

Ask HN: Anyone doing a startup part-time while working? - dmix

I am just coming out of school and have been bootstrapping a startup for the last 8 months. We're not quite ready to raise capital yet (in this market) and cash is getting tight.<p>I was contemplating getting a full-time job (ideally 30hrs/week). But there's always a million things to do to get a startup running and I'm not sure how feasible it would be.<p>Does any have experience running a startup on the side? Is it possible? Any advice?
======
patio11
I've been doing it for 2.5 years now. Its gone from "Ooh, I can afford to buy
myself a Wii" to "Oh, erm, it appears that I made more sleeping than I did
while awake three weeks out of four last month".

I've blogged pretty regularly about it. See profile.

My advice: find a job which is OK with you having a side business. I have an
arrangement with my company that is mutually beneficial: I firewall my
extracurriculars from the day job, I bring them the stuff I learn about
engineering and business, they wish me the best of success and officially
ignore the existence of my "personal hobby".

Make a business which is designed to have returns which are super-scalar to
your time investment. I am religious about automating, outsourcing, or
eliminating just about anything that I have to do more than once in a blue
moon, even if it only takes me 5 or 10 minutes to do manually. My entire life
is a series of 5 minute increments and I don't want to waste any licking
stamps. (Somebody does that for me these days.)

Remember that there are more important things in life than working. If you
neglect them, the lack will bite you in the hindquarters, both in more
important respects and in impacting your work/business.

------
newy
Really depends on the type of startup your running. Is it just developing
technology? Then that can be easily done nights, weekends (and overnights).
But if your startup involves significant operational work, dealing with
customers or meeting with clients/partners, then it's almost impossible to do
unless you have that work 'outsourced' someway, whether to partners or to
other firms, etc.

~~~
dmix
We're building a B2B SaaS app, so it requires working with customers and
meetings. Both my cofounder and I handle the tech and business.

At this point the technology is nearing production ready.

------
jlees
If you've been working on it for 8 months you probably have a better idea than
we do of whether you can handle both ;)

If you need the cash, you need the cash. But there are other sources, and a
job should be your last resort. Yes, people have done it, and it generally
involved having a fairly flexible job that didn't mind you taking business
calls etc; and not getting a lot of sleep!

------
RobGR
Does anyone have any experience based advice, on whether a side job that paid
less but did not involve computers or any relation to the startup (for
example, being a night stocker in a grocery store) would be better than a day
job programming ?

------
run4yourlives
Yup. It's possible, but extremely difficult. Moreso if you have a family.

Take pg's advice here if you at all can and stay away from that day job.
Couldn't you monetize your service immediately instead?

~~~
dmix
We're trying to monetize it ASAP. Running out of cash turned out to be a great
motivator for turning an concept into a real business.

