

Ask HN: I'm quitting my job to start a company. What should be on my checklist? - throwaway_asdf

For those who have gone this route, what are the things you forgot to do that came back to get you? What do you wish you'd done differently?
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SoftwareMaven
\- Read up on customer development, then build your customer development plan.
Getting your first customers is critical, so having the initial plan in hand
is critical.

\- Make a list of assumptions about your business: what has to be true for you
to succeed. Then find ways to empirically test those assumptions. Then test
them! You don't want to spend a lot of time going down dead end paths. Keep
doing this until you have a repeatable business model.

\- Identify your weaknesses (whether that is product development, marketing,
sales, etc), and make sure you know how you are going to overcome those
weaknesses (hiring, contracting, eliminating the need, etc). If you don't
think you have any important weaknesses, you need to do more introspection.

\- Have fun and take breaks. Your business can become all-consuming. Don't let
it, or it will soon suck the fun out of it.

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dgunn
Myself and my co-founder are doing this in January. We're hoping to get in
YC-W12 but if we don't, we're moving to the area anyway. We both have great
engineering jobs, but we're tired of working for other people. One thing I
would recommend is to make sure you have a strong co-founder who is as
interested in it as you are. This is very important because it seems that
everyone other than your co-founder will just think you're crazy and having
some support is pretty critical to your sanity.

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icey
I'm doing this right now. The best advice I have is: Know what your costs are,
and know how to make enough money to cover them.

Savings will last a finite amount of time, so you need to figure out how to
replenish in order to give yourself some runway.

If you already have this plan in place then the next thing you should be
working on is increasing customer acquisition.

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JoeCortopassi
Get paying customers or written commitments from a good amount of customers to
validate your business model. Otherwise you may find yourself without a job,
and a product no one wants to buy.

If no one will give you money or written commitment, but say that they will
buy, they aren't a customer. It's their polite/non-confrontational way of
saying no

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mapster
Forgot to do?

a. Beg for my job back b. Find customers & build company c. then quit

Not being glib, I just subscribe to being careful while reaching for the gold
ring! Good luck!

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revorad
Customers are oxygen. Without them, you will die.

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BenSchaechter
Coming from a single founder almost a year in: Get a Co-Founder. You will have
probably more than double the output, someone to bounce ideas off of, and a
more sane life.

