The Startup Side Project Bubble

I'm disappointed that instead of trying to educate new entrepreneurs, the OP is discouraging them. The tone is incredibly condescending.

It's like he just heard of bootstrappers, and instead of saying, "Hey that's awesome, let me tell you what I've learned," he says "You'll never be one of us real entrepreneurs. Want a job?"

"spending 40+ hours in a week on something other than you startup"

What does this mean, exactly? Yes I know in context it means your capital raising strategy primarily involves going to work on a regular basis, which possibly is a local maxima for at least some unusual situations, but it reads just as well for "sleep", "personal grooming", "recreation and relaxation", "social relationships", "raising children", "elder care", "athletic / exercise activities".

I'm just saying if you want to guilt trip people for raising capital by having a job, you need to do that very specifically, a extremely generic guilt trip about spending time being modern civilized humans in a generic sense with having a job being a tiny subset of the possibilities of being a modern civilized human, is likely to be relatively ineffective.

This really ruffles my feathers as well:

Unless there are real consequences for failure—until you’ve personally guaranteed a line of credit and tried to sell your product to an actual human being,’ says Ruhe, you won’t have the motivation needed to build a business that matters -- Thom Ruhe, VP of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation

Now, I don't know who Thom Ruhe is, and I don't really care. But what I know is that this armchair quarterback with his fancy title, working for some foundation somewhere, knows bloody fucking bugger-all about my motivation, or lack thereof. You want to talk to me about motivation, dude? Quit your job at the Kauffman Foundation and come work with us. We offer no pay, no benefits (not even free coffee), long hours, sleepless nights, stress beyond belief, non-stop fear of failure, and an equity stake that could make you really wealthy if we succeed. Would you be motivated to take that swap, in order to gain the satisfaction of doing your own thing, the freedom of not having a "boss" and the sense of accomplishment that goes into building something? No? Well, guess what... we are. So unless you want to take me up on my offer, don't fucking talk to me about motivation.

This article is a little bit one sided. So what if most side projects never succeed? You can always learn a lot by attempting to do a large scale project yourself. Most real-life projects are large scale legacy projects that you are simply thrown into. Most likely you don't even care about them nor you can make any sort of decisions.

By doing side projects you are being creative. You learn new stuff. You actually care about your project. You also have to do everything yourself, including planning. Where else would you get such experience?

And the net result is that you learn new stuff in your side projects, something your employer gets for free. Your passion will pay off, eventually. It is nearsighted to assume that just because you "waste" time on side projects you are hurting you employer.

You hurt them more by simply not caring enough about the technology nor the project.

Reading through these comments, I think most people either a) missed the point or b) are angry because he touched a nerve.

Here's my take on it, if you are "working on a side project" + "calling it a hobby" there's no problem with that. If however, you are "working on a side project" + "calling it your start up" there's a good chance you are deluding yourself. Sure... some of you will succeed but less than 1% of you will.

If you want to succeed you need to be fully engaged, you need to be focused and it even helps if there's a strong incentive to succeed like running out of money and being homeless. If you have the comfort and safety of job income, there's a good chance you will slack off because you have "time", you are exhausted from a stressful day at work, your job is running you down so much that you need to relax, you need to buy something to cheer yourself up etc. Also you run the risk that your side project has gotten boring and you want to chase the new "hotness". Of course some of you will feel hip and cool claiming that you are pivoting.

How do I know this? I tried working on side (business) projects as an employee for over 10 years, it just doesn't work. I'm 6 months into developing my product full time, I'm about halfway done. If I had attempted to do this as an employee it would have taken 6 years. That's if I could even stay focused and motivated that long making such slow progress. I know for me that I would have just given up.

As for a bubble, it is a bubble because people are talking about their hobby side projects as if they are legitimate businesses that will take off "some day". A couple will, most will not. The froth is from all the people who will never be anything but an employee getting lots of mileage and good vibes from talking about their supposed business. So much so that they will work even less on the "business" because they have already gotten the positive boost they were looking for and can continue scraping along in their job. This is bad because these people will never push themselves in a way that will actually let them be successful and leave the job that they hate; they are too afraid of quitting because they can't stand the thought of not having a comfortable income.

Want to make it happen, then do what I did. Quit your job, you will find ways to make money. I picked up a side consulting gig where I made 3 times the money I would have ever made in a "job". This opportunity never, ever would have occurred if I was an employee. My desire not to work allowed me to state a very high rate that they accepted, as an employee I would have been so grateful to get side work I would have worked for much less. I saved enough money to live on for 2 years and quit the consulting gig.

Next pay off everything, student loan, credit cards, car loan. Sell most of what you have and rent a room in a house, cut your expenses down to the bone. Get rid of your TV and other distractions. Live, eat and breathe your start-up, when you need a break go for walks, bike rides and go see your friends.

Any of you stuck with a house? I am too, however I moved out and have been renting it out for the past 6 years. It actually makes money, it's an expensive house so I haven't had any problems with renters they always pay.

If you really believe in your start-up you will go all in, you will not play it safe. Otherwise you are just like everyone else, a dreamer that is not really going to accomplish much outside what you do for your employer.