Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#41

Post by ssalka » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 5:58 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #33

ryandrake wrote: post #7

Tread carefully. If you’re going to do this, read your current employment agreement carefully especially the parts about Intellectual Property. Every medium-to-large company I have worked at has asserted ownership of everything I build, at work or away from work, using my own equipment, on my own time—it doesn't matter. If your employer can imagne a conflict of interest (for example could what you are working on pote…

"asserted ownership of everything I build, at work or away from work, using my own equipment, on my own time—it doesn't matter" That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Assuming you're not stealing technology, or doing it on their time or machines, there is no way a court would uphold that. If I build a house, or rebuild a car in my off time, they own that too? Corporations don't own your entire life.

Sadly this is fairly commonplace in IP contracts. Though some companies provide potential hires with an option to list "own inventions" wherein he/she can list projects they may continue to develop in their own time and retain ownership of. Granted, all entries therein are subject to approval by the company - obviously they won't let you pursue a project that is actually in competition with their business.

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#42

Post by sincerely » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

leowoo91 wrote: post #27

pmalynin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty common question to ask from hiring managers. It shows passion. Passion is a way better predictor of your work quality and commitment than asking ICPC whiteboard questions.

Side projects prove the passion, I certainly agree. Only, I can't get my head around if employee decides to start dreaming his/her side project taking over the current job. If odds are close and side project has good traction, maybe it's not ethical to work in fulltime before understanding it either.

It's not ethical to take a job you think you might leave at some point in the future? lol

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#43

Post by shanemlk » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:01 PM UTC

llcoolv wrote: post #2

I think a lot of people who visit those two websites: https://www.indiehackers.com/ http://sidehustlehq.com/

thanks for the links

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#44

Post by elboru » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

deedubaya wrote: post #37

I've got two cash flow positive side-projects while maintaining full-time employment, having a life, wife, and kid. BreezyPDF - https://breezypdf.com - Dead simple PDF generation from URLs. Comes with a rails middleware so all you have to do is add .pdf to the end of a URL to download a PDF of that URL. HOALife - https://hoalife.com - A CC&R Inspection and Enforcement tool for property managers.

Was it difficult to get the early users? What did you do to get them to use your websites?

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#45

Post by rodolphoarruda » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

wilsmex wrote: post #31

notJim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, I cannot scroll down on on artcall.org.

Oh strange, can’t reproduce. Are you on mobile or desktop? Browser?

I could reproduce it on Ubuntu with Chromium.

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#46

Post by dolessdrugs » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

thenewcoder21 wrote: post #32

wilsmex wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh strange, can’t reproduce. Are you on mobile or desktop? Browser?

I could reproduce on OS X, Desktop, using Google Chrome. Hope that helps!

Windows, Desktop, Firefox : no issues

Windows, Desktop, Chrome: Clicking the scroll bar works; mouse wheel, arrows, page up/page down do not.

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#47

Post by neetdavid » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

wilsmex wrote: post #31

notJim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, I cannot scroll down on on artcall.org.

Oh strange, can’t reproduce. Are you on mobile or desktop? Browser?

Same for me on Chrome. There's a 'mousewheel' event listener attached to the window that is calling preventDefault()

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#48

Post by deedubaya » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

elboru wrote: post #44

deedubaya wrote: post #37

I've got two cash flow positive side-projects while maintaining full-time employment, having a life, wife, and kid. BreezyPDF - https://breezypdf.com - Dead simple PDF generation from URLs. Comes with a rails middleware so all you have to do is add .pdf to the end of a URL to download a PDF of that URL. HOALife - https://hoalife.com - A CC&R Inspection and Enforcement tool for property managers.

Was it difficult to get the early users? What did you do to get them to use your websites?

The first users were insanely hard to get. Getting new users never gets easy, but less-hard as you go.

First users were usually contacts that I had made within the spaces prior to building. Then old-fashioned marketing and sales pipelines.

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#49

Post by _vuqm » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

Might not be your typical answer, but I launched an ecommerce store that’s been profitable since the first month. At first I targeted solo devs without much digital design skills, but it turns out that blank sketchpads are very useful to designers and design agencies as well. It’s done well enough where I continue to run out of each batch of inventory and it’s turned a small profit as I continue to order large and larger batches of product.

https://sketchpads.co

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#50

Post by hopfog » Wed, Sep 26, 2018, 6:07 PM UTC

I built my startup while keeping my job until it was impossible to sustain. I tried really hard to make it work as long as possible.

At the time I quit my job the startup was profitable and growing really fast. A few months later we started negotiating an acquisition and closed the deal after working less than a year on it full-time.