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

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

#81

Post by drb91 »

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…

IANAL, but I believe at least in California, emmployers have no right to IP that is unrelated to work IP and developed on your personal time on a personal laptop. If it is in a contract it should be unenforcable.

The key here is having a clear demarcation between work and personal projects.

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

#82

Post by Arqu »

For what it's worth, it's still work in progress (not really profitable, but getting there). I've been working on it for more than 5 years now for about 2 hours a day on average, steady. Basically, I spend my "hobby time" working on it. Evenings, weekends, late nights, wherever I can squeeze some spare time in. Sometimes it gets hard and frustrating as you would like to push more but don't have the luxury of going full time on it just yet.

It gets easier to balance with time as you learn how and when to squeeze in some time to work on it while still maintaining a normal life with job, family and friends.

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

#84

Post by smarri »

I run a non-profit outside of my day job. Whilst not a startup in the sense you are probably asking about, there are many parallels. Even though we are non profit we still require well into 6 figures per year to operate and deliver on our charitable purpose. This requires us to pitch for funding at large corporates and investors. We have a big team of enthusiastic people working on the charity, without any scope for renumeration, so the vision has to be compelling. We have to manage regulation, risk, and financial standards. It takes a lot of time. But it's well worth it. You could always consider a 'non profit startup' if you are interested in making an impact other than financial. Best of luck.

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

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

drb91 wrote: post #81
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…

IANAL, but I believe at least in California, emmployers have no right to IP that is unrelated to work IP and developed on your personal time on a personal laptop. If it is in a contract it should be unenforcable. The key here is having a clear demarcation between work and personal projects.

“Personal time” isn't a clearcut concept for non-hourly employees, and I'm pretty sure the “unrelated” but applies to job duties (which can be quite expansive) not just existing work IP.

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

#86

Post by vorpalhex »

beat wrote: post #69
vorpalhex wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is totally illegal, you're still going to go to court to fight it, and lawyers are expensive. Nobody sane is going to spend 30k+ going to trial on a side project.

On the flip side, no sane company is going to sue a former (or current) employee for IP ownership over work they did in their off hours - especially if it isn't directly related to the company's own business.

They could file the suit and then drop it last second. Most large companies have several lawyers on staff, so it's not really any additional cost.

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

#87

Post by jepper »

kk58 wrote: post #52
jepper wrote: post #20

Not really a startup in the sense of a VC backed multi million dollar company but three working friends and me have bootstrapped a fitness websites with science based health advice, mostly free, to basically the largest fitness related website in the Netherlands. Currently employing people, which i think still sounds insane for a hobby project. https://www.fit.nl . 700.000 pageviews a month. App, 2 books, system for…

What inspired a doctor to code? I assume that must have an inspiring story

Not really. Picked it up as a child, loved programming and tinkering. Had to choose between computer science and medicine. There are actually lots of things in common, debugging complex systems, building a mental model, abstraction, looking up solutions based on certain hints. Orthopedics is a highly technical field, working with implants, computer surgery, imaging and such so its very useful. Programming trains your problem solving abilities. I really believe everybody should have the opportunity to learn to code.

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

#88

Post by pricklypear »

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…

In my experience, big companies have restrictions around moonlighting when your startup directly competes with their services/products, and assert ownership over things you work on using the company's resources, ie company computers/internet/time. So if your startup is not directly competing, and you're doing it on your own time/computer/internet, you should be good.

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

#89

Post by pricklypear »

polote wrote: post #67

That's what I do currently, I'm a full time product manager in a normal company, and I'm also working as a CTO at a startup, we are 3. Two people are working full time, and I only work part time (about 30h per week). I do that, because I like doing multilple things at the same time. But I think it is a very difficult life. I can do that because I have no social life and everything is optimized so that I can work all…

How long have you been doing this for? Do you think this can be maintained over a long period of time?

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

#90

Post by jcadam »

jjoonathan wrote: post #77
jcadam wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I now ask to see these agreements before signing a job offer after making a similar mistake at a previous company.

I did too, and they made verbal promises that they went back on. Next time I'll make sure to ask in an on-the-record communications medium.

Oh, wow. Nice to start off a working relationship by lying to the new hire. I might have signed if I were in a financial bind (e.g., just moved cross-country and couldn't afford to be unemployed), but I would immediately start looking for another job.
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