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Ask HN: Give up on my startup for high paying job?

18 points by mfrye0 ↗ HN
I have a really difficult decision here and wondering if anyone has had something similar.

I've been working on my startup for about 2 years now. It's been a long, slow road as I'm a solo founder and have bootstrapped the company.

After 2 years, I'm finally starting to make some serious traction and have been picking up some big customers. I'm now able to steal customers from my competitors who have raised close to $100M, and I'm in talks for a funding round with investors.

I'm more or less broke though and have been struggling to get by. Then due to a bug in the system, I got hit with a huge AWS bill last month that wiped out most of my remaining runway. So I'm kind of fucked...

A friend reached out to me today who has been trying to recruit me to his company for years. He's offering a salary close to $400k. So really tempting being how broke I am.

I'm not sure what to do. Continue to work on my startup that's finally seeing progress, give up and take the job, try to do both? One idea is to take the job and hire someone to run my company...

Any thoughts?

51 comments

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meri_dian
How close are you to making self sustaining income for your business? Would it be feasible to take out loans to get you to that point?
mfrye0
Could be weeks or a couple months. I've been working on landing a number of big deals for months and all I need is 2 to come through and I'll be good.

I've already maxed out all my credit cards, cashed out my 401k, and sold almost all my assets.

The bank won't give any loans as they look at my personal credit.

meri_dian
Make a deal with your friend. Tell him you'll work on a part time basis, for just enough income to survive.

He'll know you're doing it just for your startup but at the same time he'll get your expertise and knowledge at least on a part time basis for a discount.

mfrye0
He's been trying to recruit me for awhile now, and I already tried that strategy a couple months ago. He wants full-time people to build the team.
gamblor956
all I need is 2 to come through and I'll be good.

That's what gamblers say as well, right before they lose all of their savings, their house, and their kids' college funds...

Take the job with the friend, even if it means giving up on the startup. If the market you're targeting is as fast-moving as you say it is, you won't have the capacity to keep up with your competitors as a broke one-man shop.

You'll be able to launch another startup in the future, in a much better funding position than your current startup.

AznHisoka
Why not do both, at least temporarily? Take the job, and then when you're in a better financial position, quit and continue the startup.
mfrye0
Well two things. The company I'd be joining is run by a friend, so I'm unsure if he'd let me do both. He'd likely want me to focus on just his thing, especially if he's paying so much.

Then #2, the industry my company is in is moving very fast and is very competitive. If I slow down too much, the company might get left behind.

adrianmsmith
If he's offering you such a high salary, that shows he's very keen to have you. And you mentioned he's wanted you for a while. Which might mean you have lots of leverage, even if your friend wouldn't want to admit it.

So even if he would prefer you to focus on his thing, you could just state that working on your product on the side are your conditions for joining his company. And see what he says.

If he says no (and you feel he really means it, and you feel you really do want to work on his project full-time) almost certainly the 400k full-time offer will still be on the table.

Mononokay
Contact Amazon support if the problem was on their end, they'll generally make it right with you.
mfrye0
We accidentally created an infinite loop with our crm and an api on aws.

We at first didn't realize what was happening, then couldn't figure out how to stop it. The bill ended up being 10x what I had budgeted.

I talked to aws and they graciously refunded me a 1/3 of the bill. So it helped, but still wiped out the remaining runway I had.

codegeek
"I've already maxed out all my credit cards, cashed out my 401k, and sold almost all my assets."

Take the 400K salary job for a year or two. Pay off your debt and keep working on your business on the side. Of course, you may need to be transparent with your friend about it.

I am all for risk taking but it should be "calculated". It seems like you are in serious risk of going off the cliff because lets face it, an AWS mistake wiped off your runway so it means you don't have a lot of it to play with.

So yea, take the 400K job, keep working on your stuff on the side and once you have some breathing room, get back to it fulltime in a year or so.

whichdan
+1 for this. And if you can sock away $200k in the bank each year, consider how much equity you would have had to give up for equivalent funding.
mfrye0
Yeah, that's true too. That would help a lot to keep more equity.

I'm nervous to fund raise now, as I know investors would try to take advantage of the situation.

mfrye0
Yeah, that's a good point.

The mantra for startups is never give up, but I'm close to pushing it as far as I can go... I'm starting to get into risky territory.

The thing that holds me up though is all the stories we hear, like Travis Kalanick with Red Swoosh and Elon Musk with Tesla and SpaceX. Down to a few days of payroll and figured out a way to make it work...

codegeek
Giving up doesn't mean not trying again. Remember that you may fail multiple times but it only takes one time to succeed.

Sometimes it is good to give up and reset things. And I say this as someone who is running a bootstrapped business and will fight hard before I give up but my business is already relatively profitable so a different situation.

[dead] laxyjon
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g123g
Maybe sell your startup to some investor and keep some equity stake and then join your friend's company. This will help you recoup some of the hard work that you have done as well as have stake in its future growth.
mfrye0
I've thought about that. I'm not sure where I'd begin on that front though.

Ironically, I've been talking to this huge company who's interested in our IP. If I played it right, I could probably sell to them, but it would likely take at least a few months to make a deal happen.

kevindeasis
You have numerous options in this situation.

Some could say that a feasible strategy might be to put your startup in hibernation mode. However, by doing that you might lose the customers that you just recently got. Sales is also a long term relationship. What this means is that if you put your startup to sleep, when it wakes up, your relationship from your customers at that point might have to start from the beginning.

Now let's say, you didn't close your startup and you decided to take your friends offer. So that would mean your startup would not go into hibernation mode and you get to maintain your current relationship with existing customers. And you can continue prospecting for customers and do the whole sales cycle thing.

But, how do you get to work a full time job, and not put your startup into hibernation? I think one of the things you can do is to delegate/outsource/hire someone to manage/develop the existing startup for you. Essentially, you don't even have to think about your startup, you just have to pay for it. Although it is true that hiring someone to run your startup is a different issue.

Let me know what you think

mfrye0
Not a bad idea. I was thinking something similar to where I could possibly hire a few people for what the salary is.

Only fear about going into hibernation is falling behind competition wise...

brandfountain
I have been where you are, more than once. This is the true path of an entrepreneur and not for the feint of heart. I used to tell people that doing a startup is like being perpetually 'half way through the desert and out of water'. There's no turning back and no easy way forward.

My advice is to stay the course and scrape by. Scrounge, beg, delay, do whatever it takes to get over the next hill. A nine to five job will not solve any of your current problems in spite of its appeal. What's worse a high profile role will exhaust you leaving little or nothing left for your project.

By persevering you will impress investors and future employees with your ability to endure and commitment to your goals. Don't give up, never surrender and kick a little harder - you will succeed.

And when you do succeed, people will tell you how lucky you are!

FTW

treis
My advice is to stay the course and scrape by. Scrounge, beg, delay, do whatever it takes to get over the next hill. A nine to five job will not solve any of your current problems in spite of its appeal. What's worse a high profile role will exhaust you leaving little or nothing left for your project.

That's not really true. This particular 9-5 job will take him from being broke to being rich.

chatmasta
If you are good enough to get that 400k offer now, you’ll be good enough to get it again later. The same can’t be said for a startup that you’ve been working on for two years.

You’ve invested two years in this startup. If you came here saying it wasn’t working, I might say you should quit. But it sounds like your business is going well. So why not stay the course and see where it takes you? You’ve already invested two years worth of money and declined opportunities. What’s the harm in saying no to a little more money and opportunities?

mfrye0
That's what I was thinking too. I've been off the job market for a bit, so I guess it surprised me to get such a high offer.

That's also part of the frustration though. The business is just starting to take off, but I'm fucked financially if I can't figure out something soon. This AWS bill really messed me up...

AngeloAnolin
If I am in your case, I would:

1. Get the job. 400K would be quite a salary that would allow you to save.

2. AND Continue with your startup, by being on an advisory role. Delegate the business to someone you could trust (difficult, but possible). After office hours, you put in time to gauge how your startup venture is doing.

It is not quite easy to get a startup to a point where you are actually making solid progress. Of course, you would want to ensure your own survival as well.

Best of luck.

mixmastamyk
Yes the poster could hire a few contractors at the minimum on that salary.

Make sure the IP is not claimable by the new company.

zachlatta
IMO you should either be in 100% or not at all.
canadaj
100% into the new job and 0% into the startup, or the other way around?

Either way, why?

rubicon33
> "I got hit with a huge AWS bill last month that wiped out most of my remaining runway"

This is exactly why I don't use AWS. I need 100% predicable billing.

Lately I have considered looking into AWS again, since their system is just leagues ahead of competitors.

Mind explaining how this "bug" caused such a massive bill? Did you not have alerts set up? No protections against scaling? Etc.

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mfrye0
I'm using API Gateway, Lambda, and the IOT Platform to do realtime lookup / enrichment stuff for contacts in our CRM.

I setup a webhook in the CRM to call the API when a contact was created or updated, which would then enrich (update) the contact. I didn't realize that I had to disable the option to not trigger the update when the contact was updated via the API. So it created an infinite loop of updates that called everything millions of times before we realized what was happening.

I guess the one positive here is that our system can scale and handle the traffic :)

where_do_i_live
Talk to AWS support and see if you can negotiate it down, explain the situation and they might be able to cut you a break so that you don't have to shut everything down. You have nothing to lose here, make sure you've at least attempted this first.
jamestimmins
It's worth noting that you should go ahead and turn on AWS spending alerts, if you haven't already. Those should help prevent runaway expenses.
mfrye0
Yep, lesson learned.
czbond
A few questions: Is the business generating income? If so, how far from breakeven if you do some combination of cut staff, increase prices, or similar? Is there any way to pick up enough side income - can you sell any consulting to your existing customers along the line of business? Have you taken in any funding?
mfrye0
I'm in kind of a unique situation. My last startup was too many founders and gave up all the equity for an early fund raise. So I decided to go solo for this one and bootstrap it.

Since I'm bootstrapping, I haven't had funds to hire anyone. So I've been giving equity to friends to help part-time and then hire contractors for stuff as needed. I've already cut down all expenses to bare minimum.

I'm generating income and almost there on breaking even. I think a couple more decent sized customers will get me there.

I've been doing some consulting and custom dev, which has helped, but it's been as needed type of stuff.

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MattLeBlanc001
Why not hire your part-time friend to take over from you full time, while you can try the 400k gig for a year or two.
conjecTech
This isn't an answer to the direct question, but I've found AWS to be very understanding on issues of accidental overuse. If it's clear from your history that it was a one-off occurrence, considering giving them a call and seeing if they will refund/forgive some portion of it. It never hurts to ask.
mfrye0
Tried that. I got 1/3 refunded so that helped a bit, but it's still ~6x what I had planned vs the 10x bill.
treis
What valuation are these potential investors giving you?

You have to consider missed salary as an investment in the company. Assuming you could have gotten a somewhat similar salary 2 years ago, that means you have a bit under 1 million "invested" in the company. Each year you're putting in another 400k.

IMHO, unless you are really about to blow up and start making half a mil in profit a year, take the job. Save your money and in 5-7 years you will have enough to more or less retire. Then start another company and do it without being totally broke.

darksim905
What do you do to command such a salary?
mfrye0
What I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career.

:)

RHSman2
Look after yourself first. Good luck.
rajacombinator
Only you can really answer this question. How feasible is it to achieve profit, scale, exit over a short timeframe with your startup? How deep are your potential investors pockets and can you use your job offer as leverage for the valuation and salary if you continue with the startup? 400k/yr guaranteed is pretty good, especially if you’re broke. You should have a very high degree of confidence in your startup to pass it up. Unless you can raise money fast and pay yourself 200k you should probably take the job and continue the startup on the side.
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snow_mac
Take the money, pay off the debt, get stable and work on your business.
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mfrye0
Thanks for the advice guys.

I'll have to think it over, but it seems like the general sentiment here is towards taking the job.

partisan
A 400K salary and you are tempted? Come back to reality. Hire someone to run your business and put your efforts towards the job that will give you an actual life runway.