Ask HN: What was it like to quit your job and focus on your successful startup?

Just a reminder that life is pretty short, and worst case, you can probably just get another job and only be 6 months to 1 year behind your friends in terms of savings.

I gave the following talk exactly one year ago right when I decided to quit my academic job to focus on my "startup dream" (now https://cocalc.com): http://wstein.org/talks/2016-06-sage-bp/. It's a year later, and the quick summary is that I feel basically really, really happy to be working on this company. It's exciting to be successfully hiring and building a team of people who work very well together and can focus 100% on a specific problem, unlike how things worked for me in my part of academia (pure math research). Though stressful at times, doing what I'm doing now is much less painful than trying to build a company while doing another fulltime job (namely teaching at the University fulltime) -- that really sucked. I'm extremely glad that customers are paying us and investors funded us enough that I can do this.

Having the luxury to focus on one thing, rather than juggling several, is much like having an office that is neat, tidy, and uncluttered. It feels good in the same way. At least by quitting a job and focusing on a startup, you have the option to focus 100% on it. Actually focusing 100% on one thing is a difficult skill in itself, even with the right circumstances; however, it's completely impossible (at least for me) with two fulltime jobs at once, especially jobs like teaching (which involve lots of public speaking at scheduled times) or running a website with paying customers (which demands, e.g., responding to DDOS attacks).

Only asking for opinions from people who were successful is literally asking for survivor bias perspectives.

I dream of working for myself but I've never taken the plunge. My income from side projects is about 1/3 of the way to my minimum number to quit and go full time.

I do a lot of thinking about this, my number is the same as my financial independence / early retirement number.

One of the biggest things that holds me back is medical insurance for a family of 5. Having an employer offsets this cost a LOT.

I did it twice. Both times I failed but I don't regret it. I felt very good when doing it. I lost savings but it was a good live experience.

On the second time I created this plugin: http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/61050/pleasure-play-frame... I tried to make a living of this, I only sold 5 licenses of 25 dollars per year and to develop this plugin took me 2 and a half months of hard work.

Didn't have a problem getting a new job both times.

Well I ran a solo startup so my experience might be different from others but for me, it was like living a dream. While working full-time somewhere, I started this SaaS business and soon after, the monthly income kept doubling to the point I was able to quit my job knowing my living expenses are cared for. When I quit, it was like wow, the feeling of liberation just hits you so hard. I worked for 7 years prior to doing that and now I was free. The feeling of being able to go outside anywhere at any time of the day, go shopping, or go eat at a nice restaurant, just relax at the beach, stuffs you just couldn't do when you are working full-time somewhere. It's like getting out of jail for the first time. That's what it was like for me to quit my job and focus on my startup.

Quitting my job was great!

Let's just say that my mistake was that I was too afraid to hurt my co-founder's feelings. If we parted ways when we should have, I might have actually gotten somewhere. (Then again, I might have gotten nowhere either!)

I had my financial ducks in a row before I did my first startup -- I knew how much "fun money" I could expend getting the startup to work. Most of the horror stories I hear revolve around people who didn't do this.

Self employment is incredible when the money's rolling in, and terrible when it's not. I can't speak for a full fledged startup with funding though because then you just work for investors.

I never returned to my old job... Why would you go back? I did return to working as a contractor for a while. A lot of failed startup engineers become contractors.

I'm back working for a startup again now so I guess I'm just going back and forth.

I've worked for a few startups and none of them has had an exit yet but one of those I have shares in is doing relatively well.

Doing contracting work is a smarter decision in general. You can actually plan to make a sizeable amount of money and then watch it happen without taking any risks - It's all within your control. With startups, you might often feel that it's outside of your control, especially if you're not a co-founder.

I am 2 months into doing this, it feels a lot like when I moved to SF, lot of things up in the air but very promising. I had a 6 month financial plan but it was hard to adapt to the lack of income and seeing my savings decrease month by month, so I'm doing contracting and TaskRabbit. I'm not really a ramen noodles person, so I make due with what I can get at the grocer.

I have a previous coworker who'd love to help me, but I don't want to babysit his work and I feel he's not valuable enough to the business. I would like another cofounder, but it doesn't bother me that I'm doing it all on my own, I have spent the last 10 years getting ready for this, so I'm more than ready. I am doing more than okay on my business alone, but I wish I had some expertise for a second opinion. I am really really thinking about going into an accelerator program or seeking angel investment, but I'm apprehensive about taking cash at this (or any stage). My biggest fear is actually having to get a real job again, I will do anything to prevent that from happening since that means my startup is dead.

I started up twice. First was a e-commerce market place and the second one was into mobile app development. Both failed. I was running them for around 4 years. Now I am back to a full time Job. I never regretted my failures since I learnt a lot from them and now I am working on my 3rd side project hoping to succeed.

1. One day you are excited with the possible opportunities, then you are overwhelmed and then you are depressed. If you leave without a plan, it takes a few months to just get the mind straight. If you do have a plan - it falls apart and you still end up spending a few months that feel unproductive. I am not discouraging on having a plan - you must. But also note that you made a plan with an "employee mindset".

2. 6 month financial backup is usually not enough. I have heard many stories where people try going independent for 6 months, run out of money and start looking for a job. What happens is - entrepreneurship gets into you in that time and if one goes back to a job, I can bet they feel even more frustrated. You need 1.5 years of backup or 2-3 years of "frugal living backup". I struck positive cashflows in just about 5 months, but it wasn't good enough. I distinctly remember thinking "Maybe, I should have done this part time". Then I struck a mini-gold-mine at 8 months. Having a good backup will help you persist longer. I did not have a growth strategy that worked. But I focused on working and doing the right thing. Keep it rolling.

3. The biggest worry I had when starting was about providing "enough" for my family and any emergencies for next 1.5-3 years at any point in time. Unlike many stories, I promised myself not to wait until I go bankrupt or in a lot of debt - Nearing that is a huge red flag, where I would typically exit and take a regular job. However, taking a job is the last thing I want to do. That thing kept me money-oriented for a while and made me work on stuff that generated positive cashflow.

4. Would it have been possible to return to your old job? - Maybe, but I would not want to. I waited too long to jump ship. Infact, my experience on multiple "good" jobs is what is keeping me away from them. Once you taste entrepreneurship, its hard to go back

5. I do not consider myself successful. May be semi-successful, some people see it as success. But I have come a long way from fearing failures. Success may or may not last long. I enjoy the process and the tremendous personal growth it results into. I ensure my financial backup now gives me 5-6 years minimum to start afresh - if I have to. Do not undervalue the role of money - it definitely makes things easier.

6. This is my favorite quote about Karma. I heard it many years back (and thought it was impractical). Especially useful when I feel I did everything right but nothing works: "Karm karo, fal ki chinta mat karo" (Do your duty without thinking about results)

P.S.: I don't know about others, but I have restricted myself into writing lesser HN comments because it takes quite a bit of time/energy. This one is an act of impulse. How do other entrepreneurs feel about this?

The biggest change was how much more free time I had.

When you're building a Nights and Weekends side project, you get used to stealing whatever free hours you can to work on the product. But you also necessarily build things so that they don't take up much of your time every day. If they did, it would interfere with your day job and that just wouldn't work.

So when you remove the day job, you find that suddenly you have this successful business that runs itself in the background and you can do pretty much whatever you want with your day.

Most people in this situation will immediately fill that time up with work on the product, and I did to some extent. But I also made sure to take a bunch of that time just to enjoy with my family. I eventually settled on 2-3 days a week where I was "at work", with the rest devoted to other pursuits. Both me and my wife are rock climbers, which is an "other pursuit" that will happily expand to fill the time available. We're also parents, so ditto there.

I also make a point of downing tools for a while from time to time. Again, because I can.

I took the kids out of school and dragged them off backpacking around SouthEast Asia for a few months the first year. We did a couple more medium sized trips this year, and I took the entire Fall and Spring off because those are the best times for Bouldering in the forest here. Again, work is happy to ramp up or down to accommodate because I never shifted it out of that ability to run on nights and weekends.

So now, I burst for a few weeks at a time on work stuff (with possibly a more relaxed definition of Full Time than most would use), then slow down and relax for a bit.

It's actually not so bad.

I actually have a different take on this. I was building a side project 2 times in my past, to a point where there was some buzz around these side projects. And, I didn't have a job when I was working on these. However, as the products were nearing completion for V1. I got very good offers for contract work. I also had debts, so I took up the jobs. However, this led to the products failing to get any traction.

So, if you are planning to leave a job and have a good product which is getting you even half of the money you need. Leaving your job will only increase the chances of success. However, hanging on to the job while working on a product is going to be much harder.

I'm on my last day at my current job before taking the plunge to focus on my half successful startup! I'm going down in pay to about half, we're still losing money every month for me being employed. Our runway is ~6 months before our savings are out. Basically we have to double the monthly revenue that took 5 slow years to grow up to. Exciting and scary times!!!

I left my permanent position and was lucky enough to continue working on a contract basis to continue covering some of my bills.

I reached a point after about 4 months where I realised the journey to make the business profitable would most likely be a five year slog, and while the opportunity was there it wasn't a cause I felt I could devote 5 years of my life to.

So gave the software for free to the people that were helping with beta testing and went back to my job. I found the most positive thing was how it helped propel my career at my current employer as I got a better role, they seem to have more respect for me afterwards and I operate more independently now.

So I suppose if you can build some sort of safety net before quitting that helps.

This might be slightly offtopic but I've been thinking of working on my own ideas for a decade now. I tried working on projects in the evening and weekends but there isnt enough time. Not only does it effect your social life but also effects your motivation and drive in general. After looking at code on a screen for 7 hours, last thing you want to do is go home and look at more code [I guess this depends on your age, i'm 32 now - not an night owl no more]

Anyway i started contracting last year for this exact reason, at around £300-400 day rate and now i've saved enough to quit and follow my 'dream', my last day is JULY 7th. I have enough savings to last me 2 years, sustaining my current social life. no frugalness.

The way I did it was to start freelancing so that I could pay the expenses with less hours and then use the rest of the time for sideprojects. Finally, one of my sideprojects (https://everydaycheck.com) shows interest and traction, so it's easy for me to just do less freelance hours and put more time into it, hopefully I can get to a point where I can work 100% on it.

I guess the "quit your job" problem only exists if you have major responsibilities, like a family, or paying debt back. Otherwise, it makes no real sense to consider it, the opportunity is too big.

one word: liberating

For me, and probably for most, it's not a matter of quitting your job in order to work on your "successful" startup - if it were already successful then there'd be no issue at all. Rather it's about quitting while the startup is just beginning to look reasonably good, _in order_ to make it a success.

Since I've been working as a mobile developer, and also management consultant (my other career), it's always been extremely easy for me to find a new job whenever I needed, so there has been very little risk involved.

Still, it did require some savings, since our startup is very research intensive and will take several years before we see any revenue. We secured some basic funding now though, and things are looking good for the next stage too so I will only have needed 6 months or so of buffer.

In summary, my view is that if you're a reasonably skilled engineer or have some other attractive occupation, there is nothing to fear. The worst that can happen is really that your startup doesn't work, you'll go back to what you did before with a few months of missed income but with plenty of useful experience.

I don't think there are many situations or cultures where a failed technology startup attempt on your résumé would count against you in any way, in most places quite the opposite.

Am 3-4 months in with concept. Have anchor client and consultancy partnership. The biggest and wildest thing is moving from someone with an idea to a visionary leader in a space. It's fundamentally awesome to take said idea, turn it into a offering and go out on the line with it. I have had nothing but wonderful experiences with others helping me out. I am 40, have 2 kids, a dog and a wife and a pretty good network which I have had to really 'work' (authentically) but the assistance from others, trust and good feelings are something that have made me believe in the human race a bit more! In corporate it's all protectionism and petty arguments AND a visionary thinker is not what they want! I am lucky to have found an excellent co-founder who is a great counter part. Definitely taking/balancing risks, going fast and working really hard (doesn't feel like work building your own thing though) however the finances have to be calculated and I have taken the consulting/product route which seems to be good but converting a service driven model to a recurring revenue model is the goal AND the challenge.

Last year I quit a great full time role to focus on my side project, EmailOctopus (https://emailoctopus.com). Haven't looked back since!

I didn't take the plunge until quite late on, waiting until it was making enough money to comfortably cover my personal expenses. No regrets there - growth was slow in the early days and if I hadn't had the luxury of a monthly pay packet, I probably would have given up before I got the chance to properly validate the business.

Transitioning to full time brought more stress than I expected, but the experience is priceless. In the past few months alone I've learnt more than I did in 3 years of employment.

Realistically, what's the worst case scenario? I'm a reasonably skilled dev in a strong market so there's not much to lose. If it all goes wrong I'll get another job with a load of experience (and stories!) under my belt.

I can tell you what it was like to quit my job and focus on a very-early-holy-shit-what-are-we-doing-startup. Was at a marketing agency for 10 years when I left to pursue my first co-founded startup. Made the decision after we got a little organic press and signed up 5k+ users in 24 hours. I had been looking for an excuse to leave and do something new anyway.

It was scary as hell (no revenue coming from the startup), fun as hell, challenging as hell. Had my savings all planned out to help support the adventure, but still had that daily stress of knowing every dollar I spent was not coming back anytime soon. That part wasn't fun. But I didn't have kids or a mortgage and knew this was my chance to do something of the sort.

10/10 would do again in a similar situation, though knowing what I know now, I might have launched a business instead of chased a cool idea.

I started doing this recently by quitting my job, and I currently have no income.

There is this assumption that one must build a minimum viable product that has to be released as quickly as possible, so much that it's become startup mantra. It's no surprise that a lot of these products seem to be technically shallow, everyone is reaching for low hanging fruit.

I feel rather alone trying to do something that I think hasn't been done before, or if it had, wasn't executed well. I don't think I could possibly commit to it without having strong motivation, which I struggled with while having a full-time job.

The biggest technical/social challenge I have is to make something that a non-technical user could easily get right away and make something with it. I think the automation of web dev is an inevitability, and frameworks were just a historical blip on this path. The same thing is happening to web design. http://hypereum.com