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Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

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Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#121

Post by quickthrower2 »

deedubaya wrote: post #37

I've got two cash flow positive side-projects while maintaining full-time employment, having a life, wife, and kid. BreezyPDF - https://breezypdf.com - Dead simple PDF generation from URLs. Comes with a rails middleware so all you have to do is add .pdf to the end of a URL to download a PDF of that URL. HOALife - https://hoalife.com - A CC&R Inspection and Enforcement tool for property managers.

I'm impressed at the HOALife being a side project. I've worked at companies doing something similar (different country) and it's a full time job maintaining and adding features to apps like that. If you are doing all the coding, marketing, web design, payment processing and support (and in my experience people want stuff fixed quick because they have inspections to do or they get kinda angry) in your spare time I really don't know how you do it, unless you are teaming up, employing people or just ridiculously efficient.

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#122

Post by paultopia »

ryandrake wrote: post #7

Tread carefully. If you’re going to do this, read your current employment agreement carefully especially the parts about Intellectual Property. Every medium-to-large company I have worked at has asserted ownership of everything I build, at work or away from work, using my own equipment, on my own time—it doesn't matter. If your employer can imagne a conflict of interest (for example could what you are working on pote…

There's a ton of shitty legal advice in this subthread (NOT this first comment, which at the core "read your agreement" is pretty good advice). Ignore the people downthread who are making specific assertions about what is and isn't enforceable in what state. Rather, follow the advice that sensible people always give in this situation:

!!!!! If there is serious money at stake, or a reasonable prospect of serious money at stake for you, use some of that money to pay a lawyer admitted in your jurisdiction and familiar with the law on IP agreements and nocompetes to look at the agreement and advise you. It really won't cost all that much for a consultation and a bit of contract reading just to see where you stand. Then make a decision. !!!!!

(Source: IAAL (law professor actually), though I don't currently practice and am almost certainly not admitted in your jurisdiction.)

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#123

Post by jepper »

meatyapp wrote: post #103
jepper wrote: post #20

Not really a startup in the sense of a VC backed multi million dollar company but three working friends and me have bootstrapped a fitness websites with science based health advice, mostly free, to basically the largest fitness related website in the Netherlands. Currently employing people, which i think still sounds insane for a hobby project. https://www.fit.nl . 700.000 pageviews a month. App, 2 books, system for…

(While I understand passion is important and you won't make it far in either without it) Which profession would you suggest just "for the money"? Doctor or Software Engineer? Taking into the account the time and loans it takes to come online as a doctor, and the assuming the person is good enough to become a surgeon or code at FAANG? Great website btw, and so inspiring.

I' m not in the US, so no crazy salaries on both sides. The average doctor probably makes more but the best programmer makes way more than the best doctor. However with long hours, night shifts, pressure etc you have to enjoy what you do or burn out early.

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#124

Post by is_true »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #72
neetdavid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me on Chrome. There's a 'mousewheel' event listener attached to the window that is calling preventDefault()

This absolutely infuriates me to the point where I'm struggling to remain civil. My blood instantly began boiling after reading that sentence. Why the @#$% does some web designer think it's a good idea to disable mousewheel scrolling?! What does this accomplish? What feature do you gain? What was the goal? I just can't for the life of me grok what would be going through someone's brain when they decide "Hey, you know…

Haha. Step down a notch, pal

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#125

Post by is_true »

jotm wrote: post #58

I work full time and get/test/ship washer/dryer/dishwasher spare parts in my, uh, spare time. It's profitable at 2000 pounds/month, and can go much, much higher. Fuck this shit because no one should just work 6-8 24/7.

You buy and sell spare parts?

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#126

Post by chrisabrams »

mcjiggerlog wrote: post #66

I built Artpip ( https://artpip.com ) whilst working fulltime. Spent the odd weeknight and some weekends developing it over the course of a few months, then the same again when I added the pro mode once I realised it could actually make me some money. Not sure you could classify it as a startup, but it makes me a few hundred dollars per month. I'd actually love to grow it more but I'm not sure what the best direction…

Side projects are healthy just keep adding features here and there you’ll be surprised at what users gravitate towards ;)

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#127

Post by polote »

bootloop wrote: post #114
polote wrote: post #67

That's what I do currently, I'm a full time product manager in a normal company, and I'm also working as a CTO at a startup, we are 3. Two people are working full time, and I only work part time (about 30h per week). I do that, because I like doing multilple things at the same time. But I think it is a very difficult life. I can do that because I have no social life and everything is optimized so that I can work all…

"Very tired all the time" - Where I come from (EU) this is the reason why it's not allowed to work two jobs (>40h) if the employer doesn't approve.

I'm from France, it is not allowed to work more than 44h per week for a period of 12 weeks. But honestly it is difficult to set the same bar for everyone

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#128

Post by polote »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #117
polote wrote: post #67

That's what I do currently, I'm a full time product manager in a normal company, and I'm also working as a CTO at a startup, we are 3. Two people are working full time, and I only work part time (about 30h per week). I do that, because I like doing multilple things at the same time. But I think it is a very difficult life. I can do that because I have no social life and everything is optimized so that I can work all…

Does you diet suffer? Exercise? Do you get to shower? Sleep much?

I used to exercise every day, now only 3 times a week but sports is more often a good way to gain more energy.

I sleep a lot, average 8h30 per day, I really need to sleep a lot

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#129

Post by SimianLogic2 »

I didn't build one from scratch, but I recently purchased https://introcave.com for low 6 figures. Though my background is more full stack, my current day job is mostly front end. Most of the product/ux/ui work is done before things hit my desk (agency work), so I really enjoy being able to run something on the side where I'm making those decisions.

It's profitable month-to-month, but until it recoups the purchase price I'm thinking of it as a really expensive hobby. I recently purchased a better domain (https://intromaker.com), and at some point in the future I'm planning to build a more dynamic render engine and do some sort of subscription service (less targeted at youtubers and more geared towards agencies).

Re: Ask HN: Who here has built a profitable startup while keeping their day job?

#130

Post by polote »

pricklypear wrote: post #89
polote wrote: post #67

That's what I do currently, I'm a full time product manager in a normal company, and I'm also working as a CTO at a startup, we are 3. Two people are working full time, and I only work part time (about 30h per week). I do that, because I like doing multilple things at the same time. But I think it is a very difficult life. I can do that because I have no social life and everything is optimized so that I can work all…

How long have you been doing this for? Do you think this can be maintained over a long period of time?

I have been doing that since may last year, but at beginning I was working much less, maybe max 55h per week.

I have been doing 70h+ per week for 4 weeks now, and I don't think I can do much more, you really feel that working ask a lot of energy.

But to be honest, 55-60h is possible to maintain a very long period of time, since the 26 of september last year, I worked 2682 hours, which is in average 7,34 hours per day, 51,4 hours per week, and I'm not dead (yet)

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