

Ask HN: Tips to work on your startup ideas while still having a day job - cnu

Many people work on their startup ideas while still having their day job. What tips do HN have for people who try to do this?
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dazzawazza
I've done this before (and it wasn't successful btw but ymmv)

* dedicate x hours a day for a specific time period (say 8pm-12pm) every day.

* Let friends and family know that they can help by leaving you alone during this time

* make sure you still get enough sleep.

* use your lunch period at work to plan your next work period

* reward yourself, friends and family at the weekend by being extra sociable. Host BBQ's, movie nights anything so you stay in contact with humanity and don't lose those your care for.

* realise that you can only keep this up for 6 months before you will start to become too tired.

* be ruthless with features and only aim to implement the absolute minimum to get you where you want to go.

* pick a set of friends who are 'go to' friends when you need to bounce idea's. They should be used when you think you are procrastinating. They don't even need to understand what you are doing, the act of explaining will add clarity to your situation.

For me it failed because wasn't ruthless enough and I over spec'd and under
estimated time.

good luck.

~~~
modoc
Great points! I'd like to reiterate the get enough sleep point. It's easy to
try to get in another hour of startup work before bed, but being in any sort
of sleep debt will MASSIVELY impact your actual productivity.

One thing I always liked doing was finishing up my day job work-day, going to
the gym, working out, showering, changing, and walking back into my home
office like I'm starting the day over again, this time working on my startup.
The exercise is not only good for you, but can wake you up and help you turn
off your day job, and reboot fresh for your startup work.

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iamelgringo
* Pay off your bills so you don't have so many financial pressures. I've spent the last few years paying off debt and getting ready to start my business. That way the barrier for me to quit my main job and work at my own company is a lot lower.

* Talk with your employer to see if you can flex your time. I happen to be able to work 32 hours a week in 3 shifts. That way, I have 4 days a week to code.

* Be patient with yourself. If you're serious about doing this, be in it for the long haul. Don't think that you're going to be able to bring the next "______ killer" to market in 3 months. Think in terms of years and not months.

* Focus on a business that will bring in revenue as opposed to building a business that attracts eyeballs. If you can bring in more cash, you don't need to work as much, allowing you to focus more time on your own company.

~~~
lallysingh
Well crap. That's a lot of student loans :-(

~~~
iamelgringo
Student loans can actually be deferred for 18 months at time. And, if you go
back to school for one semester, the deferrment period for those student loans
gets reset, and you can take an 18 month deferrement.

So, you could go back to grad school for a semester, and then reset your
student loans. It's a pain, but there's cases where that's worth it.

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bdfh42
First read your contract of employment - you might find that you do not "own"
your ideas while employed (this might be location dependent). Does not stop
you thinking and working of course but will require some effort to ensure that
any "inventions" are deniable.

~~~
JeffJenkins
You can also ask your employer for an explicit exemption for whatever you're
working on. I've had all of my side projects cleared before doing serious work
on them (although that did kill one project, since it was too close to
something my company was doing)

~~~
ardit33
or you can live in california, where all these kinds of agreement are more
likely to be un-enforcable. Maybe that's the reason that so many startups are
here?

~~~
keefe
Be careful just assuming they are unenforceable. Non-compete agreements are,
but if your company can show that they have any "actual or anticipated"
research, development or plans in this area things are up in the air.

------
donniefitz2
I have been doing it now for about 8 months straight. Here's what I've been
laboring on: <http://clovercontent.com>

\- Use every spare moment you can find to work on your startup.

\- If you're married, don't neglect your wife/husband. Make time for what's
truly important.

\- Stay up late, but don't forgo sleep.

\- Slim down your feature set and only do what's absolutely necessary.

\- Lock yourself away in a private area so you can get into the zone.

\- DON'T USE CREDIT. If you can't afford something (hosting, etc.) wait until
you can. Start your company without debt.

\- Get friends and family to test your software. There's no better QA
department than your spouse. Who could be more critical than the person you
married.

\- Sometimes you won't be able to work on your project for weeks. Don't sweat
it. Wait it out and keep focused. Come back to it.

\- Stay focused on completing the software, no matter what problems come up.
You can complete it. You will mentally fight your own self telling you to
quite. That's the hardest part.

\- The question "why am I doing this?" will come up in your internal monolgue
at least 5 times a day. You have to really want it to combat your own doubt.

~~~
djm
I enjoyed reading your comment. I am just about to start working part-time so
that I can spend time on my own projects and so have found this whole thread
very interesting.

I have to disagree with your idea that friends and family make good QA. The
problem is that they love you (or at least like you). I think you would get
much better feedback from strangers who can be honest without caring whether
their opinion hurts you.

------
truebosko
Great question. I'm currently "struggling" with this exact issue. I have a
great day job which I put a lot of focus into but after hours I really want to
focus on my other projects (and still have a life).

I agree with a lot of what dazzawazza said, but here's some more

\- Along with dedicating x hours of time to work on it, create a TODO list for
the week, or a specific one for the day that is actually reasonable and will
get you somewhere on your project. I make a weekly todo as I only spend about
3 days a week at most on my projects.

\- With your limited time, follow the whole principle of launching early and
often. Unless you're the king of hype, no one is going to hurt your feelings
about your simple, slightly broken prototype of a system until you're closer
to the end.

\- Have somewhere that you can work peacefully. Make an office area at home
away from kids/wife/girlfriend and let them know you need some time to work.
Coffee shops also work great for you laptop folks.

That's just a few more, hope it helps you out. It's a tough thing to do but oh
so rewarding.

------
voidfiles
I have done this a couple of times. None have been success so for. Some will
never be, and some are still in the works.

<http://www.tastesatlkr.com> * I wrote by myself, finsished it mostly and then
it fizzeled. No intrest.

<http://www.qwertykitchen.com> * Equal partnership, still working on it and it
works. We just have to figure out how to bring in traffic.

<http://www.loudfarm.com> * Not done yet. * Minority equity holder. * so far I
feel has bee my most succsefull code wise. The most limited in scope, it is
going to be bay area only. * Feels like the best chance at working.

Things I have learned. * The only projects that stuck, were ones that I had
fun doing. * The wife can be helpful, but respect her time. * Don't spend
money unless you absolutely have too.

Take away, only do something extra curricular if its fun, and you are learning
something new. Otherwise you should invest your time in the company. Who knows
you might be able to innovate there.

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fallentimes
This is really hard to do. Quitting my job and working on
<http://ticketstumbler.com> full-time essentially pushed us a year ahead of
schedule. Kudos if you can pull it off; I could not.

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webwright
I think the biggest risk is "death by fizzling out". Startups are fun... at
first. Eventually, they hit a point where they (hopefully only briefly) aren't
remotely fun and are instead hard freakin' work that you'd love to avoid. So
spend some time engineering a "system" where you can't slack off (have a co-
founder who depends on you and have recurring scheduled work days to avoid the
"Meh, I'm pretty slammed this week-- I'll get back to things next week" state.

The second biggest risk is failure to pull the trigger (or inability to do
so). Know what your target is for jumping into it full-time (and make sure co-
founders are on board with this target). Be sure you have the financial means
to jump when the time comes-- start saving now. PROFIT generally comes a long
time after REVENUE.

I wrote a guest post on VentureHacks on this exact topic
(<http://venturehacks.com/articles/half-assed> ). As is often the case, some
of the comments are really valuable.

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maryrosecook
I'd say forget all the rules/guidelines people have proposed. The only thing
that matters is whether your startup idea compels you to work on it. Having to
force yourself to work on it guarantees failure.

Or, to put it another way, the only way to work two jobs for an extended
period is for one of those jobs to be a hobby.

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shafqat
I worked on NewsCred for 6 months while keeping my day job. I'm glad I did
that - we weren't obsessed with time to market. If you are or have a product
that is dependent on getting out there immediately because of 100s of
competitors, then you probably should give up your day job (and find a new
idea?!). But most startups can be nurtured and grown while holding a day job.
You'll know when you need to give up the day job. Either you have way too much
startup work or way too many users, and both cases are good.

So don't sweat it. For me, 6 months was a nice overlap. I quite my job after
that and haven't looked back since.

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ojbyrne
Find a place other than work or home to work on the side job. School library,
coffee shop, something like that.

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mishmax
I've been in this situation for six months or so and it worked well for me.

My best advice is to surround yourself with people who are excited about your
product and can give you feedback.

In my case, I had a customer who was very excited about the product, technical
peers who I would bounce ideas off of, and a supportive family that wants me
to succeed.

Plus, you need to have the drive to make the startup a reality. If you don't
have drive, nothing will get done.

------
pxlpshr
I agree with being out of debt... it's been very critical in maintaining
relative sanity when pushing through the tough times of a startup. Use credit
cards to float a month's worth of expense, but always pay in full.

Here's what I've been doing recently, but I'm at a slight advantage since I'm
self employed.

When possible, I try and use the time I spend working on client web projects
to advance my own projects. For example, I'm researching CMSes for a client
and myself. What I learn building their site, I can apply to my site during
the evening and visa versa. Makes me much more efficient on both fronts,
especially being able to work on both in tandem. And, knowledge retention is
generally higher.

I spent about 3 days doing pretty extensive research and testing on TXP, WP,
SilverStream, and EE. Selected SilverStream CMS and now a lot farther along in
BOTH projects than I had imagined being just a few days ago.

------
edw519
Find things to do at work that will teach you things you need to learn for
your startup.

For example, you need to choose between two ways of doing something on a
screen and aren't sure which way users would like more. Instead of deciding
yourself (we all know how well that often turns out), find a way to implement
both ways at work and see how those users respond.

You've done good work for your employer and its users, you got paid for it,
you've learned something invaluable for your startup, and you don't have to
worry about IP issues (it's just an idea, right?)

Sometimes, if you change your thinking, you can turn what appears to be a
liability into an asset. Although a day job sucks your time, it's a great way
to get experience you need. Think of its as someone else paying you to do R &
D.

------
timae
I'm doing this right now. I don't believe there to be any secrets. Just do it.

------
brlewis
I just posted some tips here: <http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings-
startup/2008-09-09>

    
    
      o Assess yourself
      o Assess your market
      o Assess your day job
      o Use Lisp
      o Prioritize continually

------
maxklein
The best way to do it is to make a modular design and hire people to work on
it. Every day, you review the code they wrote for an hour. Otherwise you will
hardly have the time for work, startup AND wife. Plan carefully, use the money
from your job to create your idea and then launch small.

~~~
wlievens
Usually, the reason for staying at your full-time job while working on your
project in your free time is that you don't want to take the financial risk of
going full time on the project. I find it hard to believe why you'd rather
stay employed yet use that money to pay others to work on your project.

~~~
maxklein
You will hire cheap programmers from abroad who will work for a fraction of
your salary. For example, you earn $3000 a month and spend $600 a month on
your startup. You still have enough and more left over.

~~~
jauco
You probably shouldn't hire extremely cheap programmers if you want a product
that, besides barely functioning, is also extensible and scalable.

No matter what country your programmers are from, if they have spent enough
time working on various projects to know what they're doing, they probably
also know what they're worth.

~~~
maxklein
If you spend an hour every day reviewing the code and making design decisions,
you could very well hire monkeys and they would come up with good code. You
have to micromanage the code to get good results.

~~~
alex_c
I'm not the one who modded you down, but... I'm having trouble seeing how this
would work. What do you do if the code isn't up to par? Are you willing to
basically pay - with both cash and time - for the privilege of educating the
programmers you're using until they're up to your standards? Or to throw away
their work and look for better programmers, possibly ad infinitum? Rewrite
parts of the code yourself?

I haven't outsourced any projects so far. I have, however, worked on a project
launched with an off-the-shelf script - it definitely saved time and effort
upfront, but the code is far from great, so it's been more frustrating over
time. I still haven't decided whether the tradeoff was worth it.

Have you actually used this strategy yourself, and if so, how did you make it
work?

~~~
maxklein
What I do is this: model the part of the project you want with uml and write
the function names. You solve the bulk of the design issues and all the coder
has to do is fill in the functions. The skill lies in writing function names
and descriptions that pretty much guarantee that he can hardly do wrong.

~~~
hhm
Do you really believe that? The implementation requires skills too, and
without those skills, you get terrible and buggy code, even if it uses pretty
names and if it follows your descriptions more or less.

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tlrobinson
Whatever you do, make 100% sure you own your project if you work on it while
still employed by another company. IP agreements sometimes cover things you
work on even when you're at home, etc (though these are supposedly
unenforceable in CA and probably some other states).

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vaksel
just don't launch while still employed like that mob wars guy

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puzzle-out
Give up the day job.

