5 ms·

Good on you to have realized the inherent job scalability problem so early on in your life - you have just easily saved yourself several years of your life. The

by DenisM 17y ago

Good on you to have realized the inherent job scalability problem so early on in your life - you have just easily saved yourself several years of your life. The economical relationship between employer and employee is such that your employer takes upon himself all small and moderately-sized economical risks and in return collects most of the upside. There are exceptions such an outsized IPO (very rare) on one side and layoff (not so rare) on the other. In other words it's a risk swap not unlike car insurance or extended warranty. It's a great deal for someone who can't tolerate cashflow problems (e.g. who is in debt), but this sort of risk swap is unnecessary for someone who has a cash cushion to ride out the rough times. Many people voluntarily put themselves into such position e.g. by spending beyond their means - don't do that. Your #1 goal is establish the cash cushion. Your #2 goal is to find a worthy idea. Once you have both you can burn cash to build business out of your idea. Here's how you do it: 1. Get a job and keep it. Reduce your burn rate and save money. You're ready when you have 18-24 months worth of burn rate stashed in the bank CDs (do not mess with the stock market - you are your high-upside investment). 2. While holding a job identify a group of people who have money, have problems, are willing to pay to solve the problems, you are able to solve the problems (it's in your domain), you can easily find and talk to. Bad choice examples: software engineers, teenage gamers. Good choice examples: middle-age middle-class women, small business owners. Business is not a legal entity and not even a product - business is a group of people whom you can reach and whose problems you can solve better than other people and who can pay you for it. Once you have that you've made it. 3. Talk to these people and verify the problem. Build a mockup of the solution and talk to them again. Try to sell the mockup on google adwords or any other channel you were going to use to reach out to your audience. This is a low-bandwidth activity that you can do while keeping your day job. Don't be afraid to drop one problem in favor of the another. In fact, strive for it - try to discover the most pressing problem your audience may have. 4. In a couple of years you should a solid idea about what to do, how to do it and how to sell it. You should also have enough cash to make the leap. You know the time is right when it doesn't feel like a "leap" anymore. Also, read "Re-work" - it'll do you good. Good luck.

snitko 17y ago
Thanks for such an extensive advice.
- DenisM 17y ago
  This topic seems to cause some interest judging by votes. So if there is further interest I could write a blog post in greater depth about this subject, and then we could probably have a more targeted discussion in the comments for it.
  - al_ 17y ago
    Please do it. I'm more or less in the same situation of the OP, and your answer gave me a fantastic energy boost.
kiba 17y ago
The problem is, that I want to make games.
- gfodor 17y ago
  At some point in the last 10 years I realized not only are video games a waste of time but transitivity working on building them is nearly as much a waste of time. They're fun, but ultimately are just entertainment. I still play them occasionally. But the entire gaming industry from the players up to the executives at the end of the day are just providing people means of escaping from reality. Beating a game is a false, manufactured sense of accomplishment: it's like getting a "participation" ribbon in the game of life. Fun, yes, but ultimately I think it becomes as satisfying to beat a game as it is to eat a pastry from starbucks: in either case you're consuming a wholly manufactured experience that provides slim to nil real value for your mind or your body. In other words, there are much more interesting, difficult, and worthwhile problems to solve than how to build a better RPG or FPS. You're just not looking hard enough.
  - almost 17y ago
    It sounds like you maybe played games too much (forgive me if I'm wrong there, obviously your one comment is not enough to know that). I don't think there's anything wrong with recreation for its own sake and games are a form of recreation. They're fun, and it's good to have fun things in your life. Just so long as they're not the only (or, I'd say personally, the major) thing in your life. By creating games you are helping other people have fun and relax, that doesn't seem like a worthless thing to me.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
    You must be so much fun at parties! I don't play video games either, but that hardly gives me the authority to deprecate them for creating merely a "manufactured sense of accomplishment." There are many people for whom games are the only practical release from daily drudgery and that alone makes their existence, and by extension their creation, worthwhile. Not everyone aspires to solve "interesting, difficult and worthwhile problems." Sometimes we just want to have fun!
nkohari 17y ago
This mirrors my personal experience very closely, and as such I think it's great advice. :)
patio11 17y ago
Denis has just given you some of the best advice I've seen on HN in my year here. My few additions: You don't have to quit the day job to build stuff. Building stuff can be low-bandwidth, too. Middle-aged middle-class women and small business owners have a lot of problems that can have a rough solution written in a week. (Think like "scheduling software for a beauty salon": it is a CRUD app. Not even a very difficult CRUD app. I don't know if it can be marketed in an efficient fashion but I'm absolutely positive there is no technical risk involved in making a prototype and shopping that around.) There are probably other tiers of problems which can be solved in a month or three months. You can also gradually extend the v1.0 of your solution in terms of functionality or niches (salon scheduling... for massage therapists! Salon scheduling... with online booking! Salon scheduling... en español!.) Having a cash cushion is excellent advice, but ramen profitability (or day job profitability) is even nicer. After that, the risk is truly minimal (if you have a profitable business selling salon scheduling, what is your main strategic risk -- people stop getting their hair done?) and your runway is infinite. Incidentally, salon scheduling software presumably takes minimal time to maintain. You could probably build it and maintain it on, oh, call it five hours a week. That gives you a whole lot of time for pursuing other interests -- including perhaps a startup with larger ambitions or building the next great videogame, if you really want to do that.
- DenisM 17y ago
  Right, cash cushion is there to take you through the first few month until you become ramen-profitable which is the first major milestone. It also helps to calm to down the nerves for people who are exceptionally risk averse, like I am.

by DenisM 17y ago

snitko 17y ago

Thanks for such an extensive advice.

DenisM 17y ago
This topic seems to cause some interest judging by votes. So if there is further interest I could write a blog post in greater depth about this subject, and then we could probably have a more targeted discussion in the comments for it.
- al_ 17y ago
  Please do it. I'm more or less in the same situation of the OP, and your answer gave me a fantastic energy boost.

kiba 17y ago

The problem is, that I want to make games.

gfodor 17y ago
At some point in the last 10 years I realized not only are video games a waste of time but transitivity working on building them is nearly as much a waste of time. They're fun, but ultimately are just entertainment. I still play them occasionally. But the entire gaming industry from the players up to the executives at the end of the day are just providing people means of escaping from reality. Beating a game is a false, manufactured sense of accomplishment: it's like getting a "participation" ribbon in the game of life. Fun, yes, but ultimately I think it becomes as satisfying to beat a game as it is to eat a pastry from starbucks: in either case you're consuming a wholly manufactured experience that provides slim to nil real value for your mind or your body. In other words, there are much more interesting, difficult, and worthwhile problems to solve than how to build a better RPG or FPS. You're just not looking hard enough.
- almost 17y ago
  It sounds like you maybe played games too much (forgive me if I'm wrong there, obviously your one comment is not enough to know that). I don't think there's anything wrong with recreation for its own sake and games are a form of recreation. They're fun, and it's good to have fun things in your life. Just so long as they're not the only (or, I'd say personally, the major) thing in your life. By creating games you are helping other people have fun and relax, that doesn't seem like a worthless thing to me.
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  You must be so much fun at parties! I don't play video games either, but that hardly gives me the authority to deprecate them for creating merely a "manufactured sense of accomplishment." There are many people for whom games are the only practical release from daily drudgery and that alone makes their existence, and by extension their creation, worthwhile. Not everyone aspires to solve "interesting, difficult and worthwhile problems." Sometimes we just want to have fun!

nkohari 17y ago

This mirrors my personal experience very closely, and as such I think it's great advice. :)

patio11 17y ago

Denis has just given you some of the best advice I've seen on HN in my year here. My few additions: You don't have to quit the day job to build stuff. Building stuff can be low-bandwidth, too. Middle-aged middle-class women and small business owners have a lot of problems that can have a rough solution written in a week. (Think like "scheduling software for a beauty salon": it is a CRUD app. Not even a very difficult CRUD app. I don't know if it can be marketed in an efficient fashion but I'm absolutely positive there is no technical risk involved in making a prototype and shopping that around.) There are probably other tiers of problems which can be solved in a month or three months. You can also gradually extend the v1.0 of your solution in terms of functionality or niches (salon scheduling... for massage therapists! Salon scheduling... with online booking! Salon scheduling... en español!.) Having a cash cushion is excellent advice, but ramen profitability (or day job profitability) is even nicer. After that, the risk is truly minimal (if you have a profitable business selling salon scheduling, what is your main strategic risk -- people stop getting their hair done?) and your runway is infinite. Incidentally, salon scheduling software presumably takes minimal time to maintain. You could probably build it and maintain it on, oh, call it five hours a week. That gives you a whole lot of time for pursuing other interests -- including perhaps a startup with larger ambitions or building the next great videogame, if you really want to do that.

DenisM 17y ago
Right, cash cushion is there to take you through the first few month until you become ramen-profitable which is the first major milestone. It also helps to calm to down the nerves for people who are exceptionally risk averse, like I am.