Bootstrapping - the secret work week
onepix.me
Bootstrapping - the secret work week
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#2A few meta-comments if the author comes here:
- Chrome complains about resources served as non-ssl
- I could not find your name on the site (I just wondered who was being the service)
Hope this helps!
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#3How long will you be able to pull this off? 2 weeks?
Maybe 3 weeks at best.
And you'll be suffering from burnout so bad you wouldn't want to look at your project ever again.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#4I did this (for six months) up until recently (quit my job) and I can say that it's a great means for getting your project started. If you're in a situation where you don't have a lot of money saved up and need a job, nothing beats spending time in the evenings and weekends working on your idea. The only caveat that wasn't really noted by the author is that it's NOT EASY. When all of your time is occupied with work (even if you view your project as fun/something you enjoy, it's still hard work), you can get worn out very easily. Be warned that this requires a lot of dedication and focus (sometimes you skip going out on the weekend to build a new feature). It will suck at times but once you get into a flow, it gets easier. What's more, make sure you explain what you're doing with any significant others (girlfriend, wife, boyfriend, husband) as this will detract a lot of time from your relationship and you'll need support for what you're doing.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#5This pattern simply isn't sustainable and should not be maintained for anything other than short bursts.
The level of those short bursts is variable based on your own individual conditions (i.e., single college kids vs. married fathers of two), but the end state is the same if exceeded: burnout.
My advice would be to find a method that works well, and do it longer. The world is not going to end because your MVP wasn't released in three months.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#6How long will you be able to pull this off? 2 weeks? Maybe 3 weeks at best. And you'll be suffering from burnout so bad you wouldn't want to look at your project ever again.
I suppose that depends on the individual, their life situation (single, married, college student, full time job, etc), and how long they can stay excited about their idea.
I'm curious about how long the OP specifically has been pulling these 49 hour additional work-weeks.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#7How long will you be able to pull this off? 2 weeks? Maybe 3 weeks at best. And you'll be suffering from burnout so bad you wouldn't want to look at your project ever again.
If you get bored with a project in 2 weeks then I would not try to build a business around it. If your current job is not overly stressful, then you should be able to do this for 6 months to a year.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#8How long will you be able to pull this off? 2 weeks? Maybe 3 weeks at best. And you'll be suffering from burnout so bad you wouldn't want to look at your project ever again.
Not only will you quickly burnout but that kind of intensity makes you very susceptible to getting sick. A couple of sleepless nights from stress and one crowded bus ride -- wham! -- you have a flu bug.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#9I did this for about a year while bootstrapping a project and it was extremely tiring. Also, I had a one year old at the time. I recently abandoned the project for other reasons, but even had I continued, I'm pretty sure the pace would have burned me out sooner or later.
Now I've got the itch to pursue another idea, but I've got a 2 year old and a 4 month old at home so I'm a lot more wary.
I think if I was to have another go at it, I'd find a co-founder who has a similar family situation so we can help each other through the rough patches. Going solo with this kind of schedule and having a family life is a little maddening.
Re: Bootstrapping - the secret work week
#10It's not about time... in fact having less time helped me a lot to bootstrap my company, we have a few signups right now. And yes, this sounds 37signalsish.
I'd say it's more important to have co-founders that like the bootstraping idea too than having more time.
My startup, btw, is something like Punchd but not requiring everyone to have an iPhone, I built the web application (Python, Django... I even have some tests (integration and unit tests)), a mobile web app (JQuery UI), an iPhone app, web admin dashboard (stats, pretty graphs), etc etc.
All this in like 4 months of bootstraping, putting 1-3 hr a day (sometimes a lot more) and a saturday or sunday here and then. Seriously I think we have most of the features that Punchd or Five Star Card have and all this with my own money we own 100% of the company.
By far we're not profitable, but as soon as one client starts paying (next month, crossing fingers)... boom profit.
I don't know, maybe we have a very good work ethic, but we do fuck around a lot! (Hacker News, parties yay!)