

Ask HN: Is success impossible for a part-time startup? - Deejahll

I've got a (software) idea that I want to turn into a startup.<p>I'm not motivated by money past a certain point. I want only to create a stable business around my idea and keep my face and family fed.<p>My real motivation for starting a company would be that as my own boss, I would be able to set for myself a low-hour (&#62;20, &#60;40) work week. This is mostly in reaction to my current situation, where I am employed with an acceptable salary, but quite unhappy with the number of unpaid overtime hours I end up sacrificing to my employer. I would gladly forego a pay raise for more time off.<p>However, every article I've come across that highlights startup companies and some of PG's writings on the subject have dashed my hopes. All have one thing in common: "insane" hours. They are telling me that I shouldn't bother taking the risk.<p>My take-away is that in order to have any chance of a startup not doomed to failure, you have to be 1. young 2. unmarried 3. able to fall back on your parents and 4. willing to make your company your whole life.<p>Some people I have discussed this with claim that this is due to CEOs being "in love" with their idea and doing everything they can to make it succeed. The implication for me is that I don't care as much. The only thing I have to offer here is that I do in fact have a lot emotionally invested in this, however the only thing I care about more is being involved with my family, and I'm tired of sacrificing that for financial gain.<p>I'm sure that startup CEOs who meet the criteria have a distinct advantage in a competitive market, and are more likely to become wealthy. However the idea that failure is guaranteed for the less insane seems counterintuitive to me for a number of reasons:<p>1. This idea has been knocking around in my head for years with no implementors, so why rush now?<p>2. I believe strongly in the importance of exercise and rest to one's ability to perform. I blame most of my failures or missed deadlines on the all-nighters and skipped exercise that I did in an attempt to meet those very same deadlines. I think a short work week should allow me to demand that I and my employees are rested and healthy for the 4- to 6-hour blast.<p>3. I have seen and have been guilty myself in the past of not using time efficiently during a &#62;8-hour daily grind. I think that with a set 4-6 hours to get all my work done followed by lots of free time, I and employees would easily stay intensely focused and driven during that schedule. I know the argument for context-switching and time spent "getting in the zone" but I believe that this is negligible compared to zoning out due to lack of sleep/lack of exercise/burnout/etc.<p>4. Work weeks are shorter in some other countries (France). Can't it be successful in the U.S.?<p>5. Google has their 20% rule. I think I should be able to work at least 20% less for the same or better productivity, if that 20% is spent on recharging activities like time with the family, etc.<p>6. Some startups spend 80 hours per week per employee and still fail. This makes me suspect that if the idea isn't good enough to succeed on 20 hours a week, it might not be good enough to succeed on 80 either.<p>I'd like to hear your comments, but most of all I'm looking for a counterexample: a pointer to a single (startup) business that is profitable--not necessarily booming--with short work weeks.
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cmos
It would appear as though you have spent a good deal of time thinking about
this. The irony is that even if 20 people posted their part time success
stories, it would have no bearing on your success. It might give you a bit of
confidence to go forward with it, but even that would be 'false'. If people
instead post 20 part time failure stories that might make you hesitant, and
that too would be 'false' as you might be walking away from a great
experience.

Your trying to escape from a 9-5 job. You could do this by starting a company
with a focus on making enough money part time (even freelancing) to quit, but
you'd be surprised how quickly this too becomes a 'job' if you don't have a
passion for it.

Your best option is to ignore most people's advice and build something you are
passionate about with whatever free time you have available. Keep it as
'hobby' or 'lifestyle' as you can since that's what your seeking. If it
becomes something you win. If it doesn't, you'd be surprised how many doors
making something 'from scratch' opens. You still win.

Wondering if you can or should do it? That will take forever.

------
thomanil
Cheer up - Paul Grahams worldview isn't the only one out there.

Do some reading on 'mISV' companies. Google Bob Walsh, Erik Sink, Rob Walling,
Andy Brice and Patrick McKenzie - all of whom have written excellent material
about building viable, bootstrapped, part-time software businesses.

Also, see this excellent talk by DHH on alternatives to the classical 'balls
out, big risk/reward' startup scenario:

[http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-
hans...](http://www.omnisio.com/startupschool08/david-heinemeier-hansson-at-
startup-school-08)

Good luck!

(I'm in the same boat; currently only a few weeks from launching my first
product.)

------
neilk
1) "...no implementors" Just FYI, I had such an idea that I thought was far
too weird for anyone else to even consider let alone implement. But someone
eventually did it, while I dithered.

2,3,4) "exercise ... rest ... shorter work weeks"

Okay, let's start with the facts: if you believe the people who have made
studies of intellectual work, nobody has ever achieved sustained productivity
greater than seven hours a day. To meet a deadline, you can sprint for a few
weeks at a time and achieve greater productivity. But that time has to be
recovered later.

Startup people (and certain corporations, like Google) like to claim that they
are working insane hours. But I suspect if you did a proper study, they would
actually be spending more time than they think in non-work activities, or be
working ineffectively.

By the way, this doesn't mean that startups aren't way more productive than
established players. I've been there and achieving 1-2 hours per day of
sustained effort can be a challenge.

In the case of YC startups, possibly the very young can achieve greater
productivity than oldsters, although this must come at some cost since they
have less experience. Or, it's possible that they were ridiculously efficient
performers to begin with, so even at reduced capacity they're doing okay.

However, for startups, it might be necessary for them to work in a suboptimal
and overworked manner, since a startup goes down so many blind alleys and has
to meet so many arbitrary deadlines due to customers, investors, certain
conventions and trade shows, etc.

5) "20% time" Don't base any decision on what Google says they do. It's all
lies, or deliberate omission to make you assume the wrong thing. Most 20% time
is spent working on tools for one's existing project, or in mini-sabbaticals
with other teams. Furthermore it's usually taken in blocks, not as one day a
week (although that does occur).

6) Even overworked startups fail -- so what? That is no indication that part
time startups succeed.

I do know of a case where a startup did "succeed" (was acquired for a
relatively small sum) and the founders had never even quit their day jobs.
However this was in the middle of the big Web 2.0 acquisition frenzy and the
founders had phenomenal contacts in the industry. You cannot rely on this.

In conclusion it sounds to me like you want freedom more than insane riches.
So you should aim for some consulting niche or niche market, where the returns
are too small to justify a full-blown startup investment, but there is plenty
of revenue for an indvidual.

------
tonystubblebine
Bootstrapped startups often use part-time non-startup work as funding for
their actual product. All indications are that it is very hard to keep your
focus and energy high enough to make progress, but all indications are also
that any way you start your business is hard.

37signals still did one week design reviews after basecamp launched. MailChimp
launched in 2001 but the team continued to do web development on the side
until 2006.

If you aren't doing a venture backed startup, you need cash. You can either
burn through your savings, build a consulting practice around your product (I
did this with CrowdVine), or have side work.

When I made the switch to go full time on CrowdVine I gave up an agile
software development training gig in favor of consulting for CrowdVine
customers. I think it was the wrong move and that the training gig, which only
took six days a month, would have been a lot more effective way to bootstrap.

------
anulman
At the risk of sounding too Tony Robbins-y, there is very little in this world
that is truly impossible.

It sounds to me as though your goal right now is to follow a dream and spend
more time with your family. This type of startup, as I'm sure you're aware,
will probably have a much harder time raising venture capital, not to mention
reaching an IPO (especially in this market). But hey, that's okay.

If I was in your shoes, I would look at two things:

1) How much cash do I have that I'm willing to pour into my startup?

2) How screwed am I if this thing fails?

The answer to #1 (and probably a few other, better-tailored-to-your-situation
questions) will let you know when to quit. Because you will almost certainly
not recognize it "when you need to" (if, unfortunately, you _do_ need to).

The answer to #2 will help make sure that you're not jeopardizing yourself and
the family you obviously hold so dear. But there are things that can help you
here: so long as you have a strong personal and professional network (enough
important strong ties, or an abundance of weak ties, or even both), that's a
huge plus. And, as cmos said, "you'd be surprised how many doors making
something 'from scratch' opens."

Whatever your decision, good luck!

------
DenisM
The key to success is being relentlessly resourceful.

Everything else is fluff people make up to make themselves feel good about the
path they chose or assign meaning to random events.

Read the above a few times until it sinks in. Give it a couple of days, then
read it again. If it doesn't set things straight, try this:

    
    
      1. The effort applied must be adequate for the goal - 
         both in scope and direction. Neither excess nor dearth
         are virtues.
    
      2. Determining what is adequate is just as important
         as is the execution itself, and must have adequate
         effort put into it.
    
      3. Determining the goals worth pursuing is again equally
         important.
    
      4. The first three items are actually one and same item
         applied recursively. Recursion does not end at three
         items.
    
      5. The first three items are ongoing processes, not
         accomplishments that can get "done". They must have 
         time and resources allocated and artifacts defined and 
         tracked.
    
      6. When starting a task, always pop up a level above and 
         ask yourself if what you do makes sense. "Bottom-up"
         validation.
    
      7. Periodically unwind all recursion layers, then roll 
         them forward again and make sure they still make sense.
         "Top-down" validation must be performed with adequate
         frequency.
    
      8. You don't know most things you will need to know to 
         succeed. Determine the important unknowns and put 
         adequate effort into reducing uncertainty.
         The iteration lenght must be adequate to the relevant
         timeframes.

------
Hates_
Reading through your list of points, it sounds like you're trying to justify
_not_ just trying and seeing what's possible. There's no golden rule or answer
to starting a business, but there are plenty of successful businesses that
started as a small part-time endeavours.

As a start, 37signals did it with only 10 hours a week:

[http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1078-it-doesnt-have-to-
be...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1078-it-doesnt-have-to-be-all-or-
nothing-with-a-startup)

~~~
Deejahll
> Reading through your list of points, it sounds like you're trying to justify
> not just trying

Correct. "Trying" is risky, I'm just attempting to measure how much more of a
risk it is to do it on my terms. Prior to today, my plan seemed guaranteed to
fail no matter how strong the idea, and I would be unhappy in that situation.

Thanks to the comments here so far, I feel now like I'm not _guaranteed_ a
loss under my low-hours restriction, and the risk of failure is acceptable
given my desire to see my idea to fruition, and my expectation for its
potential.

Your link was brilliant, motivating and exactly what I wanted to hear. I'm
surprised I hadn't found that before.

Thanks much for the reply.

------
alavrik
There is a simple chart which might help you to better understand what type of
business do you want to start:

1\. Startups pursuing large markets (either existing or new). Typically they
require a lot of work and/or serious technology investment in the beginning
and must demonstrate considerable traction/growth in terms of increasing
market share/sales/user base/technology innovation etc. and at the same time
seek for substantial funding to be able to hire workforce, develop technology,
pay for data centers etc.

Such business requires a lot of work and serious time investment until they
exit or grow considerably (3+ years), involves substantial risk of failure and
potentially huge payoff in case of success. And the reason why pg and other
investors are describing startups in this way because this is the only kind of
business which is fundable (i.e. what YCombinator and other investment
companies are interested in).

2\. New businesses pursuing smaller markets with less competition or less
competition risk. Typically they have better chances to succeed, require less
effort, imply slower growth, have typically clearer business model and smaller
payoffs, require no outside money investment. No one would invest in them
anyway unless they demonstrate serious growth potential -- that is the
business is viable but not fundable.

~~~
Deejahll
Ah, this is very helpful. I was aware that I wanted to do something like #2,
but I was not aware that such a partitioning was the norm.

------
olihb
I work/own(15%) in a small startup in the survey business. It's been about 10
months and the biggest problem is the time between the first meeting with a
client and a signed contract(usually more than 6-7 months).

Another problem is that the survey business is very trust based. Most people
don't have to skill to interpret correctly the raw data and the common
statistical and sociological pitfalls, so they must trust our conclusions.
Also, no clients want to listen to 1000 recorded calls. So we have to gain our
client trust which is sometime difficult when you're a young company.

To answer more directly your question, I work maybe 15 hours a week(more when
we finish data collection on a project) but only because I've automated about
every portion of the business and used a lot of open-source software(like
asterisk, jasper, etc.) My partner works a lot more but he's in charge of
business development, but he has more shares(49%) and when the contract
pipeline will be full, I'm the one that's gonna be busy. But he "gets" to have
lunch with clients and play golf...

My free time is spent working another project/startup.

English second language here, go easy.

------
vaksel
it depends on your startup type.

If your startup suffers the chicken and egg problem, you can easily do it part
time, because it'll be next to impossible to gain users. So you can have it on
the side, until you grow the userbase to be able to monetize it.

However if you are doing something involved with direct sales, every hour you
spend on the startup = # of new sales = $$$$$

------
russell
Part time works if your idea is realistic for part time. Is it easy to
implement, easy to scale? Does it have a core of good functionality?

I recommend reading 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. You need a strong hype/BS
filter, but he has some good suggestions about time management. In particular,
there is a chapter about how to reduce the number of hours you have to put in
at your day job without reducing your effectiveness. For example, if you work
from home, you reduce interruptions and meetings. He tells how introduce
telecommuting without your boss realizing what is happening.

~~~
Deejahll
Thanks for the comment. I was wary of that book because I heard it described
as a way to become a sort of uncaring-manager-at-a-distance while getting rich
quick.

Since there's more to it than that, I'll give it another look.

------
jmonegro
You could bootstrap it on the side for a while, making sure you have
_something_ out there, and test if it really is a good idea without having to
give up financial security. Then maybe you could seek some funding, enough to
allow you to minimize the risk.

------
dannyr
I recently switched from full-time to part-time to focus more on my startup.

Right now, I'm trying to see if it would take off. If the site is growing,
I'll probably look for angel money and work full-time on it. If not, I'll keep
my part-time job.

------
ScottWhigham
So the key question, to me, is how do you define success? Is it $10m in the
bank or is it working full-time on something you love that you wrote and
built?

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noodle
short story: no, but the tendency is for part-time startups to become full-
time startups as the success level rises.

------
bruin4tw
part time startups are harder for people that have other commitments, like a
family to feed, wife or gf, busy career. That is why most of the startups are
started by young single men who don't have a family they are obiligated too, a
gf or wife that needs attention that takes away time from working on your
startup, or people that are higher up in the food chain at corporations, which
requires time as well. Furthermore, younger people can take risks because they
have more time to recover from a failure.

