I started InkedPlaymats.com a month ago. I work full time as a purchasing manager, have 3 kids under the age of 5, and take online courses full time. I am way over my head and sleeping 4 hours a night, but I am making it work. I am getting a 4.0 and just after a month open my business is starting to boom. I get up early and make breakfast and get orders ready to ship. I spend my lunch break shipping items and answering emails. I come home from work and spend 2 hours having dinner and playing with the kids. I then spend the next few hours doing schoolwork and printing out mats. My wife supports this knowing I am in a growing period. School ends this week, so I am looking forward to that. Anyways, I think it can be done, but is not ideal. And your family has to support you 100% of you will be lost.
Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
111–120 of 197 posts
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Easy: without venture funding, I would have just been a guy sitting on the couch at home with nobody to work on this with. And the hosting costs alone to run a site that large are around $25K/month. Yes, we had reached 7 figure revenues many years ago, long before the acquisition.
25K a month? Really? That's like 50 medium Amazon instances.. all for at most a couple million uniques a month? What were you doing that required so much servers?
Hosting options and costs were radically different a few years ago.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#113My technical blogs, while not technically a startup, do have the habit of making me mid-four figures per month with very few hours per month investment.
I just finished reading your book. It is very well done. I recomend it to everyone interested in this thread. (http://technicalblogging.com)
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hear ya... This is something I struggle with too. Long workday at Mega Corp., 45min+ drive-commute each way, 3 kids (7, 5, 2), a spouse with a highly variable work schedule, and ongoing charity work. It's really, really hard to make time for a side business in there too. Are you working on something? How are you making the time for it? How's your progress?
I have read posts of these kind for quite some time. All of them suggest. ... Wake up early, exercise, work for 2 Hrs and then get ready for normal life. I have been trying to do this but failing miserably, cos my body doesn't cope up. I say start exercising regularly once it becomes a routine then start working on your start-up.but don't forget exercising. Having said all that it boils down to one point. WILL POWER.
nah, just new habits. Like this guy who got up at 3:45am for 135 days:
http://ryanwaggoner.com/2011/01/135-days-of-getting-up-at-34...
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Am I reading that correctly that that site is making 25k+ a month? How is that possible? Do people pay for the site or is it from ads only?
I did not put any numbers anywhere about our profits. We have a freemium model. Ads are just a small part of the revenues we make.
"making me more money in 2 months than my day job was paying me for an entire year!"
Day job of 50k / year, over 2 months, so per month 25k. 'Making money' = profit, otherwise I could be 'making' 250k / month by opening a BMW dealership and selling 2 per month - which in the real world would bankrupt me Very Quickly.
So, maybe I'm misunderstanding, but didn't you say that you were making 25k or more?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#116I started InkedPlaymats.com a month ago. I work full time as a purchasing manager, have 3 kids under the age of 5, and take online courses full time. I am way over my head and sleeping 4 hours a night, but I am making it work. I am getting a 4.0 and just after a month open my business is starting to boom. I get up early and make breakfast and get orders ready to ship. I spend my lunch break shipping items and answeri…
Hey, didn't know you were on here! I run quietspeculation.com. Incredible that you're doing all that. Can't wait to get my mat design to you.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#117School and part-time student programming work took up 40-60 hours a week, and I put in another 20 on our business on top of that. Got barely ramen profitable by graduation, which let me keep from getting a job for 8 months while it ramped up enough to start actually supporting me.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#118i have built a startup on the side while working full time still. due to the fact that we are 3 partners, the money is not enough to quit my day job but it's getting there. we have grown from $0 to $200K in 2 and a half years while all 3 of us do this part time. i did all the development and sysadmin work and the other partners took care of the marketing and business side of things.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
then you probably just started...I don't mean the first few weeks after you launch...there is plenty of things to do then. I mean that period for all sites after the launch coverage, the time where your traffic goes down to almost 0. Who to meet/who to talk to...should have been done prior to launch. optimizing text? it takes a while to do a/b testing if your traffic is tiny...same goes for seeing results from market…
You must be joking right? Except you're not, which makes it sad instead of funny. It must be very comfortable to not see the endless opportunities in increasing traction for your service after launch. Not even bothering to commit code any longer, since it was perfect at launch. Or doing marketing, sales, community and customer support, PR, ops, paying bills, sending invoices, handling complaints, bookkeeping, etc etc…
I did say marketing/sales is the exception.
Not bothering to commit code? If it works, and you don't have actual customers yet? Then yes...it's just busy work at that point.
Community/Customer Support? I dunno about you, but customer support is only required for less than 1% of users. And even then it's usually a case of 1-2 sentences.
Paying bills? How many bills do you have as a startup?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?
#120I started InkedPlaymats.com a month ago. I work full time as a purchasing manager, have 3 kids under the age of 5, and take online courses full time. I am way over my head and sleeping 4 hours a night, but I am making it work. I am getting a 4.0 and just after a month open my business is starting to boom. I get up early and make breakfast and get orders ready to ship. I spend my lunch break shipping items and answeri…
Hey, didn't know you were on here! I run quietspeculation.com. Incredible that you're doing all that. Can't wait to get my mat design to you.
Yep, can't get enough. I am waiting on you man! I want to hook you up!