
Your own company? You can do it (2011) - oliv__
https://jacquesmattheij.com/your-own-company-you-can-do-it
======
apatters
To anyone considering starting a business I would recommend reading a book
called "The E-Myth Revisited" by Michael Gerber. It's 20 years old, but it
discusses one point in particular which I think is particularly relevant for
HN's audience. Many people who go into business fail because they operate the
business with the mindset of a "technician" \-- someone who is very good at a
particular skill, and enjoys and prioritizes performing that skill.

The _abilities_ of a technician can be very valuable to a business, but
especially as it begins to scale the owner/operator(s) need to adopt different
mindsets in order to succeed. In short, if you don't like the idea of spending
most of your time on business or marketing stuff, you should find someone who
can handle those, or perhaps be a solo consultant/contractor. (I think this is
a large part of why YC encourages cofounders so much.)

Exceptions certainly exist--there was a time when tech was a magical world and
you could do magic things just by being an expert engineer--but increasingly I
feel they are getting rarer.

~~~
gwbas1c
I don't think the book applies at all to the hacker news crowd. "The E-Myth
Revisited" basically advocates turning every business into McDonald's.

That's fine if someone wants to start some kind of tech consulting business;
but that's not the kind of business that I see promoted on Hacker News.

The "The E-Myth Revisited" describes how to plan a business where labor is
low-cost and unskilled. With software, (and hardware, to a degree,) when you
write a program, the program is done. Most of your labor goes into R&D that is
not repeatable according to what "The E-Myth Revisited" advocates.

At least with hardware, the low-cost unskilled labor can go into
manufacturing, but that is now mostly outsourced.

At most, "The E-Myth Revisited" can be applied to the sales and support part
of running a tech business, which is what Oracle does very well.

~~~
colefichter
> With software... when you write a program, the program is done. Most of your
> labor goes into R&D...

Not by a long shot! The vast majority of the lifetime cost of software is in
the maintenance (daily operations, upgrades, new features, bug fixes,
integrations, rewrites, etc).

------
raarts
For comparison: same Amsterdam, about the same timeframe. No drive to start my
own business (initially!), because didn't even know that was possible for
regular people.

Started out when I was eight, I got into electronics. Read all magazines,
learned myself how to design electronic circuits from library books. Kept my
own, hand written, library card system describing the specs of all
transistors, ICs I could get my hands on. Designed/built and repaired devices
for other people who paid me for the materials and for my trouble. I was 15.
When I was 18 I went to university, switched majors multiple times.

And then the Dutch electronics magazine published the Junior computer, based
on the 6502. I spent all my money on it, and learned assembler by inputting
hex numbers. After that came the MSX computer (I disassembled the BASIC
interpreter to grok how it worked) and I started searching for programmers
jobs.

Found a job at KLM where I got out top of the class and entered a special
called SMART. For special internal projects. All of us programmed in IBM S370
assembler, they tested C but it was too slow.

I was 25 by then. The following years went downhill. In IT. I changed jobs
multiple times, but the companies kept going out of business. I was
flabbergasted at the amount of incompetence I saw in salespeople and at
C-level. I had no idea, coming from a blue collar background.

Side note: in 4 years I had 9 CEOs, 8 of which left their wife for their
secretary in the time I worked there! I had a lot of respect for the 9th until
I found out a couple of years later he'd done the same after I left.

So I decided why not start my own business i was capable of going bust as well
couldn't do worse as those guys. So I started the first commercial ISP in the
NL. One thing led to another and many companies later I now pulled out of most
and again starting as a founder and learning all the new hot technologies.

~~~
it_learnses
Could you please give me some advice? i'm a full-time developer with 10 years
experience. I would like to start my own and have a few ideas to try out. I
have savings that could allow me to survive for a year. Would you recommend I
quit my day job or just work on it on the side?

~~~
_d8fd
Here are my simple tips:

\- don't run out of cash

\- make something you enjoy working on

\- sell something people need

\- sell something for more than it costs to make

\- don't expect the people around you to be as excited as you are about your
thing

~~~
EliRivers
"don't run out of cash"

Don't neglect this one. A surprisingly large number of small companies that go
under are profitable. They don't go under because they're making a loss; they
go under because they cannot pay today's bill. Cash flow kills small
businesses dead.

~~~
amorphid
A good way to watch a business evaporate is missing payroll. Or rent.

------
patryn20
I've done my own thing since high school with the exception of two years in
offices (one as W2 and one as part time 1099). I'm now 35 and experiencing
health issues and discovering that unless you earn "f$&! you money" group
health insurance in the US is worth at least $75k a year in income. At least.

If you aren't in a country with proper healthcare and are not earning AT LEAST
$300k USD a year (consistently), understand that all your years of work can be
destroyed by one diagnosis. And plan accordingly.

I love my life. I've had a charmed existence moving to wonderful locales and
doing what I wanted when I wanted; but the genetic lottery cannot be
outwitted. You can be healthy one day and in debt the next.

Plan accordingly. Don't let youth and good health lull you into complacency.

It's completely possible and attainable for software developers to be
independent anywhere on the globe, but understand the potential financial
implications and limitations of the social safety nets of your country of
citizenship/residence. Plan accordingly.

~~~
anothercomment
A bit OT, but this post made me think: how do countries provide good health
care? does it always have to be government sponsored, otherwise it would be
not affordable? And how does the government pay for it, given that the money
has to come from taxpayers?

Because otherwise I don't understand why the market can't provide good health
insurance in the US? Isn't that a classic insurance problem, take a group of
people and spread out the risk?

What is going on? Is medicine too expensive because of state subsidies, so
private insurers can't compete? Or are there regulations preventing private
insurers from entering the market?

~~~
dejv
I am no doctor, but I guess when you run health care as a for profit adventure
you will try to extract more money from your patient. Maybe not the direct
way, but you might buy a lot of very expensive equipment and send your
patients there even when there is another way of diagnosis that is cheaper. Or
you might be even doing a lot of additional screenings just to be sure (you
really want to be covered in case of some lawsuit).

~~~
anothercomment
This seems to be more of a problem with insurance - there often is little
transparency and doctors simply charge all sorts of things to the insurer that
the patient has no idea about.

I think that is one of the main challenges of health insurance.

In my country (Germany) I have actually shied away from switching to private
insurance, because they pay doctors more, and doctors are known to do as many
tests and procedures as possible (not always a good thing, but in the end it
is a gamble - too many examinations/procedures or too few?).

The "public" health insurance is quite regulated as to what gets paid and how
much. The downside is that doctors have to waste a lot of time on bureaucracy
(every examination has to be entered into the computer to determine the
costs), and transparency is still missing (patients typically don't even know
how much their treatments cost). And some committee decides what procedures
get paid. I don't trust committees. I trust the market (I mean I trust "in"
markets, not necessarily any given market as markets can be broken by
regulations, lack of transparency, all sorts of things). I have also spent a
lot of money on things that weren't covered by public insurance.

One story I heard is that for example in the UK they won't pay for dialysis
after a certain age. So public health insurance is not an automatic solution
to every problem.

I think it is actually unavoidable that insurance will have to make a cut at
some point, because medical procedures can become arbitrarily expensive.
Perhaps even now for the right money, people could be kept alive indefinitely.

I would have no problem with a doctor trying to be profitable - just as with
other businesses. I guess the classic assumption is that to be profitable,
businesses have to provide good service.

~~~
grkvlt
> [I]n the UK they won't pay for dialysis after a certain age

This is completely _WRONG_ , there are _NO_ age-related limits for treatment
like this in the UK. Dialysis is a life-saving procedure for those with kidney
failure, and is available to _everyone_ in the UK who requires it regardless
of age. The same goes for heart surgery, bypass operations, stents etc. which
are also sometimes claimed to be age restricted.

The fact that people actually believe that a cruel system like this (one that
would cause people to die by withholding treatment just because of their age)
might really exist probably says much more about the way US health care works
and the perceptions surrounding it.

~~~
anothercomment
I am actually from Germany and heard the story about NHS dialysis many years
ago, so it has nothing to do with US right wing propaganda or whatever. My
apologies, though, if it isn't correct.

Nevertheless I think there will always be procedures that won't be paid for,
in any health care system, because it would always be possible to incur
arbitrarily high costs. As an extreme example, you could assemble a team of
1000 scientists to try to cure one person.

~~~
grkvlt
That's interesting, I assumed it was a solely US belief, and certainly there
have been plenty of scare-story emails circulating there regarding NHS and
ACA. Obviously NICE [0] (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence)
does make calculations about when and what treatment should be given or
withheld, using a system called QALYs [1] (Quality Adjusted Life Years) to
attempt to ethically and deterministically decide this, which will always
cause _some_ people to be unhappy, unfortunately.

0\. [https://www.nice.org.uk/](https://www.nice.org.uk/)

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-
adjusted_life_year](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year)

------
encoderer
My POV:

1) You can keep your job. Just always build things on the side. It keeps you
coding for play and not just for work.

2) Try to sell the things you build. You don't need to be fully polished on
day one. In fact, you shouldn't be and can't be because you need real
customers to really understand their needs.

3) you can find the numbers online, but my saas project Cronitor had just
$500mrr after seven months. You need patience and to adjust your work factor
to match the available outputs. By letting it coast a bit while it picked up
momentum we prevented burnout. When it started to grow faster we could pour
some attention in and level up the product.

4) grow it while you work your day job. This is easy at first and grows
harder. Having a partner is important here. Alternative: a business where a
little downtime is not a big deal.

5) when it gets stressful, know your commitments. Your day job gets first bite
and when you can't do that anymore you know it's time to move on and do it
full time.

Most importantly the tldr is: quit your job after you've replaced most of your
salary. And before you quit enjoy the incremental income.

~~~
fizixer
One thing I noticed while doing a 40 hour a week software job recently (I'm
not working now) is that your ability to work in the evenings and weekends
depends on how much cognitive load you go through during those 40 hours.

I've had jobs where the load is moderate, but in this recent one, the employer
wanted to extract work from every hour of the 40 hour perior. I was so
exhausted, that I couldn't do anything in the evenings, would spend Saturday
in a state of haze, and on Sunday finally be able to think straight. But then
on Sunday you barely catch up with what you were doing last Sunday. So your
progress practically comes to grinding halt.

~~~
sqldba
I know how you feel. I'm currently technically doing a 37.5 hour week - but it
FEELS like a LOT more and it's killing me. A lot of those hours are at odd
times and I seem to work more and then take it up in time in lieu but it's
entirely recovery time not doing-things-time.

Try explaining to your boss, "We need more staff because although I
consistently meet all targets I'm just working TOO hard".

I get gas lighted when I do so. They insinuate I'm doing something wrong and
need to take more breaks. Uh yeah but then the work doesn't get done, and day
by day it builds up, and everyone is clamouring for it, and then you make it
seem like I'm at fault again?

I started keeping an Excel spreadsheet of what I do every day just to see how
much time I "waste". It turns out I'm doing 6-20 different things a day. Which
is what I've been telling them, the load of constantly switching between so
many different demands on attention and doing stuff "which should only take a
minute" but can turn into hours spread out over days - all the time goes.

I'm extremely sad every day. I'm definitely depressed. But the pay is good and
it pays my mortgage. So I feel very trapped.

And yeah when I get home I do nothing. I used to do stuff and blog but now I'm
just too tired. All day every day I'm working and making decisions and
stressing out - I have no capability to function outside of hours. I can't
even make dinner so my partner does it. I find it hard to decide on even
simple things and if anything goes wrong I'll break down into tears.

~~~
baudehlo
I hope writing that down helped. Because that is not sustainable. I tell
developers that I interview that I don't want them working long hours because
it leads to bad code. Go home. I want you to have a life and one you enjoy.

------
ryandrake
So many "how I did my own thing" stories out there remind me of that old "How
To Draw An Owl" meme[1]. It's always: 1. I quit my job one day and decided to
[do a startup | independently contract] 2. Fast forward a few years and [I
sold to Google! | I've got 5 contracts and I set my own schedule!] I mean,
great work, and congratulations, but I think you skipped a few steps there.

1: [http://i1.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/572/078/d6d...](http://i1.kym-
cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/572/078/d6d.jpg)

~~~
angersock
I mean, sometimes you just have to draw the fucking owl.

People want a nice little checklist of how to start a business, but that isn't
how it works.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Having started five-six new organisations by now, there is in fact a checklist
I use these days. The first item is: do I have a salesperson I trust to work
with onboard as collaborator? Without this I don't do anything. Viable ideas I
am never short of. Then the rest of the checklist starts. But I am on mobile,
and not able to easily elaborate right now.

------
thesagan
This works if you're young (health insurance is expensive, working/traveling
away from family), have resources (for those unexpected expenses, and the slow
payers), and are able to take your work with you on vacation (important
customers need service); but for the vast majority of professionals it's just
not possible any more, without significant financial support starting out.

You need a good chunk of capital to survive the first few years, before you
even think about expanding. (Which, when it's time, you must do, or risk
shrinking into oblivion. And not everybody is able and willing to expand
forever. I wasn't.)

Just sharing my own little caveat; otherwise I think starting your own
firm/consultancy is fantastic.

~~~
learc83
>health insurance is expensive

ACA subsidies are based on income, not net worth. If you quit your job and
you're in a state that expanded medicare, or if you can pay yourself a bit
above the poverty line, you can take care of most of the cost with subsidies.

~~~
YPCrumble
Do the subsidized plans actually cover anything? I'm on an Obamacare plan that
basically covers catastrophic health care and everything else I pay for.

If it's a subsidized catastrophic plan that's not helpful. I'd be surprised if
they subsidized one of the regular plans in full.

~~~
learc83
It's not a subsidized catastrophic. The subsidy is pegged to the 2nd cheapest
silver plan in your area. Silver is 2 steps above catastrophic coverage
(catastrophic > bronze > silver > gold > platinum).

The subsidy is calculated so that you won't have to pay more than x% of your
income for the 2nd cheapest silver plan. 2% of your income if you make between
100% and 133% of the federal poverty level, and 9.5% if you make between 300%
and than 400%. With a sliding scale in between.

Here's what the sliver plan covers. [http://www.medicoverage.com/health-
insurance-blog/news/silve...](http://www.medicoverage.com/health-insurance-
blog/news/silver-healthcare-exchange-plan)

The real problem happens when you make below the poverty level, but you live
in a state that hasn't expanded medicaid. Then thanks to the governor's of
those states, you get nothing.

------
dharma1
"My first ‘freelance’ job I got by accident. I was walking home one night in
Amsterdam and two guys were lugging an Apple II from a car in to a house.
Being of a curious nature I asked what they were doing (it looked rather
suspicious!) and they said ‘building an eye tracker’. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Come along and see”. Stuff like that happens in Amsterdam in the middle of
the night."

"“Ok, I’m going to send you on this course, it’s a 20,000 guilder expense on
my side. If you let me down, you’re out and I never ever want to see you
again, if you pass the examination at the end you’ve got a job as a junior
programmer”."

Stuff like this can make a world of difference to the trajectory a young
person's life takes. Much respect to people who are open and inclusive like
this

------
Tade0
"When I was 17 and a high school drop-out I went to work for a bank." Last
time this was possible it was the early 90's maybe.

~~~
jpm_sd
Not to mention paying for a studio apartment on a highschool dropout hourly
wage

~~~
coldtea
Depends what you consider a "studio apartment" to be.

For most it's not some huge NY loft above Central Park or Soho, but an all-in-
one, cramped, small space single room apartment that's usually the cheapest
option, and is around 300-600sq feet.

~~~
theparanoid
Where I'm at that's about $1000/month plus health insurance. Minimum wage is
$1700/month.

~~~
BenchRouter
In NY or SF a 300 sq. foot studio would be about $1800/month, at least.

You could get cheaper, but you'd be far away from the actual city (at which
point you might as well just live somewhere else).

~~~
creepydata
What do you consider NYC? $1800 a month can get you a two bedroom in Brooklyn.

~~~
nedwin
Wow, really? I had no idea it was so affordable. My rent is more than double
in SF but figured it was a comparable CoL city to NYC/Brooklyn included.

~~~
creepydata
Yes, I have many friends (10ish maybe) who aren't natives but currently live
in Brooklyn. Queens is affordable too (you can buy a small house for
~$300,000ish IIRC, I think in Rockaway Beach) but you're very far away from
Manhattan. I had another friend who lives in Long Island City (Queens, close
to Manhattan) but her rent was high IIRC. I'm unfamiliar with the rent in The
Bronx.

However NYC as a whole has high sales and income taxes though. Including City
income tax.

Brooklyn is where you live when you move to The City without a lot of money -
like for grad school.

Rent is (probably) higher in Park Slope or Williamsburg though which are more
"desirable" areas of Brooklyn.

I'm sure natives can chime in.

------
taysic
I agree with a lot of this though my journey has been really different.
Running a business didn't interest me for a long time - then I realized I felt
I was very skilled and I was just tired of working in the industry. So I came
up with side projects on my free time. I think everyone has their own non-
linear journey on how they get there.

The biggest thing I have learned so far is it's really not about "hard work".
Imo, its much more about how well you balance work and life. Are you on an
unsustainable path or are you on a sustainable one? Are you enjoying what you
are doing? This is critical. Are you genuinely eager to work on it and can you
sustain that after one year? If so, you're highly likely to succeed in my
opinion. If you believe in it, and love what you're working on, it's very
likely there are other people out there who do too.

~~~
rkunnamp
'Are you on an unsustainable path or are you on a sustainable one?' Well, that
kept me thinking. Never did I ask this myself. Thank you for that thought.

------
linker3000
Did it (in the UK). Started a sole consultancy, grew it into a training and
courseware business employing around 10 people. Formalised what was previously
an ad-hoc partnership with a US-based organisation into a franchise-type
contract in exchange for a five-figure marketing kickstart from them, and
tooled up (software and people) for a 'letter of intent' long-term joint
contract with the US military in the UK for technical and personnel training,
then found out that despite a written agreement, they were poaching our
business in the UK. We started talking to them, they said we could forget the
funding. We were small, they were corporate and basically told us to fuck off
and sue if we had the cash to carry it through.

Had to fold the business. Nearly lost my house and marriage. This was in the
late 1990s.

For every story, there's an equal and opposite one.

~~~
hellofunk
> For every story, there's an equal and opposite one.

It's not equal, for every success there are many more than one story similar
to yours.

~~~
linker3000
Fair point.

------
gameshot911
Worth noting that the guy backed up all his passion with hard work. Just
telling someone to "go for it" isn't worth much if they don't have the fire
(or the potential for one) already within.

~~~
uiri
A lot of people will say that they want to quit their job and start their own
business. The people who will back up what they say with hard work actually do
want to start their own company. The rest are all talk and when push comes to
shove they'll fail. They don't actually want to start their own company. They
want to keep working their job while dreaming about starting their own
company.

Articles like these are for the former group who will doubt themselves because
of all the naysayers and the latter group of dreamers.

~~~
UK-AL
Thats because a lot of people know people who have done that, and ended
setting back their financial position back many years. Then had trouble
finding a job afterwords.

There are a lot more failures than successes, but you hear about the
successful ones.

------
IceDane
I appreciate the sentiment of this article, but for the most part it kind of
comes off as a bunch of stuff about him tooting his own horn(handwritten
assembler, editor light years ahead of anything else, etc), and then a single
paragraph about how he started a business. Not really useful advice.

------
sqldba
All I read was the article, "How I started my own company 30 years ago during
the computer boom". I'm eagerly awaiting part 2 which is how this is even
remotely relevant today when programming isn't a secret skill anymore.

~~~
Joeri
Yes, the supply of programmers has increased, but the demand has increased
even more, and the bar keeps getting raised as far as knowledge, so if you are
a skilled programmer you are still pretty much guaranteed to have work.

~~~
sidlls
Not even remotely true. There are plenty of skilled programmers without work
right now. Not everyone lives in the Valley. In the Valley what is considered
a "skilled" programmer by the measure of interview practices is so out of sync
with what skills are actually necessary as to not be a valid comparison.

~~~
Joeri
What countries have a surplus of programmers? I've never heard of a country
where programmers aren't in high demand.

~~~
nickpsecurity
There's all kinds of people in the U.S. with programming skill who can't get a
job due to discrimination (esp age). They're discarded in favor of less-
experienced people out of college or those with H1-B visas since they'll be
cheaper. Lots of people on the job sites with 20+ years experience in many
skills talking about how they're "overqualified" for everything. In my area, I
even saw job ads say "H1-B Visa Preferred" for basic, IT jobs. That's really
giving the middle finger to U.S. citizens.

------
axonic
Seriously, go run an Eve Online player corporation. Try setting up a
persistent chat server, wiki, etc. for the corp and securing it. Try managing
players in fleets from several time zones and scheduling engagements and
operations. This is analogous to setting up collaboration infrastructure for
remote teams in development settings, as well as scheduling for international
workers, wrangling cats, and you will be fully qualified to wrestle Mongolian
Tigers. These players are volunteers, which is synonymous with the real
meaning of "employee" held by some of the people you may work with. Loosely
held by honor, perhaps loyal based on their relationship with the
organization, some are hard workers and motivated, others require a leader or
mentor be assigned to them. Once your eyes bleed and you wish for death every
night for ever deciding to be in charge, try also making it profitable. Use
your knowledge of business practices to balance the corp accounts, make good
deals, and save money where you can to be able to pay dividends to members of
the corp. If you really want to do a "dry run" to test your mettle, that is
one way. I'm not saying this will make you CEO of Intel material but you'll at
least have the confidence to proceed and have some idea of what the minefield
really looks like so you don't jump on every one.

------
carsongross
There's a lot of survival bias, self-marketing and old economy steve in this
post.

Statistically, you can't do it, and you'll waste a lot of time, money and
prime earning years figuring that out. That's not to say you shouldn't try,
but only to say you should be realistic about what you are likely sacrificing
for that small chance of success.

~~~
mindcrime
_Statistically, you can 't do it_

I'm not sure that's true. I mean, yeah, it's a given that "most new businesses
fail", but that's ignoring the point that _you can try again and again_. Even
if you "run out of money" and have to quit, you can go to work for The Man for
a few years, rebuild savings and then try again. Lather, rinse, repeat. To be
fair though, I'm assuming a situation where you don't have kids, a house
payment, etc.

 _and you 'll waste a lot of time, money and prime earning years figuring that
out. That's not to say you shouldn't try, but only to say you should be
realistic about what you are likely sacrificing for that small chance of
success._

Is it really wasted time though? The way I look at it, if you try to start a
business and fail, you still gained from the process, because you mostly
likely _learned_ a shit-ton from the process itself. Speaking from my own
experience working on Fogbeam, even if we never make a penny, the process will
have been invaluable to me, as I've learned, grown and extended myself in ways
I never imagined I could.

~~~
carsongross
_> To be fair though, I'm assuming a situation where you don't have kids, a
house payment, etc._

Exactly. "You" means different things. On average, even smart people (maybe
especially smart people) aren't cut out for this shit, and that's not to
denigrate them.

 _> Is it really wasted time though?_

Again, it depends. People in the startup world can feel so much pressure that
they end up offing themselves, as we saw during the last downturn. Due to
survival bias, we rarely hear about the failures, fractured families, ruined
savings, etc. There are guys who kept trying over and over and never made it.
They usually don't write books or blog articles about it. There are even more
guys who started something, limped it along for five or ten years and then
watched it peter out, and absorbed all the psychological punishment that
entails.

I started a reasonably successful company. I'd be really careful about who I
recommended it to.

------
theparanoid
I freelance part-time and actually enjoy life. It's not difficult, with remote
work, to make Silicon Valley wages and pay cheap housing.

~~~
JajaMan
Can you go into more detail on this?

~~~
gk1
If you can get a remote contract or salaried position, then you can live in a
low-cost area while still earning the same amount.

~~~
aurelianito
How do I get a part-time Silicon Valley salary for a part-time job remotely? I
would love to. Please let me know who would be interested in hiring me in
these conditions.

------
lazyjones
There's a huge difference between "your own company" (freelancing) and "your
own company with employees" though. The former is very easy and pretty much
for everyone who can run a single household in a developed, bureaucratic
country, the latter is much more demanding and requires certain personality
traits that need to be present (in yourself or a co-founder).

------
myth_buster
I agree with the sentiment and appreciate the motivation, but...

> If a high school drop-out with nothing but a typing diploma could do it, so
> can you. Now go do it.

this is not representative. From the reading you seem to be "smart" too apart
from hard working. =D

------
graycat
> "Your own company? You can do it"

In general, of course. In some specific cases, maybe not.

For you to have a job by being hired by an employer, someone else has to
create that job. In the private sector, usually someone has to start and own a
company, make it successful, and generate enough free cash to pay you.

So, if you are looking for a job at all, you are essentially admitting that
it's possible, reasonable, common, doable, etc. to start and own a company and
make it successful.

So, why not you? That is, if you want job, especially a good job, then
consider creating that job for yourself.

------
Grustaf
This is a very impressive and inspiring story, but I think the title is
misleading. You're clearly much more talented and/or hard working than most
readers, and you also had the advantage of being one of very few programmers
in a time when the need was increasing rapidly.

------
jandrewrogers
This sounds astonishingly similar to how I got into the business. Great story.
You can go a very long way as a scrapper with little to lose and a bit of
talent.

------
tomrod
I want to do it. I'm just not sure what problem to solve, or how to broadcast
my skillset. I welcome suggestions!

------
LordHumungous
Nice to see some positivity on this topic. Yes, starting a company is hard. No
it's not for everyone. That doesn't mean it can't be done.

------
rkunnamp
One thing that I want to remind everyone reading this, including myself is a
thought from "Forrest Gump"

"I don't know if we each have a destiny,............or if we're all just
floating around......accidental-like on a breeze.........But I
think,......maybe it's both" \- Do we have defined destiny? or Can we
influence the destiny with our actions? The answer is not black and white.

Life is like that, it is part luck and part hard work/smart work. The context,
the skill set etc is entirely different for every single individual. So you
can't really learn much from patterns.

On an ending note- "\- Do you ever dream, Forrest, about who you're gonna be?
-Who I'm gonna be?............. Yeah. .................Aren't I going to be
me? "

------
mshrewd
I won a boilerplate (ycombinator copycat) competition last year and it's
helped me a lot in some ways. It was also kinda stupid.

I mean, my teammates all quit as soon as they realized how much hard work a
startup requires... Life lesson!

And, in actuality I haven't made much progress toward an actual company. but,
I mean, this has been pretty great in some ways. Best part is my mentor was an
expert in my field (automation, robots, etc.) and has really had a lot of
fantastic input for me.

My key takeaway from the competition? Don't try to build a start up on your
own. You really MUST have a strong team backing you up.

I'm probably going to crumple up this owl and start another one soon. Most
importantly if you want to get good at drawing owls, you have to love drawing.

------
JokerDan
I would love to start up my own business, I am extremely hard working and
dedicated, even in my every-day 9-5 which I end up doing like 8-6 and working
weekends. I enjoy working, as a software dev and at 23 years old I have a fair
bit of time ahead of me. My biggest downside is I lack the confidence, I have
a bunch of ideas but then I decide, "It won't go anywhere";"I can't do
that";"As if people would even bother with this"... I see so many things that
could be so much better every day. How do I get past these barriers? Do I just
run with an idea and even if it fails, oh well, move on?

------
therealmarv
I agree. But this were different times. Nowadays competition and requirements
(especially looking at good companies in e.g. Germany) are much higher in IT.
Beeing a lateral entrant is (and will always be) possible but it is much much
harder.

------
realPubkey
Of you live in germany: don't do it, the bourecraty will kill you with a 360
no-scope.

~~~
uiri
The author is from the Netherlands. Is the bureaucracy really that much worse
in Germany than it is there?

~~~
captainmuon
I'm seeing a bit of the employer side burocracy: Currently, I have a weird
job. I work in Germany, but am payed from abroad. My employer would have to
pay German social insurances, but can't/won't deal with that. So they give me
the cash and I hand it to the insurances, and do the paperwork.

It was quite a steep learning curve: registering a company with the health
insurance agency, calculating the different contributions (health,
unemployment, care, pension, ...), and making monthly reports.

Was it hard? Hell yes, it was horrible. But that's just because I hate
paperwork. Everything has its internal logic, it's entirely learnable in a few
afternoons. Most importantly, the burocracy was incredibly patient with me,
even though I screwed up a few times. I overpaid, and realised months later,
but they will still pay me back. The thing is, they _want_ you to fill out
everything correctly, they have no interest in you failing or do so, so you
get support. And many many people have gone through that same process before.

Also, I think in an actual business, I'd just pay somebody to deal with these
things.

~~~
icebraining
Oh, man, the envy. In Portugal, I just paid a 200€ fine for failing to pay 20€
in taxes - which I didn't owe, I just marked the wrong box on the form.

~~~
captainmuon
They are surprizingly chill here :-) If you don't file taxes (as a regular
employee), you will get increasingly sternly worded requests to do so... and
after a few months they say "ok whatever", and just estimate your taxes
conservatively. Of course that would be stupid for you, because you'd leave
money (deductions) on the table. It is actually hard to accidentially evade
taxes. If you make an honest mistake, and come clean, you are not likely to be
fined. Maybe it helps that we pay everything (tax, insurance) in advance, and
largely automatically (as salaried employees).

------
necessity
Not in Brazil no you can't.

[http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploretopics/starting-
a-b...](http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploretopics/starting-a-business)

~~~
owebmaster
Here in Brazil you can start a company literally in one minute, without any
cost or taxes and you will pay only ~15 dollars/month, and part of it will go
to your governmental pension as monthly contribution.

You will have more bureaucracy to fill progressively, but most of the
companies (and all startups except a couple) will probably not need it.

------
more_corn
I just started my own company. I'm a bit worried that nobody will come. I'm
offering contract Dev/Ops work. (I did DevOps at YouTube for 8 years, spent 2
years building AWS infrastructure for a startup)

I'm certain companies could benefit immensely by contracting with someone to
help improve their Ops game, but I'm that awkward stage where I'm not 100%
sure anyone will request my services. Wish me luck!

------
accountyaccount
also helps to have a big ol' safety net

------
wincen
What about health insurance for those of us in the USA?

~~~
will_pseudonym
COBRA is a good stopgap if you're leaving a corporate job, and the health
exchanges vary in quality.

~~~
koolba
COBRA is usually prohibitively expensive.

Your best bet is having zero declared income and going on Medicaid.

------
hellofunk
I must admit that I am getting a bit worse for wear from reading lots of self-
congratulatory blog posts by software developers (and in other fields too),
where they craft a very curated set of words to highlight the most attractive
qualities of their life. Perhaps I am being bitter, but it just seems strange
to me to have a personal website where you aggrandize yourself through the
brief filter of a few paragraphs that I think ultimately exist to serve an
ego.

------
stretchwithme
Great story.

------
jt2190
(2011)

------
Adam89
You sir were not talented at all, but instead you were a very hard worker,
kudos

~~~
spraak
I agree they worked hard, but I don't think they aren't talented

