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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?

#141

Post by shdh »

fizx wrote: post #73

I built bonsai.io/websolr.com while working at Twitter in 2010. I left in 2012, keeping a promise to a co-founder that I'd leave if we hit $1M ARR. There were definitely a couple months of pager/ops overload where I hit 100hr workweeks and multiple hundreds of pagers per week. Hypervisor bugs meant that some tasks were hard to automate, and that automation would stochastically fail, so I stayed up til 4am watching th…

Any insightful takeaways from "watching the logs" and "correcting issues" in terms of what you would do differently?

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

#142

Post by smoe »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
buf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put it in your contract before you get employed. If starting a company while employed, reach out to your employer saying you're building company X which does Y as a side project and you need a document stating no IP ownership.

No employer I have ever worked for would even consider modifying this language in their agreement. They are going to have a standard boilerplate and if you try to negotiate or modify it they will tell you “sign it unmodified or GTFO.” Ask me how I know :-)

At my first ever job, where I was among the first developers after the founders, they got such standard boilerplate template.

I asked them to remove that line and some others, and they did without discussion or trying to pressure me into signing.

They didn't actually notice the line being there when they downloaded it from the internet and it was consequently removed for future contracts.

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

#143

Post by taylorhou »

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.

whoa. huge props for HOALife. any interest in selling? I'm interested in acquiring =) we're a growing player in the property services niche looking at different entry points into hoa's

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

#144

Post by taylorhou »

polote wrote: post #128
quickthrower2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does you diet suffer? Exercise? Do you get to shower? Sleep much?

I used to exercise every day, now only 3 times a week but sports is more often a good way to gain more energy. I sleep a lot, average 8h30 per day, I really need to sleep a lot

i found the keto diet to be very complimentary to the founder lifestyle. you end up intermittently fasting because of work which helps boost all of the benefits of keto.

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

#145

Post by shdh »

dazhbog wrote: post #75

We had a different turn of events in our case. Me and my co-founder we were working on the startup, while on our full-time jobs, and we got some grants from governments to allow us to quit and persuit it full time. This was 4 years ago and we are still going strong with sales and grants. Never underestimate the opportunities for free money! Governments, councils, schemes, all have projections, agentas and budgets and…

Can you post some sources to this information?

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

#146

Post by deedubaya »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #121
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.

I'm impressed at the HOALife being a side project. I've worked at companies doing something similar (different country) and it's a full time job maintaining and adding features to apps like that. If you are doing all the coding, marketing, web design, payment processing and support (and in my experience people want stuff fixed quick because they have inspections to do or they get kinda angry) in your spare time I rea…

I do all the coding design and support, and some marketing and sales. I have a co-founder for HOALife that does a lot of the day-to-day work (his side-gig too)!

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

#147

Post by javiramos »

canadapups wrote: post #26

I have a finance career, plus I built CanadaPups.com. Very little maintenance and costs, but lots of fun to tinker and improve it as a hobby. Just letting it grow on its own as I'm kinda out of ideas of how to kick it up a notch - suggestions welcome!. https://canadapups.com

How did you get the first few customers to achieve enough critical mass to make website successful?

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

#148

Post by NullPrefix »

jepper wrote: post #123
meatyapp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(While I understand passion is important and you won't make it far in either without it) Which profession would you suggest just "for the money"? Doctor or Software Engineer? Taking into the account the time and loans it takes to come online as a doctor, and the assuming the person is good enough to become a surgeon or code at FAANG? Great website btw, and so inspiring.

I' m not in the US, so no crazy salaries on both sides. The average doctor probably makes more but the best programmer makes way more than the best doctor. However with long hours, night shifts, pressure etc you have to enjoy what you do or burn out early.

>However with long hours, night shifts, pressure etc you have to enjoy what you do or burn out early

Is this about the doctor or the programmer?

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

#149

Post by oceanman888 »

polote wrote: post #127
bootloop wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Very tired all the time" - Where I come from (EU) this is the reason why it's not allowed to work two jobs (>40h) if the employer doesn't approve.

I'm from France, it is not allowed to work more than 44h per week for a period of 12 weeks. But honestly it is difficult to set the same bar for everyone

that is bellow the minimum in japan.

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

#150

Post by madeuptempacct »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
buf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put it in your contract before you get employed. If starting a company while employed, reach out to your employer saying you're building company X which does Y as a side project and you need a document stating no IP ownership.

No employer I have ever worked for would even consider modifying this language in their agreement. They are going to have a standard boilerplate and if you try to negotiate or modify it they will tell you “sign it unmodified or GTFO.” Ask me how I know :-)

I also got the “sign it unmodified or GTFO.”
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