Ask HN: Where to invest $5K?

12 points by gdhillon ↗ HN
Is it possible to start some startup with this money? If someone have some success stories to share with us it would be more than welcome.

8 comments

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Personal development. $5k won't last you long with a startup, but if you can use the money to obtain a better job it might make it easier to work around.
$5k is such a small amount and even some seed funding rounds will run up legal fee's not too short of that.

Personally, I'd sit tight on it until you get around $15,000-$25,000.

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Okay, I'm in the OPs position but have $15,000-25,000. Where to invest?
It all depends on your definition of "some start up". A mobile fruit stand costs $25 for licensing fees and around $250 in inventory around these parts. On the other hand, launching a domain registrar is looking more like a startup business needing around $250-300K.

I would recommend you keep your eyes open for a problem, then build a solution to address said issue. Focus your resources on growing your user base and then your revenue slowly. Look into the term "bootstrapping" for businesses funded this way.

Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, Invested.in, Pledge Music, Sellaband and Spot.us.
Contrary to what some people might say here, $5k is a lot of money. It is entirely possible to build a company and bring it to (ramen) profitability with less than $5k. I personally barely spent $1k this year.
Including your living costs? Where do you live? You spend less than $100/month?

When people say "ramen profitable" it generally means paying you enough to live on cheaply so you have all your time to work on the business.