Ask HN: Evening and weekend startups - how confident were you?

[cmontgomeryb]

I have been working for a few months of evenings and weekends on a web app. The app first and foremost scratches my own itch - but I know for sure that it fixes problems with pre-existing competition, so I know there is a potential market for it as many of the pre-existing competition are freemium products (my intention also).

For further validation, the company I work for between 9am and 5pm uses their own in-house version of my product, which is also flawed in ways which mean it is not used properly. This results is lots of confusion (resulting confusion is the cause of a team meeting last week and an upcoming team meeting next month) no doubt resulting in financial loss in terms of wasted work hours.

For these reasons I am happy that my product has a place and is worth money; but for those of you who have been in my position and done it - how confident were you in your product before you went live?

My ultimate aim financially is to make enough money to reduce my reliance on my salary for those luxury purchases that I don't make at the moment. Is there a way to know if I'm wasting my time, or does this just come with time and experience?

Thanks guys, I'd appreciate any insight!

[willvarfar]

One tangential word of advice: be very cautious about telling anyone that you are doing this; your company, when they hear about it indirectly, might feel they own it.

Your contract may or may not make this ownership issue clear. The laws in your country may or may not make this ownership issue clear. However, that's all irrelevant. If anyone at the company feels that the company ought to own your product, then it gets very sticky, uncomfortable and possibly expensive.

And you really don't want to end up without job and side project.

That's my tangential advice.

[cmontgomeryb → willvarfar]

This reply applies to robwgibbons - thanks for the replies guys.

I had started work on this product before I started working at the company - it just happens that the company had a need for a similar product and had chosen (I believe in the year immediately prior to my joining them) to develop their own.

Also I can't remember the wording, but my contact does explicitly state that any of my own work outside of working hours does belong to me. This was added to my contract by my boss after I asked about their policy during my interview. I should also note that the system that the company developed is not (and will never be) for sale or for use by anybody outside of the company.

That said, nobody at the company knows about the specifics of my side project, only that I work on something in my own time.

[robwgibbons]

The first thought that comes to mind is, if you're re-creating something your company uses in-house, you need to watch out for IP infringement.

[cmontgomeryb → robwgibbons]

Thanks for the reply. I do believe I am a-OK in this respect (see my other reply to willvarfar - it was typed as a reply to you aswell) - I'm not directly recreating their system, BUT my system could be used to replace theirs... If that makes sense :)