
A Less Risky Path to Entrepreneurship in Software Development - mdeegill
http://www.almostpolished.com/blog/2013/7/2/a-less-riskier-path-to-entrepreneurship-in-software-development
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EGreg
It usually proceeds like this:

Employee -> Contractor -> Your own agency and contractors -> Your own agency
and employees -> Entrepreneurial ventures.

For example Joel Spolsky and others went through this. Sometimes you can skip
steps if you have the connections beforehand.

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yesimahuman
So I did the same thing, also unwittingly, with my company. In hindsight,
starting my company was completely risk-less. I was keeping my day job,
learning a ton, building my personal brand, and had a full salary from revenue
when I was ready to transition.

The next company I run, I'll probably be a bit more antsy to get full time
since I feel I've also become less risk-averse now that my company is doing
well. I've learned a ton on how to make money from SaaS products, and I'm
gaining confidence.

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kken
Although not completely related to the article - the headline triggered a
reaction in me:

Why do we need a less risky approach to entrepreneurship in software
development? I believe that of all start-up opportunities, software
development is already the least risky one. Why? Almost zero unvestment
required. Absolutely flexible working ours. All value creation is through your
mind work. No external milestones and so on and so on...

The fact that Software development has become synonymous with entrepreneurship
is almost ridiculous. Just compare the risks you are taking with that of your
mom-and-pop shop around the corner (or the one that was there 30 years ago)...

~~~
vinceguidry
While there's practically zero capital risk, there is a lot of career risk
involved if you fail. Many employers avoid failed entrepreneurs like the
plague.

~~~
mikkelewis
I disagree. When reviewing resumes, I'm always impressed when I see candidates
starting their own company. It shows ambition, and the will to wear multiple
hats... something that startups are always looking for.

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clienthunter
I hate to be _that_ guy but...if your justification/explanation for taking or
not taking risk involves more words than numbers, you don't understand risk.
References to popular science books scores double points. You're merely
tricking yourself into thinking that you do so you can feel better when it
goes to shit.

You must, must, must, do a) the research, and b) the math. Everything else is
fluff.

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slow1234
I hate taking risks, but wanted entrepreneurship badly, I have kids/family, do
not care about fast growth. My less risky path was: \- Save 12 months of
personal expenses/ regular salary before starting. Anyone in software can do
it. \- nothing to lose if it fails after 12 months, just a nice line on my
resume, lots of lessons learned, I can monetize later. \- my main goal was to
keep a 12 months money window ahead of me, everything I bring in helps me
extend that window for another month, hopefully every month. \- It helped me
to plan long term, not to be in a rush, not to be afraid quoting higher
prices, not feeling a gun on my head, sleep at night, stay married, see my
kids. \- Going strong after 5 years. \- I think fewer people should raise
money, give up equity, and more should start less risky businesses in
software. \- Go outside the Valley, try to disconnect from the "startup" myth,
and embrace the small business one. Be happy, and rich.

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dzink
Entrepreneurship is the least risky thing to do, when you have done so much in
your field from the bottom up that it becomes your best option. At that point
at a salaried job you'd risk earning little, learning less, being a subject to
a bad manager, wasting too much productive time in bureaucracy, or sinking to
irrelevance.

I started building for the web at 13, had a freelance business for 5years,
paid for college by building fundraising videos for another 4, did non-profit
for a year part time, UX consulting for two, front-end architecture at large
scale sites for two more, product management with a lot of financial and
metrics success in a senior role for a big brand for the last two years, and
spent some time at a VC (by age 28). At that point nothing else made sense but
building the start-up I've always wanted to use (for about $1000 in legal and
server fees beyond my personal time).

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adamzerner
I like the idea, but it was very simple: choose the right point on the
spectrum of startup vs. skill building. This could have been expanded on much
better.

1) Startups vs. skill building aren't always independent. This could be
discussed.

2) Examples/stories of points on the spectrum should be discussed.

3) The pros and cons of different points on the spectrum should have been
discussed.

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quaffapint
I'm confused what the point of this is - is it that if your startup fails you
have something to fall back on with a 'real' job? Makes it sound you can
become a developer and magically your startup has much more of a chance to
become spectacular - which is of course bunk.

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tlarkworthy
How does codepen make money? Was it generating revenue in the first 5 months
before the leap. I really want to do a similar move. I would really like to
know more about this strategy

~~~
secretagent
PRO accounts:

[http://codepen.io/pro](http://codepen.io/pro)

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ArekDymalski
Nice counterweight to that mythologized cowboism propagated by blogosphere.

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jacques_chester
OT: Is it just me, or are Squarespace sites flaking out on Chrome today?

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michaelochurch
One of the things that people need to understand is that there are various
kinds of failure. Some ruin your life; others are mild annoyances whose
negative consequences are paid back by what is learned. It's really important
to know the difference before forming an opinion on failure (i.e. "fail fast")
that is supposed to apply to everyone in all circumstances. What are the
effects of the failure?

Losing a job is not a big deal, usually. Layoffs and business failures happen.
Closing your venture because it didn't work out doesn't always ruin your life.
But if you took out $80,000 in credit card loans, or took on personal
liability to get a bank loan, or had a vindictive investor who decided to ruin
your reputation, welcome to Fuckedville.

There are a lot of young people out there right now who are far too willing to
risk their careers, reputations, resumes, and savings opportunities on
terrible prospects and in business with some really unethical people. The fact
is that if you don't gain a certain credibility quickly, you're going to be
screwed. If you don't look out for your career and really think through what
happens in the case of failure, you could very easily end up at a bad end.
I've lost close to $200,000 on bad startups, but at least I _always_ made sure
that I kept learning and building skills, no matter what. Now that I'm older,
having kept my skills sharp is starting to pay major dividends.

We have these obscenely privileged people, who are so well-connected as to be
tied in with what's essentially a private welfare system, who go out there and
preach about how failure is no big deal and everyone should risk everything
all the time, knowing that they're Stanford grads with partners at six
different VC firms in their cell phones. That's not realistic; and people who
don't have the social resources to take extreme risks (i.e. the 99%) shouldn't
be decried as cowards because they do less risky things like, you know, take
regular jobs.

~~~
ktd
What kind of "ruin your life" failure do you think people on HN are at risk of
undertaking? It strikes me that such levels of failure are very rare, at least
among the set who even knows about HN in the first place.

~~~
michaelochurch
A lot of these startups are pretty ugly when they let people go. Banks and
hedge funds and large companies lay people off, but they're honest about it.
They say, "we had to cut jobs", and they usually pay a decent severance. Many
of these startups make those look like performance-based firings in order to
save face. Needless to say, that practice creates a lot of ugly behavior on
all sides, and you don't want that stuff to follow you.

A "for cause" firing (which invariably comes with no severance, and can have
reputation effects, because for those words to come up on a reference check is
devastating) can really fuck up your career. Also, there are a lot of venture
capitalists out there who have no problem breaking with common decency and
doing a "back channel" reference check.

That's one risk. There's more variance in startups, so the good outcomes are a
lot better, but the bad outcomes are really nasty. I know people who've had
ex-employers throw frivolous lawsuits at them, just to be vindictive, years
after the fact. That kind of nonsense doesn't happen nearly as much in big
companies.

More relevantly, a lot of these startups don't do much for a person's career,
as there's a lot of junk work to go around that you won't learn much from. If
you get into your 30s and 40s and haven't worked on a couple of serious, meaty
projects-- and a lot of people haven't-- then you start facing the age
discrimination issues. I think those are probably mild for people with
legitimate work experience, but the people who did lots of low-yield grunt
work "because it was needed" and without appreciation are just screwed. You
have to manage your career, and if the work available isn't benefitting your
long-term employability, move after 12 months. But... that gets me to another
risk: the job-hopper stigma. It's pretty typical in the VC-funded startup
world to have more than one job per year, but it looks _really bad_ if you
want to go to back to traditional companies, and you might not slide back in
on the best terms.

Unfortunately, the reality in careerist America is that age matters a lot, so
you have a lot less time than you think you've got. It shouldn't matter,
because what really matters is how much time one has left, and a lot of us
will live into our 90s (or later, if the most optimistic people are correct)
and be sharp until the end. However, the sad truth is that age does matter,
and you have to manage your career pretty aggressively to avoid looking like
an underachiever amid the harsh age-grading of hyper-optimistic tech
companies.

~~~
kamaal
Your post is so correct, that I'm running short of words of praise for it.

The problem isn't just in the US. I'm from India, and the situation you
describe matches the very situation we have here.

One thing that really pisses me off totally, is the industry seems to classify
people into two separate categories. First, the kind of people who become
managers quickly are automatically considered good. Its almost like if you are
coding after 5 years into the industry, you are 'stuck'. That's how its
described.

Second, is the kind of people you describe as in having worked for technically
meaty projects before say 30. Unfortunately such work is exceedingly rare to
find. I would be glad if you can write an essay on how to be finding such
work. It would help me and nearly everyone else a lot.

