
Ask HN: How much runway did you have when you started your startup? - HD134606c
How much runway did you have when you started your startup?
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joshontheweb
Infinite. I did contract work part-time while I worked on the business. This
was a blessing and a curse. It made sure that I didn't fail due to lack of
money but also probably made things take longer than they should have.

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jboggan
First time: 3 months

Second time: 5 months

I am coming up to the end of my personal runway on this current venture but I
raised some money from friends and family and I'm able to pay myself a little
bit now! Meanwhile I know people who are sitting on 4,5,6 years of runway and
are still just talking about doing it. Whatever it is, if it excites you and
you can convince others of that, go do it today!

I'd suggest about 6 months of runway to be safe, but we aren't doing this to
be safe are we?

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rnprince
Could you explain why you think six months is good? Is the goal to get
investors within that six months? Or revenue?

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jboggan
The goal is to get something that's going to extend that six months, whether
it is convincing investors to contribute to your venture or convincing
customers to give you a dollar. Ideally you can do both, but if you can't do
either with the full force of your time then something is off and you should
shift your efforts.

I think six months is good because it is enough time to figure out if
something isn't going to work while being short enough to not be an
insurmountable challenge to save up for. I don't have a family yet so there is
bias in that number, I would probably say 12 months if I was helping to
support one.

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rnprince
Thanks! This is good, practical advice.

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muzani
First time: 6 months.

Market validation in 1 month, very strong traction with no marketing. Spent 6
months trying to find investors.

Started borrowing lots of money to keep it afloat. It had good revenue but not
a profit (e-commerce profit margins were around 6%). Couldn't get investors
despite two accelerators, so we sold off the company after 14 months. But we
made a good profit even after paying off debts.

Second time: years(?)

Ended up trying to do too many features. Still "wasn't ready for launch" 9
months in, ended up building features with no market validation. I ended up
quitting the company because no progress was being made.

First and second startups were essentially the same, except the second one had
a much bigger team, more ambitious.

I'd say keep your runway as short as possible and try to launch something by 3
months.

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Wellacopia
Do you mean from an individual standpoint? Both our founders have full-time
jobs so they can make a living and the startup has been a year in development.
We don't have much in the way of expenses as of yet. Since we are not paying
anything for marketing (just social media, growth hacking), and our "product"
is a service/software, we don't have any manufacturing costs. No office space
needed either. I guess technically our runway is infinite but as we are trying
to grow, that will change. And it seems, once an investor says he/she is going
to invest, it usually takes 3 months to close.

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jamesmishra
About 12 months, but it's easy to spend much faster than you expect.

Although if I were giving advice to someone else doing a startup where it's
difficult to get _immediate_ traction (e.g. hard tech, enterprise SaaS,
hardware, etc.), I'd remind them of the Jason Lemkin rule that it typically
takes 24 months to get anywhere[1].

[1]: [https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-
up-...](https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-you-have-
to-give-it-24-months/)

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tonyedgecombe
None, I just dipped in and out in the downtime between contracts. This went on
for a couple of years until I had enough revenue from the startup to cover my
living expenses.

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timavr
-2 months

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quickthrower2
Oh!

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toptalkedbooks
Two weeks ago, i began to collect data and write website (it spent one week),
and now i have a little profit.

i am proud of it, but i don't think it is startup, maybe just a side project.

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mtmail
cofounder was struggling paying rent. Not the best start and my advice is to
have a honest talk with all cofounders about their finances from the
beginning.

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nickfogle
3 months and whatever I could drum up contracting part/time

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AndrewKemendo
About three months of savings between myself and my co-founder.

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rnprince
That is not a lot of runway. What happened to make it work for you? Did you
get investors or revenue within those three months?

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AndrewKemendo
We got enough traction that we could get a seed investment.

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jwilliams
Twice so far and it was 12-months each.

Btw, that was personal runway - i.e. didn't get paid for that period. Rather
than raising 12-months of getting paid.

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contingencies
Years.

