Ask HN: What's your day-to-day life like running a startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112460

by route3 • 16 years ago

2 2 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Plenty of HN'ers have shared their thoughts on the "do" and "do not" when trying to get a startup off the ground (thank you for sharing!).

What happens when your startup has hit "cruising altitude"[1]? Do you enjoy the flexibility of owning your own business? Are you able to explore more hobbies and spend more time doing things you enjoy? Any regrets or surprises?

Do you ever pause and think, "Wow, writing those first lines of code for MyApp was one of the smartest decision I ever made"?

[1] - "Cruising altitude" for me would be equaling my current salary at my desk job so I could maintain my already frugal, but enjoyable, lifestyle along with the challenge of running my own business. I'm sure many of you probably have a more "grand" vision.

mindcrime• 16 years ago

What happens when your startup has hit "cruising altitude"[1]?

I'm not there yet, so my daily life is:

(M-F)

1. Wake up after getting far less sleep than I really need, because I stayed up too late hacking on my project.

2. Go to work at $DAYJOB. Spend ~8 hours there, doing mostly mind-numbingly boring work. Drink too much coffee. Go for a walk around lunch-time.

3a. Leave $DAYJOB, drive to Barnes & Noble. Drink an espresso containing drink of some sort, browse the books and magazines, maybe buy something. Sit in the cafe and hack on my project for anywhere from an hour to 4 hours.

3b. Leave $DAYJOB, drive home. Put on a pot of coffee, spend rest of the evening hacking, excluding time taken to cook dinner (and possibly walk to the grocery store for provisions.)

4. Stay up too late hacking, researching, reading, and wishing there was a way to magically shrink my TODO list.

lather, rinse, repeat. Sometimes steps 3-4 may be replaced with "Leave $DAYJOB, go to a user group meeting, or meet somebody for drinks/dinner after work."

Fri-Sun:

1. Get off $DAYJOB on Friday evening. Drive home, put on coffee, sit down in the chair with the laptop, start coding. Continue until bleary eyed and verging on collapse (usually about 6-7am). Get up Sat. about 12:00-1:00, watch tv, surf the 'net for a bit, idle around the house for a while to let the brain rest. About 3:00'ish, sit down and start hacking again. Go until 8:00 or so, get up, go to Barnes & Noble, drink a latte or something, code for another hour or two. Drive back home, watch a movie or something, then stay up coding until ??? (3-4am usually). Go to sleep. Get up Sunday, write more code for a couple of hours, then do laundry, then back to coding, and misc. "stuff" (plan schedule for the coming week, update TODO list, send emails requesting meetings, blah, blah.)

There are exceptions to that basic pattern from time to time, and that's obviously leaving out a lot of details, but that's the basic pattern of my life right now; FWIW.

route3• 16 years ago

I have an amazingly similar pattern at the moment. The lunch time walk while at $DAYJOB is perhaps one of the most productive 30 minutes of my day. The combination of fresh air, getting the blood moving while walking and some caffeine is perfect for thinking over ideas. Do not neglect this.

I posed this question to HN for motivational purposes: how awesome is it when you aren't balancing full-time $DAYJOB and full-time hacking. When your startup is profitable, steady and you can finally go fishing at 11am on a Tuesday simply because you can.

Ask HN: What's your day-to-day life like running a startup?

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