
Before you start a company, answer these questions - dema_guru
http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/15/before-you-start-a-company-answer-these-questions/
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welanes
> Will your spouse/significant other be OK if you spend three nights a week at
> hacker meetups?

The ideal spouse/significant other would be one that asks why you're hanging
out at hacker meetups every other night when you've just quit your job.

~~~
civilian
lol, yeah. I don't think that if I was a founder I'd be at hacker meetups? I
don't get great coding done there. I'd rather come home, have a simple dinner,
and then put a few hours in after catching up with the fam. If I was trying to
hire I would go to hacker meetups, but I think you can filter for meetups that
have high-quality candidates and a good engineers::non-techies ratio. And of
course, only stay for the first hour of networking, skip the presentation.

~~~
Ntrails
I read comments like this "I want a couple of hours after work to see people I
love before I get back to the very important task of more work" and cannot
decide if I'm lazy, or the average startup'r is a bit mad.

Doing a 10-12 hour day every now and again because there's a deadline is fine,
planning ahead for that to be an average day boggles my mind.

~~~
brianwawok
Sounds like you don't pass the founder test ')

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wattt
Sounds a lot like my approach. I've been in business for over 8 years.

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adventured
"Are you motivated by the prospect of getting rich?" ... " These are perfectly
normal human emotions but horrible reasons on their own to start a business."

Being motivated to get rich is an extremely good reason to start a business.
In fact it's one of the few reasons to do so. It's very difficult to get rich
if you don't own generative assets (short of being a radiologist and plowing
your after taxes/expenses salary into a bank account for 20 years). There are
three ways to do it: acquire ownership in a business, either privately or in
the public markets; buy assets such as real estate and turn it over at a
profit; start a business. The theme of nearly all wealth in the developed
world, is ownership. One of the best ways to guarantee you get a shot at that
sort of outcome is by starting a business. I grew up in a poor area and knew
several millionaires, they were all self-made small business owners.

Being motivated to be rich, is not the same as defining your business around
or by that premise, which is what the author is confusing.

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rsp1984
100x This.

As a corollary: If you're not motivated by getting rich a job at a big tech
firm will probably satisfy most of your non-monetary motivations while at the
same time giving you more impact and a much easier life than going the startup
route.

~~~
sokoloff
A job at a big tech firm, reasonable spending habits, and 20 years investing
in the markets is likely to make you extremely comfortable financially. With
almost perfect certainty.

It's not going to be private jet money, but it's going to be easily flying
first class money.

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jaypaulynice
The more you contemplate these questions, the least likely you are to do
anything. The only question I think is valuable is: "How many months can you
go without a paycheck?" I think the original idea is seldom where most
startups end up. It's more than likely a problem you encounter while working
on the original idea. In fact, I think the less money you have to start the
more hungry you will be for success.

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iandanforth
I would add to this, can you convince at least one person to work on this with
you? Solo founding isn't just a little harder than having a co-founder.

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epynonymous
i've got a really cushy job making great money, and the work life balance is
tolerable, but i feel that it's not that exciting. i have had lots of ideas,
but i finally think that i've figured out what i really enjoy which is sports
and technology. i have been working on madsportslab.com for about a year now,
i taught myself golang and swift as part of the process and have released my
app to the appstore, now just have to start the marketing part.

the cmo definitely agrees in theory that she can deal with me going full time
on this, but i seriously doubt that and think it would make things really bad.

financially i could easily live a few years without salary, but i need to
support my daughter so this makes things difficult where i live.

i am thinking of leveraging kickstarter and will continue to work on this as a
side hobby, but once i see any traction, i may seriously consider taking the
plunge

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ChristopherM
I started a company, by myself, November 2012. I'm still in business but
haven't released the original intended product.

1) What was my motivation? I was tired of working for someone else, I'd had it
with commuting, working with people that kept bringing diseases from their
kids in daycare and hence getting colds and flus mutliple times per year,
living in a state with absurd taxes and cost of living. Working hard to afford
a "condo" that might be paid off once I hit 65 was beyond stupid. Oh and I
wouldn't work in an "open office space" setup if you paid me $1 million a
year. I don't do headphones, ever.

2) Is this idea worth my time? The idea was an iPhone game, I did complete it,
but never released it. They released new phones, new ipads with new
resolutions, so I was in the process of adding that capability when a
consulting opportunity arose (work 100% from home). I could get into why I
abandoned releasing iPhone and Android apps, but have decided to redo it in
HTML5 and free myself from the rules the stores impose and cut they take. But
ultimately I had decided even if my product only generated $30k a year that
was good enough. To own and control my time and product was worth that drastic
cut if it came down to it.

3) What have you done to validate this idea? I did research into the potential
market size, I used to play a similar game on yahoo games before it was shut
down and they would have 10's of thousands of players every day. I looked at
similar games on iTunes that were pathetic weekend hacks that left much to be
desired and they had downloads, so the market existed. And I really liked the
game, still do, I play my game on an ipod touch that I hacked to an older date
so the certificate never expires. My UI, and the options that I added also
made it far more enjoyable to play. I had big plans for multiplayer.

4) Are there real customers for this? Yep, see above. Maybe it won't make me a
millionaire, but I could live off of it.

5) Do you have the endurance for the marathon version of your company?
Absolutely, I worked non stop for 2 years when I was about to release. I did
not make any money during that time, in fact if I had a "real" job I would
have given up. A regular job sucks away all mental energy and leaves one like
an empty shell at the end of the day (at least that is my experience).

6) CMO (Chief Marital Officer)? Don't have one, did have a girlfriend back
then but we lived in different cities so going for a visit was a nice vacation
from the work.

7) Is quitting the right next step? As far as I'm concerned you are either all
in or it's a hobby that is going nowhere. If I kept working I'd never even had
developed a prototype non the less a full working product, with multiplayer
server on the back end. So if you really believe in your product, quit the day
job. You can't do both, period.

Where is my company now?

Well, I've gotten side-tracked with consulting business. I've never met a
customer on site, I work 100% at home. They send me their devices, buy
whatever compiler licenses so I can do the work. I work when I want to, so if
I want to take a week off to work on a project at home, or take a trip I do.

Last year was crazy, I moved to Wyoming to drastically lower my taxes, even
Nevada was not low enough. Bought a house, while taking care of multiple
clients sometimes work ing 260 hours a month. Billables were just under $250k
last year. Now that I'm settled in the new house, which cost less that just
property tax payments in CA, I've cut back the work to maybe $150k this year,
which will free me up to migrate my Objective-C app to HTML5. All the valuable
code exists on the game server anyway, so no risk there.

Was it worth just quitting and going for it? Absolutely. Did it turn out
exactly as planned? Not even close.

If anyone else out there is trying to decide and wants to know more about my
adventure, send me an email. I'm happy to share what I've learned if it helps
others to escape the rat race too...

~~~
dbancajas
what's your email?

~~~
ChristopherM
I thought my email was visible in my about page... it's cmerinsky@gmail.com

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maxekman
The undertones of VB jokingly writing Chief Martial Officer is pretty sad from
an equality perspective IMO.

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nanijoe
These are somewhat irrelevant questions... one thing that is almost guaranteed
is that your original idea will change, and all your loft projections will not
come to pass.

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sean_patel
> Is quitting the right next step?

Why do all these Entrepreneurial articles and stories promote quitting and
going 'All in'.

If you develop the discipline and commitment and have the 'applied faith' that
your product or startup idea will succeed (based on the parameters you set for
success) then you should be able to do it nights and weekends.

Even Matt Mullenweg, WordPress co-founder didn't straight up 'Quit' and work
on wordpress full time. He was still working at CNet to pay the bills, and
bootstrapped Wordpress with 10,000 $ that he saved from his day job and worked
on it nights and weekends.

"I quit my day job and started my own company and make a good living" stories
are very very few. The media only focussed on these success stories and not
the other 99% that fail and have to go back to a day job, with a mountain of
debt.

~~~
curun1r
Probably because most people are incapable of documenting that their work
occurred off-hours and without company resources. And even if they are, their
employer can still tie them up in litigation if the company ever takes off.

Working contract jobs to support your startup aspirations can make sense, but
working as an FTE is pretty risky.

