
Ask HN: How to bootstrap my own business? - the_wannabe
I desperately want to start my own company, but I am not sure how to best go about it without gambling my families finances. I&#x27;m hoping for some advice or relavent anecdotes that might help me.  My situation in a nutshell:<p>I am building a B2C website after work and on weekends, however it is very slow going and at this speed I think it&#x27;s going to take at a minimum 12 months before I have something to launch with.  This is frustrating on it&#x27;s own, since I want quit my job and build something that I can pour myself into, but I&#x27;m never able to make any meaningful progress between work and family. I really beleive in this idea, however I am trying to be realistic.<p>I have a wife and 2 young children, and my wife is getting upset that I spend all my free time working on my side project instead of hanging out with the family.  So it&#x27;s getting to the point where something has got to give.  My initial thought is to quit my steady decently paying full time job, and move to contract work.  The idea being that since that generally pays more (at the cost of dependable income), in the down time between contracts I could focus on getting my MVP ready.<p>I&#x27;m not having a lot of luck finding contracts though, since I am a generalist and the contract roles I&#x27;ve seen want you to be a specialist (usually in some web technology I haven&#x27;t used much).  I&#x27;ve also looked into places like Upwork, however they don&#x27;t look like they pay enough to be worth the time and effort it would require to put in.<p>Am I just being naive?  Is it a requirement to risk my families savings on my business idea?  Do I just need to suck it up until my kids are not dependant on us anymore?  What am I missing?<p>* I understand there will be some financial risk no matter what, I&#x27;m just very much trying to avoid the situation where in 6 months time, I have to say &quot;Welp, that didn&#x27;t work.  Oh yeah, we are also broke.&quot;<p>* I am based in Melbourne, Australia, if that makes any difference to my options.
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saluki
Prioritize family time, work on your side project when your family is
sleeping. Maybe work out where you can spend part of the weekend on it. But
prioritize family time when it's family time.

Don't risk your families savings on a business idea.

I would look at B2B vs B2C.

Check out Rob's stair step approach at StartUpsfortheRestofUs.com.

Basically start with a product or simple app to start generating revenue and
use that to fund your next larger project. Do this till you can quit your day
job. Having revenue will make it easier to justify the time you spend on side
projects too. And get you familiar with running projects, doing support etc.

I would keep your secure full time job so you don't have to focus on the next
contract.

Start small and build things up. You can never get back family time so enjoy
that while you can. The kids grow up fast.

------
steve_taylor
I feel your pain. I also have a wife and two kids and have been through this.
With poor web dev skills going into it, I tried to build a doctor appointment
booking marketplace. I eventually got my MVP done, but the practice I trialled
it at didn’t really buy into it and I didn’t have the time to spend with them
to get them up and running properly. Plus, there were some intermittent sync
issues with their system. Meanwhile, Healthengine pivoted into the space and
took off.

By the end of it, I was a much better web dev and I’m doing quite well in the
contracting market in Sydney. I’m still tinkering with side projects, but
deliberatley avoiding unrealistic ones.

Trying to bootstrap a startup when you’re supporting a whole family and you’re
one or two paydays away from financial destruction is virtually impossible.

------
sn
Don't risk your family savings.

Feel out if you might be able to go part time at your current company. Half
days or a day off a week may be more appealing to them than you leaving. If
not the current company, then exercise your network - put out there you are
looking for something part time.

Even if you are a generalist, you can look like an expert at something. I wear
many hats personally.

------
anthony_franco
First piece of advice is to get it in front of potential users ASAP (if you
haven't yet). Just to make sure you're going in the right direction. Even just
mockups or wireframes is good enough (we started off showing hand-drawn
designs at the very beginning).

And secondly, if you want to speed things up I'd look into hiring a developer
in Eastern Europe through Upwork. That's what I did and I wish I'd done it a
lot sooner.

Happy to talk more. I built my startup on the side and now it support me full-
time. Good luck!

------
gitgud
Either you risk you're own money and get the product done fast. Or risk your
time and spend 12 months building it and working part time. Either way you
forfeit time and money.

Or you forget bootstrapping and seek out investment. It sounds like a small
startup incubator would be perfect for your needs, they take some equity, you
get funding $$ and the chance to build your product!

------
illwrks
As echoed by everyone else, don't risk your family and family finances.

Look for B2B ideas not B2C.

Don't focus on big ideas, I read a dry old book a long time ago, called the
'wealth of nations'. The key bit that stood out for me was an observation that
the workers in the looms and mills built machines to improct things for them,
and then capitialsed on it (where their landowners/lords etc supported them)

With that in mind, the best comment I ever read was 'every spreadsheet tool
you see in a business is an app crying out to be made'. Look around the
company and business area you already work for/in. You have an advantage in
knowledge of their business and where the shortcomings are.

You will need to tread carefully as you don't want to loose your idea to a
byline in your employment contract.

------
a-saleh
I would like to go on a similar path one day, with following differences:

* not quitting a job, change job, negotiate higher pay, long weekends (done ;)

* figure out what side project I actually want to pour myself into

Based on what I hear, B2B is easier than B2C, and info-products
(book/course/e.t.c.) are easier than SaaS. Bonus points if the problem solved
by the course could be turned into a SaaS later on.

After I would have my bright idea, I would start reaching some potential
customers, (blog? mailing-list? cold-emails? conference talks? this is the
biggest problem for me probably?) to get some confirmation somebody would
actually buy the product. I know there is a cottage industry just for creating
landing pages and getting emails of potential customers.

After I would see the idea has traction, I would have time (due to my
4-day/week job) to write/record the damn thing, and sell it, to the people
that presumably wanted it enough to be on my damn mailing list :D

My big inspirations in this regard are Amy Hoy [0] with her methaphorical
brick-stacking course and Nate Berkopec [1] with his book on ruby.

My biggest set-backs are that I am mostly too tired to actually execute on the
plan, so I mostly use my extended weekends for more recovery/family time :)

Second, I am not sure I have enough expertise on a anything that would warrant
writing such book/make course?

I.e. I was thinking about writing about Jenkins, but I am not sure my
expertise is enough, and I work with it much less than a year ago when I was
thinking about that most :-)

I wish you luck!

[0] [https://stackingthebricks.com/](https://stackingthebricks.com/) [1]
[https://www.nateberkopec.com/blog/2017/03/10/how-i-made-
self...](https://www.nateberkopec.com/blog/2017/03/10/how-i-made-self-
publishing-about-ruby-on-rails.html)

------
21dayhero
While each situation is always different and you haven't provided many details
about your business, here are some things to think of:

\- As someone said already - if your MVP takes 12months to build, it's
probably too big, especially if it's a B2C Website. Think of the very
essentials your service/product will need and launch it as fast as possible.
Then go to get as much feedback as possible from your target audience. You'll
be surprised how what you think people need, might be the opposite of what
they actually need.

\- Are you using all of the off-the-shelf solutions already available to speed
the website development? In my previous startup, our CTO has insisted in
building a marketplace website from scratch, which ended up being a very
lengthy process and it was always buggy because he needed to code even such
basics like responsiveness from scratch. I later found a WordPress template
for a marketplace that would have done 90% of what we need and we would have
had it done in 1 month, instead of 6. So really look at platforms like
Wordpress - they are a lot more powerful than you think and are really good
for prototyping at least.

\- If that website is something so huge and no-way can be stripped down - try
to think from a different perspective. What is the purpose of the website? Is
it to get you leads? Provide a service? Sell something? Maybe it can be
already done by existing platforms like Instagram, Facebook Marketplace,
Facebook Messenger Bots, Course using thinkify etc. etc. Is the website the
only way to reach that goal?

These are the tips on how to make things faster than 12 months. By doing it -
you will be able to test it quickly and will know if your idea is even worth
changing your lifestyle or risking your financials and family love (probably
nothing is really worth risking losing family support).

If you talked to your users, build an mvp, and it seems to be clicking with
your target audience - then start thinking how to bootstrap most effectively.
One of the best ways - to launch any sort of paid product and try to get a
small income stream from your business already, this might help you to reduce
your workload at the day job and then focus more on the main idea. Also, think
of getting an intern. There are tons of great people out there who are willing
to trade their time for nothing but real life experience (ofc, check your
local laws are you required to pay your interns or not).

Anyway - wishing you all the best in your entrepreneurial journey. It's not
possible to lose, because even if you fail - you learn.

~~~
steve_taylor
> if your MVP takes 12months to build, it's probably too big

This piece of conventional wisdom keeps getting trotted out as gospel. 12
months doesn’t get you much when you have a wife and kids to support and they
make demands of what little time you have between working and sleeping.

~~~
21dayhero
Agree and I am not stating otherwise. If it takes 52 hours to build and you
have 1h a week, that's a year.

The sole purpose of sharing this 'conventional wisdom' was to give perspective
because I always appreciate when somebody shares theirs with me. More often
than not we get so focused on our own initial plan that we fail to see
shortcuts that actually makes sense.

------
is_true
Talk this with your wife. Explain her what you want to do and why. I'm sure
she will support you. I did it without telling my SO and without kids, and I
didn't pay attention to our relationship and it went bad, really bad.

------
kohanz
I'm a developer who does part-time contract work to support bootstrapping (so
far) a business. Here's my advice to you.

> I am building a B2C website after work and on weekends, however it is very
> slow going and at this speed I think it's going to take at a minimum 12
> months before I have something to launch with. This is frustrating on it's
> own, since I want quit my job and build something that I can pour myself
> into, but I'm never able to make any meaningful progress between work and
> family. I really beleive in this idea, however I am trying to be realistic.

Don't spend 12 months building something. Please. Unless you mean 12 months of
building something while showing and selling it to people along the way every
week or so. Whether you believe in your idea or not, it's the opinions of your
customers (and more importantly, their wallets) that will decide whether
you've got a business here.

> I am building a B2C website

Understand that the #1 challenge in B2C will be marketing. It doesn't matter
if you build the best version of something, or a completely new something that
people find amazing. They will not know it exists or find you, unless you put
a ton of effort into marketing. More than development.

I learned this the hard way. I've built a B2C product that users love, but
getting users to it is challenging, even though the product has some built-in
virality. I'm actually pivoting the core technology to a B2B use-case that I
can sell to companies for recurring revenue. To be honest, I wish I had done
this from the start.

> I have a wife and 2 young children, and my wife is getting upset that I
> spend all my free time working on my side project instead of hanging out
> with the family. So it's getting to the point where something has got to
> give. My initial thought is to quit my steady decently paying full time job,
> and move to contract work.

Yes, this is a good idea. I didn't even start getting seriously into
entrepreneurship until I had established a successful consulting business.
Your family, especially your spouse, are going to be your number one support
through the tough times. Do not take them for granted - they need to be on
your side.

> Am I just being naive? Is it a requirement to risk my families savings on my
> business idea?

The naive aspect that I see is that you haven't really presented any real
validation or traction for your "idea". Pre-sell it, build a fake MVP, etc.
there are tons of ways to get out there and validate an idea before building
it. Just please, don't spend 12 months where you're primarily developing
software, because it's such a small part of a successful business. Find out
whether your idea is something you can sell and people will pay for first.

------
jonchurch_
My best advice is to post this over at
[https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/). It's a great
community of people who have bootstrapped businesses (and/or are in the
process of doing so).

You sound pretty stressed, which is understandable with the kind of pressure
you are experiencing both from within and from without. This is purely
anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt, but entrepreneurship is very
stressful. It's unlikely you will find a soft landing making a sudden jump
from a paid gig to supporting yourself fulltime with a new business
(freelancing), while trying to build another business on the side which might
not work out (your B2C project). That's not to discourage you, but a dose of
reality which can help you look at things differently. For example, whatever
you have now, just launch it. Launch it and ask people to pay for it. It will
never be "good enough", and 12 months is way too long to work on an MVP before
launching, because it never survives first contact with customers.

None of what I've said above is new, particularly wise, or even true in all
cases. It's just the basic boring truth about entrepreneurship, it's hard,
you're likely to fail, and you should've launched yesterday. That's why I like
the indiehackers community, acknowledging the challenges above is an important
part of working around them, which is a big theme in that community. Most are
destined to fail, but not everyone does. So what smart things can you do to
try and get yourself into the percentage that don't fail?

If you jump straight from having a stable income, to having absolutely none
but with a family to support and without the ability to live off savings,
you're not giving yourself a very good head start into an endeavor you're
already most likely to fail at (statistically). Focus on what you can do now
while you're still employed that will actually get you closer to making money
from your product. The only real way to tell if you're getting closer to being
able to make money from a product, is to start charging for it. ASAP. In
whatever form you are able at the current moment, to people who really want to
use your product.

Basically, I'm saying validate demand for your product, start selling it to
people, market market market, sell it to more people, etc., and then think
about quitting your job. Honestly writing lines of code correlates very poorly
to making money in most businesses. Finding more customers for your product
(and first finding out if they exist at all!) is far more important than
building the product (until it's not, but at that point you should be selling
said product whether it exists yet or not).

To your specific questions: You quite likely shouldn't risk your family's
savings on your business idea. What I think you're missing is that there are
so very many options out there. Bootstrapping only means that you fund the
business out of pocket. But making the assumption that you need to go broke to
build a business is, I think, a mistake. Don't pursue a business idea which
demands more of you monetarily, or in time, than you can afford to risk.
Because as you acknowledged, there is always some risk. It's up to you to
mitigate that risk by both approaching the business in a smart and focused
way, and by picking the right opportunities to pursue. If you're not a
billionaire, don't bootstrap a Rocket company.

It sounds in general like you're frustrated with where you are, and want to
work on something yourself. Scratch that itch, 100%, just realize there are
options to scratch that itch where you don't have to upend your life. Maybe
pursue a job that gives you more freedom, so you can have both more time for
family and your side projects.

Best of luck to you, there's a million people out there who feel just like you
do.

Source: Im a fulltime freelance dev and wantrapreneur

Edit: See also this related thread on HN
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438118)

------
markfer
\- Strip away 80% of the B2C website and launch an MVP in 2 months (if you
can't, maybe create a B2B solution instead?)

\- Try lining up contract work before taking the plunge. It's a new skillset
and you may find that you can't sell yourself (or, don't like selling)

\- You can always find more time. Spend family time and then code into the
late hours?

\- Honestly, you sound like you're just making a lot of excuses. Either do or
don't. It's up to you.

