6 ms·

Tell HN: I quit my job Starting full-time on my startup on Monday.

60 points by vyrotek 17y ago

I put in my notice a couple of weeks ago. Today is my last day! I will be working with RyanElkins (a fellow hacker) on IActionable.com full-time starting next week. We received some initial funding through a local program called BoomStartup.com. One thought I wanted to share was on my experience letting my coworkers know that I am leaving. I was definitely not prepared for the responses I received. When people first heard I was leaving almost everyone jokingly responded with "Traitor! Who are you leaving us for? Is it more money?!". But once I explained that I'm doing my own thing the attitude change was amazing. I wasn't told "You're crazy!" but instead I was congratulated and applauded as if I had broken free from some captor and were cheering me to run as fast and as far as I can. I was also reminded over and over again to remember them as if I was supposed to return and free them. Perhaps one day :) Of course, from my perspective I feel more like I'm late to a marathon that I have been jealously watching others run for years. The feedback we received from our 'Review our Site' posts as well as everyone's experiences that were shared here have definitely helped us get to where we are today. Thank you Hacker News - Here we go!

edw519 17y ago
from my perspective I feel more like I'm late to a marathon that I have been jealously watching others run for years Naaa. Those were other marathons. Your marathon starts Monday. The marathon analogy seems especially appropriate. No need to be jealous or worry about the competition. Just participate and finish. Best wishes!
- enjo 16y ago
  It starts today at 5:00 to be more precise. Startups tend to be a 7-day a week sort of obsession from my experience:)
minalecs 17y ago
good luck, and let us know of the progress of your project. I did the samething as you and so far so good.
ryanelkins 17y ago
Tell me about it. I have 6.5 more hours of people here slowly becoming more and more terrified as they begin to realize they have no idea how to maintain the software they asked me to build. I can't wait to be free. (In case anyone didn't notice, I'm OP's co-founder)
- vyrotek 17y ago
  I just got notice that I can leave whenever. What shall I do with all this new found freedom!? Maybe I'll stop by your work.
  - pwhelan 17y ago
    If I were in your shoes I'd try to have something to do tonight or after work. Just something non-work but good. Perhaps a romantic dinner with the wife or playing golf with a friend. Something to keep your general momentum going and relax a bit before you hit it hard again. Congratulations!
- jaekwon 17y ago
  sounds like you're just being greedy?? did you choose to leave your coworkers behind with a heap of your code, or did they ask you to leave? nothing wrong with leaving a company, but developers should at least leave their work maintainable.
  - DaveChild 17y ago
    It's the responsibility of the company to ensure they are capable of coping with a coder leaving. I've worked for companies where they've just not given any time or thought to what happens if the coder leaves.
    - jaekwon 17y ago
      I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on the other leave their turd piles for management to "manage". Or we bitch about crappy code left behind by the prior owners -- spitting at the sky playing musical chairs. If you need to leave your job, at least offer to maintain your shit. Don't leave them trembling in fear. Save us greedy monkeys.
megamark16 17y ago
Good luck! I'll be especially interested to see what BoomStartup is like as you go through their program.
- vyrotek 17y ago
  We definitely took a chance being one of the first companies in the program. But after meeting many of the mentors and investors we were confident that their intentions were good and they will do all that they can to help us succeed. Its also exciting to work along-side other startups at the same time.
djb_hackernews 17y ago
Congrats on taking the plunge. Monday eh? 9am sharp? Does your startup already have a defined work week and business hours? :)
- vyrotek 17y ago
  Heh, not quite. We do have to show up on Monday at 10am for the official kickoff of the program. We have some office space assigned to us as well as some mentorship classes scheduled throughout the 3 months. Of course, we'll most likely work way more hours for our own company. I already have a hard time stopping myself from coding every night.
  - jasonlotito 17y ago
    Some tips from someone who did this many years ago. 1. Start every day at the same time. Be reasonable. 10 AM is acceptable. But be consistent. 2. Make sure you give yourself time away from your company. Yes, you'll love it and want to work late nights. However, giving yourself a 2 hour break to go out, have a nice dinner with your co-founder, and maybe have a beer or two will do wonders. Even if you end up talking about business. 3. Dress smart. Keep yourself groomed properly. It sounds silly, but really, you are your company. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your company. 4. Stay focused. You know what drives you. At least at the start, build stuff you want to build. Don't let other people deter you. You'll have a lot of "If it only did this..." comments. That's rubbish. Don't get me wrong. If the idea is good and you want to take it on, do so! But don't feel obligated. The good deals always came because of the work I wanted to do, not from some "If you build this, I'll buy" comment.
    - vyrotek 17y ago
      Thanks for the tips! Ryan and I are both married with young kids so we will definitely have to learn to budget our time wisely to make sure we keep the wives happy :)
zavulon 17y ago
Congratulations!!! That's exactly the feedback I got from my former coworkers as well - 95% were very happy, and had the "well, at least someone is getting out of here for the better things" attitude. Keep in mind though - you'll have to be working much harder than you ever did at your day job ;)) Good luck!
- luckystrike 17y ago
  I got the exact same response when I left my job a few weeks earlier. I was pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming positive response and support almost from everyone (friends, acquaintances, (ex)co-workers etc). I am based near Delhi, India and entrepreneurship is not exactly a very hot thing here (compared to US). All the best to the OP and you as well!
braindead_in 17y ago
Congratulations! Don't give up. Just keep trying.
jacquesm 17y ago
Super, congratulations and all the best of luck and energy to you. If you can spare the time, keep a notebook of what you experience, online or offline doesn't matter much. Later when you look back you'll be surprised how much use that can have.
makeee 17y ago
Was just planning an achievements system for my website and was thinking that there really should be a service that makes this easy. Looks like that's exactly what you're working on.
crescendo 17y ago
First of all, congratulations! There will be a lot of ups and downs, so just remember to enjoy the good times and hang in there and be persistent through the bad. I have a couple suggestions for your landing page: * The current overall payload is 382.1K. You could significantly reduce this and speed up the load time if you enable gzip compression on your web server. Seems like you're running this on IIS 6.0--there is a configuration option for HTTP compression buried somewhere in the submenus, I believe. * The rounded corners have a white background, whereas the page background at the top is gray. This causes the top corners to have a very visible rectangular edge. The IE-6 friendly way to fix this is to change the background color for the top corners to match the background color of the top of the page. If you don't care about IE 6, you can simply give them transparent backgrounds. Good luck!
- drp 17y ago
  Also, the <title> is "Home Page" You should instead include the name of your company and a short description of what exactly you do.
mynameishere 17y ago
Maybe I have a bad habit of criticizing company names, but you should be aware of the word's definition if you aren't, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/actionable http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/actionable 1. furnishing ground for a lawsuit.
- vyrotek 17y ago
  Heh, we're aware of that. Although the other definition works for us. "Relating to or being information that allows a decision to be made or action to be taken." I'm also not sure how many people noticed but the name is IActionable not iActionable. It comes from the concept of Interfaces types which many object-oriented languages have.
spencerfry 16y ago
Congrats! Welcome to the other side.
lazyant 16y ago
Good luck. I got the same reaction btw.
wglb 16y ago
I once left a technology company to start my own business. Mostly, i got (almost whispered) "are you hiring?"

60 points by vyrotek 17y ago

edw519 17y ago

from my perspective I feel more like I'm late to a marathon that I have been jealously watching others run for years Naaa. Those were other marathons. Your marathon starts Monday. The marathon analogy seems especially appropriate. No need to be jealous or worry about the competition. Just participate and finish. Best wishes!

enjo 16y ago
It starts today at 5:00 to be more precise. Startups tend to be a 7-day a week sort of obsession from my experience:)

minalecs 17y ago

good luck, and let us know of the progress of your project. I did the samething as you and so far so good.

ryanelkins 17y ago

Tell me about it. I have 6.5 more hours of people here slowly becoming more and more terrified as they begin to realize they have no idea how to maintain the software they asked me to build. I can't wait to be free. (In case anyone didn't notice, I'm OP's co-founder)

vyrotek 17y ago
I just got notice that I can leave whenever. What shall I do with all this new found freedom!? Maybe I'll stop by your work.
- pwhelan 17y ago
  If I were in your shoes I'd try to have something to do tonight or after work. Just something non-work but good. Perhaps a romantic dinner with the wife or playing golf with a friend. Something to keep your general momentum going and relax a bit before you hit it hard again. Congratulations!
jaekwon 17y ago
sounds like you're just being greedy?? did you choose to leave your coworkers behind with a heap of your code, or did they ask you to leave? nothing wrong with leaving a company, but developers should at least leave their work maintainable.
- DaveChild 17y ago
  It's the responsibility of the company to ensure they are capable of coping with a coder leaving. I've worked for companies where they've just not given any time or thought to what happens if the coder leaves.
  - jaekwon 17y ago
    I agree, that companies should be prepared for developers to leave. I maintain that developers and engineers should leave their work maintainable. I know I'm going to get downvoted, but this needs to be said. With great programming power comes great programming responsibilities. And you and I know this power doesn't come from silicon or management. We all bitch about crappy products, and fail to see the developers on the other leave their turd piles for management to "manage". Or we bitch about crappy code left behind by the prior owners -- spitting at the sky playing musical chairs. If you need to leave your job, at least offer to maintain your shit. Don't leave them trembling in fear. Save us greedy monkeys.

megamark16 17y ago

Good luck! I'll be especially interested to see what BoomStartup is like as you go through their program.

vyrotek 17y ago
We definitely took a chance being one of the first companies in the program. But after meeting many of the mentors and investors we were confident that their intentions were good and they will do all that they can to help us succeed. Its also exciting to work along-side other startups at the same time.

djb_hackernews 17y ago

Congrats on taking the plunge. Monday eh? 9am sharp? Does your startup already have a defined work week and business hours? :)

vyrotek 17y ago
Heh, not quite. We do have to show up on Monday at 10am for the official kickoff of the program. We have some office space assigned to us as well as some mentorship classes scheduled throughout the 3 months. Of course, we'll most likely work way more hours for our own company. I already have a hard time stopping myself from coding every night.
- jasonlotito 17y ago
  Some tips from someone who did this many years ago. 1. Start every day at the same time. Be reasonable. 10 AM is acceptable. But be consistent. 2. Make sure you give yourself time away from your company. Yes, you'll love it and want to work late nights. However, giving yourself a 2 hour break to go out, have a nice dinner with your co-founder, and maybe have a beer or two will do wonders. Even if you end up talking about business. 3. Dress smart. Keep yourself groomed properly. It sounds silly, but really, you are your company. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your company. 4. Stay focused. You know what drives you. At least at the start, build stuff you want to build. Don't let other people deter you. You'll have a lot of "If it only did this..." comments. That's rubbish. Don't get me wrong. If the idea is good and you want to take it on, do so! But don't feel obligated. The good deals always came because of the work I wanted to do, not from some "If you build this, I'll buy" comment.
  - vyrotek 17y ago
    Thanks for the tips! Ryan and I are both married with young kids so we will definitely have to learn to budget our time wisely to make sure we keep the wives happy :)

zavulon 17y ago

Congratulations!!! That's exactly the feedback I got from my former coworkers as well - 95% were very happy, and had the "well, at least someone is getting out of here for the better things" attitude. Keep in mind though - you'll have to be working much harder than you ever did at your day job ;)) Good luck!

luckystrike 17y ago
I got the exact same response when I left my job a few weeks earlier. I was pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming positive response and support almost from everyone (friends, acquaintances, (ex)co-workers etc). I am based near Delhi, India and entrepreneurship is not exactly a very hot thing here (compared to US). All the best to the OP and you as well!

braindead_in 17y ago

Congratulations! Don't give up. Just keep trying.

jacquesm 17y ago

Super, congratulations and all the best of luck and energy to you. If you can spare the time, keep a notebook of what you experience, online or offline doesn't matter much. Later when you look back you'll be surprised how much use that can have.

makeee 17y ago

Was just planning an achievements system for my website and was thinking that there really should be a service that makes this easy. Looks like that's exactly what you're working on.

crescendo 17y ago

First of all, congratulations! There will be a lot of ups and downs, so just remember to enjoy the good times and hang in there and be persistent through the bad. I have a couple suggestions for your landing page: * The current overall payload is 382.1K. You could significantly reduce this and speed up the load time if you enable gzip compression on your web server. Seems like you're running this on IIS 6.0--there is a configuration option for HTTP compression buried somewhere in the submenus, I believe. * The rounded corners have a white background, whereas the page background at the top is gray. This causes the top corners to have a very visible rectangular edge. The IE-6 friendly way to fix this is to change the background color for the top corners to match the background color of the top of the page. If you don't care about IE 6, you can simply give them transparent backgrounds. Good luck!

drp 17y ago
Also, the <title> is "Home Page" You should instead include the name of your company and a short description of what exactly you do.

mynameishere 17y ago

Maybe I have a bad habit of criticizing company names, but you should be aware of the word's definition if you aren't, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/actionable http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/actionable 1. furnishing ground for a lawsuit.

vyrotek 17y ago
Heh, we're aware of that. Although the other definition works for us. "Relating to or being information that allows a decision to be made or action to be taken." I'm also not sure how many people noticed but the name is IActionable not iActionable. It comes from the concept of Interfaces types which many object-oriented languages have.

spencerfry 16y ago

Congrats! Welcome to the other side.

lazyant 16y ago

Good luck. I got the same reaction btw.

wglb 16y ago

I once left a technology company to start my own business. Mostly, i got (almost whispered) "are you hiring?"