

When should you start a startup? - davidbalbert
http://dave.is/when.html

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arihelgason
Good post. I did my first startup straight out of college, which was great for
a couple of reasons.

\- I was used to living off very little. I didn't develop expensive tastes
fueled by a regular paycheck. It helped that I could live at home while
bootstrapping. My opportunity cost was getting an entry level job somewhere
for decent pay.

\- I was used to managing my own time and being disciplined about work
schedules. This was helped by attending university in the UK where we had 6
hours' obligatory classes per week or less. The rest was optional lectures and
self study time.

~~~
davidbalbert
Totally forgot about this point. Starting up right out of college is great
because you know how to live like a college student :).

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nir
I think the author misses the major argument, which is "I have to make rent".
Most startups never get to the point of making a profit.

This is why now isn't generally a good time to start a company (unless you are
able to raise substantial investment). Now is a great time to get a job at a
funded startup, save money, learn skills, make friends - once the bubble pops
you'd have the basic ingredients to start your own thing (and - possibly -
without a job anyway, so have nothing to lose)

~~~
nicholasjbs
This works well _assuming you're disciplined about it._ When I graduated, I
knew I wanted to start my own startup, but I planned on bootstrapping and
needed money. I worked two years exactly, living cheaply and saving as much as
I could.

My job was comfortable and I really loved it. It would have been very easy to
stay. The advice to start "now" is really a reminder that if your answer is
always "tomorrow," you'll never get started.

~~~
karolist
So.. I assume you did start a startup eventually?

EDIT: nevermind, looks like you're co-founder with OP.

~~~
nicholasjbs
Yes. I quit my job last year to start up (and OP is my cofounder).

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jrsmith1279
>As you age, you naturally accumulate things that will make >it harder for you
to start your startup: a spouse, kids, >aging parents who need care, an
expensive lifestyle, a >career, respectability.

I have to say I completely agree with this. I'm only 31 and finding it hard to
take on much risk given the fact that my family relies on my income very
heavily. This leaves me trying to spend time in the evenings and weekends to
work a B2B SaaS product idea that I have. I've thought about paying another
developer to write it, but it's an app that's targeted towards the IT
Services/Managed Services industry and writing it requires some background
knowledge of that industry.

~~~
dutchrapley
There are no excuses. If the it is important and matters, you will always find
a way.

If you have the know how, start by spending 30 minutes a day on it. Get up 30
minutes earlier. Pack your lunch and work on it then. Small steps are
important. Try to make time daily.

You're in the process of discovering a product. When you close your eyes, can
you see yourself using this product? Do have this feeling that you're using it
as if it already exists? Do you find yourself constantly thinking about it?

Hiring developers can be toxic - they'll certainly be able bill hours for
building features, but would they be able to help you discover your product?

~~~
maximilianburke
I like the way you think but I'd caution you on working on your own project
while on lunch as I think some employers may not be welcoming of you doing
that while on "their time" with "their resources", even if you're on your
lunch break using your own software/hardware.

~~~
jrsmith1279
Luckily I work from home and I'm paid 100% commission based on the hours that
I bill. This means that I'm free to do what I want for the most part as long
as our customers are taken care of. The downside to that is that if I'm not
billing hours, I'm not making money.

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EricKennedy
So true. To all of the people who think you will learn something at a big
company, how many of you have founded a startup? Did the processes that you
learned at a big company help you run that startup?

One of the reasons I decided not to pursue my idea for a Dropbox-like system
in 2002 was because I thought I would actually learn something if I took a job
at a profitable web commerce company. (See <http://erickennedy.org/great-idea-
before-Dropbox> the full story.)

The only thing I learned at Expedia.com was how hard it is for publicly-traded
companies to innovate if it has any threat on their existing business model.
They were unwilling to allow their customers to write hotel reviews because
they feared it would anger hotel suppliers. They paid advertising to
TripAdvisor as it grew that business and only later acquired it. It was
pointless innovate within Expedia -- even the CEO (Rich Barton) couldn't get
the teams to add reviews.

Worse, I bought a condo and a car with debt at Expedia and no longer had the
flexiblity to bootstrap a startup. Don't make that mistake. It's fine if
you're working at a big company to build up a cushion to start your business,
but don't believe that their processes are right for a startup.

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orijing
> You don't want to start a startup.

I'd like to add "enough" to the end of this option: You don't want to start a
startup _enough_. That's because starting one is just one of your many options
--perhaps your current job is paying you a very comfortable salary. You have
to compare starting a startup to your best alternative (opportunity cost), and
see if you want it _enough_ to justify giving up that alternative.

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wpietri
Excellent point. It's worth noting that there are a substantial group of
people who say they want to do something but never find the time. Writer John
Scalzi has an excellent response to that:
[http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/09/16/writing-find-the-
time-...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/09/16/writing-find-the-time-or-
dont/)

~~~
sskates
"This is why I don’t have an acting career, or am a musician — because as much
as I’d like those, I somehow stubbornly don’t actually do the things I need to
do in order to achieve them."

Being an entrepreneur isn't about sitting on a beach enjoying your millions,
it's about solving lots of intensely hard (and often frustrating) problems.

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edw519
I know OP means well, but there's one piece of advice that's exactly the
opposite of my experience.

First he says:

 _There is very little you will learn in your current job...that will make you
better at starting your own startup._

Then:

 _Good ideas only come through trial and error._

Both are terrible advice.

There is a whole universe of things you can learn in your current job:
technique, experience, exposure to different ideas (in practice, not in
theory), how to manage projects, how to deal with people, what to look out for
in real world situations, and the two most important things: what NOT to do
and what people need.

I can think of no better way to get good actionable ideas for a startup than
from one's job.

And for many aspiring entrepreneurs, having a job and learning a few of these
things is the single biggest missing piece in their bag of personal assets.

If you have a great idea and the wherewithal to start a business, then by all
means go for it when you're ready. In the meantime, there's nothing wrong with
having a job; it's probably the best thing you could be doing until you're
ready.

~~~
karolist
That depends totally on the job. If it's a well paid megacorp job - very safe,
but far from something that might spring ideas in your head, you're locked in
a little corner doing your thing. Only in small companies the business side of
things is transparent enough for the technical people.

~~~
edw519
_If it's a well paid megacorp job - very safe, but far from something that
might spring ideas in your head, you're locked in a little corner doing your
thing. Only in small companies the business side of things is transparent
enough for the technical people._

This is exactly the opposite of my experience. The bigger the company, the
bigger the problems, in both number and size. It may seem counter-intuitive,
but I have worked in many "megacorps" and you'd probably be stunned by the
extent of their needs and their difficulty getting them fulfilled. I have
hundreds of ideas accumulated over years of enterprise programming that I'll
probably never have time to get to.

Sometimes I think it would be a great idea to put a tiger team of hungry
programmers together with the right enterprise users. But since that rarely
happens from within, attacking their problems from the outside is still
probably the best approach.

~~~
noahc
I'll add to this a bit:

I worked for a 400 person company. The business side of things was very
transparent. Maybe if there were 20,000 employees that'd make it less so. But
at 400 employees, I could listen in my office for conversations that I found
interesting, join them and then create a solution in a day or two.

It's also easier to justify a fix. If you can save 5 minutes a day for 100
employees that's one man-year of work saved. If you can do that for the most
annoying process of the day that's worth at a least $35,000, plus any moral
issues.

Keep your eyes and ears open and don't focus just on IT systems to improve,
focus also on other systems that you can get in there and improve through your
engineering mindset.

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gamble
An even better question would be 'what are you willing to give up to start a
startup?'.

On most measures (experience, contacts, etc) you're better waiting a few years
before starting. The trick is that people tend to accumulate personal and
financial obligations during that time that make a startup a much bigger
sacrifice. If you end up on the spouse->house->kids->midlife-crisis-at-45
track before starting, you'll have a very hard time changing direction.

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kirpekar
I have had enough of people preaching startup advice.

When should you start a startup?

When the hell you want to.

You have a family, You have a mortgage, You have an aunt that left you $1M,
You have no left arm, You are dyslexic, whatever.

Just start the damn company when you want to. At some point, stop wasting time
on what other people think and think for yourself.

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acconrad
I agree with the debt reason. I personally want to make sure that if the ship
goes down, I'm not stuck with inescapable student loans. Live cheaply, pay off
your debts...then you have nothing holding you down from doing what you want!

