

Ask HN: How do you get started by yourself? - mduvall

Hi Hacker News, first post, and I'm sure the answers to this are somewhere...but waking up and reading this site every morning and all the awesome stuff that happens here gets me pumped up (who knows why); then reality hits, walk to class, do schoolwork, be bored, rinse and repeat.<p>So far, I've just interned a couple summers, did Rails and web dev stuff on the side, and made a bunch of little apps...nothing monumental really.<p>What are some of things that you guys did to take that first step? I always get the impression from the people here that their product/site was their first app/idea, but really what happened at first and what are some stepping stones to take along the way?
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wccrawford
Finish your education. It's the basis for your future.

And if you think it's not, why on Earth are you paying so much for it?

Don't waste your money. Pay more attention to your studies, and get the most
out of it.

And if you're already getting A's and still bored, start doing more side
projects. Things that are useful to you or (better yet) someone else you know.
Try to write up a spec for the project first, and then work from the spec.
Then go back to the customer/friend and see how close the project is to what
they really wanted. It's a real eye-opener.

Be putting all of your best code in a portfolio to prepare for job hunting.

~~~
egor83
> Finish your education. It's the basis for your future.

Not sure about this one.

Sure, good education helps a lot, but not all education is good, and sometimes
(and it's probably especially true for startups) you will learn much more by
just going into a field.

The most famous example of a successful dropout is Bill Gates, and I believe
we have a few dropout here at HN as well.

> And if you think it's not, why on Earth are you paying so much for it?

Education is so expensive because lots of people want to get a degree, and
high demand means high prices.

High prices do not mean that something is really necessary or useful for you -
think of diamonds.

~~~
inetsee
_Some_ education is expensive because you are paying for the name and possibly
for the contacts that you might make there. If you go to a big name Ivy League
school expecting to learn from prominent professors, you are likely to be
disappointed. Many of the big names at the big schools are taking off one year
in three in sabbaticals, and when they are there they're focusing their
attention on their own research first and their graduate students second.

There are a lot of good schools that focus on actually providing their
students with a good education, and their costs are substantially less. There
are a couple of books that provide information about good schools beyond the
Ivy League:

1\. Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That's Right for You

2\. Harvard Schmarvard: Getting Beyond the Ivy League to the College That is
Best for You

An added bonus: the money you save by _not_ going to an Ivy League school can
help fund your first startup.

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luckystrike
You might like to read this from Github Founder -

    
    
      But it wasn't an overnight eureka, and it wasn't intentional. 
      I didn't just walk out of high school, pick up a Ruby book, meet Tom and PJ, 
      then launch the site GitHub. 
    
      Before GitHub came, in chronological order, Spyc, Ozimodo, my ozmm.org, tumblelog, 
      ftpd.rb, Choice, Err the Blog, acts_as_textiled, Cheat!, acts_as_cached, Mofo, 
      Subtlety, cache_fu, Sexy Migrations, Gibberish, nginx_config_generator, 
      fixture scenarios builder, Sake, Ambition, and Facebox.
    
      And that's just the stuff I released.
    

Source: <https://gist.github.com/6443>

Discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=282158>

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travisglines
First find a cool project that you find fun to work on. (a game, a tool to
help you do something) Regardless if you ever make money on it, it'd be worth
it just to use it or play it yourself. Thats pretty much the exact process
that lead to the creation of Ruby on Rails by 37signals and I imagine
countless other projects/businesses.

Then later on when its stable and usable consider launching it to the world,
sharing the valuable software you've created. (and possibly receiving value
back)

In the process of building it, if you get stuck, read/post on HN and go to
stackoverflow to ask programming questions, you'll get there.

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locopati
Scratch an itch.

Maybe it's something that nobody else is doing or a tool that you use but
think could be better or a way to improve the operation of a suite of tools
that could work better together. Maybe it's a group that you're a part of that
needs a web site/service for something or a better way to explore their data
or automate a tedious process.

It has to be something you're interested in otherwise you won't be psyched to
do it.

But ideas are a dime-a-dozen - you want to make it real. I'm sure everyone
here has orders of magnitude more never-done ideas, started-and-stopped ideas
than out-in-the-world ideas. But generating and playing with those ideas, even
if they come to nothing, are part of the means to getting something done.

Take small steps and keep taking small steps. Even with 15-30 minutes a day,
you can do something (write a function, write a page, tweak the database).
Eventually, though it doesn't seem so along the way, you'll get some place.

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JunkDNA
Internships are a great first step. It is good to get out there and see how
the world really works. Not sure what kind of school you are in, but one thing
that preserved my sanity was that I did work in a lab while I was an
undergrad. I found a prof who was doing interesting stuff, and did some work
for him. I learned more from doing that than I actually did im my classes, and
it gave me the chance to explore a problem space that I would not have had the
ability to explore on my own. It was a bit like having a friend to go to the
gym with you. By making a commitment to the prof, I avoided the temptation to
go home and read the web instead of actually doing something.

~~~
mduvall
I currently attend Cal under the EECS department and have been doing research,
it's been a mind-boggling experience for theory, application however has
seemed quite dismal... :-\

It does help to stay productive though!

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aik
Are you essentially asking what the first step to success is? It seems
everyone has a different answer. I don't think there's a better way to put it
than "to each his own".

But, firstly: Understand yourself. Through this you will discover (or
strengthen) your interests and passions, and find out what you truly truly
care about.

Then figure out how you could apply your skills to improve upon/change/disrupt
what you care about. If your care is strong enough, you could do it all day
regardless of the "monumentality" of it.

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ig1
Build stuff you think is cool.

The single biggest thing likely to make you fail is if you lose motivation.
Building cool stuff is a way to avoid that.

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sz
The Obama legislation that forces your parents medical insurance to cover you
until you're 26 goes into effect next year. I'm planning a year off from
college to work on projects that I can't realistically attempt while in school
because I need to focus too much on classes. You could consider doing that
too.

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ct
Find your passion. Plain and simple. Although it's better if your passion is
something in high demand that you can easily make money off.

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bmelton
I know it's the mantra, but as somebody in a similar situation, I can tell you
there are 2 pieces of advice leading up to my imminent launch.

1) Find a partner - I've had a LOT of false starts on projects that were sure
to be the next big thing. I would get an idea, work hard on it, overthink
everything, convince myself it was destined to be a failure, and then start on
something else. I watched idly as I saw my ideas implemented by other
companies, some with very large exits, some making large profits, and some
flops. I invariably regretted whatever reason I had justified to myself for
losing steam on it before.

I found a likeminded individual who is motivated, and is good in all the areas
I'm not (and better in some of the areas I am). From first-hand experience,
it's a lot harder to lose focus or succumb to wanderlust when you have
somebody next to you making progress. His progress motivates me. My progress
motivates him. We both have skin in the game, and we're both moving forward at
a pace I never have before.

The other piece of advice? Cancel cable. My TV broke, and I found myself being
extremely productive while I was waiting for a repairman to come out. So
productive, in fact, that I called and cancelled on him.

I still get most of what I watch from Hulu or other sites, but now the TV is
background noise while I'm programming, and far less of a distraction than
something that I needed to leave the room for.

