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Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#151

Post by j45 »

danmaz74 wrote: post #149
j45 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing you might want to look at is putting in some time in the mornings with your best energy instead of at the end of a long, long day. Early to bed, and early to rise might work for you.

Absolutely. I started waking up at 6 am and working until 8:30 a month ago, and it's been a great boost in my productivity.

Cool. I've been having good luck with on and off. The hard part is getting back into an early sleep routine when I have the odd late night. Anything you do to help reset the routine?

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#152

Post by riffraff »

prayag wrote: post #143
jasonkester wrote: post #26

I have two profitable SaaS products that were built while I was theoretically working full time on something else. I was a bit fortunate that my "something else" was Consulting, which you can ramp down by exactly as many hours per week as you'd like to devote to your side project. The thing is, if you use the term "Startup" here to describe anything other than a zero-profit 80hr/week scramble for VC funding and event…

>you're doing is not startuppy enough to count I have always had a problem with that. A start-up is a start-up if you decide it's a start-up and want to transform it into a viable business. There is no magic line that you have to cross to transform your project into a start-up. I always advice people to call their projects a start-up from the beginning.

> I always advice people to call their projects a start-up from the beginning

Could you expand on why you advice this, meaning, what is the advantage of it? According to your post simple message above it could be the other way around (always call your startup a project).

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#153

Post by kalid »

paraschopra wrote: post #131

I built Visual Website Optimizer during weekends and during evenings after work (while I was working full time at another day job). Initial prototypes and first beta version took about 6-8 months. Beta remained for about 4 months, had thousands of beta users by then, quit my day job, polished beta for 2 more months and then launched paid plans. Today we are a team of 8 people (and hiring more) and many happy customer…

I'm so happy VWO came to be :).

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#154

Post by kin »

Geez, you all inspire me so much. I'm trying to do the same and have switched to smaller and smaller side projects so I could get SOMETHING out there. Currently I've been distracted by time with friends/family/SO/and the current barrage of amazing fall video games all which pushed my project to the point of is it even possible?

Apparently I'm the only thing in the way. Thanks for the inspiration everyone! You guys are all amazing.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#155

Post by rokhayakebe »

whirlycott1 wrote: post #138
marcc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting options and costs were radically different a few years ago.

If you're all presuming that EC2 is some magical pixie dust for reducing the costs of running a large site, that's not the case. We had ~10 EC2 boxes and 15 managed servers at Contegix, CDN, Dynect, email service provider and a few more services thrown in. It's not any less expensive today because those numbers I gave are current numbers.

How did you know it was time to raise? Was it because you could not afford the hosting bill anymore, or that you were getting lots of traffic and not enough time to build out the product, or...?

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#156

Post by whirlycott1 »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #155
whirlycott1 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're all presuming that EC2 is some magical pixie dust for reducing the costs of running a large site, that's not the case. We had ~10 EC2 boxes and 15 managed servers at Contegix, CDN, Dynect, email service provider and a few more services thrown in. It's not any less expensive today because those numbers I gave are current numbers.

How did you know it was time to raise? Was it because you could not afford the hosting bill anymore, or that you were getting lots of traffic and not enough time to build out the product, or...?

I finally had a better understanding of the context of the opportunity and started to think big. And I found people I liked who understood the vision and were willing to back the idea.

The hosting bill back then was ~$100/month since it all ran on a single box so, no, that wasn't a factor. It was a question of opportunity and not costs.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#158

Post by phob »

zyang wrote: post #135
landonhowell wrote: post #52

I built an online news service in 2002/2003 with zero coding knowledge, $100, and a bootleg version of Adobe Illustrator. I put every spare moment I had into it, skipping lunches and dinners and sleep (though I never skipped church) all for the sake of keeping it lean before keeping it lean was cool. 5 years later I sold it for a paltry sum, mainly because I didn't add enough people fast enough.

so you never skipped church yet you had no problem stealing software. interesting.

Copying is not theft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU7axyrHWDQ

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#159

Post by acangiano »

16BitTons wrote: post #113
acangiano wrote: post #56

My 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 )

Thank you so much. I appreciate your endorsement.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

#160

Post by daliusd »

daliusd wrote: post #17

What's the point of this question? There are people who did that and that's possible. patio11 is one example and I must say very good one. I am example of person who has not managed to do that in 3 years but I have learned a lot and my trial contributed to my well-being in many positive ways. Some of those are like salary growing faster than planned and some are small but pleasant things like Nokia N950.

I would love to know why I am downvoted.
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