$300,000 lost salary to start up - would you do it?
I majored in EE at a great engineering school, but obviously that was a while back. I can program in C, but don't know the new web-app languages. All of my friends are doctors who majored in biology or some such and have zero programming experience or interest. So I can't talk to anyone I know about this and get a reasonable answer, so I ask you(very smart) people this:
1) A years lost salary is 300k. If you were in my shoes, would you dabble with a start up in your off time and see where it goes, or would you go balls to the wall-take a year off and work full time on it? 2) What language(s) must I master in order to be proficient at web design? What are the best books to start off with? I recently read Getting Real and re-read Knuth's book. I'm reading the SEIA right now, it's a pretty nice easy read. Any other reccs?
Before someone reams me, I didn't just watch the Social Network and develop aspirations of becoming a billionaire at 30! I've been thinking about this for a few months now.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
32 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 48.7 ms ] threadWhat's your situation like?
is the idea for a medical start up?
If your startup were in the medical field (i.e. one you know well, and in which your background gives your insights the halo of serious credibility) then your positioning is even better.
And if you can get to Working Prototype before quitting your current practice entirely, you should be able to make a very solid decision.
Just don't go full-time until you're not going to be spending the first 6 months learning.
With cash you shouldn't have a problem (depending where you are) finding 1 or 2 people with the needed skill set.
I outsourced quite a lot of my development work because I'm better at certain things then others and I wanted to spend my time wisely. Since I've done it before and have a medical background, feel free to email me if you have questions. It's in my profile.
Edit: You could replace 'motivation' with 'ambition' if that reads better to you personally, but they are nearly the same.
http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11
http://www.kalzumeus.com
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1925983
Good luck with this.
Just curious, how many years did you spend completing your education? A medical doctor with an electrical engineering degree is quite rare.
I went through 4 years of college (majoring in EE), worked 1 year as an EE, switched tracks and went to medical school(4 years), then finished 4 years of residency. I've been out practicing for a bit more than 1 year now. Everyone who wants to go to medical school has to have a college degree in something - mine happens to be in EE! Thanks for your input, much appreciated.
Are you dead set on a Web startup? I do embedded c in the medical industry. The company I work for now( ~250 Million in sales) was started by a surgeon in 1978.
It might be worth staying in your field, and keeping your eyes open. Then when you find the problem you can fix, leap!
Either way, I feel like doing a web startup would be a good way to learn firsthand bootstrapping entrepreneurship. And the skill sets (programming, rapid iteration, etc.) would be very beneficial in working on a medical device startup down the line. You're right about one thing - problems that need fixing abound in my field. I have a Moleskine with page after page of things that need fixing in the system!
You're in a good industry. Devices, especially non-invasive things, are the new new thing. I wish you well.
As an aside, I have friends in the embedded arena who get backed by doctors looking to invest some spare pocket cash. I think once you get hacking, your friends will bug you to let them in on it.
Most important, Have fun!
I'm sure you've seen all of the figures about compound interest. Were you to invest even $30,000/year for the next 10 years, you could easily retire a multi-millionaire without hardly noticing the reduction in your standard of living.
Retirement aside, I would suggest that you pay off all of the bills you possibly can first. That way, you won't have the same sort of pressure on you to produce from your startup you otherwise would face. Good luck with this venture!
Give yourself 6 months of dabbling, then reevaluate market conditions, & lifestyle conditions before jummping in.
Keep in mind that Ben Bernanke is turning off the taps in June, and the markets may drop. And who knows how the global economy will react once its fix of cheap USD is gone.
Web 2.0 is in a bubble. The fact that a doctor wants to get in on it is a signal that the bubble may have reached its apex. So wait 6 months, and see if it pops. If it does, and you still want to proceed, you can hire developers on the cheap.
It makes little sense, what you're planning. You have a steady income now and a good skillset, and you want to throw that away and start something where you have no skills at all? You'll probably fail.
The OBVIOUS choice is simply to spend an hour everyday designing your product. Then hire people to build it for you. You are under no time pressure, as you have already a lot of money.
Think of it like writing a book - would you quit your job to write a book? Just do this in the evenings, if it will work, you will know the right time to quit your job. It will be obvious. But leaving a highly paid job to do something that has a > 90% chance of failing is silly.
Even with > 1 million users a month, it's difficult to make $300.000 a year on the web.
1) If he keeps his high paying job he won't have the motivation to work on his startup. That's more likely to lead to failure than jumping in with both feet.
2) Why does he have >90% chance of failure? Who calculated that statistic?
3) Who cares about 1 million users? He doesn't need that. He needs paying customers. He can do very well with 500 customers or less.
4) Why does he have to make $300,000+ to be considered successful? Clearly he isn't happy and isn't driven by money. What's the exchange rate for taking pleasure in your work?
b) what knowledge do you have outside C i.e. Database? Can you model an app?
c) How many years are you willing to put aside for this? At least 2 would be typical, before you give up, but quite often it's more - say 4? Doctors often have loans to pay off, but after that I find they live very comfortable lifestyles - are you ready to go back to living on beans on toast, pot noodles, and other crap?
d) have you shown your idea to someone else?
e) have you tried to get a prototype built (think £20k, USD 40K) for 2 devs couple of months in RoR.
f) learn Ruby on Rails....make the prototype yourself.
/end of random thoughts.
Books I recommend: Rework, Lucky or Smart, The Art of the Start
Languages: HTML, CSS, and Javascript are a must (jQuery is a great JS library to use). I recommend Python and Django for the server side, though what ever language you choose you should use an MVC framework (Django, Rails, CakePHP).