Who works full time at their own startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3476004

by kkt262 • 15 years ago

11 9 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Would love to hear about fellow Hacker News users who work full time at a startup that they founded.

Are you able to do it because you make enough money or perhaps because you got funding?

mindcrime• 15 years ago

Well... I am for at least a few days, since I got laid off from my previous day-job. I'd been doing the "nights and weekends" thing all along, and now I get a little while to work on this as much as I want. But the startup isn't funded yet and we don't have any revenue yet, so I'll be taking another day-job at some point. I've been chewing on the idea of just milking the unemployment benefit as long as it lasts while I work on the startup, but I already have some discussions underway about a new day-job, so we'll see.

In the meantime, it is nice to get up and spend all day working on my own thing; instead of working all day doing mind numbingly boring shit for a company that's not going anywhere. :-)

tstegart• 15 years ago

We're doing it half and half. My co-founder has a day job and I'm working on the start-up full time while living off savings after working like crazy at my last job.

mbarlow• 15 years ago

I've been working on my startup fulltime for close to 6 months now. I've been able to do it because of savings.

Ancient• 15 years ago

I put way more time in my startup than my freelance and little part-time job (combined), so in essence, I try to have as little expenses as possible and live within my means with whatever money comes thru freelance channels until it runs out (rinse & repeat). My goal is to work full-time and earn more thru my own startup within the next six months.

kkt262• 15 years ago

Interesting. No one responded that does their startup fulltime without any other source of income or savings. I didn't even think about the fact that you could just be working on your startup living off your savings.

akg• 15 years ago

I've recently quit my job to work on my startup full time. I do have some money saved up and am living cheaply. At some point you have to take a chance on yourself and do what you want. Life is too short to be working on things you don't want to do; that was the primary reason for me to devote myself full time. I also wrote about this in slightly longer prose, if you are interested:

http://www.akashkgarg.com/essay/therighttime.html

zerostar07• 15 years ago

Does a 1-person company qualify as a startup? Because if yes i 've been doing it for 3 years

sixQuarks• 15 years ago

I've been working full-time on my own sites (I don't really think of them as startups), since 1997.

priitp• 15 years ago

We've been working full-time with 2 co-founders, for almost a month now. We took a loan to finance it, and hope that we will start to make revenue soon to pay it back :)

The product: www.plumbr.eu

Who works full time at their own startup?

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