
Have anyone tried doing 2 startups simulatenously? - master54

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master54
What if the 2 startups are complementary?

Like say, you are doing a dating site and a social networking site, which was
the case for Intermix Media, parent of Myspace

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dfranke
Then run them as one company so you can spend half as much time talking to
VCs.

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zeph
That's what I'd do if I was in that situation... structure it as separate
holding companies for the IP or whatever so you can flip each product
individually if needed, but don't unnecessarily duplicate resources. Of course
you're probably going to get into a world of fun "internal accounting" taking
this approach... you will probably want to "bill" the appropriate holding
company for time spent working on that project, etc.

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dfranke
You only really need to do enough accounting in order to pay your taxes
correctly. You might need more than that if you want to try to go public, but
the rest can be repaired retroactively. And if you just sit down with the
relevant IRS publications and read through them, you'll find that the tax code
isn't as scary as you think it is. A tax return is about as complex as, and
makes about as much sense as, a typical Microsoft API.

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master54
how was it? Do you regret it?

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nostrademons
I'm working as an employee for one startup and a founder of another, in two
totally different business domains (financial software and internet games,
respectively).

It's hard. Startups take more out of you than a regular job will, because you
can't just switch into maintenance mode. There've been times where my boss has
had a demo for an important client one week (making me work nights & weekends
for a couple days to get it ready), and then I've gone straight to preparing a
launch for the startup.

I don't think I really could've done it differently, though. I wanted to work
at a startup so I could get experience & a sense of what I was getting myself
into, and this is my first job since college. The day job is essentially
funding my startup - it pays better than YCombinator, with similar advice &
experience benefits. I thought about switching to a less intensive job at a
big company, but I dunno if they'd hire me when I already have a startup on
the side. Plus, I have a pretty good relationship with my boss and the IP
policy is relatively lenient at my current employer, reducing the chance of IP
problems (he doesn't care as long as I'm not starting a competitor,
basically).

Overall, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're in a similar situation - first
job out of college, self-funding, and want the training of a startup. If
you're older and already have plenty of experience with business, I'd get a
job at a big blue chip where nobody knows what anybody else is doing - a
coworker said that Thomson Financial is great for this, almost everybody has
their own private business that they run out of their cube because the company
is incapable of getting anything done itself. If you can get YCombinator or
similar funding, I'd take that: you're trading equity for time, which is
usually a good tradeoff. If you can afford to, quit your day job and live off
savings (I'll probably do this fairly soon, but I want a little more runway so
my startup has a greater margin of safety).

