Ask HN: How do I pull the trigger and start?

[a1235813]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice, maybe some direction, or maybe just someone to kick my ass to tell me what I’m missing. I’m currently working with a good company paying me decent but I feel like I’m not going anywhere. Actually I started feeling this a while back a few years ago and thought of starting my own thing. Why? because I know I can grow myself more and put the full day towards a visible end goal. Where I’m today, I don’t see one. I wake up, goto work, come home, spend time with family, work on my side project, goto sleep and repeat. There are times when my side project takes a back seat because I’d been spent through the day. There are often times I find myself daydreaming at ‘work’ in a meeting about what’s the next thing I’m going to be doing on my side project, maybe a new feature would be nice or how I’d attract customers etc.

So what’s the problem, right? Why don’t I just quit? Because between myself, my wife, and an infant, I’m also supporting 4 other adults; my parents and grandparents. I’m 32 by the way. I’ve got a house to run and support the expenses needed to run a house, the baby and shit just comes up during the day. I’ve always put other people ahead of me and maybe that was my mistake. I’ve always thought to get someone else comfortable before thinking about myself. What bothers me now is that I used to believe that it’ll get better but it isn’t getting better. I find myself taking on more responsibilities, more demands and more expectations on me and there’s always some fucking reason why I shouldn’t quit my job to just go full throttle in working my own business. Mostly the reasoning is that how are we going to support the house, there are other people that I’m supporting, I’ve got a kid and I’ve got to think of him. I AM thinking of him and where I can take our family years from now if I start going hard on my own now. But then, there’s that Risk guilt-trip bs. Wait until we’re more stable she says, but doing this I’m going to just keep getting older and who knows if it’ll actually be getting any better.

I feel like I’ve got this vision of where I want to be, I’m sure like everyone else. I think I know the way but I keep hitting a block actually getting going. Now I’m married and supposedly more responsible. Is this what’s called a catch-22, in order to do something I have to do something else that is kind of depending on the first thing I’m doing?

Have any of you found yourself in a similar situation that you felt you were tied down and tried getting out of this rut? I don’t want to just let the people who depend on me hang but because of them, I’m hanging. I don’t see myself doing what I’m doing now when I’m 40 and I sure don’t want to be doing this then. My fear is that 8 years down, I’m going to look back at today and say some bullshit like ‘I should have tried harder or I didn’t give it a shot’. I think that will kill all that’s me. I’m scared of being at that spot looking back and justifying my unsatisfactory actions on a disguise of responsibility.

I’m fine with trying and failing, but I can’t afford to give up my job, drop my income and take this Risk. That’s the dogfood I get to hear all the time so I’m just repeating it here. We’re just breaking even so savings are very low.

Any thoughts?

[staunch]

You are in a tough position. There's only two good outs that I know of:

1) Raise money and take the salary you need to support yourself.

2) Bootstrap a business that makes enough to support yourself.

To raise money you'll probably need impressive growth, you need to prove users love what you're doing (which is hard).

To bootstrap you probably want to go more of the SaaS route. Build some niche thing that's easy to charge for. Look at businesses like Olark, Mibbit, Sendgrid, Clicky. Those kinds of things are (relatively) simple and people will pay good money for them.

Work in the morning. Wake up early and dedicate the first 2-3 hours of your day to your "real" job and then go do your day job.

Make your project small and polished. Be the easy/simple/beautiful solution. Don't compete on features.

Launch within a few months, don't drag it out.

Good luck.

[helen842000]

If you DID quit your job. What would you do on the first day?

Would you go into coding furiously, look at how to attract customers? What's the next step that requires your full working week?

It's very tempting to just throw all your spare time at a project, convinced that it needs more time, when all it needs is more progress.

Maybe spend the odd vacation day on it, like a 4 whole days (Friday to a Monday) see what you get done and how it feels.

I quit my perm job in 09. Currently contracting and working on my side project on eves/weekends.

I've made much more progress since I started to structure my mini "working day" for when I get home. I cross off a couple of tasks in my notebook and I know when I'm done each day.

I don't think you need to quit yet, focus on getting more out of the hours that you already have.

You can then enjoy the rest of your free time and spend important time with your son & family without feeling that you should be working still.

I'd be interested to hear what industry your project is in, There are plenty of folks here that will help if they can!

[d_r]

You haven't mentioned how your side project is doing. Have you seen reached any milestones/small successes? Is it something you can monetize, like a SaaS website (as staunch wrote below) or perhaps an iPhone app? If you are already spending some free time working on a side project, you're on a great track. What's actually hard is to allocate time to this every single day, since as you noticed, other important things come in the way. A couple of hours here and there likely won't do it, but this doesn't mean you have to go "cold turkey" yet.

In your position, I wouldn't recommend quitting the day job just yet until you have some financial buffer, so you'd need to figure out a revenue stream first. You don't have to passively wait until things get better, but instead focus on shipping some things and perfecting your art.

Finally, your family (and especially your spouse) has to be on board with this, and it will help you immensely. If you're spending those few hours on a computer, they should know that you're working on something and not, say, reading the news. It'll take some time (or achievements) for them to take it seriously, but, again, this will really help you.

Best of luck to you, and don't feel trapped. You have to be genuinely excited and know that you're doing the right thing every day that'll take you to where you want to be.

[DjMojoRisin]

Your in a tough spot, but you should just focus on working on your side project and make a priority; if you can get it generating revenue and/or getting a ton of users you should be able to switch from your current day job to your "side project".

I think that this is a problem that plagues a lot of would be entrepreneurs...and there is no optimal solution.

I'd say just get your family on board with your ambitions; since if you are not able to do that, then it will be extremely hard for you to convince users/investors about the benefits of your product. And once you have your family onboard, and have gotten some success with your side project, you should quit your job....but until then keep your day job.

[md1515]

I think there are a lot of good points in the thread. I understand your risk that makes it seemingly impossible to leave your job. I would agree that without many paid customers it is not worth it to do so.

Try to spend the first few hours after you wake up on your project (I have found these to be the most productive hours of the day). Also try to bring a lunch into work and do some work then? Although doing a side project at work could lead to some problems down the road.

If you want to bounce some ideas off of me or anything, send me an email (it is in my profile). I'm not the most useful person in the world, but I'd love to help if I can.

Good luck

[RexM]

Don't quit your day job, yet. Like everyone is saying, keep working on your side project. Stick with it. Keep it small/simple and get it out there. See if people like it and are willing to pay for it. If people are willing to pay for it (even if you're only making $50/month) that's a huge win for your morale. If your side project goes well, eventually you can transition to working on it full time. Good luck!

[a1235813]

thanks everyone, i appreciate your suggestions. i think right now i don't have the option to leave my job. what's clearer to me is that i just need to carve out time for my business every day and making small strides.

so my business/plan is actually 2 part and it's got to do with the real estate and investments industry.

1. building a solution to bring and connect real estate investors together to help them achieve a common goal. i'm working on it part-time but moving very slowly because of the other part of this whole bit.

2. actively be involved with investments myself and use my product/solution when it's ready. the thing is that it does take some time to hunt and act on deals, but it can def be done part time and i'm making some progress on this. this is the meat.

i did get some funding setup aside but it's strictly for my investments pool. i can't quit my job and eat through my funding which is supposed to have it's own purpose.

family/spouse is onboard to some degree. they don't get in my way most of the time.

[veyron]

Is there a way you could bring others onto your side project? I'm sure a multitude of people here would gladly help you if you have a good project.

You shouldn't give up the job yet, especially if you have to support others. You dont want to sabotage yourself trying to become profitable too early (before building the business)

[Ankur84]

If "leave without pay" is an option try that. You can then take 2 weeks or maybe even a month to get your product to a working state. From there you can try to recruit a team and raise angel money before you quit your day job.

[away]

What are you planning on doing if you start a new venture?