Ask HN: How much runway did you have when you started your startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15020053

by HD134606c • 9 years ago

30 19 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

How much runway did you have when you started your startup?

nickfogle• 9 years ago

3 months and whatever I could drum up contracting part/time

joshontheweb• 9 years ago

Infinite. I did contract work part-time while I worked on the business. This was a blessing and a curse. It made sure that I didn't fail due to lack of money but also probably made things take longer than they should have.

contingencies• 9 years ago

Years.

AndrewKemendo2• 9 years ago

About three months of savings between myself and my co-founder.

rnprince3• 9 years ago

That is not a lot of runway. What happened to make it work for you? Did you get investors or revenue within those three months?

AndrewKemendo2• 9 years ago

We got enough traction that we could get a seed investment.

jboggan2• 9 years ago

First time: 3 months

Second time: 5 months

I am coming up to the end of my personal runway on this current venture but I raised some money from friends and family and I'm able to pay myself a little bit now! Meanwhile I know people who are sitting on 4,5,6 years of runway and are still just talking about doing it. Whatever it is, if it excites you and you can convince others of that, go do it today!

I'd suggest about 6 months of runway to be safe, but we aren't doing this to be safe are we?

rnprince3• 9 years ago

Could you explain why you think six months is good? Is the goal to get investors within that six months? Or revenue?

jboggan2• 9 years ago

The goal is to get something that's going to extend that six months, whether it is convincing investors to contribute to your venture or convincing customers to give you a dollar. Ideally you can do both, but if you can't do either with the full force of your time then something is off and you should shift your efforts.

I think six months is good because it is enough time to figure out if something isn't going to work while being short enough to not be an insurmountable challenge to save up for. I don't have a family yet so there is bias in that number, I would probably say 12 months if I was helping to support one.

timavr• 9 years ago

-2 months

quickthrower2• 9 years ago

Oh!

jwilliams• 9 years ago

Twice so far and it was 12-months each.

Btw, that was personal runway - i.e. didn't get paid for that period. Rather than raising 12-months of getting paid.

jamesmishra• 9 years ago

About 12 months, but it's easy to spend much faster than you expect.

Although if I were giving advice to someone else doing a startup where it's difficult to get immediate traction (e.g. hard tech, enterprise SaaS, hardware, etc.), I'd remind them of the Jason Lemkin rule that it typically takes 24 months to get anywhere[1].

[1] https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-...

muzani• 9 years ago

First time: 6 months.

Market validation in 1 month, very strong traction with no marketing. Spent 6 months trying to find investors.

Started borrowing lots of money to keep it afloat. It had good revenue but not a profit (e-commerce profit margins were around 6%). Couldn't get investors despite two accelerators, so we sold off the company after 14 months. But we made a good profit even after paying off debts.

Second time: years(?)

Ended up trying to do too many features. Still "wasn't ready for launch" 9 months in, ended up building features with no market validation. I ended up quitting the company because no progress was being made.

First and second startups were essentially the same, except the second one had a much bigger team, more ambitious.

I'd say keep your runway as short as possible and try to launch something by 3 months.

toptalkedbooks• 9 years ago

Two weeks ago, i began to collect data and write website (it spent one week), and now i have a little profit.

i am proud of it, but i don't think it is startup, maybe just a side project.

mtmail• 9 years ago

cofounder was struggling paying rent. Not the best start and my advice is to have a honest talk with all cofounders about their finances from the beginning.

Wellacopia• 9 years ago

Do you mean from an individual standpoint? Both our founders have full-time jobs so they can make a living and the startup has been a year in development. We don't have much in the way of expenses as of yet. Since we are not paying anything for marketing (just social media, growth hacking), and our "product" is a service/software, we don't have any manufacturing costs. No office space needed either. I guess technically our runway is infinite but as we are trying to grow, that will change. And it seems, once an investor says he/she is going to invest, it usually takes 3 months to close.

tonyedgecombe• 9 years ago

None, I just dipped in and out in the downtime between contracts. This went on for a couple of years until I had enough revenue from the startup to cover my living expenses.

Ask HN: How much runway did you have when you started your startup?

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