profitable and still growing strong. [1] The reason it took so long is because I was an inexperienced founder. I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... These are not th…

> I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page...

It would be extremely interesting to read what lessons you learned on this road :-)

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#52

Post by softwarefounder »

overcast wrote: post #8

What'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.

This is a good way to start a consulting business as well.

Do it all as side work, wait for that bigger client/contract, and then do your own thing.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#53

Post by justboxing »

a13n wrote: post #24

Heck no I don't regret it. Just over three years ago I left my cushy job at Facebook to start a company. It took a year and a half of grinding to make our first dollar. Now we're ramen profitable and still growing strong. [1] The reason it took so long is because I was an inexperienced founder. I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... These are not th…

How are you just 'ramen profitable' when your lowest / basic plan to track just 100 users costs a whopping 50$ / month [1] ?

Don't mean to come off as snarky, but, unless you are targeting corporations and enterprises for your service, your pricing model [2] would be too much for most bootstrapped companies and early stage startups...

[1], [2] https://canny.io/pricing

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#54

Post by adamnemecek »

overcast wrote: post #8

What'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. Building shit takes very long. When employed, you might have like four shit working hours a day plus weekends however the progress tends to be very slow.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#55

Post by adamnemecek »

I quit my job to work full time on something I’ve been wanting to do since I was like 12. It’s been like two years now, mich longer than expected, but there was a lot of shit I had to plow through, the project is more researchy than I thought. I don’t regret it whatsoever, what I regret is stressing myself over launching ASAP in the first nine months of this thing, which really caused me to burn out. I would never take time off cause I thought I was wasting money, but it’s impossible to do that in the long run. If you want to play a game, play it, you’ll return back to your project soon enough.

Here’s my project, it’s not launched yet but check it out https://www.ngrid.io

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#56

Post by riku_iki »

geofft wrote: post #20
bad_good_guy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine a case like that would ever hold up, unless you were working on company time or machines.

I can't afford as many lawyers as Google can. Do you have examples of cases where a Google-style IP agreement was ruled unenforceable when someone was moonlighting on something that was in the same field of business as some other part of the company (but unrelated to their own day job)?

From another hand there are thousands of ex-googlers left company to engage in startups, and Google likely doesn't have enough lawyers to go after each of them..

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#57

Post by gremlinsinc »

a13n wrote: post #27
overcast wrote: post #8

What'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…

My solution is... make freelancing my business for awhile (it sometimes works), and it's sort of it's own business, but I still answer to the clients (the boss), I use the money from feast-cycles to buy me time to work on side projects/SaaS ideas. If the side-project thing never works out, I'd like to turn into an agency, and hire other devs to do the dev work and move more into project management and running the business.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#58

Post by dasmoth »

overcast wrote: post #19
aardvark291 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned…

Baloney, unless you're using corporate resources to get it done, they don't own work you do outside of working hours. No judge would ever uphold that. There are tons of Google / Facebook / whatever employees that build software outside of work.

Depends on the jurisdiction. California is reputed to be relatively side-project friendly in this regard. Other US states less so. Likewise UK (which is a factor in why I’m on the way out of my current gig in a couple of weeks...)

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#59

Post by godot »

I did this. Left a cushy corp job a few years ago, then worked on my own startup for 3 years. While we had some small funding, we could only pay ourselves very little salary (almost below livable standards for bay area, cutting into savings a little monthly), and in the end it had to shut down after 3 years. Went back to regular job (non-corp, an early-mid stage startup) after that.

I think the only factor that I have regrets about was financially. Not so much about having to cut into savings because I had good enough cushions anyway, but just realizing that I could've had 3 more years of high pay and stocks and padding the investment account with more money, and putting myself 3 more years away from retirement (or maybe more considering compound etc).

Other than that, entrepreneurship was an awesome experience that I wouldn't trade for anything else really.

Re: Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

#60

Post by geofft »

riku_iki wrote: post #56
geofft wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't afford as many lawyers as Google can. Do you have examples of cases where a Google-style IP agreement was ruled unenforceable when someone was moonlighting on something that was in the same field of business as some other part of the company (but unrelated to their own day job)?

From another hand there are thousands of ex-googlers left company to engage in startups, and Google likely doesn't have enough lawyers to go after each of them..

Left to join/found a startup is different from working simultaneously at both.
Post reply on HN