

Ask YC: Is it possible to do a startup parttime? - yters

I won't be able to do anything full time until 2011.
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rhyde
This was just addressed today by Josh Coates of Mozy.com who talked to a small
class of CS students. He said, "if your idea is good then there are six other
guys out there working on it full time. If it's not good then don't work on
it."

On the other side I just finished the Chapter in Founders at Work on 37
Signals. David Heinemeier Hansson created BaseCamp and he only spent 10 hours
a week on it. He was the only programmer working on it too. Designers did help
out but they only gave a third of their time too. But he said this lack of
time was the greatest gift to the development of Basecamp. It helped focus his
view on what they needed, and it forced them to make tough decisions about
making less software all the time. When you have a lot of time you just get
tempted to try to do it all, or at least do too much. So maybe if you don't
try to do everything and just the essential then it might be a gift too.

37 Signals embraced the constraints that were forced upon them.

So the short answer to your question is . . . it depends. But it's still a
question that needs to be asked.

~~~
hhm
Also, if the market for your idea is very very good, and the company is
offering a service, then this might work. You are already selling the service
by now, within your limited time, and the competition doesn't care much as
there is such a huge market for your idea. But these are not the conditions in
all the cases...

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JoeEntrepreneur
It really does not matter much if you are doing it part-time or full-time
except for the time it takes to get the first release out. I have been working
on <http://www.onista.com> for almost a year now and I am doing it mostly in
evenings and weekends. Bear in mind that I have one and half year old kid who
takes lot of time away from me (Off course I enjoy it a lot). Recently two
more friends joined me and we are pretty confident on launching in November.

Based on my experience I can say that, persistence is what matters. If you
work full-time and are not persistent or loose focus then you are not going
anywhere. If you work part-time and are persistent and focussed then you will
win. May be it will take more time than usual but you will get there with
better results.

So I would say, yes go ahead and work part-time on your idea, but be very
persistent to spend whatever extra time you find on the idea. It would be good
idea to find group of friends who can work part-time with you. (I did that it
does help a lot)

~~~
yters
Yeah, that would probably work as long as I don't have tough competition that
can work full time. So when I release, I have to release pretty complete and
bug free, and it'd help if the product was very hard to reproduce without
knowing the internals. I can probably do those, since I currently have a year
and a half of comp sci research ahead of me (getting a masters).

Any recommendations on especially pertinent fields? I'm planning to look at
SOA type stuff - intelligent agents, evolutionary algorithms, systems
architecture, etc. I'd like to throw some Godel in there too, but can't really
see the applicability yet.

~~~
edw519
I'm not sure that the "pertinence" of the field is what's important for a
start-up. I'd be more concerned about the need for something (unless that's
what you meant by "pertinent".)

If you have to look for something to do or ask for recommendations, you'll
probably never have the passion needed to see it through.

OTOH, you probably already have what you need. What really bugs you? And
others you know? When's the last time you said, "You know, someone really
ought to make <some thing>." THAT'S what you should be pursuing.

~~~
yters
A deep solution is better in my situation than scratching some random itch,
since anyone can do the latter. So, to rephrase my question more exactly: what
are the deep underlying problems of the web that need the type of strong
theory I can learn at university?

In answer to your last set of questions, something that really needs to be
made is an aggregation service for all the web 2.0 stuff out there. People
want an integrated, secure, and trust based work/socializing platform, and my
current research interests are geared towards solving this kind of problem.
Facebook is trying to do this, but I don't think they have a good mechanism
yet for integrating apps.

~~~
edw519
"Random itches" sometimes grow to be "deep solutions".

Hotmail was started because 2 guys didn't want to leave an email trail on
their employers' systems.

Ebay was a hobby to help a guy sell his girlfriends stuff.

OTOH, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon were intended to be "deep solutions".

Sounds like you have the passion. No substitute for that.

------
bootload
_"... I won't be able to do anything full time until 2011. ..."_

try the delicious model, build product, refine to user requirement. Then
create company around product ~ <http://joshua.schachter.org/>

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rms
Sometimes, but it's hard. There's really no reason not to try, as long as you
don't mortgage your house. All you have to lose is time.

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chmike
It depends how much effort your startup requires. It also depend on the
intellectual effort required by the other part job. If it's a manual job, you
will be able to plan what you do the next time you work on your startup.
You'll make better decision and you might even become more efficient than some
working full time for its startup.

If the other part job his intellectual, then it will be much harder,
especially if you can't well split activities.

Finally what is really important is how much perseverance, motivation and will
you have. The other factor will just influence the amount of difficulty you
have to overcome.

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Shorel
If your product is mainstream, no. Your competitors are too strong.

However, in vertical markets it only depends on how hard is to develop your
version 1.0.

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Kaizyn
I believe it is possible to do the startup part time. In fact, if you spend a
good deal of your time planning the right actions to make while you're
actually working on your startup, you may see better progress than if you're
working on it full time. This would simply be because you would be acting in a
more intelligent way.

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nickb
Your odds are small, indeed. You will never be as fast as the other guys and
if you have an amazing idea and something worthwhile, you'll be overtaken by
your competitors very quickly. You have to jump in fully and mind the business
from the start.

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kirubakaran
Some get things done irrespective of constraints. Some look for excuses no
matter what. Your choice.

And who are we to tell you if it is possible? Go forth and kick ass!

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breck
Yes.

It's also possible to learn the guitar parttime and play golf parttime.

If you want to be great though, you probably have got to work harder than
parttime.

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edw519
"won't be able to do"

You should have nothing to do with any start-up until you premanently remove
those words from your vocabulary.

Seriously.

~~~
yters
You're right. I can have all the time I want at Fort Knox.

Anyways, this is part of thinking around the problem.

