Ask HN: What do you consider "making it"?

I'm not a typical HN reader/user. I'm a one-man consultancy outfit, helping businesses sort out how best to use Internet technologies for internal and external collaboration. I also help untangle knotty workflow problems, you get the picture.

"Making it", as far as I am concerned is having a steady stream of people coming through my door through personal recommendation with really interesting problems - enough in fact that I can turn the less interesting ones away to other people.

I get to make money, I get to help people (I know it sounds sappy, but I love it) and I get to think about interesting problems.

It doesn't get much better than that for me, it really doesn't.

No. I haven't quite "made it" yet, I only started out as an independent a few months ago, but I've had enough of a taste of it to make me a very happy bunny.

Short answer, never, particularly when you are still calling yourself a start-up. Once you've 'made-it', you aren't a start-up anymore, you're a big business, and big businesses still need lots of work to keep them successful.

Long answer - when your piece of art is complete. A great book, 'Finite and Infinite Games' lays out my feelings on this. Your first STEP in success is when you are really in the game. I've launched a few companies that nobody cared about. Got no traction. There was very little reason to keep revising the product/project because I wasn't in the game. Other times you hit on something that people care about, and that is making a difference. You work like mad to churn out new products and satisfy the demand. You are in the game. That is success level 1, and it goes from there.

I think the big problem with saying "how do you know when you've made it?", is that this isn't a sprint or a marathon. It's a life. You've never 'made it' in life, if you're done, then you're dead. When do you know when you have breathed enough? When you have eaten enough? If you stop working on your product/business, it will go stale and die.

You can 'get out', sell, hire others to take over the day to day tasks, but what do you do with yourself then? I think some of PG's comments regarding the 'artist' in programmers/innovators is just that. An artist doesn't stop painting once they have sold one painting. So your current project leads to the next, etc.

I would say to answer your question, that only you can decide when your current piece of art is done. If you're making great money, fantastic. If not, maybe you love this project so much that you'll continue with it anyway.

Basically, have an exit strategy, targets, goals, etc. But none of these are 'finishing lines', they are markers on the coarse. Like aid stations on a cicuitus marathon coarse. They let you know that you have reached a significant marker, but don't stop running, 'cause you are still in the race.

There are still things to do, problems to solve, art to build. The journey is the destination.

Heh, yeah, I know, I was just light-heartedly picking a hole in the statement many people make about time being more important than money.

As an aspiration, it's noble, but when pressured people nearly always find a reason to make more money instead of taking the time ;-)

I disagree, but I think it's because of our separate interpretations of "free time". I don't mean free time in a sense of doing nothing, I mean it in a sense of hobbies, travel, family and pursuing projects that may or may not be monetizable. I'll always have a business of some sort I'm taking part in, the variable will hopefully be the amount of time dedicated to it.

No matter where you are, "made it" is always one step above you.