
Ask HN: Part-Time Work for Founders? - quotz
Hi fellow hackers! Dilemma, I have!<p>What part-time jobs should be suitable for founders to have in other to fund their expenses and work on their startup for the rest of their time? I wanna hear personal stories too!
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ian0
I was saved by a consultancy that dropped in my lap, a foreign company looking
for a local representative to manage a key account. Basically 10-20 hours a
month doing some product/marketing and account management stuff within my area
of expertise but not related to my startup. It mainly just ate into my
weekends, with a few meets mid-week.

Since then I have noticed others doing the same type of work to support
themselves while their businesses are in the early stages (be it startup or
trad. business).

Im relatively old and have a family withs kids in school, for me the hardest
part of founding a startup was the financial strain. We extended way past our
initial runway by not taking salaries, eroded our savings. It was difficult,
but I had confidence in the business, we had responsibility to our customers*
and this gig saw me through the really dark times.

We are a success case (our startup is seeing a lot of traction and funding now
isnt an issue), but this is an area that I think needs more attention. I can
imagine there were potentially great businesses that failed because of this.
Startups (esp B2B ones) take time to find their feet. Older founders can eat
ramen but you cant feed it to your kids.

PS On general advice id tend towards activities that arent too strenuous and
are different to your main tasks within the startup. Eg developing part time
while coding full time for your startup id imagine would be a huge drain.

* Our startup has an impact aspect. You couldn't with a heart abandon it, even if you were to roll back your services in a professional manor.

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ecesena
I worked for about 6 months at MemSQL while we were selling our startup
Theneeds (and now I have a full time job while launching SoloKeys, so I can
see also the "growing your startup" option).

My experience with MemSQL has been awesome on every possible level, before,
during, and after.

I found the job via regular application process + interview, they were
searching explicitly for part-time, so I'd recommend looking for that. I
strongly recommend no conflict of interests of any sort, I was doing QA at
MemSQL, they knew about my startup where I was doing content
recommendation/machine learning/backend+web.

Aside from money, it's been great to work with another startup that: 1) was a
US company (vs we were all Italian founders), 2) was in a more advanced stage
(so, potential to learn about processes), 3) was and is full of great talented
employees (so, great connections that we're still keeping alive).

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stevesearer
When I finally decided to make
[https://officesnapshots.com](https://officesnapshots.com) be my priority, I
found work through a temp agency for a while which came with some interesting
experiences.

One memorable placement was in the shipping department of company which sold
tooth whitening kits to dentists. Another was as an office manager at a
cremation company sales office.

I actually enjoyed temping for the most part since I was able to build various
skills I didn’t have before and try out different roles in companies.

~~~
tixocloud
Unrelated to OP's topic but I really enjoy OfficeSnapshots and it's incredible
to see how far it's come since the early days. Congratulations!

Was there sort of a pivotal moment where you felt OfficeSnapshots was going to
be viable? Did it happen organically or did you have to push hard for it?

~~~
stevesearer
Thanks! I guess I’d say it was pretty organic.

When I started it there was no intention of it being a business and it took a
while to even think about it that way.

~~~
tixocloud
It certainly felt that way. Did design firms eventually ask whether they could
showcase their work on your site?

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Communitivity
A lot of startups that grow slowly use a consultancy model, offering
consulting services in the area their startup is targeting, or on the Open
Source tools their startup is leveraging. As you grow a product and get market
fit you can slowly switch from service-oriented to product-oriented, or not,
as you see fit. As I understand it, product-oriented tends to be more
profitable.

~~~
quotz
Arent Non-Disclousure and Non-Compete agreements that you have to sign as a
consultant forbid you from making a product ?

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tushar09k
\- teach during weekends \- fill up online surveys \- start a blog \- build a
strategy for another startup and take stakes in return than money \- review
life experiences with Brands

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GFischer
The best kind would be using your first customer as a funding source.

The other, typical option is to consult for a not very demanding customer.

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verdverm
Toptal.com

