
Ask HN: How did you start your business? - juliansamarjiev
Did you leave your job and then start a business, or was it a side project that evolved into a full-time gig?
======
cabinguy
I started buying broken laptops on eBay, fixing them, and reselling them with
my best friend. We started with $600 each on credit cards. That turned into a
large refurbished computer sales business. So large that I started shopping
for a vacation home (lake home).

Well, the process of buying a vacation home was frustrating. This was back in
2002 and most real estate brokerages did not have websites, and if they did,
they were static and outdated. This led to a conversation with my business
partner...and we ended up buying a really good domain related to my vacation
home search and launched a website for realtors. We called it our side
project.

When the used laptop market turned into the used VCR market, we shifted all of
our eggs to our side project basket.

Today we own a real estate brokerage with 20 offices and are pretty much
considered the leaders in the lake home sales market in the Midwest. We're on
track to hit a $Billion in annual sales in the next couple of years (did about
$300M last year). Neither of us were Realtors (I'm still not). It's been an
interesting ride so far.

~~~
mandeepj
A naive question - if you are selling a lake home worth $5m then you are
considering that amount as your sale? Let's say you are charging 1% as your
fees then $50k is your revenue? Thx

~~~
tiffanyh
Given that OP was doing $0.45M just 7 years ago [1], doing $300M today would
be some phenomenal amount of growth.

Maybe this is a “gross revenue” vs “net revenue” topic.

Especially given that the OP states in the same Link that he’d love a “$20m
exit”.

A $20m exit on a $300m is a no brainer.

Either way. Being your own boss. Being profitable. And growing is awesome.
Congrats.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341124)

------
csallen
I left my job. Or, more accurately, the startup I was doing contract work for
went under, and I decided not to look for another contract afterwards. I
worked on a few projects before starting my business, Indie Hackers, which I
grew to just under $6k/mo in revenue (in 8 months) before joining Stripe.

I've done interviews with close to 300 founders. Recently, I added a sortable,
filterable directory that can help answer questions like yours. For example,
you can filter to only show businesses started as a side project:
[https://www.indiehackers.com/products?commitment=side-
projec...](https://www.indiehackers.com/products?commitment=side-project). I'm
still working on improving the accuracy, but it's coming along.

~~~
wuliwong
I've seen other attempts to build a community around this demographic before.
One I really liked, I even found someone on there and we built a nice project
together, though I forget the name.

Do you recall what you focused on when you started? What do you think led to
your success and traction?

I find this stuff fascinating when there seems to be an idea that people want
to happen but no has been able to get it right. Then finally someone (or some
people) crack the code.

~~~
csallen
Long day, finally back. The key was a combination of (a) identifying the right
audience, (b) finding a distribution channel that could consistently reach
them in large numbers, (c) creating a product ideal for that audience and
distribution channel, and (d) parlaying that traffic into its own community.
And not necessarily in that order.

The answer to those questions turned out to be (a) developers who want to
self-fund profitable online businesses, (b) Hacker News, (c) interviews with
successful developer founders willing to tell their story and share revenue
numbers in the open, and (d) getting readers onto a mailing list, then sending
them links to interesting forum threads every week for a year.

Lest I seem smarter than I am, this analysis is being done with the benefit of
hindsight. I did not have 100% of this stuff planned from the beginning.

------
fecak
I had been a recruiter for several years, starting off out of college with a
~200 person international firm for a couple years and then a founding member
of a small boutique recruiting firm for about seven years. I eventually
figured out that I wasn't getting any value from my partner, so I started my
own recruiting firm.

During my recruiting career I was always writing/editing resumes and giving
job search advice to my candidates, but the job search advice was always
awkward because I had "skin in the game" (potential fees). I never became
comfortable with that process.

On the side I started a resume writing and career consulting business, and I
decided a couple years ago to make that my full-time focus. At first I wasn't
sure if I'd be able to maintain my income from recruiting (wife and 2 kids in
an expensive area, special needs kids), but so far it looks like I'm on
schedule to actually earn more.

Beyond the compensation, I find the work far more fulfilling. I'm working more
hours than I used to, but I feel I'm actually helping people much more
effectively. Hearing stories about how a resume and advice got someone their
dream job feels good, and I'm also writing for some interesting people both in
and out of tech.

~~~
gwbas1c
Recruiting and resume writing is what entrepreneurs call a "tie shop
business." The product is already well-defined, the customers are already
well-known, and how to operate the business is already well-known.

Even a software consulting firm is a "tie shop business."

Developing new technology is the polar opposite of a "tie shop business." The
product is new, the customers are unknown, and how to sell the product is
unknown.

The reason why I state this is that hacker news's users, and Y Combinator's
businesses, are developing new technology. They aren't creating "tie shop
businesses."

It's important that you know the difference when participating in a forum like
this, and deciding what kind of business to start. Advice that applies to a
"tie shop business" doesn't really apply to someone who's starting a business
to develop new technology.

~~~
fecak
I expect most users of hacker news aren't creating any businesses at all ("tie
shops" or otherwise) but are here for interesting stories and dialogue with
others.

YC's _portfolio and team_ may be creating new tech, but HN is a bit of a
bigger umbrella from what I've seen, and in my several years commenting here
your comment is the closest thing to a "you don't belong here" or "stay in
your lane" signal that I think I've heard.

OP's question was pretty open and didn't mention anything about developing
technology. I wouldn't offer expertise where I didn't have it, but if someone
asks how I started my business I think I'm qualified to answer.

~~~
jackgolding
Want to add to side comments that I've read a few of your posts in Ask HN and
generally enjoy them so hope you do feel valued here.

~~~
fecak
Thanks, and I absolutely do feel valued here. I was a bit surprised by this
reply as it was a bit out of left field given what I wrote and the question
asked. Identifying as a recruiter (now former recruiter) here was always
interesting based on the reputation of the industry, but I haven't had any
real issues with the audience.

Thanks, I appreciate your comment.

------
Radim
Employee => academia (PhD in AI) => open source (Gensim) => ML freelancing
(radimrehurek.com) => ML consulting company (rare-technologies.com) => ML
products (pii-tools.com, scaletext.ai).

Looking back, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to jump right into
full-time products, skipping the intermediate budding steps. Is it a burden to
understand the whole process, from accounting, legal, HR, management, ops,
sales, support? Better to outsource them right away?

It's definitely true that all that ancillary stuff is a distraction, a
(stressful) time sink. Especially when you're just starting out and clueless,
like I was. Bootstrapping slows you down. On the other hand, it felt kinda
natural, but took many years. Not the standard (?) SV path of rapid growth.

~~~
alfonsodev
How old were you when quoting as an employee and started the PhD ? Was it hard
financially ? I’m asuming you had a degree already.

~~~
Radim
Quit in 2009, age 28. It was not that hard financially -- I moved to southern
Thailand, worked on the PhD and Gensim there. Thailand is a pretty cheap
country to live actually.

~~~
abrichr
How did you negotiate doing a PhD remotely?

~~~
Radim
I feel like I'm not helping you guys much, because my circumstances may have
been unique, but the honest answer is:

Not much negotiation needed. My uni had what I'd call an "old school AI
department", grounded in linguistics / semantic web and RDFs / expert systems,
that type of research. I was more into statistics, Bayesian inference and
vectors. The mutual impact was lukewarm, and completing my thesis remotely not
an issue.

~~~
zerr
Did "PhD" pedigree help in anyway? I mean you could do your research outside
academia, since your department was not helping you (in research). But I guess
US PhD stipend could be considered as a good salary in Thailand.

------
Fradow
Neither. After getting my degree, I continued a student project for 1 year
that went nowhere. Eventually, I realized it wasn't going anywhere, so I
decided to look for a job.

I went to a hackathon, summarily said I was looking for a job on stage at the
end. Instead, someone I already knew came talk to me about their startup idea
(which had PoC already live, a solid business plan and good proofs the project
could be viable), and I decided to give it a go.

That was 5 years ago, I'm still there, learned a lot, and now we are 12
employees (we started at 2 unpaid founders, and started paying ourselves a
minimal salary after a year). While it's not up to SV standard, I do consider
it a success that we are still alive, and did not sell our soul doing others
people project at any time of the company (which happens a lot here, companies
don't die, they become contractors).

Important note: I had the privilege of a nice parental cushion that let me do
that instead of absolutely requiring an income. I couldn't have done it
otherwise.

~~~
hndamien
Thanks for the honesty about the cushion. Often these tidbits get left out. It
is really interesting to understand all the puzzle pieces and the mentality of
those that made it.

------
jacob_rezi
I started my company, [https://rezi.io](https://rezi.io), 5 months after
graduating college in August of 2014

I noticed that about all of my classmates were grossly underemployed since
their resumes were simply trash. They didn't understand applicant tracking
systems and existing resume companies don't address the issue of resume
optimization (except Jobscan, but they're a little different)

It started as a side project in Wisconsin, then in November 2016, I moved to
South Korea where we've successfully supported a number of the top
universities with our English resume solutions and I've been able to go full
time + hire our first employee. Feels great. Such a ride so far. Here is a
quick article of my time in Korea

[http://www.mobiinside.com/2017/12/05/rezi-korea-
startup/](http://www.mobiinside.com/2017/12/05/rezi-korea-startup/)

------
DizzyDoo
I started making video games as a teenager, and about ten years ago there was
this golden age of Flash games where you could make a small video game,
auction it off on a private website to various companies that ran Flash game
arcades. You'd incorporate their branding, ads, links, and in exchange receive
an upfront fee followed by a split of the ad revenue. Over the course of my
three year degree I had five games published, which gave me a taste of the
business side of game development. It was a weird, unique, fun time in game
development! I don't think there's much like that now for hobbyists to
transition into commercial work quite so naturally.

But I finished uni and went into the industry, writing Python/Django code for
a startup. During this time I started work on the game that eventually let me
go full-time, The Cat Machine
([http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900](http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900)).
I'd work on it on Saturdays and towards the end of development I'd even get up
early in the morning to get an hour or two in. I released it on Steam and a
bunch of other places, where it did... better than a niche puzzle game about
cats should do, I think! Other good things happened, it was featured for a
number of months on the front page of the Apple Mac Store next to actually
really good games like Braid and Mini Metro, so it turned out that cross-
platform support was really worth it!

I've been working on my second downloadable title for the past two years
([http://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookee...](http://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookeeper/)),
but that's the story so far!

~~~
wilhow
Just wanna say that's pretty inspirational. Keep it up.

~~~
DizzyDoo
Thanks!

------
jcadam
I have had some side projects make a little bit of money, but never enough to
make any sort of headway toward replacing my full-time job.

My current effort is also a side business while I continue to work my FT job.
It is definitely detrimental to the business to continue to devote 40+ hours
per week to something else, but I need to feed my family (if I was young and
single with no other financial obligations, I would totally just quit the day
job and live on canned meat and potatoes) :/

My advice - if you're young, take your financial risks now. It only gets
harder to do later :)

~~~
extrememacaroni
Depending on how far you take your business while young, you may find it
difficult to go back to regular employment, especially in places where people
expect you to be reliable and dedicated.

I'm not sure young people can take financial risks, unless they're already
rich. If they're not rich, I'd sooner advise people to work for long enough to
have a safety net of cash, as well as cash to invest in their idea first. A
bonus you get while working is that you meet people who can potentially help
you in your business later on. Seeing what's involved in a real business will
also help you make more realistic estimates of what you'll need in your own.

The average age of the successful startup/business founder is way older than
what the media lets people know by showing only the youngest entrepreneurs
i.e. the outliers who are noteworthy. Those people happen to have industry
experience and money that can be "risked".

~~~
gwbas1c
> I'm not sure young people can take financial risks, unless they're already
> rich.

It's a lot easier to take a financial risk when you have no dependents and no
mortgage.

I quit my job to start a business in my late 20s, when I was single and had no
kids. I will say that another reply's statement is very true: "If I think back
to the person I was in my mid-20s, I would not have had the dedication,
confidence, people skills, or even the technical know-how to pull off anything
approaching a successful business."

In my case, I just wanted to be in charge of my own destiny for awhile, with
the freedom to screw up. (And I did screw up.) Although I wish I did things
differently, the experience itself was worthwhile. Our modern upbringings are
so structured that "starting our own business" really just turns into an
outlet for avoiding authority for awhile.

~~~
Agathos
During my 20s, I was in graduate school and I had no money. Now I'm in my 30s
making good developer money, and while I have a mortgage I also have enough
saved to pay it for a long time.

I also have no dependents, which is obviously the big difference maker.

~~~
jcadam
> I also have no dependents, which is obviously the big difference maker.

Yep. Just try to build significant savings with a wife and 3 kids. I'll
probably never have more than a couple of months' pay sitting in savings. I
realize if I lived alone I could easily live on 1/3 of my current salary. Ah
well, life choices and all that...

------
erohead
I started working on a prototype smartwatch back in 2008 while I was doing
undergrad at UWaterloo. iPhone didn't have a Bluetooth API then so I actually
hacked together a small 30 pin dongle with an nrf radio. Quickly moved to
Blackberry which had a semi working BT API.

I graduated in 2009 and decided to work on it full time. Funding in early days
came from oversized novelty cheques from pitch competition wins, some interest
free loans ($15k personal loan from Canadian government - CYBF) and personal
savings from my coop work terms over previous 5 years.

Got $20k YC funding in 2011 which kicked company into higher gear before our
Kickstarter campaign in 2012.

~~~
graycrow
I still regret that Pebble went out of business. Any plans to make similar
smartwatch again?

~~~
erohead
No, there's no point. You can buy a Pebble 2 HR on Amazon for $90. It will
last long into the future (albeit with slightly reduced feature set in July,
until the Rebble.io project is up to speed).

------
jasonlfunk
The best thing that I was able to do is to reduce my fulltime job hours to
part time, initially 3 days/week, and used the other time to grow my own
business. This may or may not be applicable in every situation, but if you are
a positive contributer in your working environment, it's unlikely that your
boss would rather just replace you (and retrain a new person) instead of just
having you work less. This eases the stress tremendously on the new business
if you don't have to worry about eating and rent/mortgage payments.

~~~
sreyaNotfilc
You know what, I've never thought about that possibility at all. Usually, when
you hear about starting a business while working, you're just working extra
hours on top of your 9-5.

Maybe I can try that with the leave I have saved up and then ease my way into
a part-time gig. Well, after I start making money on the side business.

Thanks for the insight.

~~~
ibz
1st step, going from 5 days / week to 4 days / week is pretty much a no
brainer. You get 50% more free time for 20% less money. I did that 2 years ago
and never looked back. Sometimes I switch to 3 days / week, then back to 4
days, depending on how I feel. But I would never consider a "full time job"
more than 4 days / week. But sure, I am getting shit done, so I don't have a
problem asking for that.

~~~
imhoguy
Well said! Just for a statistical curiosity, which weekdays do you work? :)

~~~
ibz
Mon-Thu or Mon-Wed. I like long weekends. Not that it matters really.

------
stevesearer
Office Snapshots ([https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com))
was started ~11 years ago as a side project while I was teaching middle and
high school history. It got fairly popular immediately due to early viral
sharing on Twitter and Digg.

I just kept going at posting to it for the next several years. Eventually I
decided to stop teaching, and my wife and I moved to a new city, and decided
to do something else for a career. Through the process of temping at various
businesses (warehouse for a tooth whitening company, office manager at a
cremation sales company), I decided that Office Snapshots should be my main
pursuit.

There was still a lot of doing various projects for people to make money in
the meantime while the business was growing such as web design work or hunting
for working coupon codes for a friend's business.

All that said, Office Snapshots has been my sole work for the last 3 years and
we recently launched a site dedicated to healthcare projects and one for
educational architecture projects.

~~~
pharaohgeek
I check out your site every few weeks. I really enjoy looking at the design
and layouts in offices around the world. No real reason for it. It’s just a
nice distraction sometimes. (Especially in boring meetings!) Keep up the good
work!

------
greysteil
I left my job, took some time out, and then started building my business
([https://dependabot.com](https://dependabot.com)).

Financially, it's been tough - after 10 months Dependabot makes $2,100 a month
(although that's now growing quite fast). I know I'm the kind of personality
that couldn't have started it at the same time as working a full time job,
though - I need to be really focussed on one thing at a time.

~~~
tootie
If you want those big money enterprise clients, add Maven and Nuget support.

~~~
Totoradio
I agree. If this tool does what it says, and supported .Net/Nuget, my company
would throw a lot of money at it. More than the $50/month advertised.

~~~
greysteil
Interesting, thanks for the validation. We have basic Maven support already,
and a PR half-finished for .Net - I'll get on it :-)

------
a_shane
I started freelancing 5-6 years ago, doing copywriting projects mostly.
Website copy, monthly blog posts, that kind of stuff.

After a few months I realized that none of the clients I was working with had
an actual digital marketing plan in place; they were just farming out copy
projects because they "knew the needed to have a blog."

I pitched all of my existing clients and spent the next year building up a
side roster of additional clients who relied on me for their digital marketing
strategy, copy, and social media management. This pivot away from being just
copy-based to strategy and execution/management earned me enough recurring
monthly revenue that I was making more from my side project than my 9-5, so I
quit.

I've been running my company, Starling Social
([https://www.starling.social](https://www.starling.social)) for just shy of
three years now. I have a Copywriter, an Account Manager, and it's looking
like I'll need to hire an Ads Specialist in the not-too-distant future. Life
is pretty great.

------
DoofusOfDeath
A little tangential, but my wife decided to start a business a few years ago.
We had no idea where to begin with the legal, banking, etc. side of things.

This book was a great primer for us: [https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-
Operator-Business-Yourbook...](https://www.amazon.com/Small-Time-Operator-
Business-Yourbooks/dp/158979799X)

------
ThomPete
My first company was a design agency which I started in 2005 with one other
partner. I left my other job to do it after I got tired of working for other
people.

Built that up to 80 people and left in 2012 to got to New York to help another
company get acquired. That happened faster than I thought (hadn't anythhing to
do with me), that company was Square were I spent 4 1/2 years. Last year I
left to start a new product consultancy we are still two, have a bunch of
freelancers and are about to hire our first people.

I have had a lot of side projects (still do) my most profitable one is
Ghostnote. Because I live in NY I wouldn't be able to live from it but it does
give me substantial income and I am working on a few more which will
definitely put me in position to not even have to do consulting (although I
really do enjoy it)

To me the most important benefit besides the money is freedom and if I have
anything to say I will never work for someone again.

------
mrskitch
I started [https://www.browserless.io/](https://www.browserless.io/) when I
found out that there wasn't a good hosted solution for headless-browser work.
There's a ton of other higher-level services that do things like screenshots
and pdfs, but what if I needed something that those services didn't cover (and
had to scale out to 100's of concurrent sessions).

I didn't really set out to do this service, but it came after _not_ finding it
anywhere else. I'm about ~4 months in and make $1k/month on it so far, which
tells me that others need this service as well. Happy to answer other
questions about the business if folks are curious.

~~~
palidanx
What was version 1.0 of the product?

~~~
mrskitch
Version 1.0 was a very very simple hosted headless image running on a few
VM's. At that point there wasn't any debugger or notifications about your
sessions. Pretty much just a submission form that provisioned machines to
support the account.

This actually took place after a few months in a beta where I was doing
everything manually (to see if it could even work). That was actually a good
lesson: do things manually until it doesn't scale as it's possible that you'll
be writing code that doesn't ever run!

------
m3nu
Never had a job in my life. I helped friends at real estate offices fix their
IT problems while a student. People kept asking me for more and more stuff.
Server setup, hosting, data analysis, websites, etc. Also got many referrals
that expanded the business.

Eventually I just focused on the most fun and profitable projects only, while
passing the rest on to freelancers or friends.

------
rodolphoarruda
Got fired from this large international company. By the time I was saying
farewell to my project team some folks from India told me they wanted to
partner with me in case I decided to open my own (web development) company.
And that's what I did a couple of weeks later. The partnership lasted 5 years.
Lesson learned: networking is everything, not only with levels above but also
below. You will need it when you decide it is the right time to build the team
you need.

------
slipwalker
Hope you are not looking only for success stories... I left a stable job at a
small consultancy, with one-year-worth of salaries on the bank, armed with my
tech skills but no sales expertise ( or commercial talent ) whatsoever. The
results, 14 years later: bankruptcy, lots of debt, a couple labor-related
lawsuits and back to full time employment for a large corporation... Lesson
learned: as an entrepreneur you can buy tech skills ( and it's cheaper than
most would imagine ) but nothing is more valuable than sales (soft)skills. A
competent, well related, sales person is the most valuable asset on your
company.

( BTW, my company was developing J2EE/JEE/JavaEE small/mid-sized projects for
finance&insurance companies in Brazil )

------
nickjj
I started freelancing just under 20 years ago and have worked as a solo
developer ever since.

Maybe this isn't the best advice but I think we're capable of doing pretty
extraordinary things when you're thrown into the deep end. You'd be surprised
at how things start to work out once you're 100% out of your comfort zone.

I'm not saying quit your job immediately while still in debt or whatever. I
just think that if you're debt free and have a few months of savings you could
at least give starting your own business a fair shot without a safety net. If
things don't look like they are going to work out, you could always find some
type of job to pay the bills.

~~~
k1ns
> I think we're capable of doing pretty extraordinary things when you're
> thrown into the deep end

This resonates with me as I've been there once already in my life and felt the
same thing. A very sudden life-changing situation popped up unexpectedly and I
just had to dig my heels in and push forward. You really find out what you're
made of when failure is not an option. It turned out great and got me a job at
a Fortune 500 while still in college, but admittedly I've had trouble
replicating that tenacity ever since. There has to be a term for the
phenomenon, but you feel like you're in this advanced state of mind and
somehow you just know you're going to hit the ball out of the park if you keep
working. Thanks for sharing your story!

~~~
OtterCoder
Grit, I think. It's not a static trait, the way some people talk about it.
More something you discover when you need it.

------
altharaz
I started a first company with some friend. I was in charge of the IT, he was
in charge on Sales. However, things were catastrophic as I was selling more
than him. A huge conflict occurred and I closed the company. => I lost some
money in the process, but I learnt a lot.

Then, a friend from Engineering school just graduated. We had previously
worked together on side-projects, and we had a common passion for
cybersecurity. We decided to launch our company.

After three years of hard work, we are now profitable and really happy about
this choice :).

~~~
bitcoinmoney
I'm curious what does a cyber security company do? Do you do pen testing for
other companies? Consulting? Also what is your background? Thanks

------
juliansamarjiev
I'm building my company ([https://weardulo.com/](https://weardulo.com/)) while
working as a web developer full-time. Mornings, evenings and weekends is when
I dedicate time to it.

------
jallardice
A colleague and I left a large UK company and started orangejellyfish
([https://orangejellyfish.com](https://orangejellyfish.com)), a software
consultancy with a focus on the web and JavaScript. The real push to start it
came when we realised that much of what we both wanted to achieve in terms of
craftsmanship, maintainable code and training in new technologies for
engineering teams not yet exposed to them, was not going to be possible. We
knew that many businesses do have a desire to improve those aspects of their
engineering teams, and when we came to an agreement with a company that would
become our first major client we decided that the time was right to both
commit ourselves full-time.

We've doubled in size from our initial 2 in the last couple of months and with
many more prospects on the horizon we're hoping to add a few more to that over
the course of the next year!

~~~
kypro
How do you typically find your clients?

~~~
jallardice
We network at meetups, conferences and other events, so through word of mouth
mainly. The active engineering community in London is fantastic at helping to
spread opportunities.

------
tnr23
A job was no option in the first place. Started and failed with businesses
since I finished school with 19. With 29 now I have a business with 7 figure
yearly profits.

------
graeme
I was in law school, planning to start my own law practice. Then I read the
4HWW, fell in love with the automated business model, and realized it was
difficult in law.

I left law school, using LSAT tutoring and teaching to cover expenses while
thinking of an automated product idea.

I had reached out to online LSAT tutors for tips when I first started
tutoring. A few months in, one of them approached me to ask if I would write
some explanations for LSAT preptests. He needed them for licsening reasons,
but didn't have the time to write them himself.

This seemed like an automated product (he would pay me royalties, I kept the
rights). I wrote a bunch. These eventually also turned into print books.

I later made the explanations free online. This site attracted a lot of users,
and I made video courses to sell to them.

That's where I'm at now, it's the 8th year.

------
trevorhinesley
I was touring full-time in a band, while on retainer with an app agency for
30-hours/week when we launched
[https://soundstripe.com](https://soundstripe.com). I was introduced to the
other two co-founders by a client, and we hit it off.

I quit touring about 10 months after we launched because we had gotten a staff
of a few people and it was starting to take off. I took about a 75% pay cut to
focus on it full-time until we were able to pay ourselves a reasonable salary
about a year or year and a half into business. Still did some side work until
then, but not 30-hours/week worth.

We bootstrapped it for the first two years (had about 15 employees by then),
but just recently closed a late seed round, and have about 25 staff now.

------
martiuk
Started my own business with a friend 4 years ago to write funny sci-fi side
scrollers, he was then promoted in his permanent job which meant he didn't
have any intention of leaving it.

Straight after with a 3d artist co-worker at the job at the time created a
relatively re-useable VR ArchViz Engine in UE4 and Oculus Rift, our first
client (major Indian construction firm) expected us to give it away for free
and subsequently they went radio silent.

I panicked and quickly pivoted to DevOps/SRE consulting and contracting
through agencies, which I've happily been doing since then.

Now it's a decision on whether to go back to permanent work (at a relatively
senior level) as I'm starting a family or to double down and start hiring.

------
alexobenauer
Started it in 2012 while wrapping up my last year of school. Put my idea for a
product I really believed in on Kickstarter, luckily Hacker News and the like
really took to it, pushing it past 100% quickly. Been at it ever since.

------
gk1
I left my job to become a consultant. I had some savings that were only going
to last me a few months but I found a way to stretch that to 6 months, which
is how long it took me to start getting consistent work. That was 5 years ago
and I'm still consulting and loving it.

I've written about this: [https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-
consulting-l...](https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting-
leads/)

------
rwieruch
It simply started out with blogging about web development, JavaScript, and
React and writing a self-published book about it eventually. I didn't plan to
do it in the first place, but now I teach many people online React.js on my
own course platform [0].

It's an exciting adventure, because suddenly you have to handle customer
support, marketing and sales. Yet your main priority is keeping the course
content up to date, adding new content and ensuring content with a high
quality. It's not a 100% full-time gig yet, but I would say 60%. I hope by
getting more students this year that I can accelerate it to 100%, because the
teaching part itself is more fulfilling for me than any other 9 to 5 job. Last
year I quit my job to support this adventure, but I have to have a couple of
clients on the side [1]. Most of these clients are companies which are
transitioning to React.

\- [0] [https://roadtoreact.com](https://roadtoreact.com)

\- [1] [https://www.robinwieruch.de/work-with-
me](https://www.robinwieruch.de/work-with-me)

~~~
RikNieu
That's cool, congrats!

May I contact you with some questions about doing something similar?

------
lpaone
My first startup attempt was a indie game right out of university. In
hindsight, I was too inexperienced, and as the only programmer on the game; it
failed.

I got a job and worked there for ~3 years to gain experience, learn, and make
some money. About 2 years into that, I started working on a side project with
my lead and we left about a year later to work on it full time.

[https://www.stroom.live](https://www.stroom.live) started out as a live
streaming video "social network for local happenings". Shortly before we
launched, Facebook Live/Meerkat/Periscope were launched, and we could not
gather any traction. We took our base tech and pivoted, turning it into a low
cost, high quality (allowing the user to plug their professional camera into a
cell phone) professional live streaming platform for video and broadcast
professionals. After 2 years, we are finally starting to gain traction and
customers.

My founder and I were able to pay for it through savings, me sucking it up and
living at home, side contracts, and a Canadian government research program
IRAP.

------
carlchenet
I started freelancing in 2012. Some years after, I started to understand I
could never be rich or dissociate my income from my time while freelancing.

Started to build side projects 2 years ago. I roughly get $700/mrr with my 1st
side project and my goal this year is $1.2k/mrr in 2018. So still far from
being a full-time gig and still freelancing but increasing other revenues,
which is my long term goal.

------
p0d
I have a side project that lets me work for myself two days a week. Growing
the project has been hard. I’m glad now I didn’t pack in the day job.

------
spodek
1\. My nation elected a president more interested in plundering the
environment than protecting it.

2\. Nearly everyone feels "I want to act but if no one else does then my
actions won't matter so I'll keep doing what I'm doing."

3\. When I've gotten over that feeling, my changes _improved_ my life.

My podcast, Leadership and the Environment
[http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast](http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast), emerged to
help provide the leadership for cultural change, to where people _want_ to act
on their environmental values.

Then guests like Dan Pink, John Lee Dumas, Dorie Clark, Frances Hesselbein,
and other luminaries enjoyed their personal challenges, leading to more
influential guests.

With a Superbowl champion and a Victoria's Secret model coming up, I'm more
motivated than ever.

Plus people are volunteering to help, leading to in-person events.

Check it out:
[http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast](http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast).

~~~
cooervo
are you eating meat? avoiding meat & diary products is the best way to help
the environment. Sensitive issue because not many people will do the change.

Watch Cowspiracy to learn more.

~~~
acidburnNSA
75% of carbon emissions come from our energy supplies. Not taking any long
flights is another amazingly potent way to reduce footprint. It's hard to
pinpoint a best way to help but there are certainly a lot of good ways.

------
Slaul
I have a question about starting businesses...I'm getting ready to launch an
MVP and it never occurred to me to research opening a specific bank account
for it, whether or not I need to get a sole proprietorship (I'm in Canada,
afaik this is our version of LLC more or less), etc. Anybody have any good
resources for this stage of the process?

~~~
jeffreyrogers
In the US a sole proprietorship is different than an LLC. It's basically just
an alias that an individual uses to operate as a business. I think this is the
same in Canada. An LLC limits your liability in the case that the business
goes bankrupt or someone sues you or something like that so that your personal
assets can't be taken.

I'm hesitant to give legal advice, especially to someone in another country
whose laws I don't know, but in the US sole proprietorship are very common for
small businesses and you can always switch to an LLC (or its Canadian
equivalent) later.

------
amorphid
I was contracting as an individual. I thought of myself as a a temp employee.
The one of the executives at the company I was contracting for referred me to
an executive at another business. In that moment I realized I could make the
mental transition from temp to consultant, and my consulting business was
born.

------
dceddia
I started a blog on the side in 2015 as I was taking the 30x500 business
class, built up an email list, and later wrote a book that teaches folks about
the React JS library. I launched the book in 2016. I still have a job at this
point, but the book continues to sell, and I have more products in the works.

It's not been fast. There are no hockey-stick graphs. But it's slow steady
growth, and still seems to be growing. I am very glad I did not quit my job
before I started this thing! I did a podcast interview about the process I
went through and some of the earlier false starts here:
[https://stackingthebricks.com/podcast/ep27-you-can-ship-
but-...](https://stackingthebricks.com/podcast/ep27-you-can-ship-but-will-
anybody-buy/)

------
patwalls
I just got started - I started a content website about starting e-commerce
businesses [https://www.starterstory.com](https://www.starterstory.com)

Right now, it's earning about $1-200 a month. Still have a full-time job.

------
arthurBrooks
Before i was hired i went through around 150+ rejections. Every time i would
go for an interview or interview candidates in my current role as technical
team lead.

I will seriously wish for some resources which can teach me and others about
the full interview process. what to do and what not to do. What kind of
questions to prepare and what not to prepare.

And moreover a self assessment tool which can tell me how good i am as a
developer from the interview perspective.

So i started [http://www.codespaghetti.com](http://www.codespaghetti.com)

currently i a, working on an AI based self assessment tool. Hoping to launch
it by the end of this year.

------
rorygibson
I got tired of (only) working for other people as a consultant. Started a side
project 14 months ago to create a small scale integration tool, and it turned
into a full-on search indexing tool for digital product companies -
[https://getctx.io](https://getctx.io)

(Basically you connect it with your Slack, Trello, Google Drive, email and
GitHub and it indexes the content & lets you search via web or our Slackbot)

I've got multiple clients in trial and a couple of promising community
installations for large tech bodies, hoping to get some decent revenue on the
scoreboard soon :-)

------
pbnjay
I started freelancing on the side for about a year or two. Once it started to
gain some momentum and be more predictable, I officially made an LLC and
website and started devoting more time to it.

------
desaiguddu
We started building small apps in 2010 for fun. We were building it for our
passion, this was a side project.

2010 to 2012 - We generated $ 10k in ad revenue in a year.

2012 to 2014 - We started an app consulting keeping our full-time jobs.

2014 to Present - We started app consulting for full-time with a couple of
clients. Two co-founders with a technical background.

\- We had our first hire in 2014

\- We became a team of 5 in 2015

\- We on-boarded amazing clients & provided monthly retainers for App
consulting & app maintenance

\- 2017, we have our first $ 100k client

\- 2018, we are a team of 14 people focusing on mobile apps, web apps

------
ivm
For many years I was switching between earning money from client projects for
6-8 months and then trying to build my own things for 3-4 months while living
from savings.

------
dsacco
A few years ago I was working as an application security consultant at
Accuvant LABS. I had been reading the small business and consulting writings
of tptacek and patio11 on this site and elsewhere for some time before then.

My experience as a security consultant was mostly working with very large
enterprises. The technical work was interesting for the most part, but there
was a lot of mundane "process" minutia and bureaucratic scar tissue. I noticed
that kickoff calls with these companies would involve myself and any other
technical consultants scheduled on the engagement, sales representatives, my
immediate manager, a "solutions architect", the account manager, several
people from their side, etc...I also witnessed a lot of "we'll get back to
you" and inefficient internal team communication happening. At the time they
were billing out consultants for $10-12,000 per week, but each consultant was
only typically paid about 20% of that. A lot of value was being captured by a
process very clearly designed for enterprise sales funneling, whereas the
technical meat of the process was receiving a relatively smaller portion of
the value.

So I left that company and started my own consultancy, aiming to effectively
streamline the logistical for a smaller absolute rate while capturing nearly
all of it individually. I began by focusing on smaller clients, particularly
seed stage and VC-funded tech companies. I differentiated myself by 1) setting
my weekly rates at approximately half of the market norm, and 2) handling all
the foregoing roles on my own. On kickoff calls I could confidently speak
about the end-to-end process both technically and logistically. In particular,
I prioritized getting technical cofounded on kickoff calls in one-to-one or
one-to-two settings, doing technical deep dives to demonstrate value, and
consolidating all the answers into a single half hour call. For the most part,
this was extremely effective - founders enjoyed having a single person to
speak to who could fluidly transition between both "languages" for them.

After the first few clients, I started asking each founder directly for a
referral to other founders they knew who might need help with security. Within
the first year I no longer had to do any sales; all new clients were coming in
through passive referrals, and my personal compensation well eclipsed my
former salary. I focused on getting early champions and repeat clients who
would excessively evangelize my service. In return, the folks who sent me
referrals early on have been promised a lock into the low weekly rate for the
life of my consultancy, and at this point I've raised my rates enough that my
pricing has nearly reached parity with the large, enterprise consultancies.
However, I've entirely avoided large enterprise companies, and I keep the
sales cycle to a few weeks at the most (with a few outliers here and there).

Now having said all of that, if I'm being fully honest with myself I feel that
much of the success of my consultancy comes from being very lucky -
particularly in the beginning, with respect to finding initial clients. I
don't think it's at all typical to achieve a fully passive sales funnel in
year one of a new consultancy. But I don't have any sense of how much that
achievement is attributable to my own networking skill and business savvy (or
excellent technical work) rather than to being in the right place at the right
time.

------
lazyjones
Had a noncommercial side project (website) while working at university and
later as a freelancer. It became more popular and got some press coverage,
then VCs came knocking on my door. I gave in to the 3rd offer. Business model
was tacked-on later (it was the year 2000), but was logical and works to this
day.

------
usmsid
I recently launched a website for those who want to download their Instagram
photos, videos or stories for offline use. I am hoping it attract user and get
early attention. [https://www.savefromweb.com/](https://www.savefromweb.com/)

------
motdiem
Left my job to become a consultant (to my former company initially), did that
for 5 years, then used the money I made and saved to bootstrap my current
project. Still did some part time consulting on the side for a couple of years
until we raised.

------
akulbe
I had a full-time job, and my side gig was only 10 hours per week that I was
doing in addition to my FT job. Then I went full-time as a contractor for my
side gig.

------
RobertRoberts
By accident.

------
lettergram
I was and still am working full-time, but I try to put a new side mvp project
out every roughly every 6 months which can (hopefully) generate revenue. Ive
been doing this for about 2 years, and am launching hopefully my third
"successful" project in April.

My most recent project (
[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/) ) is an AI financial
predictor - I started with scripts in 2013 - 2014, I then rewrote it recently
to launch as a web service. So you can say it started as a side project, made
me money (100% yoy), then after I felt it was validated, I went to expand.

My first project ( [https://easy-a.net/](https://easy-a.net/) ), was built as
a weekend project to help some friends. It lets you know the grade
distribution of every course, semester and professor of the universities in
the system. Further, it provides estimated workload, probably exit grade for
you, etc. My friends needed it because they couldn't get in to see a CS
advisor at UIUC at the time, because they only had one advisor for ~ 1600
students.

The two I have today (aka the remaining "successful" MVPs) are gowing at an
alright pace based on how much I put into it. And although I don't plan on
leaving my job yet, I'm sure in the next couple years.

For reference, I did $3k the first year from my projects, $7k the second, and
this year I'm on track for ~$25k+. I think I've heard it called the hockey
stick of death.. where it isn't profitable enough to sustain itself, but it's
growing... Slowly. It's a pain for SaaS. But I try to improve the products
because they are both growing constistently.

The project I'm about to launch is built off my most recent platform (
[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/) ). I think I can
build at least four apps off of it - which I why I built it. More MVPs to try
for the market!

List of ideas that haven't made it (yet at least):

\- [http://synaptitude.me](http://synaptitude.me)

\-
[http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/](http://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/)

\- thinksuite -
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/synaptitude/thinksuite-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/synaptitude/thinksuite-
brainware-not-software?ref=discovery&term=thinksuite)

\- pearlywhiteparcels - toothbrush deliveries (similar to Dollar shave club),
couldn't find enough partners with dentists (probably didn't want you to clean
your own teeth lol)

~~~
dalacv
Just an observation: On project piglet, the red price slashing gives me a
perception of "desperation". My opinion is get rid of it and just make them
nice simple numbers (whatever those prices end up being) without the drastic
price slash.

~~~
lettergram
Yeah I can see that, it also might explain why my conversation rate was higher
at $50 / month.. lol although we are talking 1.5% vs 2%

------
haggenballs
I decided to quit my full-time job in Feb and go 100% start-up.

Two of the largest risks I considered before taking the plunge was career
risk, and financial risk.

For financial risk, I’m from Waterloo Canada, which is a relatively low-cost
area. I’m doing some part-time contracting to pay off the bills just to break
even. I am okay to lose out on the opportunity cost of earning more money at a
full-time job. I treat that as an investment in the future cash flows of the
company I’m trying to build.

For career risk, I think working on a start-up can actually make you more
employable and increases your future earning potential. At a start-up, you
work like hell and are constantly learning. If you believe your salary should
be an accurate reflection of the market value of your skills, and you work to
improve those skills, then your market value should increase accordingly.

Reading Nassim Taleb’s book “Antifragile”, gave me a lot of confidence. One of
the central ideas from the book is to put yourself into environments where
there is an asymmetrical bias for positive payoffs. I.e. you can’t get
randomly unlucky and die from entrepreneurship, but you can get randomly lucky
and do very good.

For those of you curious, my company is
[https://www.hodlbot.io](https://www.hodlbot.io) After I realized I was
spending too much time rebalancing my portfolio, I made a trading bot.

For the MVP, it uses trade-only API keys to diversify your portfolio into the
top 20 cryptos by market cap on Binance. It rebalances monthly.

~~~
RikNieu
> you can’t get randomly unlucky and die from entrepreneurship

Unless you, you know, get into an accident and don't have enough cash or a
decent medical plan...

