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How to start a startup without ruining your life
- riklomas 10y agoHey everyone, I wrote this guide, if anyone has any questions about it, I'm happy to answer and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the article!
- jv22222 10y agoJust, well done. Good article. :)
- euyyn 10y agoNo questions, but thanks for writing it and sharing that knowledge.
- riklomas 10y agoThank you :)
- 40acres 10y agoWhat would you say to those who have an entrepreneurial spirit but struggle with idea generation?
- _ao789 10y agoAs an entrepreneur you should look for gaps or things that could be improved first.
- ronack 10y agoTeam up with someone who has a good idea but struggles with implementation.
- riklomas 10y agoThis, but make sure they have enough skills to be useful in the long term!
- riklomas 10y agoLook for problems. It's hard to sit and think of ideas, even if you do, most of the ideas will change on contact with potential customers. Look at what you're strong at and what you enjoy. If you're seeing customers struggle with other businesses solutions, then there might be a way to solve that problem in a better way. Being a good listener helps - get the feedback loop going as quickly as possible. Don't take anything personally if a customer doesn't like what you're doing. They could be right. Iterate on the initial idea. Don't spend too long building the first version of anything as it'll probably look different in a year.
- wikwocket 10y agoI think this is good advice. It's better to see first-hand pain points that businesses experience as opposed to looking for an "idea" i.e. dreaming of a solution and then trying to find a matching problem that it solves. If you start up with an "Uber for X"-tier idea, you may spend half your time educating people that they could use your solution. On the other hand, it is difficult to watch a non-techie business worker perform their daily tasks for a few hours without seeing something that could be improved. A macro here, some workflow automation there, etc. Find a theme and you may be able to build something that solves a lot of problems.
- riklomas 10y agoAlso, don't call yourself an "entrepreneur" - it's a bit like being calling yourself "hilarious" or "handsome" - it's what other people call you, rather than a job title.
- amackera 10y agoInteresting! I like this logic. However... what should one call oneself?
- riklomas 10y agoDepends! CEO is fine, business development is good too.
- brianwawok 10y agoIs it even legal to call yourself CEO if you aren't a C-Corp? A basement LLC with a CEO always makes me laugh. How about Owner or Founder?
- riklomas 10y agoCEO of a LLC is legal if you're in sole control of the company but yeh, owner/founder is fine too. I used to call myself Founder when the company was just me.
- pc86 10y agoOf course it's legal, but the "C" stands for "Chief" which has a pretty strong implication that there are non-Chief Executives in the company. If you're not at a position to have full-time employees whose sole job is to manager managers, it's unlikely "CEO" really fits.
- digler999 10y agoopposite question as the other poster: what do you do if you have a great idea (naturally everyone thinks their own ideas are great) but don't have the entrepreneurial spirit ? I've been working on a project for a couple years, still have about 25% of the work to go for it to be MVP, but I'd really like to find a business partner/investor. I'm afraid to reach out though because I dont know how to protect myself from being screwed.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoNot OP but I found that pursuit of a Patent can be a protection avenue that opens up opportunities for business partnership/investment long-term. Granted it does take personal capital in the US, as it's not exactly cheap, but it's a functional approach in some avenues. Hope this helps.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- riklomas 10y agoSometimes you just gotta give it a go. I'm not saying quit your job and do it full time, but if someone is going to steal your idea, then they're going to steal your idea tomorrow or in a years time. Everything is a risk, but you don't want to get to 90 and think "damn it, I should have done that business". The worst thing that might happen is you might run out of cash, give it up and get another job. Or someone will rip you off (be it a biz partner, investor or rival) and you give it up and get another job. It's stressful and not fun, but you're not going to die if your startup fails.
- digler999 10y ago> if someone is going to steal your idea Just to clarify, I (gladly) fell out of love with my idea and dont so much worry about people "stealing" it. I'm more worried about a business partner building an "escape hatch" in the partnership contract and screwing me out of ownership/stake. Not sure if that changes your answer or not.
- pratap103 10y agoYeah, thanks for sharing!
- benologist 10y agoI did the life-ruining one as my previous startup. Then I did one that only turned out to be a nice business. The good project and the disaster both took about 3 years to build but the good project was always making money since week 1 cause it had to sustain me as I'd overextended myself in every way just trying to sustain the disaster. After about 3 years trying and failing to make the good project earn a lot more money I wanted to do an exciting new startup. Having almost hit 6 digits that third year meant I couldn't just ignore the good project and let it atrophy but I didn't want to pursue an exciting new startup being anchored to the good project all the time. I decided to sell it. With that decision all of the remaining work became about transitioning from 'code on my computer' to 'coherent and pleasant part time job for someone else to do well'. I replaced bash scripts and w/e other random crap with a web interface and gutted my code and dependencies so that the person they find on craigslist to add something in 2 years won't drown. Now I'm completely free to work on my new startup and make something like a good salary while I do, someone else takes care of the nice business in 5 hours a week. Probably half of HN could pull that off with a side project or two. This is where patio11 and someone from feinternational.com described the difference between the good project and the nice business - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11347541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11347541
- Blackstone4 10y agoHow did you sell your side business? Just thinking aloud if I wanted to buy one
- rebekk99 10y agoValidating your idea. That is one of the best but most overlooked advise. Validate, validate again.
- riklomas 10y agoYep, totally agree. A lot of founders don't do this as they're too attached to the idea or too worried about criticism. It's a tough learning process to get over the negative feedback.
- contingencies 10y agoThis seems quite hyped advice in SV recently, but validation can be difficult for certain classes of businesses. For example, I recently spoke to a US startup founder who had failed in what is roughly our segment, burning $300k. His advice: validate, validate, validate! In our area, however, it is essentially impossible to do so without similar to launch expenses, so we are just running with a regular development trajectory (in a far cheaper and higher demand market with other positive attributes) and the broad assumption that people want to eat food - http://8-food.com/ http://8-food.com/
- karthikb 10y agoEverything can be iterated. The degree to which this iteration can be accomplished is really highly dependent on the complexity of your product, but, in terms of iteration complexity (and highly simplified, dropping lots of intermediate points, etc): Polished product > Happy path demo > Mockups (mechanical, digital, etc) > User stories > Deck At the very least iterate on things like the user stories to make sure your customers can see your product fitting in to their day to day life. Without any form of iteration, you're leaving the most important thing -- product market fit -- somewhat to chance.
- contingencies 10y agoYou're right, but as with anything the management-level questions are (1) risk versus reward; (2) (finite) resource invested versus value derived (versus other options for those resources). In our case, we can iterate easily based upon real market information post-launch. It's literally illegal to do market research otherwise, so we can't really get a foot in the door hyper-analyzing potential segments ahead of schedule.
- gravypod 10y agoI'd love for someone to write about howto meet people who you'd want to join up with you as a cofounder. I know I wouldn't be able to do any of my high in the sky plans by myself but I don't know many people who'd be up to taking the plundge.
- riklomas 10y agoLooking at your profile, as a technical person you'll be a lot more in-demand than someone non-technical. Go to meetups and talk about your ideas online, people will naturally come out of the woodwork the more you talk about your high-in-the-sky plans.
- gravypod 10y agoHere's an idea for someone to build up. Make a dating site for founders and cofounders. That would do really well in SV. Probably could even run in real life speed dating. That's not exactly my field of interest but I'd sign up for something like that when I get out of college and need to finally get to building things.
- riklomas 10y agoIf I was to set you homework, it'd be to talk to 10 founders on your idea. See if they think it'd be useful. Talk to founders in SV and other cities (and other countries). Do the research before building anything, otherwise you could be wasting your energy on something people don't want.
- sanswork 10y agoThere are already a bunch of these actually. I think cofounderslab is the most well known but there are a bunch of others.
- Adamola 10y agoYeah, Rik's totally right. As a technical person you control the proverbial board. Go out, meet (great, non-crazy) people...talk about your ideas. Have in mind the type or skill set of the co-founder you want though, early stage everyone needs to bring hard skills, IMHO.
- sanderson1 10y agoI love the section about the first idea is probably not going to be the last idea. I've seen startups come in with a very set idea of how the product was going to work, only to find that the way it was going to work wasn't really what customers were looking for. Rather than defining how a product should work, startups should define their mission and adapt their product to both accomplish their mission and meet the needs/demands of the customer. I've been involved in a few startups and this is what I've learned: 1. Iteration is key and should be welcomed. 2. Validation, as noted, is incredibly important. 3. Continuing to validate iterations ultimately leads to a successful company.
- Adamola 10y agoAbsolutely! Couldn't agree more with this. Most often thing I see is teams holding onto a solution to a problem that 1) no-one has, or 2) a few people have but no-one cares about. Sometimes they also over engineer the early iterations to a level of complexity that even prospective users won't "get it". Starting small, doing the research & interview legwork to define the problem, then design the smallest version of one possible product solution to it, iterate, review continuously...
- ankitsoni 10y agoIt’s better to try and fail than never try at all. Sums it up. Thanks for the great article.
- elwell 10y agoNot really. Failing is bad. It's better to not try at all if you're going to fail, unless you can learn something that makes you succeed in the future. Otherwise, trying will mean missed opportunity costs.
- beejiu 10y agoIt is difficult to know whether you are going to fail, but easy to know whether you are going to try. Nobody sets out to fail.
- tschellenbach 10y agosuperhi is a terrible name for a company. it doesn't make me think of online courses at all.
- aldarn 10y agoJust a comment on the expected salaries for developers in London: - A junior developer at £20k is probably going to do you more harm than good - £30 - £40k for a junior developer is more reasonable, where £30k would be fresh from red-brick uni (if lucky) or a couple years industry experience - A senior developer asking less than £50k is probably not super confident (could be various reasons e.g. failing to get other jobs, not super experienced) or experienced with startups - Good senior developers experienced with startups are more likely to be on a minimum of £60k and anywhere up to £80/90k Also it's a little more nuanced than this. A first hire developer might (perhaps reasonably) expect to be a CTO or Tech Lead assuming further hires - this is one of the reasons some developers consider working in startups as it's a potential fast track to gain management-like experience. If you're hiring a junior developer, this probably isn't the best idea and it should be made clear to them this isn't the case. In hiring a senior developer it should at the very least be discussed - the outcome of this may potentially be an expectation of higher salary (either immediately or upon company growth). It's not unheard of for small startups (seed / series A) to pay £100k+ for CTOs.
- riklomas 10y agoYep, totally agree. Didn't want to get too in-depth with that, otherwise the article would have been a lot, lot longer.
- string 10y agoIs this a guideline for startups only? I work as the only dev in a small design company but have no frame of reference for salary expectations as I've never worked with other developers and transitioned into it from a design role. I earn slightly more than the other employees (designers) but that's still under £30k. I would consider myself more experienced than a junior.
- riklomas 10y agoIf you wanna send me your CV (rik@superhi.com), I can give you a rough idea of what salary you should be expecting.
- riklomas 10y agoᶦ ᵈᵒᶰᵗ ᵍᶦᵛᵉ ᵃ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ
- luckystartup 10y agoProbably not the best response for a CEO to be making on an online forum. This is not the message you should be sending to potential clients and employees.
- riklomas 10y agoᶦ ᵈᵒᶰᵗ ᵍᶦᵛᵉ ᵃ ᶠᵘᶜᵏ Seriously though, we did a lot of testing with names with real customers and also with a brand agency called Koto (the team behind Airbnb's new work - https://www.studiokoto.co/ https://www.studiokoto.co/). We didn't want to call ourselves "online code school dot com" or some SEO-bullshitty name and we found that our customers preferred a name that's not like that too, so it goes back to talking to your customers and seeing what they like and dislike. We found customers remembered our name more and could find us with the dot-com domain. The HN audience isn't one that we promote to because our customers are designers and creative industry professionals, so I'm not really bothered about promoting what we do on here. I'm more bothered about our customers liking what we do. I'm just trying to be active in the HN community. So Thierry's unthoughtful, uncritical comment deserved me saying that IDGAF response.
- hoxtown 10y agoPerhaps this is the point where you talk about your name origin (which is cool) rather than setting yourself up to be perceived as one of those dickhead founders?
- riklomas 10y agoThe name origin comes from information superhi...ghway. I was watching this Youtube video at the time and thought it was cool: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8cnP-RtRHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8cnP-RtRHU In another comment in the thread, I was talking about the brand name testing we did with customers and also with the awesome team at Koto (http://studiokoto.co/ http://studiokoto.co/)
- desireco42 10y agoNot that many comments. Here is what I would like to say, I love how you structured SuperHi as a both online course and 1-1 mentorship. That way people get best of both worlds. To me that says you care about what you are doing and your customers. This is important and will enable this business to be viable long term.
- riklomas 10y agoThank you! Yeh, we've been consistently asking customers what works for them over the two or so years we've been running. We found that a lot of people get stuck very quickly with the free online courses that are out there, and they wanted to create sites from scratch rather than learning about HTML, CSS and Javascript – it's a very slight difference, practical vs theory. We've found that the 1:1 help informs the course material too - if we get the same request topics in the 1:1 help, it's obvious we're missing something from the course material, so we add it in.
- vonnik 10y agoThe title of the piece is slightly misleading. It's really more like: Roundup of startup advice based on one person's journey. There's decent advice, but it's not really structured to support the title, which would seem to require a few counterexamples of ruin.
- riklomas 10y ago"Roundup of startup advice based on one person's journey" wasn't a catchy enough title. I should have linked to http://autopsy.io/ http://autopsy.io/ - a good place to read about why startups failed from the founders.
- arzt 10y agoI can't reiterate the incentive vs caring point he makes enough. Agencies exist to satisfy a requirement, collect a check, and run. Engage them warily for dev/design.
- isomorph 10y agoGotta tell you, that "giving a shit" scale isn't true in my case. I work for an agency and we give much more of a shit about our client than the client's internal devs do... about the code, about the business, you name it...
- rl3 10y agoThis. I've seen agencies that look like they're 11s on the give-a-shit scale. Usually it's interactive creative design agencies that are both small enough and young enough to really care about their reputation. That said, using an agency to build your startup probably isn't the best idea for so many reasons.
- riklomas 10y agoYes, I'd agree with this. The agency comment was more aimed at the medium- to large-sized agencies rather than small, young ones (I kinda see them more as freelancers when it's an agency of 2-7). Also it's a big variance of caring, some big agencies do care a lot but they're rare and hard to find. Some staff turn up late and are hungover every other morning. It's a wide range but I was trying to average it out!
- emodendroket 10y ago"Niché"? Someone should edit that misguided bit of pedantry out.
- partycoder 10y agoIf starting a startup is in your mind, I strongly this series of videos from Sam Altman (@sama) from YCombinator: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/ http://startupclass.samaltman.com/
- simmons5552 10y agoI started a company (actually several companies by now) because I knew that my life literally depended on it. I had a job out of school at a big firm and I absolutely hated it. The idea of getting up at 6:30 am every morning, wasting precious time sitting in rush hour traffic, dealing with people at an office I don't necessarily want to see, much less work with on a daily basis, sitting in a cubicle working on something that just helps get someone else rich, was just terrifying to me. I have a few people in my extended family who have committed suicide and I knew that if I continued on this path I would definitely, 100% be one of those people. I know others can, and some may even enjoy it, but I simply cannot enjoy a life like that. So I started a company and fought like I was going to war to save my own life, and it worked. I worked really hard for about 5 years and now I have enough money that I never have to worry about getting stuck in one of those dead end jobs I feared at the start of my career. So, if you're thinking of starting a company, be ready to go up against some competitors (depending on industry) who will fight you to the death - if corporate life doesn't bother you so much, perhaps you should stay there.
- shostack 10y agoWhat did you end up starting as your first success and how did you decide to start it?
- godzillabrennus 10y agoBusiness is war. This article sets the tone: https://medium.com/@lanec/what-to-expect-as-a-new-ceo-9489df14ac24#.exias3khq https://medium.com/@lanec/what-to-expect-as-a-new-ceo-9489df...
- kdazzle 10y agoNot to be a geography troll, but... I'm sure the rest of the article is great. > SuperHi has online courses which means we have students from California to Australia, all due to the internet. Lol, sounds like a whole lot of fish to me, amirite?
- jrcii 10y agoToo late
- birdpers0n 10y ago"It’s always easier to work with your friends rather than searching for someone to be your co-founder. You trust them and you have faith in their abilities. However, startups will strain even the most solid of relationships." Not only that, they could ruin your relationship with your friends forever. Friends are friends, business partners are business partners. Been there, done that.
- yokisan 10y ago> 80% won't give you critical feedback, because humans like to avoid conflict and are polite Haha. I wish! "Your app sucks". "Why is this not free?" "Can I do X? Why can't I do X?" "You changed Y and I hate it" 80% won't give you feedback, period. Because they've another 10 tabs open and you've haven't intrigued them enough to warrant anymore of their precious time and attention.
- riklomas 10y agoThis was aimed at the idea validation stage. You shouldn't have built anything at this point as you're too busy talking to customers face-to-face, trying to hone the idea down.
- canabisjunke 10y agoThe article didn't explain the "how not to ruin your life" part when doing a startup.
- rkunnamp 10y agoHow to start a startup without ruining your life 1. Never accumulate personal debt in the process of starting up 2. Sleep, Exercise and eat well 3. Never forget 1 and 2 The rest are beyond your control by a large degree. Try your level best. And Yea, occasionally read through such advices.
- ioda 10y agoAfter having failed at my first startup, and having partially succeeded in second, I couldn't agree more on those two points. The debt accrued on my first startup still haunts me. And I really wish, I slept more and worked out more during the period. It is really a simple advice, to sleep and to work out. But when you are a sinking ship, you could hardly follow it.
- cableshaft 10y agoHow do you start a startup if you're at least a few years from getting out of existing debt? Is it even remotely feasible? I've been having urges to give it a try but I'd be starting in the hole, which seems like a really bad idea. I try to work on things in my off time but it's difficult finding the time after working all day.
- riklomas 10y agoAlways have a back-up plan so I'd clear out your debts first.
- gagzilla 10y agoAlmost all such articles miss the most crucial self assessment piece- if you are married/in a relationship make sure you and your partner have a good understanding of the potential stress that you are about to take on. It can make all the difference in making shitty days tolerable or even more terrible.
- Adamola 10y agoSuch an amazing response to this thread! Thanks everyone. Rik (the author) made the original article into an ebook as a result of all this great conversation. It's on Product Hunt books also now, should you wish to check it out: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/how-to-start-a-startup-without-ruining-your-life https://www.producthunt.com/posts/how-to-start-a-startup-wit... :)
- doozler 10y agoGreat article, thank you! As a developer I often dream about having a startup. I don't want anything large or fancy but a nice little SaaS app that can generate some income. I'm absolutely terrible at marketing and I can never seem to come up with a good idea / product. Do you have any suggestions as to where I can get inspiration for products or find markets that need something?
- TempleOS 10y agoSurrender, you Freemason nigger. You're MY slave, now. God says... brainteaser's cautionary put's killer federate Greek's heiress's Novgorod Jekyll Jude playmate Burundi ice finagles claptrap's upcoming empathy's faintness germ dementedly cadmium Gresham pulsate wideness's Romanov gap's Maratha Carol's Jana sledge border's noticed