Ask HN: BigCo vs Freelancing.. and then Startup
I currently have a well paying job in IT at a top 10 online retailer.
I've been trying to build my product nights and weekends with some progress, but nowhere near the progress I desire. I attribute it to a diverged focus of working full-time for someone else (40 hr+), and overall exhaustion. Don't get me wrong, I have done probably 3-5% of the project in about 2 months moonlighting on nights/weekends while still being on-call 24/7, but haven't reached the full meat/potatoes of the application (yet!).
One thing I've recently begin considering and reading about is starting a small freelance business to begin (to pay the bills) - max 20 hours per week and then quitting my job to do that, while investing the rest of my time in my startup until it flourishes enough to quit freelance and go full-time on the startup I'm trying to create.
I've read countless articles of people having a full-time job (in bigco) and then just: 1) quitting cold turkey and focusing full-time on startup 2) quitting when startup product is built, then quitting cold turkey from bigco. 3) quitting when startup product is built and has paying clients = bigco income 4) When startup product is built, has paying clients > big co income.
Resulting in an understanding of : there is no black/white answer.
I project this first version, with a full-time focus, will take 6-9 months to develop.
I guess I'm just at a crossroads on what to do, I've talked to others, researched myself, tried doing some moonlight, but I'm not seeing the progress I hope for and I'm a bit confused on how to approach the situation now.
I'd love to quit right now and go full-time, but that isn't realistic due to apartment bills and daily living expenses of about $1k per month
I have quit a lot of skills in open-source development (ideal for freelance).
Thoughts? Suggestions? Stories? Fire em' at me :) .
Thank you!
16 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 57.9 ms ] threadAre you alluding to freelancing part-time? Please further explain.
I would recommend seeking out as much feedback as possible -- not just from friends & family, but from people on the street, people in your hypothetical target market, Show/Ask HN posts, meetups, etc. Look before you leap. While you can never fully mitigate the risk of starting your own business, you can certainly get your ducks in a row before jumping completely into it.
Maybe the product you want to build will never get built unless you devote 50%, 60%, or even 100% of your time to it. That's fair. But before you do that, prove the concept. Nothing is more heartbreaking that dropping a secure, comfortable job to leap into a project you haven't rigorously vetted and tested. Trust me; I've done that before. It didn't end well, and it set me back at least a couple of years.
One should never have to make a "cold turkey" move. Nothing about it should be cold. If you're giving up a good job to pursue something else, you owe it to yourself to make sure that something else might be viable. Instead of spending your 3-5% nights-and-weekends time building small chunks of the product, use that time to test the concept and the market.
I've talked to random individuals I meet at meetup groups as well. It isn't a totally earth-shattering new idea, but one with an already existing and ever increasingly new platforms and market expansion.
Short answer: Its already a proven market. I know my competitors and their offerings, and history.
What are your thoughts on doing 10-20 hours of part-time freelance as kinda a segway into this?
I think I would have to have a MVP before getting any early adopters cash though, right?
Have a look at this mixergy interview for some ideas/inspiration - http://mixergy.com/sam-ovens-snapinspect-interview/
Think of it as a form of freelancing where the customer just wants some end result but doesn't care about the code itself.
If you can line it up easily, and if you think it'll actually cover your living expenses, I see nothing inherently wrong with it. Just realize that freelancing is not always the time saver people imagine it to be. You'll be dealing with invoicing, chasing payments, lining up steady and consistent work to keep the cash flow on track, etc. Freelancing is a full-time job in its own right.
I would recommend building out a freelancing runway -- for example, and if possible, carving out a steady freelancing gig for 18 months from your current employer, if that's possible. And get a contract in place. You don't want to jump into freelancing cold turkey and find yourself scrambling for gigs.
There are a number of paths available to you: 1. Give up. 2. Quit dayjobbing, go full-time on your savings in hopes it will succeed (part-time freelancing is a partial version of this). 3. Get funded and work off the funding. 4. Get a revenue-generating product out the door so it starts paying for you to work full-time.
I don't believe in #1. I can't do #2 because my marriage is more important than my startup. I looked into #3, but fundraising is a full-time job that takes your eye off the ball with no guarantee of success. This leaves #4.
So consider a way to build a subset of your product you can sell, or otherwise shorten your takeoff trajectory. That will get you going faster.
As for the freelancing idea... unless you think you can immediately get half-time freelance work and keep a steady flow of it, it's not a good path. It will start intruding on your startup time.