

Ask HN: Did financial crisis ever hold you back to release your product? - pknerd

I am just thinking out loud. I have been <i>struggling</i> to come up with own idea/product/site. Out of many reasons, one of the reasons that always held me back was that I always thought about my family.<p>I quit 9-5 slavery a year back, till then I have been working as a freelancer, providing consultancy and working with pals in their company. As it's expected there were some tough days during the course. I had to think about my family first rather than <i>dreaming</i> about my <i>next big idea</i>.<p>To cut long story short, how did you cope up this situation beside getting investment from a VC(<i>Being a resident of a non-US country its not easy either</i>)? Does this mean I can never be an entrepreneur ?<p>Your thoughts please?
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byoung2
If you want to start a business but your appetite for risk is low (you have a
family to support), you should look into a lifestyle business. It's like a
startup, but instead of swinging for the fences and seeking VC investment and
looking to be aquired or IPO, you seek to maintain a certain level of income
to support your lifestyle. This may be easier for you in Pakistan than in a
more expensive country.

Take me, for example. I make $100k+ as a software engineer, so if I wanted to
quit my job and start a business, I'd need $9k per month to support my current
lifestyle (pretty difficult to do). Maybe in Pakistan I would only need $1k
per month (a little easier).

Ideas for businesses to make $1k per month include selling stock photography,
WordPress templates, simple iOS/Android apps, etc. If you want something with
more potential (but with more effort), try something like Skype tutoring,
being a virtual assistant, or a content writer.

~~~
pknerd
Thanks for your valuable comment. In short you're saying to juggle so many
balls at once but it does make sense. What I guess it also requires good at
marketing which I am not.

In past few year I did try to work on different technologies and could not
restrict myself to a few but I still could not develop skills to _sell_ myself
or my skills. Being a developer it's pretty hard but not impossible.

