Ask HN: My company went bankrupt today and I have 2 options

I am a software engineer and entrepreneur, I have 5+ years of experience. During all of these 5+ years, I was building my startups (2 of my companies failed, and I currently have a small team where we develop in-house mobile apps, but we are not generating any revenue at the moment) while I was working as an engineer in software companies on a salaried basis. So you see, I had a "safe" entrepreneurship adventure.

Today I got the news that the company I have been working for the last 1.5 years went bankrupt. They were operating in the fintech sector.

From the very beginning, I always wanted to be a tech entrepreneur and I dreamed of one day quitting my salaried job completely and not coming back. I wanted to do this not because it was cool, but because I wanted to be the decision maker on the technology and business issues that I developed with my own team and I wanted to do great things together with my team.

You know those ridiculous motivational videos that say entrepreneurship is all about courage and a little bit of misery at the beginning. But after a few times when what you build fails, you start looking for "safer" ways of entrepreneurship.

Right now I have two paths in front of me: get a new job and continue being a part-time entrepreneur (I know the shortcomings of part-time entrepreneurship all too well) or I can go full-time and bet on one horse and hold on as long as I can and hope that my startup will succeed in the meantime.

There is no such thing as "safe" entrepreneurship, yes, I am aware of that, but I am trying to make it "safe" since I don't see any silver lining in my ventures yet (we have good plans but most of them are uncertain at the moment).

What kind of guidance can you give me? What would you suggest?

This really depends on your runway and external stakeholders in your life.

If you go for this, how long do you have until you _need_ to start generating enough to pay yourself?

Do you have any spouse, children, .. that you need to support? (and which might mean you get unforeseen financial strain?)

I'd say we're in another golden age of entrepreneurship. A one man shop can create things that would have taken teams even just years ago.

However, there's nothing wrong with working a real job until you are financially independent enough to fully commit yourself to this.

You haven’t really said much about your personal situation and in this scenario it’s very important.

- Do you have a family or other dependents?

- How much do you have in savings?

- Could you fall back on e.g. moving in with parents in the very short term if things go horribly wrong?

Entrepreneurship is a wonderful adventure but at a very base level you need to be able to put a roof over your head and eat. As long as you’re able to do that even if your business completely fails, go for it. If you don’t, take the safe option, build up savings, then go on your adventure.

Also, to be blunt: is your idea any good? Do you have domain-specific knowledge you’re able to leverage in your market? I sometimes find people who are putting the idea of entrepreneurship ahead of any specific concept fail because they’re not actually passionate or well positioned, they just want success.

Taking a job also isn’t wasted time. Going back to the criteria above, in my day job over the last few years I’ve identified a few SaaS concepts I know my employer would very gladly pay for, and I imagine others would too. I’m not in the situation to execute on any of it right now so I’m going to stay right where I am, but I hope to pull the trigger sometime in the not too distant future.

Your best course of action depends on a number of variables: your recurring/anticipated expenses, your savings or other access to cash, how speculative your business is, your risk tolerance, family obligations, and so forth.

So in lieu of answering the unanswerable, I want to offer some advice that applies either way: sit in the uncertainty for a few days, if you can, before you try to evaluate your options. You must be feeling pretty anxious right now, and that’s not a place of objectivity. Tolerate the uncertainty for a bit and the facts will be clearer.

Do you think your previous 2 companies failed because you didn't spend enough time/energy on them?

If so, then yes, go for it! Life only happens once, and if you screw up, there will surely be another job you can get at a later point. If not, maybe continue playing it safe until you feel a bit more confident about what went wrong, so in the future you can give it a go full-time.