
How I built a startup while working full-time in Finance - andyokdj
http://andypickens.tumblr.com/post/19345391305/how-i-built-a-startup-while-working-full-time-in
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reason
Congrats on launching! I can sort of relate with trying to pull off ideas on
the side in a field completely unrelated to computer science as someone who
wasn't bred from a young age to program. It's definitely hard, and I commend
you for putting in the hours and the effort.

As for the product: It's a neat idea. I think it'd be cool if you actually
gave people on Facebook and promoters in general a small cut of some sort of
revenue. It'd give users two incentives, both monetary and social (being known
for discovering great undercover bands). Have users compete to be the best
'agents'.

Don't mind the haters – it's the growing trend 'round here on HN. If you're
not a CS guy, you don't deserve much, basically. That's even more so for
people working in business. But you've done far more than the people here can
claim to have done.

Best of luck!

Edit: What made you settle for that one idea? Was it the only one you had, or
did you choose it from a list of others you were entertaining? I imagine
working in an industry like Finance you haven't got much time to play around
with ideas left-and-right, so there's a bit more calculation in picking an
idea to move forward with.

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upthedale
This doesn't really address any practical issues you faced in holding down a
full-time job whilst also building the startup.

Based on the title, I was expecting more. Something like how you managed your
time?

That said, congrats on launching.

~~~
andyokdj
I worked most nights during the week for a 1-2hrs and every weekend, sometimes
spending full days working on the weekends. I found the time when I could and
delegated work to my cofounders who did the same. It was just a lot of hard
work and extra hours. I sacrificed some social life but still managed to enjoy
New York hugely over the past year.

~~~
lusr
I think people underestimate how much you can get done if you commit to at
least 1-2 hours during the week EVERY DAY, and at least another 12-16 hours on
the weekend. Working during the week is critical, even if it's difficult,
simply because it keeps the momentum going and motivation fresh (in my
experience of trying it every other way). It's also a deceptive 30-80%
additional capacity than what you have merely working weekends.

Oh and paying attention to what you're doing and how long it took, and making
sure not to waste unnecessary time on nice-to-haves or unnecessary research
rather than critical functionality. This is particularly important if you're
working alone; I find reviewing my source control checkins and my
PivotalTracker progress very helpful in this respect.

Then again I ended a great relationship for work so perhaps I'm not the best
exemplar of priorities.

~~~
arscan
Sounds good in practice, but I have a real hard time building anything in 1
hour increments. I need a good 3-4 hours scheduled to make solid progress on
any of my side projects. I have a feeling others may have the same problem...
and PG described this pretty well in his "makers schedule" essay.

~~~
lusr
I used to believe that too but while 5 blocks of 1 hour each aren't as
efficient as 1 block of 5 hours, it's still better than 0 hours.

Today I've managed to get Hadoop set up in pseudo-distributed mode in 1.5
hours on a fresh VM I just installed, while reading a tutorial in the
background waiting for stuff to download and install. Tomorrow I'll think more
about how I want to convert my crawler prototype from C# over to Ruby on the
cluster and read a bit more about how this all works while I wait for code to
compile or packages to run at the day job.

Even the 15min I spend eating while at the client are used to think, read and
plan my next step or how I will implement something. Same for the drive
to/from work. Yup I talk to myself. There's a lot of time in the day when
you're supposedly busy that you can get constructive work done.

In the evening I'll start working on getting my first test job to run. At the
end of every day it looks like I've made little progress, but at the end of
the week I'm certain to be happy with my progress (something I learned from
David Burns' "Feeling Good" is to actually test your hypotheses; if you _feel_
you didn't accomplish much, actually _test_ it by listing what you did and
you'll be probably be pleasantly surprised).

~~~
arscan
Thanks, I appreciate the examples. I think a lot of it comes down to
organization -- with some planning I certainly could find smaller items that
fit into 1 hour blocks (configuration, writing tests, documentation, etc).
Depends on the nature of the project though.

Good point on capturing and reviewing progress. I'm always trying to get
better at that.

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jcampbell1
I am surprised that an ex-finance guy would start this type of company. The
music industry is a startup death trap with more than 99% of startups failing.
Of all the possible industries to make money, why would someone voluntarily
join an industry with declining revenue, nasty lawyers, and a million other
competitors?

~~~
antoko
While I agree with the points you make regarding the industry The OP answers
your question in his post - albeit without directly addressing any of your
negative points about the industry.

 _For whatever reason, this video incited a thought about the power of free
music and the power of fans as promoters of the music they love. This concept
consumed me._

And...

 _If you are ever consumed by an idea, focus on that idea and see where it
takes you. Your obsession with it likely means that it embodies your passions
and values._

------
icode
This reminds me of a startup mantra from the 90s: Eat like a fly, poop like an
elephant.

So far there is nothing. A website with a music player and a share-on-facebook
button. But the blog post sounds like Andy already turned this thing into a
billion dollar company and now bows down to the mere mortals to share the
wisdom he gathered. On his heroic journy to fame and riches.

~~~
freshhawk
I didn't catch that but you are absolutely right.

I have a feeling this project is going to turn out just like those ones from
the 90's did too.

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breckinloggins
The most important part of the article:

"If you are ever consumed by an idea, focus on that idea and see where it
takes you. Your obsession with it likely means that it embodies your passions
and values."

~~~
jcampbell1
Obsession is a dangerous thing. It clouds your judgment and ability to think
rationally. Sure, it provides the energy to work all day on Saturday and
Sunday, but it also causes you to quit a high paying job to work on a webpage
with a play button and a link to share on Facebook.

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PaulHoule
it's hard to make money on obscure music.

one of the seo masterminds of our time tried to build a site that featured new
bands. the backlinks were a work of art.

i guess it ranked well for a bunch of bands nobody had ever heard of but that
doesn't help you when people are searching for "hootie and the blowfish"

~~~
286c8cb04bda
What would I search for if I wanted to know more about this story?

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fourmii
Congrats on the launch! And thanks for sharing your experience with us. I'm at
the start of a very similar process. I've been sitting on an idea over the
past year and had a false start with a co-founder. I'm now pushing on on my
own, so you've given me some great ideas on the various stages. Thanks for the
inspiration!! Good luck!!

~~~
desertfox508
Fourmii - I'm about a two months away from launching my site after having not
one, but two false starts with co-founders that made me decide to go at it
alone as well. In hindsight I wish I had a co-founder or at least a mentor
who's built and launched a site before. Most of my decisions were off and/or
not immediately necessary for the launch. Even choices that I thought were
brilliant turned out not as expected. None of this has to do with the product
itself, but just getting from development to launch. good luck!

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tomgallard
I think the most important issue with building a company as you work full time
is the need for absolute leanness.

Out of necessity you have far fewer hours than you'd like to work on a
project, and this really forces you to focus on whether each thing you do
takes you closer to being able to launch.

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corkill
Seems to me like you can win by default for people like me.

Just want to click a website and start playing music that's decent in one
click, I can't be stuffed researching or downloading albums. In europe all the
sites I liked in the USA have we are coming soon banners, aka massive
opportunity to win by default at the moment in terms of traffic (although to
be honest I have no idea how you would get me to buy something, guilt me into
supporting artists by showing them pictures of their kids maybe).

Minus points:

Keeps playing the same songs, I don't really even notice because I am music
retarded, but my gf will kill me if I put your website back up.

Tried to login with facebook to see if that would play me some different ones,
says it wants permission to post to my wall. No way in hell am I giving you
that.

------
seivan
How much work did the technical co-founder do compared to you and how much %
did he get?

~~~
andyokdj
he got between 10-20% equity and we were doing a comparable amount of work
(10-20hr per week) up until I quit my job. now I'm putting in more hours.

~~~
akie
Hmm, well I guess you were lucky to have found someone competent who took that
offer. I'm not sure if I would be willing to work equal hours for 4 times less
equity.

~~~
goatcurious
I'm assuming the Biz dev cofounder would have taken a similar amount. Which
should make the equation a little better. However, I agree - he got a good
deal with the cofounders (not sure if that is necessarily a good thing)

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jakeonthemove
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Although I think you should've delved
into the details of working on your own project after coming home from a
stressful job - it definitely isn't easy - even if you have the drive and are
excited, your brain is tired and it's just super hard to work at your full
capacity.

Hope everything works out though, good luck!

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yitchelle
First off, congrats on the launching the site! It looks great. I played with
it but I am having a hard time trying to figure out the business model. Is the
key revenue stream advertising?

When I look at last.fm, it also sells other music related items such as
ringtones, and also advertises. I can't understand last.fm as well.

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kappaknight
Interesting post indeed. However, I was expecting you to quit your day job
once this was able to pay for itself and the salary of three people. I did not
expect to see you quit it to launch this.

Am I missing something? What's your monetization plan? How long before you're
profitable?

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fatbat
I wish this article included a rough range of the monetary spend since it
looks like most of the work was "outsourced" to others. Unless it was all
equities?

It would be less impressive if the money amounted to a huge sum! Just
wondering...

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jimmytucson
Did you have a non-compete agreement with the firm you worked for? I would
have thought working in financial services your employer would technically
have first dibs on anything of value you create.

------
demoo
Congrats on getting your product out there!

>Surround yourself with smart people always. I've been struggling with this
one for a while. I've cut time drains and people that keep me down, how to go
the next step?

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Shane_Wolf
Building a product is obviously extremely important, but without the bzdev
skills and ability to launch and scale a business you need a well rounded
team. Not just an all start programmer.

------
madsravn
Congratulations. Very nice post.

It could be cool if you could integrate something like promoters got points
for dj'ing the song in some club or something.

------
goatcurious
How did you manage the legal issues surrounding IP ownership while working at
a full time job? Were your employers aware of your startup?

~~~
joshu
Not all employers care about all IP ownership. They just want stuff done on
their time and stuff relevant to their business to be theirs.

I also built a project that became a startup while I was at a wallst bank.
Although it didn't become a company till after I left.

------
thong
we all too often beat up on founders that stay at their jobs before committing
full time to a startup. staying at your job isn't always a bad idea at first.
taking the risk out of the startup lifestyle suggests this guy will do the
same with investors' money when it comes to the life of his new company.

------
caublestone
Congrats to you and Moses :P!

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jsavimbi
> I obviously needed to find someone technical to build the website, whether a
> freelancer or a cofounder.

Two jokers drop out of Goldman Sachs after a very short employment stint and
hire some kid to build them a Facebook-based link-sharing game that targets
emerging artists who have no money on the most garish website I've seen in
quite some time and all he gets credited with is Lead Engineer. Not even Mr.
Lead Engineer.

If non of the above doesn't embarrass you from turning down below-market deals
with non-technical, inexperienced dreamers than nothing will. You need to
recognize that your skill set is a finite commodity and the more time you
spend on loser projects like these, the less in-demand you become. On the
other hand, everyone knows that you'll do almost anything for cheap and you'll
end up as the "coder dude" while the co-founders debate the merits of shitty
internet-generated logotypes and branding as they plan their trips to SXSW.

tl;dr: Facebook-based link-sharing games are loser projects you need to avoid.

~~~
reason
You have basically speculated the intentions of three people, the
relationships they have with one another, and the outcome of their company all
from this one line. Pretty impressive. It sounds like you've watched The
Social Network one too many times. Constructive criticism would be of much
more value.

Further, it seems you are completely ignorant to the contributions that
skilled businesspeople can make to a startup, and instead you've opted to
succumbing to the played-out stereotype of all finance guys preying on the
young, nubile, innocent programmer who just wants to build things and do good
for the world.

~~~
jsavimbi
> you are completely ignorant to the contributions that skilled businesspeople
> can make to a startup

In this case, can you please list the contributions that you think were made
by the non-technical, strategic members of this team, and why you think they
should share in 80% to 90% of the company vs. the 10% to 20% that our esteemed
colleague who actually built the feature did?

And I call it a feature because a one-page that tracks your likes and posts
them to your timeline making very basic use of Facebook's API is a feature,
not a startup and it certainly isn't a going business concern that may turn a
profit large enough to grow beyond its current MVP.

Bandpage.com very well may be a product, but what we have here is a very basic
implementation of the API and nothing else aside from a horribly-conceived
design. I won't even mention the uselessness of the so-called awards or even
ask what prompted the use of Disqus for a Facebook app. I guess those were all
consuming business decisions that took a year to hash out.

tl;dr: Exactly what value did the layperson add to this thing?

~~~
doktrin
> tl;dr: Exactly what value did the layperson add to this thing?

They made it happen. The site would simply not exist were it not for the
dream/passion/drive/whim/fantasy of the OP. In a more deserving context, the
following story could be referenced :

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus>

That said, I'm not going to defend the merits of the site itself. It looks
awful, adds seemingly no value and isn't something I would think of actually
using.

However, we should not trivialize the act of bringing ideas to fruition.
That's what it's all about, after all.

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quasisimple
I find this post strange: there is no demonstrated success aside from having
the courage to quit a job to pursue a start-up (which is commendable but very
different from achieving success), yet the author appears to be giving advice.
This feels like a captain starting a voyage who, a few days after leaving
shore, sets himself up as an experienced person. This seems more useful from a
historical point of view than from a practical point of view.

Max Levchin compiled a very nice list of pointers here:
<http://www.quora.com/Max-Levchin/answers>

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sabj
60-65 hrs a week isn't so many :)

