I don't know if its been mentioned already, but I thought the minimalist entrepreneur by Sahil Lavinga (gumroad founder) was good.
Just know though that gumroad originally took a bunch of VC money.
Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
41–50 of 80 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#42Not exactly a resource but more of an advice - learn software development. Unless you are familiar to some extent, you will always be dependent on a competent software engineer, and that will make it much harder to build a lifestyle business. Second advice, use Ruby on Rails or Django as a web framework and don't follow after the complexities of JS and other newcomers. Phoenix (Elixir) is awesome but that will requir…
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Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be a ~ three or four person shop in my experience. It’s small enough that you the founder know how to do everything themself. That’s a fine business, but often it’s tough to take a vacation and leave it on autopilot for a few weeks. And heaven help you if you ever come down ill.
Vacation for a few weeks ? I never imagined taking weeks of vacation unless I’m between jobs or businesses. If you can take weeks, then you’re probably not needed at all or so sparingly an occasional email would do.
Wait till you’re a little older and have a family. The OP asked about a lifestyle business, that is, a business to build an actual life around, not an ‘I’m-in-my-early-thirties-and-still-single-so-burn-me-out-please’ business.
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#44Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vacation for a few weeks ? I never imagined taking weeks of vacation unless I’m between jobs or businesses. If you can take weeks, then you’re probably not needed at all or so sparingly an occasional email would do.
Wait till you’re a little older and have a family. The OP asked about a lifestyle business, that is, a business to build an actual life around, not an ‘I’m-in-my-early-thirties-and-still-single-so-burn-me-out-please’ business.
ugh … I won’t comment on exact numbers, but I have plenty of kids lol
If you get to the point you aren’t needed great; but everyone I know running lifestyle businesses tend to take only a few weeks off throughout the year — not all at once. Many take If you get to the “I don’t need to work any more” phase of a business; typically it’s time to sell or hire someone to manage and do something else.
Which btw should be the goal, I’m just saying, you’re no longer running a business if you quite literally are leaving for weeks at a time lol. Someone is running it for you.
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait till you’re a little older and have a family. The OP asked about a lifestyle business, that is, a business to build an actual life around, not an ‘I’m-in-my-early-thirties-and-still-single-so-burn-me-out-please’ business.
ugh … I won’t comment on exact numbers, but I have plenty of kids lol If you get to the point you aren’t needed great; but everyone I know running lifestyle businesses tend to take only a few weeks off throughout the year — not all at once. Many take If you get to the “I don’t need to work any more” phase of a business; typically it’s time to sell or hire someone to manage and do something else. Which btw should be t…
Sorry, not true at all. Good night.
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#47I’m enjoying being a member of Ramen Club https://ramenclub.so/
What do you like about it? It feels like a lot of money for potentially little value?
It's a great active online community of people actually building - all helping each other with their complimentary skillsets (product, designers, devs, growth)
I just rejoined after not working on side projects for a while and find it a great value - super easy to network/find a cofounder too
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#48Not exactly a resource but more of an advice - learn software development. Unless you are familiar to some extent, you will always be dependent on a competent software engineer, and that will make it much harder to build a lifestyle business. Second advice, use Ruby on Rails or Django as a web framework and don't follow after the complexities of JS and other newcomers. Phoenix (Elixir) is awesome but that will requir…
I don't want to hijack this thread, but what does Django do? I ask, cause I have a service that is a Rust backend (kind of specialized in what it does) + a SolidJS frontend... But I've seen a potential area for growth, I didn't imagine at first, and that would be stuff like user profiles, authentication, and managing stuff. And I really don't want to cut all this more "CRUD" like stuff in Rust and an SPA. I don't kno…
Nothing against Django, just suggesting another option: Laravel offers the same "out of the box" tools that Django does. Django is built with Python, Laravel with PHP. Someone will be along in a moment to start the flame wars about why one or the other or both totally suck, but for your purposes it's most important to choose the language and approach that will be most comfortable to you.
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to hijack this thread, but what does Django do? I ask, cause I have a service that is a Rust backend (kind of specialized in what it does) + a SolidJS frontend... But I've seen a potential area for growth, I didn't imagine at first, and that would be stuff like user profiles, authentication, and managing stuff. And I really don't want to cut all this more "CRUD" like stuff in Rust and an SPA. I don't kno…
Nothing against Django, just suggesting another option: Laravel offers the same "out of the box" tools that Django does. Django is built with Python, Laravel with PHP. Someone will be along in a moment to start the flame wars about why one or the other or both totally suck , but for your purposes it's most important to choose the language and approach that will be most comfortable to you.
Yeah, these days I'd put Laravel and Rails pretty toe-to-toe on features and productivity. Django is good but it's not in the same tier, imo.
Re: Ask HN: Best resources on starting a lifestyle business?
#50Not exactly a resource but more of an advice - learn software development. Unless you are familiar to some extent, you will always be dependent on a competent software engineer, and that will make it much harder to build a lifestyle business. Second advice, use Ruby on Rails or Django as a web framework and don't follow after the complexities of JS and other newcomers. Phoenix (Elixir) is awesome but that will requir…
Contrary view. Your success running a lifestyle software business is likely to be far more dependent on your marketing skills and efforts that what what tech stack you use.
The right tech stack will not bring success, the wrong one will doom it.