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Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

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Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#21

Post by AMerePotato »

I'm your age :)

I started my current one in college. Since high school I had every intention of making a living starting my own business, so that was the plan all along. I've been on hacker news since my early teens (different accounts) and I've been doing projects about just as long.

I'm working full time on my business. If the times were different, I'd look for a part time job serving coffee or something. I went back to living with my parents after college (probably a mistake), so I don't worry about supporting myself.

By now, I am pretty good at recognizing what a good idea is, and getting from idea to shipping something. I'm working on my marketing skills and being patient.

You say you're struggling to start, I imagine there is something specific that makes you feel that way:

Do you have an idea yet? How far have you gotten? Are you afraid to quit your job? Are you having difficulties putting in the time and effort?

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#22

Post by artur_makly »

My startup trail started the day I decided to take the summer off from living in NYC, and go to South America for the summer ( Peru ) to learn to surf while working all day on my MVP.

That was 2006. I never looked back.

Once you get used to doing things your way.. it's very hard to go back.

Let go of the golden handcuffs, put on your adventure hat, and consider finding a low-cost city/country to play in while you figure out product-market-fit[1]. If you are lucky you will also find other potential co-founders also on the same journey, and other talented local folk who are affordable. Who knows you may even learn a new language along the way! Worst case you go back to doing what you've been doing. It's not going anywhere soon in this climate.

[1]https://remoteok.io/

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#23

Post by news_to_me »

cj wrote: post #20

> making the move of quitting my fulltime job > How was it going to sleep knowing that you probably not going to have an income in the next upcoming weeks/months? Do you need to quit your job to start working on a startup? When I started my company at 23, I spent a full year working long nights/weekends and then quit my day job only after the company had some momentum. If you can manage a day job and a side hustle, I…

I’d extremely not recommend this. Everyone is different of course, but there’s no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate enough time to a serious new endeavor. Don’t listen to the hustle bullshit. If you want to do a startup, just quit and jump into it.

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#24

Post by gzajac »

Based on my personal experience (SlashMap - fairly successful Slack plugin), I’d recommend trying to verify an idea before giving up your full-time job. For instance, you can start with a landing page to do so. I must confess that combining full-time work with a side project was challenging for me and affected work-life balance heavily in my case, but it may be the best choice if you’re not ready to quit your current job. Working on a side project only in your free time will probably significantly slow down the progress, but you can think of finding a partner to help you with it (if the project succeeds you’ll probably need a partner anyways). Opinion and complementary skills of another person may be keys to success as well. I’d say that if you really believe in your idea, it’s very likely you’ll find a way to verify it before quitting your current job. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#25

Post by cj »

news_to_me wrote: post #23
cj wrote: post #20

> making the move of quitting my fulltime job > How was it going to sleep knowing that you probably not going to have an income in the next upcoming weeks/months? Do you need to quit your job to start working on a startup? When I started my company at 23, I spent a full year working long nights/weekends and then quit my day job only after the company had some momentum. If you can manage a day job and a side hustle, I…

I’d extremely not recommend this. Everyone is different of course, but there’s no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate enough time to a serious new endeavor. Don’t listen to the hustle bullshit. If you want to do a startup, just quit and jump into it.

> there’s no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate enough time to a serious new endeavor

I agree. I didn't stay very healthy when I was working a day job and also working nights / weekends. It was exhausting.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough savings to be able to quit my job. It was definitely a trade off.

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#26

Post by news_to_me »

cj wrote: post #25
news_to_me wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d extremely not recommend this. Everyone is different of course, but there’s no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate enough time to a serious new endeavor. Don’t listen to the hustle bullshit. If you want to do a startup, just quit and jump into it.

> there’s no way you can work a full time job, stay healthy, and dedicate enough time to a serious new endeavor I agree. I didn't stay very healthy when I was working a day job and also working nights / weekends. It was exhausting. Unfortunately I didn't have enough savings to be able to quit my job. It was definitely a trade off.

That’s fair, and I assume it worked out ok for you in the end. I imagine people who are able to pull that off know who they are. Definitely understand the trade off.

I just think as general advice for young programmers, “work 60+ hour weeks” is very much the wrong message. Stay healthy and let your passion drive your work.

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#27

Post by asdev »

do you have an idea you could see yourself working on for 5-10 years? If so, quit your job and make the jump. You are going to be too burnt out from having a job and working your free hours towards building a start up on the side. Not having income will inherently drive you to work harder towards finding success quickly.

If you don't have any ideas, would recommend finding some ideas you are passionate about first while keeping your day job

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#28

Post by ykevinator »

I started after losing custom coding business for a few years to really bad products and decided to make a product. Took about 3 years to replace the custom revenue with product revenue. I agree with all the sentiment here, you don't have to quit your job to do a start-up. You can do lots of validation

Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?

#30

Post by pieterhg »

artur_makly wrote: post #22

My startup trail started the day I decided to take the summer off from living in NYC, and go to South America for the summer ( Peru ) to learn to surf while working all day on my MVP. That was 2006. I never looked back. Once you get used to doing things your way.. it's very hard to go back. Let go of the golden handcuffs, put on your adventure hat, and consider finding a low-cost city/country to play in while you fig…

I think you mean my other site https://nomadlist.com, thanks for mentioning!
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