

Why I Quit My Job, Killed a Company in Six Weeks, And Still Feel Great - Schwolop
http://www.drtomallen.com/1/post/2012/08/why-i-quit-my-job-killed-a-company-in-six-weeks-and-still-feel-great.html

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Simucal
I find it pretty refreshing to have someone candidly discuss their failed
ambitions. The selection bias of insanely successful startups on HN can lead
to a skewed perception of actual success rates. These are the kind of posts I
need from time to time to keep myself grounded in reality so I can make better
decisions.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Perspective, perspective.

1) They say: 95% of businesses fail.

2) I say: 100% of the remaining 5% are successful.

~~~
wpietri
Heh. The lesson I take: Well, then I'd better try this a bunch of times. Which
means I need to make the tries cheap and quick enough.

~~~
ed209
or so it would seem. Don't rule out chasing an idea for years before you find
it's successful. AirBnB, Pinterest, Craigslist etc etc

 _“Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new
talent or opportunity presented to them. They have developed the opportunity
that was at hand.”

— Bruce Barton_

~~~
jnorthrop
Don't forget to add the even more ambitious Elon Musk into your list... SpaceX
and Tesla.

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austenallred
"I didn't care enough about money to run a startup."

There's the rub. A startup cannot be about the money - it's about changing the
world and the way people live. If you are already doing that and feel
fulfilled in your job (which most entrepreneurs simply can't), then more power
to you.

You don't start a company for the sake of starting a company, you start a
company because a startup is the only possible means by which you can bring to
pass the change you want to see in the world and live the lifestyle you want
to live. Michael Arrington compared it to becoming a pirate. "The potential
for riches was just an argument for the venture. But the real payoff was the
pirate life itself."

That having been said, I love the refreshing honesty about the reality of
startup failure. A small part of me wishes more people wrote the stories of
their failure; TechCrunch would be 90% people running through savings and
eating ramen and 10% successful exits. Thank you for giving a real perspective
into what entrepreneurship can be like.

~~~
michaelt

      There's the rub. A startup cannot be about the money - it's
      about changing the world and the way people live.
    

My reading of the post wasn't that the guy only cared about money - just that
a start up operates in the intersection of exciting world changing technology
and commercially viable technology.

And the guy's exciting world-changing ideas weren't his commercially viable
ideas.

~~~
Schwolop
More the opposite - I care about money only to the extent that it allows me to
stay out of trouble. I don't want to be a millionaire, I'd just like $5M
sitting in a bank account at 5% so I don't ever have to think about money
again.

The technologies/products I was exploring - while awesome, some verifiably so
according to the customers we spoke with - weren't likely to lead to
profitable businesses. I had to learn the difference between a good idea and a
good business model. This is a valuable lesson for any entrepreneur.

As something to play around with as a hobby or technology demo they're still
great ideas, but as businesses they're not viable (and in one case, perhaps
just not yet.)

~~~
austenallred
Ah, I definitely read that wrong. That's a whole different dilemma if the
issue is, "I love this technology but it's more than the market will bear." So
will you go back to your old job? I know you have a runway for a while should
you choose to use it...

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DigitalSea
Am I the only one who wants to know the answer to this question: what now? You
quit a great job, tried building a startup and failed - you have a family and
mortgage to factor in to the equation, where to from here? I am guessing that
the author has some savings to live off, but I want to know how it all ends.
What does your wife think of all of this? So many unanswered questions that
have my head buzzing with nervousness and curisotity here.

~~~
jan_g
His wife is most probably furious. Women are in general much more averse to
risk-taking than men (especially after having kids). At least that is the case
with my wife. Every crazy idea I have, I run it first through my wife. She
shreds 99% of them ;). "Think of the children", "How will we pay mortgage",
"In fall we have to renovate older child's bedroom". Etc.

~~~
notJim
This comment comes across as pretty sexist, by the way. Taking experiences
with a small set of people and generalizing them to all people based on their
gender is basically the definition of sexism.

~~~
jan_g
I am sorry you feel that way.

I don't agree with you, by the way. And there's loads of research suggesting
that males are much more prone to risk-taking than females. And not only in
humans.

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ljd
"I don't care enough about money to run a startup business."

It sound like you don't have to worry about connecting a job/business with
your desire to create.

Build a great workshop at your home and work on projects that you are
passionate about. If you start to build something that you think has market
viability you have the experience needed to vet the idea in the market.
Something that can be done on a lunch hour or over weekends, depending on the
demographic.

~~~
Schwolop
I'll have to worry about money eventually, but I'm one of those risk-adverse
engineers so by the time I quit my job in the first place I'd saved up almost
two years of runway.

I'm definitely still creating. Watch this space.

~~~
sigkill
I'm just wondering if you're not working on any of the three ideas at all, why
not mention them atleast? Someone else may benefit out of it. On the other
hand, if you plan to re-visit them in the future...

~~~
Schwolop
Well they're still described on the company website, but I didn't want to
drive traffic to them when I'm not actually going to pursue them (commercially
at least).

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useflyer
What impressed me most about your experience is how disciplined the process
was, and how you approached building a startup in a way that takes most
entrepreneurs magnitudes longer to learn.

While it may look like a failure, if anything you've achieved an incredible
success and compacted a long, arduous process into an incredibly short
timeframe.

Congratulations.

Money begins as the driving force to launching a company, but I've learned
that once you get going, you quickly forget about money as the reason for
building a company, and begin to appreciate the process of BUILDING.

As much as you think you're done, I see the underpinnings of an entrepreneur,
if you can stomache it.

~~~
Schwolop
I can't stress enough that it wasn't just me doing this - I had a great pair
of co-founders, even though they weren't as committed and ultimately walked
away from the business. They helped a lot with the cold-calling and face to
face meetings. A large part of what I learnt was that I really dislike cold
calling!

But you're right I'm probably not done. I still like this world; making stuff,
fixing people's problems, innovating, etc. What I've learnt is that I
certainly don't want to be the CEO/hustler. I like technology more than money.
I should sit on the CTO/product side of the fence if I do it again.

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jeremyt
First, I want to say thanks for putting yourself out there.

However, I think there's one thing that needs to be reiterated, for everybody
who's reading hacker news and thinking about starting a company:

The world probably does not need yet another incarnation of project
management/collaboration software.

If I had a dollar for every first-time entrepreneur who told me they were
starting a new project management tool for team collaboration app, I'm
probably have enough to A-round my own company.

That's not to say it's not possible to succeed here – Trello is a case in
point – but one has to realize that Joel has been in the project management
space for probably close to a decade. It's even probable that he would've
failed except for the fact he has such a large online following that just
happens to be his target audience.

To use the example below, if 9/10 startups fail then probably 49/50 of project
management/collaboration startups fail.

By all means, do a startup, but at least give yourself a fighting chance.

~~~
Schwolop
Where did you get the idea I was doing project management/collaboration
software? We were building a hardware device to allow collaboration through
existing physical whiteboards. Not another online whiteboard application.

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SparksZilla
This was a great post. I have a lot of respect for you for being so honest and
open. Do you want your next gig to be related to robotics?

Side note: I remember when my first phase of 'burnout' hit me and I literally
got sick at a meeting with a bunch of investors. There's a whole post to be
done on taking care of yourself in a startup there.

~~~
Schwolop
Thank you. I lied a lot as a teenager, became _really_ good at it, then
realised my life would actually be easier if I just told the truth all the
time.

I hope my next gig will be somewhere amongst the union of robotics, consumer
tech, useful, helps humanity, and scalable. It wouldn't have to be robotics
(but robotics can be arbitrarily vague anyway), as long as there's room for me
to learn and I can actually see people using what I've created.

~~~
SparksZilla
Yeah I had a history of bending the truth until I realized it just got me in
more trouble than it was worth. Interesting article in Esquire on 'Radical
Honesty' you might enjoy here: <http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707>
\-- You have to take it with a grain of salt, but a good read at the very
least.

~~~
Schwolop
That was a fun read. A bit further than I take my honesty however...

~~~
SparksZilla
100% agreed.

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technotony
I'm not even sure this should be regarded as a 'failure'. You took a risk,
approached it the smart way through customer validation, and realized early
enough that it wasn't going to work out that you didn't damage relationships
with anyone. This is actually showing a smart, intelligent process at work.

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gsk
This is a honest post and very valuable.

"why did I quit a job that met all these criteria? The easy answer is that I
knew I didn't want to be an academic. But since the job was a stepping stone
to a similar, higher paying job in industry, there's a more complex answer
hiding away in here somewhere."

That answer could be: Freedom.

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tocomment
Could his "magic torch" product be repurposed to stabilize a laser pointer? I
just sat through a presentation and the guy's laser pointer was shaking like
crazy the whole time.

Thoughts?

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felipebueno
Judging by the title I would say you are bipolar in manic phase. =P

But it's a pretty inspiring post. =)

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Apreche
I want to hear about how you are paying for rent and food now with no job and
a failed company.

~~~
Schwolop
Savings. I had almost two years runway to start out. I've only burnt two
months worth.

