I found it useful to have cofounders as forcing functions. Also, the end of the previous thing: college->first startup, finishing my PhD->YC startup, being fired->CircleCI, and running out of money->Dark.
Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
31–40 of 42 posts
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#32My 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!
Pieter I simply cant keep up with our startups ;-)
What do you have cooking under those sleeves these days?!
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#33My 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…
then again.. if you have a US passport, today much the world is not opening its doors to it: https://medium.com/@indica/the-plague-states-of-america-53b2...
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#34Some of my friends asked me whether they should start a company, I typically suggest them to answer these questions first:
- Have you ever made over $10k on your own?
Not from your day job salary. Not from public stock market. Making money needs practice. You start a company to make money. You’d better have some experience of making money first. Without working in an established company, are you able to make a meaningful amount of money and survive in this world?
- What’s your longest project?
Have you worked on anything for multiple years? Grit & patience need practice. Building a successful company takes multiple years, even decades. Be prepared.
- When was the last time you were insulted by others?
If you grew up in a very comfortable environment (rich family, great schools — because your parents went to those great schools too, great companies, …), probably you already get used to compliment for your entire life. Now you are going to face a very very diverse set of people who don’t know your family background or don’t recognize your family name. If you are the kind of people who are easy to be upset by very minor things (e.g., people don’t reply your email or people don’t compliment you), you’d better stay in the friendly corporate.
- What happened when you broke up with your ex or your friends?
People relationship is complex. You’ll experience a lot of bad people relationship if you start your own company — breaking up with cofounders, firing employees, fighting evil investors, fighting con man, fighting bad reporters, dealing with malicious users, dealing with competitors (sometimes in person)… All kinds of drama. You’d better practice this kind of things before starting your own company.
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#35I was about your age when I founded a startup about 8-9 years ago . One thing I did was never went to a full time job and the safety of regular an income . I took freelancing jobs and consulted few odd jobs for about 2 years as I worked to getting a MVP out and get seed funding .
I did have student loans pretty much like anybody else , and it wasn’t easy certainly . Trying to balance working on consulting gigs and building your app at that age there is lot to learn to become better developer and also figure out how a startup works is hard.
My reasoning was financially the older you become more it harder to quit a full time job and do what you want. A house mortgage , family, kids their education etc keep adding up , your lifestyle may make it hard to quit .
The downside to the approach knowledge and experience helps a lot . While I learn a lot fast, with my current understanding I could perhaps do what took 5-6 years in a year or two. However I don’t think I would get remotely same knowledge had I not been working under that kind of pressure .
Would I do it again ? I don’t know. I did a miss lot of typical twenties life , most of my peers / friends are in very different stages of life then I am : financially stable , found their life partners, have kids and settled down on life goals on what they want to do. While my startup is doing pretty well , until there is an exit , financially I am probably not far a fresh graduate, never could spend time in relationships , this despite being perhaps one of lucky ones still in the game and part of something fairly successful, there are many founders who had to face hard truths and try to get back to regular jobs or dig deeper and deeper in still lost in their ideas and having lot tougher time than me.
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#36> 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.
It wasn't a startup exactly, but I did part-time software dev contracting as a side hustle for about 3 months while I held down a full time job. It was excruciating. But, it did allow me to build up enough cushion to comfortably make the jump to full time contracting. Which was my best career move yet.
I really wouldn't want to go through that again, but it was worth it.
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#37I was 26; it was the dot-com boom. I had no clear plan but a potential client called me asking for something I could deliver at a price that they were happy with.
I was mostly profitable by about week 5 -- so I only skipped one pay cheque, but I didn't have children then, so it was easier to live cheaply.
But that was a service business: service businesses are easy to get started, but they are hard to scale. If you are thinking of making a product business, you are in for a much longer harder road.
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#38Some of my friends asked me whether they should start a company, I typically suggest them to answer these questions first: - Have you ever made over $10k on your own? Not from your day job salary. Not from public stock market. Making money needs practice. You start a company to make money. You’d better have some experience of making money first. Without working in an established company, are you able to make a meanin…
10K sounds like a lot of money, do you really set your own bar there? What examples did you encounter of people making 10K on their own while still working at corporate?
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#39Some of my friends asked me whether they should start a company, I typically suggest them to answer these questions first: - Have you ever made over $10k on your own? Not from your day job salary. Not from public stock market. Making money needs practice. You start a company to make money. You’d better have some experience of making money first. Without working in an established company, are you able to make a meanin…
10K sounds like a lot of money, do you really set your own bar there? What examples did you encounter of people making 10K on their own while still working at corporate?
I mean $10K it’s like a website w content for US audiences and getting 1K readers a day for a year - depending on the niche you could make even more. It’s not that hard. Not easy. But not hard either. For example posting on relevant Facebook Groups every day a couple of hours a day would suffice.
If you can do that you have a basic grasp of marketing, copy, product market fit, accounting and taxes, financing, maybe design, hiring and outsourcing. Definitely a head start.
Re: Ask HN: How and when did you decide and start your startup?
#40I prefer to experiment with ideas and ideally get an MVP out way before officially deciding that I’m “starting a startup”. I worked on https://divjoy.com for 6 months on the side and only decided to jump into it full-time after validating the MVP (mostly thanks to my Show HN).