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Ask HN: How do you find a business idea and motivation to leave the 9-5 grind

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Re: Ask HN: How do you find a business idea and motivation to leave the 9-5 grind

#21

Post by NiagaraThistle »

mstipetic wrote: post #19
NiagaraThistle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have achieved the goal. The question was 1. how to come up with ideas, and 2. how to work on those ideas with a 9-5. I have achieved both of those. Successfully and profitably, or not, is another question altogether. Even in the past when i've procrastinated, i still 1. had the ideas to work on, and 2. spent some time after work many days to work on the projects. If the question had been 'how do you build profitabl…

But your advice is reductive "it's about building habits." No it's not. His question was about escaping the grind with an "idea" which kinda implies building a business. I intentionally use the word business, not product as a lot of people (including you it seems) conflate. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm trying to save you from a lot of potential pain, as I've been also through that and am trying to get you to…

definitely not taking any of your comments as 'being an asshole'. I genuinely appreciate the feedback and advice, and 100% agree with each of your points. I am the first to admit product /= business and project /= startup, but the terms do definitely get interchanged a lot now.

my comments above fail to clarify that 'hunkering down' is not the only aspect of building something successful, nor do i think the '12-, 24-' hour hack sessions (regardless of what you're building) are a good formula to success, i've been very guilty of putting in the work but not doing so smartly in the past. I guess i was just trying to nail home the fact that if you want to start something on the side it IS going to take extra work, and that might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but some work is necessary.

And i also definitely agree with the fact that many of my ideas don't lead to community, and agree that a vibrant community is a great means to success, most of these are 'scratch my own itch' type projects. But my primary point was , good or bad, ideas surround us daily.

Thanks for your advice and feedback. I genuinely appreciate it!

Re: Ask HN: How do you find a business idea and motivation to leave the 9-5 grind

#22

Post by avenger123 »

NiagaraThistle wrote: post #21
mstipetic wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But your advice is reductive "it's about building habits." No it's not. His question was about escaping the grind with an "idea" which kinda implies building a business. I intentionally use the word business, not product as a lot of people (including you it seems) conflate. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm trying to save you from a lot of potential pain, as I've been also through that and am trying to get you to…

definitely not taking any of your comments as 'being an asshole'. I genuinely appreciate the feedback and advice, and 100% agree with each of your points. I am the first to admit product /= business and project /= startup, but the terms do definitely get interchanged a lot now. my comments above fail to clarify that 'hunkering down' is not the only aspect of building something successful, nor do i think the '12-, 24-…

I took some time to view your site and your Show Startups page.

I'll comment on your Zero to Century project as it's launched.

I think the gist of what the OP is asking is working on a startup idea that can potentially be very viable financially.

There's a lot of companies doing what your Zero to Century aims to do (stickk.com) comes to mind - which you may already be aware of.

Looking at stickk as an example, their approach is more generalized (ie. any commitment and not one tied to a particular activity) and thus a much bigger market. For your product, the question comes simply to what is the size of your market that would potentially pay for your accountability service for bike riding. The second question is how would you even reach this market.

Is it possible that this product would reach $50K, $100K, or more in a year in revenue? How many months, years would that take? How much marketing effort is there in terms of time and cost? I don't know the answer to these but considering you are targeting B2C and competing with products like Stickk my intuition tells me it would be hard.

So, I guess one constructive feedback I can give you is that I see a lot of projects that you are working on. It seems that you enjoy building these projects. I don't see the type of deep critical analysis that would indicate that you have a path to substantial revenue.

Out of the projects you have listed, which one could actually generate $100K a year in revenue after 1-4 years in the market? Personally, I start with that question and go from there. Just based on cursory look, it seems that this question is at the tail end of your analysis.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find a business idea and motivation to leave the 9-5 grind

#25

Post by killtimeatwork »

NiagaraThistle wrote: post #6

TL;DR: 1. Ideas are super easy. You just need to realize they don't need to be ground-breaking. The simpler the better. 2. None of us WANT to work more after 9-5 work, especially those of us with families, kids, other non-work commitments. So we need good HABITS and lots of DISCIPLINE to FORCE us to work when we don't want to. Motivation is overrated. 1. This always seems to be the easiest part for me. I never unders…

> But the alternative is sticking with the 9-5 grind. If you're like me, that terrifies the F out of you. I'm 42, have a great family, a good 9-5, but everyday of my life i think only of leaving my 9-5.

There's a quicker and 100% reliable way of getting out of the 9-5 grind: http://earlyretirementextreme.com. TLDR: reduce your expenses as much as possible (ideally to 10-20% of your post-tax earnings), save the rest and, over a couple of years, accumulate enough to just live off the savings (and investment income off the savings) till the end of your life. It's easy, certain and thus non-stressful - basically the opposite of the startup route. The drawback is that, for someone who's been living their life as an ultraspecialized consumer whose only skill is what he does at the well-paid job, while everything else (food production and preparation, home repairs etc.) is outsourced, it could be a shock to switch to a rennaisance man model.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find a business idea and motivation to leave the 9-5 grind

#27

Post by bloodorange »

shetill wrote: post #4
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #3

I've got a suggestion for 2. Wake up hella early and work on your side hustle before work. Your after work time will feel much more desereved at the least, and maybe just maybe something will stick in your mind from the morning that will make you want to continue on it later. But maybe the last thing you feel like doing before work is more work.

Already struggling to get up even for regular work > But maybe the last thing you feel like doing before work is more work. - read my mind

If the work you are doing is not stimulating and is merely a means to get a salary, then of course, you will eventually be drained of motivation and energy and it gets harder to wake up for it with every passing day.

On the other hand, something to look forward to, might give you the spark to "rise and shine".

If on top of uninteresting work, you pick up an uninteresting side-project, you are bound to make things worse. However, if the side-project is something for which you are itching to make time, then you might in fact wake up with excitement for it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you find a business idea and motivation to leave the 9-5 grind

#28

Post by jhunter1016 »

Coming up with ideas is a people watching process combined with a life experience process. But ideas aren’t businesses. They aren’t even side hustles. I keep a list of ideas in a note pad and add to them as they come to me. Most have been sitting there forever, likely never to be worked on. However, one idea stood out to me.

Here’s where the my path and yours might diverge. I had already done the startup thing-both bootstrapped and VC-funded. I currently have a job that pays well and I enjoy. So, this idea, I specifically didn’t want it to be a full time job. And I went about building it know the goal was to maybe make a bit of supplemental income, but nothing more.

What that did for me is it took the pressure off of having to find time before and after work to work on it. I worked on it when I truly wanted to. That’s worked well for me, and it’s about to launch (It’s a writers critique group community, if you’re interested - https://perligo.io).

If you aren’t in the same boat as me and are looking to find motivation and time to work on a product you want to end up as your full time job, my suggestion would be to stop trying to work on it after work. People, in my experience, tend to be more focused in the morning before work. Even if you have to get up super early, I’d bet your output is significantly better than anything you do after work.

Good luck!

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