Tell HN: I quit my job to bootstrap my startup by myself.
I'm 24 and worked as a developer for a consulting company working on custom enterprise apps. I got tired of watching the startup world from the sidelines, so I took the plunge and quit my job to work on my own projects.
I don't have paying customers, thousands of Twitter followers, a large presence here on HN, or even a cofounder. I'm starting from absolutely nothing and will be building from the ground up. All I have is 12-15 months of savings and my hacking skills.
I moved back home with my parents to save some money and build the product out, but will hopefully be moving out to San Francisco sometime this year.
I started a blog (www.itschris.me) if you would like to stay up to date on what I'm up to or get in touch.
113 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadOverall, it took about a three months to get on my feet after moving out here, but it was absolutely worth it.
I'm not talking about stretching living expenses from 6 months to 8 months - I'm talking about stretching them to 24 months.
If you're young and single you can live pretty cheaply and surround yourself with the inspiring people and general atmosphere of silicon valley. The fact that you have some expenses may help light a fire under you and accelerate your progress.
On the other hand, if you are highly self-motivated, and you are productive from your parents house, then you're likely not missing out on much in the short term, because most of your time is going to be spent coding anyway.
We're located in Bath, England. That's right, not even London. We launched our new startup in June 2010 and we just hit $600K in yearly recurring rev. MRR grew by almost 20% this month. Don't believe the TechCrunch hype about funding and the Silicon Valley scene.
I do agree that if you are building a revenue focused company, you don't have to go to San Francisco.
But it's hard to argue against how easy it is to raise money or get acquired in the valley vs anywhere else in the world. Look at how easy it was for Path and Instagram to raise money and to get cheap money at that. In other markets many VCs want to see revenue not just traction and that revenue can work against you and lower your valuation - making the money more expensive.
For reference to Instagram, see this Chris Dixon interview with Kevin Systrom
"He also talks about how the serendipity of Silicon Valley contributed to the formation Instagram, remembering a party that Dixon once threw in San Francisco where Systrom ended up meeting his key angel investors."
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/founder-stories-instagram-l...
rent? paid for
food? basics covered, so can be 0.
internet? chances are already installed
if you are living at home, I think your expenses can boil down just to your cell phone bill, and money you are paying for hosting.
I made more forward progress here in one week than I did in the last year in Austin.
The vibe here is insane and people are genuinely willing to help founders who are just starting out. Forget about stretching your money "a bit further" with mom and dad. Get out here ASAP...
BTW, I currently live in SOMA and pay about $900/month to live with 2 really cool guys who work at startups.
I promised myself I would give notice today. I don't think it's going to happen. Maybe it's just because I'm older (28) and have more inertia (wife, dog, a bunch of stuff to pack or get rid of and moving) to overcome.
I'm going to give notice as soon as my boss is back from wherever he's gotten off to.
I do have another job offer that I'm debating. I think it's probably better to turn that down and finally get out of this backwater (a city of ~40k people in a mountainous US state).
That means moving in with my parents in Nebraska until we get things together for a move somewhere more startup and tech friendly. While I'd be happy moving to the Bay area and eeking it out in a one-bedroom place, I'm not going to drag the wife and dog (can you even find dog-friendly places out there?) into that.
I hope none of the affected parties reads this...
Now I'm back to consulting, taking a breather, as those 5 years were many 70hr/weeks of blood/sweat/tears.....get ready for the same :)
Good luck to you man!
If I should ever do a start-up again, I'll go for boot-strapped as well. If people give you big wads of money they often try to influence your business too much ... sometimes even beyond recognition. Aw... ugly memories.
By the way, http://www.itschris.com is pretty great, too.
Life is good :) Take the plunge. PM me if you wind up moving down here, would love to get coffee.
I wanted to point out though that your startup's name brings forth strongly negative connotations.
Your startup is photo sharing site called Hard Candy.
There's a movie called Hard Candy about a 32 year old pedophile photographer who gets castrated by Ellen Page's (Juno) character and then kills himself.
Something to be aware of as people see your site.
Kind of like the tea party tea bagging thing.
Haven't decided whether or not to move in with Mom & Dad though. The savings would be nice, but I live in Santa Clara already and they're an hour south of that. The connections in the valley are worth more, IMO.
I'm 24 as well and working on my own ramen-profitable startup.
This is a good time in your life to risk it all. My suggestion is to try and go for revenue as soon as possible. Even if you just get to making $1-2k a month, you can live on that at this time in your life.
I like thousands here am planning to do the same but with Rails. Your Idea seams nice and the site already looks good. Would be if you post info about the site, when it happens so we can follow.
Cya later !
There was an HN thread about this a while back (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1536822) but no current information. Anybody have connections?
I am 23 and worked for Booz Allen 4 months ago before I quit myself to work on my startup.
Best of luck my friend! It is a much better feeling to be working and struggling for the things you love than having it easy with the things you don't!
My startup Socialblaze is in the social/analytics space, and it looks like you're entering this space as well. Good luck! It's a fun space to be in (and moving very fast).
Here's a few things I think you should figure out before starting to build your product:
- Are you really aware of your customers' needs? Have you talked to any that would use your product? Would they pay for it? (Also, a customer saying that he/she would loves that product and would pay for it is very different then keeping them as an active user with an active subscription for 1+ months).
- Small businesses, musicians, and influencers don't have much money, what's your pricepoint? Would they be willing to pay?
- What's your customer acquisition strategy? Have you tested it? Do you know it works? What's your backup?
- If you're providing analytics, make sure your customers actually get ROI from it. It's possible that a white-label twitpic with 10 new features won't increase engagement at all or not enough to justify costs, making your analytics prove that your product isn't useful.
Honestly, I suggest that you first move to the Valley and join a funded early stage startup as employee #3-5. You'll learn a ton and have the experience + connections (these are so important!) to do your own startup in a few years.
And startups aren't as glamorous as you think or read on Techcrunch, read Suster's post on the startup lifestyle: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/30/should-you-really-be-a-star...
If you still want to do it: fail fast, fail early, and iterate. Also, find amazing advisors as quickly as you can.
Good luck! I know where you are coming from. Normally I'd suggest you read my book on the topic (LFF - free on www.hunterdavis.com), but it sounds like you're already over the first hump (saving for the startup). I'm 29, and last June along with a co-founder quit my 9-5 to start www.discursivelabs.com. We've got some upcoming products and some sites in active beta. The best three pieces of advice I would give you:
1. Be open to contracts when they come up. Seriously, just being open to the possibility of contract work and attending appropriate trade shows can get you through the lean times. 2. Betas. Always beta, beta often. Don't rush to go public with your beta. We've gotten so much valuable insight into our product from our beta testers It's staggering the difference in quality feedback between 100 motivated private beta testers and 10000 mediocre public ones. 3. Build your word of mouth with useful information and verify it exists with site analytics. I was lucky in that I had a fairly active community of programmers and hackers reading my personal website, but I had a fairly good number of folks email after a good StackExchange reply I posted. People appreciate useful information, and it's a good chance to mention your product.