161–170 of 197 posts
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.
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…
Your latter input is appreciated, but I'm not sure being a "full-time consultant" qualifies you to answer this question, which is almost certainly directed at those with less daily flexibility. If my site explodes in activity while I'm at work, I can literally do nothing to sop up any problems that might arise, unless I decide to try to cash in sick time and head out early, or sit on my hands til I get home. A fullti…
Have you trained your job (bosses) to understand that you take periodic breaks outside of the building (i.e. grab coffee)?
Once you have, you simply grab your bag, with personal laptop, hit the wifi enabled coffee shop, and stop or at least slow down the fire.
I've done it. You lack creativity :)
Having a well-paying dayjob changes things. You will want to hire your first employee long before you would if you were working full-time at the startup. You will want to spend money rather than do work more often than you would otherwise. Assuming you have a high paying dayjob and you are willing to live cheap, your runway is now measured only in terms of your motivation.
Note, you will not be performing 100% at the dayjob. I got asked to choose between the dayjob and my business only once, though, and that was near the beginning, before I really learned to compartmentalize, and when I was most focused on my business.
My style of work is and always has been very burst-y, which works out well. When I wasn't that focused on the business, I'd get a regular dayjob and top off my COBRA and rent money. When I was focused on the business, I'd either focus on the business completely or work contract gigs for extra money. It's interesting; if you contract through a body shop for non-expert work? (e.g. if they rent you out as a normal programmer/sysadmin?) it pays only slightly better than doing the same job as a direct employee (sometimes a little worse if the benefits for the direct employee are good) but the expectations for your work are much lower. I mean, think about it; if they are paying about the same for a contract as for a full-time with benefits job, do you think they are going to get good people? The lowered expectations along with the ability to spend pre-tax dollars on company equipment made that a pretty good deal for me.
Especially during the money-losing phase (and this /will/ be longer than it would have been if you were full time.) the taxes are complex and can make a huge difference. get a good accountant, and listen to him or her. Small bullshit changes can make the difference between spending pre tax money buying servers and spending post-tax money on those servers.
Currently we use profits to pay anyone willing to work on the code and add features. It is self-sustaining, at least.
See: http://www.examprofessor.com
Comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome.
About a year later I brought it to the team and we decided to switch to it. A few months of light iteration and polish after that and we launched it as it's own product (https://bugrocket.com) for $20/month.
Pretty happy with how it's going, too. It hasn't really interfered with the 'day job' at all besides the occasional email to answer or tweet to reply to. We have really flexible hours here so I shift my day around sometimes to accomodate both projects. Totally do-able.
edit: Seems there is some interest in the 'family situation' of these success stories. I'm married (with kittens, no kids) and it generally hasn't been too difficult to keep a balance. It's helped me a lot having some people working with me (especially on non-technical bits), and not just alone as a single founder. It's hard to say how much time I actually put in because it's kind of a 'here and there' whenever there's the opportunity kind of thing. I'd probably estimate 3-5 hours during the week and then either a lot (8+ hours) or nothing on the weekends, depending on else is happening.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your latter input is appreciated, but I'm not sure being a "full-time consultant" qualifies you to answer this question, which is almost certainly directed at those with less daily flexibility. If my site explodes in activity while I'm at work, I can literally do nothing to sop up any problems that might arise, unless I decide to try to cash in sick time and head out early, or sit on my hands til I get home. A fullti…
> I can literally do nothing to sop up any problems that might arise Have you trained your job (bosses) to understand that you take periodic breaks outside of the building (i.e. grab coffee)? Once you have, you simply grab your bag, with personal laptop, hit the wifi enabled coffee shop, and stop or at least slow down the fire. I've done it. You lack creativity :)
If you do run a side business and keep a dayjob at the same time, you need to know going in that you won't be 100% for that dayjob. I mean, you can make excuses for it, like nobody is 100% for their dayjob; other people have kids they have to deal with, etc... but in the end? you are choosing your own interests over your employer's.
I'm okay with that.
(I mean, I was up front when I'm hired that I had this other thing going on; but I recognize that I was a much worse employee than I would have been otherwise.)
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> I can literally do nothing to sop up any problems that might arise Have you trained your job (bosses) to understand that you take periodic breaks outside of the building (i.e. grab coffee)? Once you have, you simply grab your bag, with personal laptop, hit the wifi enabled coffee shop, and stop or at least slow down the fire. I've done it. You lack creativity :)
I've done it too... but yeah, it is not so nice for the employer. I'd much rather have someone like dclowd9901 working for me than someone like you or me. If you do run a side business and keep a dayjob at the same time, you need to know going in that you won't be 100% for that dayjob. I mean, you can make excuses for it, like nobody is 100% for their dayjob; other people have kids they have to deal with, etc... but…
I can see how my comments and actions could be taken negatively, but I disagree with that generic statement. Yes it can be not so nice for the employer, but it could also have zero negative impact.
I was able to successfully do with zero negative impact. In fact, the flexibility that I trained my employer to have, made me a happier and more productive employee for that company. The ability to attend to my personal business, regardless of what it was, made me appreciate them and work harder for them.
>I'd much rather have someone like dclowd9901 working for me than someone like you or me.
Please don't lump me into that category.
I built review site ten years ago and sold it. It was profitable within 6 months off organic traffic and lead gen. Approximate revenue by year: $10k, 40k, 70k, 100k, 150k, 250k, 500k, 750k, 1.5M, 2.5M. Built entirely while working for another startup (unrelated), first 3 years I was in graduate school, year 4 I was a product manager for another startup. Year 5 I finally took the leap to run it full-time. I was the so…
Regarding your SO, I agree that it's important to have someone that understands how you make money and what's required to build a business. The question I have is, how much more beneficial was it to have your SO involved at some meaningful level? Sales is an interesting spot because it makes a case for itself to justify the time required. Are there any pros / cons of involving your SO directly and at the core of your…
My SO has done some programming for my company; some of it has been really great, some of it not. (She is generally way more competent than me or anyone else I can afford, but her background is embedded systems, you know, c, c++, vhdl; that sort of thing, and all the prgmr.com stuff is perl and bash, so you get a really good programmer writing stuff in languages they've never used before. It can be... interesting to read.)
It really all depends on communication. Can you tell her (or him) that the thing they built isn't what you need and use something else?
I mean, I'm the oldest of 6, and I've been hiring siblings for as long as I've had siblings, so I have a lot of practice saying "no, that wasn't what I wanted" and even "I don't need your help for now" without burning bridges, and I think my SO is willing to accept constructive criticism.
I mean, the usual rules for hiring family apply, I think, only more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've done it too... but yeah, it is not so nice for the employer. I'd much rather have someone like dclowd9901 working for me than someone like you or me. If you do run a side business and keep a dayjob at the same time, you need to know going in that you won't be 100% for that dayjob. I mean, you can make excuses for it, like nobody is 100% for their dayjob; other people have kids they have to deal with, etc... but…
>...it is not so nice for the employer. I can see how my comments and actions could be taken negatively, but I disagree with that generic statement. Yes it can be not so nice for the employer, but it could also have zero negative impact. I was able to successfully do with zero negative impact. In fact, the flexibility that I trained my employer to have, made me a happier and more productive employee for that company.…
It's quite possible that I'm wrong, of course.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.