When should you start a startup?

by davidbalbert • 15 years ago

31 42 15 years ago

orijing• 15 years ago

> You don't want to start a startup.

I'd like to add "enough" to the end of this option: You don't want to start a startup enough. That's because starting one is just one of your many options--perhaps your current job is paying you a very comfortable salary. You have to compare starting a startup to your best alternative (opportunity cost), and see if you want it enough to justify giving up that alternative.

wpietri• 15 years ago

Excellent point. It's worth noting that there are a substantial group of people who say they want to do something but never find the time. Writer John Scalzi has an excellent response to that: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/09/16/writing-find-the-time-...

sskates2• 15 years ago

"This is why I don’t have an acting career, or am a musician — because as much as I’d like those, I somehow stubbornly don’t actually do the things I need to do in order to achieve them."

Being an entrepreneur isn't about sitting on a beach enjoying your millions, it's about solving lots of intensely hard (and often frustrating) problems.

jrsmith12798• 15 years ago

>As you age, you naturally accumulate things that will make >it harder for you to start your startup: a spouse, kids, >aging parents who need care, an expensive lifestyle, a >career, respectability.

I have to say I completely agree with this. I'm only 31 and finding it hard to take on much risk given the fact that my family relies on my income very heavily. This leaves me trying to spend time in the evenings and weekends to work a B2B SaaS product idea that I have. I've thought about paying another developer to write it, but it's an app that's targeted towards the IT Services/Managed Services industry and writing it requires some background knowledge of that industry.

karolist4• 15 years ago

Sounds like you need a technical co-founder, in this case - someone who's technical and believes in your idea enough to put time developing for it.

jrsmith12798• 15 years ago

I agree and I've tried that route a bit, but I've had a little bit of trouble conveying the idea to someone else in order to get them to believe in it. I've found that I really need to create a mockup if I'm going to go that route and I just haven't taken the time to do that yet. I also live in an area that's not rich in technical-minded people (Waco, Texas), much less developers. So finding someone locally is almost surely out of the question.

dutchrapley3• 15 years ago

There are no excuses. If the it is important and matters, you will always find a way.

If you have the know how, start by spending 30 minutes a day on it. Get up 30 minutes earlier. Pack your lunch and work on it then. Small steps are important. Try to make time daily.

You're in the process of discovering a product. When you close your eyes, can you see yourself using this product? Do have this feeling that you're using it as if it already exists? Do you find yourself constantly thinking about it?

Hiring developers can be toxic - they'll certainly be able bill hours for building features, but would they be able to help you discover your product?

jrsmith12798• 15 years ago

Not sure why people down voted your comments. I agree with what you're saying and I appreciate the feedback.

I work for an IT Services provider as a Level II technician and I am in charge of providing a certain service to our clients on a daily basis. To administer this service I have to take time out of my normal routine of working tickets and sometimes I find it hard to find the time to do that. My app would make administering this service easier for me, but it would also allow me to pass the duties down to a Level I tech who isn't as busy with working tickets. There's not a product on the market that does this and I believe that the market is huge as far as IT Services providers goes.

Writing this app is all I can think about. I think about it before I go to sleep every night, I think about it in the shower, I think about it all day at work. I don't think it'll make me rich, but that's really not my goal anyways. It's more about contributing to the industry that I work in to make life easier for techs like myself.

I sort of agree with your thoughts on hiring developers, but I have to believe that this isn't the case with all developers. I think it's possible to find a developer to work with me instead of for me and in that case I think they'd play a key role in the discovery of the product.

maximilianburke• 15 years ago

I like the way you think but I'd caution you on working on your own project while on lunch as I think some employers may not be welcoming of you doing that while on "their time" with "their resources", even if you're on your lunch break using your own software/hardware.

noahc5• 15 years ago

Is it a CRUD app? Forget the marketing, etc. Are you only Creating, reading, updating and deleting data?

If that's the case pick a language + web framework and go to town nights and weekends.

jrsmith12798• 15 years ago

CRUD is a good part of it and I'm planning on using RoR, but there's also part of it that will interface with a POP3 server and do some regex on the messages that it grabs. The pricing model for the app will be a recurring monthly fee based on the number of clients the customer has signed up for the service. I'm still looking at options for handling the payment (recurly, braintree ..etc) and I've never built an app with a payment system, so I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around that sort of thing.

nir2• 15 years ago

I think the author misses the major argument, which is "I have to make rent". Most startups never get to the point of making a profit.

This is why now isn't generally a good time to start a company (unless you are able to raise substantial investment). Now is a great time to get a job at a funded startup, save money, learn skills, make friends - once the bubble pops you'd have the basic ingredients to start your own thing (and - possibly - without a job anyway, so have nothing to lose)

shazow• 15 years ago

I would say that falls under "I have debt." Perhaps better phrased is "I can't afford to bootstrap."

At the very least, it limits your options in terms of what kind of startup path you take. If you can't afford to bootstrap, then your only options are either working around a fulltime gig or trying to raise money out the door (from investors or friends/family or loan).

nicholasjbs2• 15 years ago

This works well assuming you're disciplined about it. When I graduated, I knew I wanted to start my own startup, but I planned on bootstrapping and needed money. I worked two years exactly, living cheaply and saving as much as I could.

My job was comfortable and I really loved it. It would have been very easy to stay. The advice to start "now" is really a reminder that if your answer is always "tomorrow," you'll never get started.

karolist4• 15 years ago

So.. I assume you did start a startup eventually?

EDIT: nevermind, looks like you're co-founder with OP.

nir2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure discipline has any place here at all. If there aren't 10 moments every day in your corporate job when you wish you were in a startup and could do things your way, then you probably wouldn't enjoy being in a startup anyway.

haploid• 15 years ago

There is nothing stopping anyone from doing a startup on the side. Needing to pay rent and working on your own project are not mutually exclusive.

edw5192• 15 years ago

I know OP means well, but there's one piece of advice that's exactly the opposite of my experience.

First he says:

There is very little you will learn in your current job...that will make you better at starting your own startup.

Then:

Good ideas only come through trial and error.

Both are terrible advice.

There is a whole universe of things you can learn in your current job: technique, experience, exposure to different ideas (in practice, not in theory), how to manage projects, how to deal with people, what to look out for in real world situations, and the two most important things: what NOT to do and what people need.

I can think of no better way to get good actionable ideas for a startup than from one's job.

And for many aspiring entrepreneurs, having a job and learning a few of these things is the single biggest missing piece in their bag of personal assets.

If you have a great idea and the wherewithal to start a business, then by all means go for it when you're ready. In the meantime, there's nothing wrong with having a job; it's probably the best thing you could be doing until you're ready.

karolist4• 15 years ago

That depends totally on the job. If it's a well paid megacorp job - very safe, but far from something that might spring ideas in your head, you're locked in a little corner doing your thing. Only in small companies the business side of things is transparent enough for the technical people.

edw5192• 15 years ago

If it's a well paid megacorp job - very safe, but far from something that might spring ideas in your head, you're locked in a little corner doing your thing. Only in small companies the business side of things is transparent enough for the technical people.

This is exactly the opposite of my experience. The bigger the company, the bigger the problems, in both number and size. It may seem counter-intuitive, but I have worked in many "megacorps" and you'd probably be stunned by the extent of their needs and their difficulty getting them fulfilled. I have hundreds of ideas accumulated over years of enterprise programming that I'll probably never have time to get to.

Sometimes I think it would be a great idea to put a tiger team of hungry programmers together with the right enterprise users. But since that rarely happens from within, attacking their problems from the outside is still probably the best approach.

karolist4• 15 years ago

Maybe I'll just clarify what I mean by a megacorp. I'm talking from experience at working for a company with well over 100k employees. My most motivating and entertaining jobs were in companies with less than 50 employees. These however were the most tiring, so bootstrapping and "side thing" was out of the question.

sskates2• 15 years ago

I have to say I agree with "good ideas only come through trial and error". Perhaps "only" is too strong of a word, but if you ask any successful entrepreneur about how many ideas they've been through before figuring out the one that led to their success, I'm sure the average will be quite high.

noahc5• 15 years ago

I think a job is great for learning, if you take an active role.

For me, I was working in IT, but I was able to build non-IT systems related marketing, sales, product development, HR, and business.

What I would do is listen for someone to say, "I wish I knew X" or "I wish we could do Y differently" and then I'd either write up a marketing/product report or else redesign their old system and have it to them a couple days later.

I learned a ton this way, but I was very active in achieving it.

davidbalbert3• 15 years ago

Perhaps I was overly strong, but my point was that whatever you're learning at your job, you'll learn it faster if you're starting your own company. I worked a few jobs right out of college and I learned some stuff that I think is applicable to our startup, but I was still virtually clueless when we actually went to start it.

When it comes to the quickest way to put yourself in a position to successfully start your startup, there's no comparison between learning at your job and just starting it.

This is super important because the longer you wait, the more risky it becomes to start your startup in the first place.

veyron• 15 years ago

The differences are much more involved: learning as part of a startup, especially if you have debt, is learning under duress. Learning while on a job, when the issue of the next paycheck doesnt loom over you, is a more steady process

arihelgason• 15 years ago

Good post. I did my first startup straight out of college, which was great for a couple of reasons.

- I was used to living off very little. I didn't develop expensive tastes fueled by a regular paycheck. It helped that I could live at home while bootstrapping. My opportunity cost was getting an entry level job somewhere for decent pay.

- I was used to managing my own time and being disciplined about work schedules. This was helped by attending university in the UK where we had 6 hours' obligatory classes per week or less. The rest was optional lectures and self study time.

davidbalbert3• 15 years ago

Totally forgot about this point. Starting up right out of college is great because you know how to live like a college student :).

gamble• 15 years ago

An even better question would be 'what are you willing to give up to start a startup?'.

On most measures (experience, contacts, etc) you're better waiting a few years before starting. The trick is that people tend to accumulate personal and financial obligations during that time that make a startup a much bigger sacrifice. If you end up on the spouse->house->kids->midlife-crisis-at-45 track before starting, you'll have a very hard time changing direction.