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Ask HN: Do you regret leaving corporate for entrepreneurship?

• godot 8y ago
  I did this. Left a cushy corp job a few years ago, then worked on my own startup for 3 years. While we had some small funding, we could only pay ourselves very little salary (almost below livable standards for bay area, cutting into savings a little monthly), and in the end it had to shut down after 3 years. Went back to regular job (non-corp, an early-mid stage startup) after that. I think the only factor that I have regrets about was financially. Not so much about having to cut into savings because I had good enough cushions anyway, but just realizing that I could've had 3 more years of high pay and stocks and padding the investment account with more money, and putting myself 3 more years away from retirement (or maybe more considering compound etc). Other than that, entrepreneurship was an awesome experience that I wouldn't trade for anything else really.
• slipwalker 8y ago
  How about the other way around ? Leaving entrepreneurship in order to take a corporate job and not looking back ?!... a bit of history: just around college ( 1996-1997 ) with the internet boom in brazil, i took my first consultant clients, since then worked with several "fintech" ( wasn't called that by then, but that is what those companies were/are... ) and tried to grow my company ( software consultancy and tailored code ). But being a tech entrepreneur below the equator line is not for mere mortals ( crony capitalism everywhere, labor and tax laws very fluid and incomprehensible by most professionals, terrible and costly infrastructure... ) so, last year i gave up. Took a corporate job writing code on a multinational corporation ( gargantuan enough to have access to the juicy contracts, contacts and clients ) and now i have a paycheck every month, in exchange for just 8 hours a day of my life. Before, it were 14 to 16 hours a day, plus weekends, no payed vacation, no time left for my family, and most months ( after payroll and taxes ) there were no money left for me...
  • nikanj 8y ago
    I've seen people pre-exit startups. Be one of the founders, take a corporate job as soon as the initial vesting is complete and the business has solid traction You're basically gambling that the other founders won't scuttle the startup just to spite you. This way, you get to enjoy the possible lottery winnings from the startup eventually making it big, while simultaneously having the safety and comfort of a corporate job.
• scrollbar 8y ago
  I've hacked away on projects over nights and weekends, hoping that one of them would be my ticket to a self-led lifestyle, but with no success. Then I landed a contracting client, and quit my job to commit fully to the client. I took the chance! Six months later, I was fairly burnt out on working alone with this client. In retrospect, I wish I had kept the client and tried to grow the business, even if reality wasn't as rosy as I had hoped. Since then I've tried to find more clients and not had much success, after taking a job and then quitting again. Looks like I may end up back in the corporate world soon enough. So- no regrets from this attempt to find freedom, even though it's leading me back to where I started. I will say it's become clear to me that our socioeconomic system is not set up to support people becoming more free... quite the opposite. Maybe if you try to make a SaaS business into something that requires VC-style scaling, it could backfire and cause regret, as you're committed to something that becomes more all-encompassing and lasts many years.
• m0llusk 8y ago
  I'm barely making it but that for me is better in every way than my life as an employee. Corporate products were always disappointments, the teams rarely stayed functional for long, there was zero security, and the money simply wasn't worth the cost of not being able to even try out my dreams in the real world.
• deepaksurti 8y ago
  You won't regret it if you go to entrepreneurship and ship. The problem is not about entrepreneurship but in not planning for failure and having backup plans. John Carmack: "There is wisdom that only comes from complete product cycles -- no amount of job hopping can provide it." [1] From personal experience, I can say go for it not because you hate corporate, but because you want an end to end experience, then come back to an even better role, better pay cheque corporate job, if the gig fails but you have shipped and have good landing zone on failure (some months with expenses in bank mainly). HTH. [1] https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?lang=en https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/761986843319660548?...
  • nikanj 8y ago
    Nothing worse than shipping and having absolutely no sales.
    • gschier 8y ago
      Not true. Not shipping at all is much worse. Shipping and having no sales is how every business starts. The next step is learning WHY. Talk to people, iterate, and repeat. That's business.
    • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      I've never had no sales but have had some products that were low volume. They have always been a useful learning experience, either from a technology or business perspective.
• TaylorGood 8y ago
  No. It was a mission to secure cash flow at first, but I’m very happy with my MRR which is services based. The looming regret I felt coming on in my great corporate job would’ve been not leaving. Having close to no control over your schedule except for PTO is no way to live.
• murph37 8y ago
  Contemplating this decision myself. Would love to hear others thoughts!
  • flanban 8y ago
    Money turns into time tokens. Therefore reducing your cost of living = more time. It's a different way of thinking and I like it. The comfort & security that comes from a steady paycheck can go in an instant. Don't let that false security keep you stuck in the rat race. Nobody wants to pay for you if they don't have to. I went to someone else's startup to escape corporate then success turned it quite corporate as well. The process left me burnt. Now I contract and it's not all roses, but I would never go back to the office life. Corporate was unhealthy for me in mind body and spirit. You get lumpy, you drink more, you eat garbage, you sleep worse, potential back & cardiac problems down the road and most importantly sex dies. fwiw, my father was an alimony ridden fine artist and my step father was a senior partner at a big 4 accounting firm. My dad was a really happy, well read and interesting guy. My stepdad's life is textbook american dream perfection and it's a very sad and bland one.
    • yelloweyes 8y ago
      and where did he get the money to pay the alimony?
      • flanban 8y ago
        He was the head of the art & architecture department at a women's college. Hence the alimony.
• overcast 8y ago
  What's wrong with working the corporate world, and moonlighting your SaaS business? If it ends up taking off, then quit. I don't understand why it has to be either or. I run multiple side gigs, while keeping the safe corporate job, for now.
  • feocco 8y ago
    I think energy would be the answer for many people. Seems easy to become demotivated from corporate work and let that leak into your side projects. Not that I disagree with you. But I've run into the problem myself. I think what you state is probably the best option though. Just gotta get life in order enough to avoid the energy issue.
    • mikeymz 8y ago
      Energy or time. If you have a family you probably don't have time for side gigs
  • aardvark291 8y ago
    If your side-project is at all related to your day job, this most likely runs afoul of your employment agreement and IP considerations. Typically, your employer claims ownership of all IP you generate that pertains to your work or its business. For example, if you work at Google, I think it's essentially impossible to simultaneously work on any other side project that you wish to commercialize that will not be owned by Google.
    • bad_good_guy 8y ago
      I can't imagine a case like that would ever hold up, unless you were working on company time or machines.
      • geofft 8y ago
        I can't afford as many lawyers as Google can. Do you have examples of cases where a Google-style IP agreement was ruled unenforceable when someone was moonlighting on something that was in the same field of business as some other part of the company (but unrelated to their own day job)?
• mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I greatly regretted leaving a finance job early in my career to work in an early stage start-up. The start-up workplace culture was worse, work life balance was worse, the loud open-plan office was unhealthy, distracting and frustrating to work in. Even on a generous expected value basis, favoring only high valuation exits or IPOs, and even as a super early stage employee, the compensation was way worse at the start-up compared with a stable high salary, bonus, retirement plan, and benefits. To be clear, that is even if you assume away a lot of the risk for bad outcomes at the start-up and favor high valuation possibilities. Even still, the equity is manipulated by founders and investors and is so drastically unlikely to work out in a favorable way for employees.
• squirrelicus 8y ago
  In August I quit my cushy (cushy!) day job to go full time on my startup, fully bootstrapped, living on my savings account. I discovered what panic attacks were, and made it to February a few months ago before getting a less cushy day job. Although I had the financial runway to go longer, I didn't have the mental fortitude to keep it up with a wife and three kids I have to provide for. We're still continuing nights and weekends at a much slower pace, but at a much more sustainable pace. The biggest challenge is keeping a moonlighting team motivated. My decision to fully vest my cofounders up front is paying off with this approach. I suspect it will be another 6-12 months before we go live at this point.
• cgopalan 8y ago
  If you want to hear a "yes, go for it" then yes, go for it. If you are still open to suggestions, lets play out that scenario where you quit your job and start a business. Then you would: 1) Make an overall vision for your business. 2) Translate it to several phases. 3) Translate each phase into tasks. 4) Start working on tasks. If a task is too big, break it down to subtasks. 5) Incrementally start finishing tasks. Now, can you do the above devoting an hour or so each day to it while being in your corporate job?
  • optymizer 8y ago
    (skipping over legal and tech arguments for a moment) Sadly, if your business is in software, then your corporate employer will own your IP, and the answer becomes "No".
    • shawn 8y ago
      Not a chance. If someone wants to hire me, they do not own my work outside of business hours. It's the new serfdom.
      • optymizer 8y ago
        The fact is, lots of software devs, aside from you, are employed by the large tech companies, and depending on the state, the courts side with the company. I wish we could all collectively refuse employment, but once you get the offer, not everyone has the luxury of saying "no, I'll go with a much lower salary at a smaller company".
    • cgb223 8y ago
      Not if you're doing it on your own hardware, on your own time, outside of work hours
      • optymizer 8y ago
        I have discussed this issue with an attorney in my state. Your argument is easier to make in court if you've started _before_ you joined, but if you start your business _while_ being employed, which is what this post suggests, your chances don't look good. Some states are more lenient or are known to side with the employee instead of the employer.
• drenvuk 8y ago
  I have said this before in other topics when someone is getting fed up with their job and want to try their hand at making a company. Get the business started, running, profitable and automated (with humans, bots, or scripts) and then quit. Do not remove your major source of income which also happens to be your major source of investment and start the clock that runs until your bank account empties and you need to look for work again. It is not a good idea to kill your company's lifeblood. The added pressure and energy drain from working on your own machinations while working a full time job pales in comparison to the added pressure and energy drain from working against the clock. In my case it became a source of depression and a constant demotivator when I realized I was running into roadblocks. You cannot foresee all of the difficulties you will run into, you cannot rely on stories of other entrepreneurs doing so. They are half truths and tell only the triumphant side of it, ignoring the failures of the hundreds or thousands of others who's companies made it only to the paper stage then died with a whimper, much less being in the spotlight of the medium and techcrunch and online news articles and forums. You're hearing about certain entrepreneurs solely because they're outliers, not the norm - they're a good narrative. Keep your job. Make the product. Make connections. Get Customers. Then make the company. Not the other way around. If you're the one in a million already has the connections and skills to make it happen then more power to you but statistically speaking, you probably don't. You should acquire those qualities with gusto but also with prudence. Good luck.
  • beat 8y ago
    This. Yeah, I made that mistake. On one hand, working on building a company full-time was the best time of my career. But it failed, and I lost a lot of money in the process. And going back to the corporate world was... demoralizing. (As an aside, I think the biggest problem I had was lack of a committed co-founder. I had help and support, but it's not the same. Later, I tried pushing again with potential co-founders, but they got distracted and lacked commitment when I really needed them.) edit: I do plan to get back to it soon. I'm taking a forced six month hiatus to reset that concludes in July, and I'm kind of chomping at the bit for it. But only while doing my dayjob too! Not going to leave that again until I have paying customers.
  • JauntTrooper 8y ago
• Meekro 8y ago
  I left my "real job" for entrepreneurship about 8 years ago (at age 23) and haven't looked back. I've run several small companies since then, with a game server host[1] being the most recent. I'm pretty happy with how it's gone and I have no regrets over leaving. I was happy and well-treated in the real job, but nothing beats the freedom to work on what I want, when I want, using whichever technologies I want. The biggest downsides for me: 1. Fewer opportunities to meet and collaborate with other nerds. I love working independently, but "argue with smart people" is a great way to refine your ideas. I wish I had more of that. 2. Fewer opportunities to learn from larger companies. Many companies have internal technologies, tools, processes, shell scripts, etc. that are truly inspired. Former employees get to take these ideas (though not the code itself) with them when they leave, to apply to future jobs or to their own startups. The more time you spend in the corporate world, the more of these tools you accumulate in your own tool belt. [1] https://indiehackers.com/businesses/arkservers-io https://indiehackers.com/businesses/arkservers-io
  • sodafountan 8y ago
    This is great advice. Did you work on your first business part-time while working your last "real job"? I feel like I'm in a similar boat and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm 24 and I work for a great company with really smart people whom over the past two years I've learned from quite a bit, I've always wanted to start a business though, actually in college I did just that to earn money. I created an app development business targeting Windows Phone and was able to build a pretty sizable passive income stream which kept me satisfied throughout college. I'm now debating finding a new job but really what I'd love to do is go back to entrepreneurship, yet on the other side I know how valuable learning from people in the industry actually is. Any advice?
    • Meekro 8y ago
      I started my first business while I was in college, and kept it going on the side while working the real job. After a year at the real job, I decided to leave and focus on the business. What happened to your company from college-- did you shut it down? Sell it? Did it die on its own? I don't think anyone can tell you whether it's the right time for you. Neither decision is permanent, though: If you do leave and it doesn't go well, it shouldn't be hard to go back to your old job or find a new one. "I took a year off, started a business, learned a lot, failed, and now I want a job" should go over well with most employers. If you don't leave, you can spend the next year learning more from your employer while tinkering with your idea on the side -- and then leave next year. As you age, you'll tend to accumulate obligations. Marriage, kids, mortgage, elderly parents/relatives that need care, medical problems of your own -- things like this will make it harder and more risky to quit your job later in life. So if you're going to do it, your 20s are a great time.
• _5meq 8y ago
  I'm a dev. I did this a few years ago, started my own company. I failed for two reasons: 1. I wasn't experienced enough as a developer IN THIS TECHNOLOGY to hit the ground running. When you are self-employed, time = money. You don't have time to learn the technology, figure out your business, and write the code. You have to hit the ground running and burning time on ramping up is extremely expensive. 2. I lacked the discipline required to maintain myself while working extremely hard at my start-up. Additionally, I didn't take good enough care of myself. I was ignorant about how to be productive. I was working all of my waking hours, martyring myself for my start-up and then getting up the next day and doing it over again. Here's a tip: This is bad and leads to failure if you aren't careful with your time, food, and sanity management. A lot of people like to glorify this behavior but really, excellence is a 24-hour job. Working out, eating well, getting a good night's sleep, and then coming into work the next day with clear-eyes beats running yourself ragged with panicked late-night programming sessions every time. ( Although, some people like to work at night and that is totally fine, we all have our own form of productivity. ) My point is really more about taking care of yourself and BEING DISCIPLINED. Unless you are wealthy, you do not have time ( remember, time=money ) to make mistakes. Discipline is your buffer between your degrading sanity and your ability to make good decisions.
  • carlsborg 8y ago
    Developing this cadence takes deliberate effort. Same for remote working when you are a few hours ahead of the main team. Remember to pack it up when you are done for the day !
• a13n 8y ago
  Heck no I don't regret it. Just over three years ago I left my cushy job at Facebook to start a company. It took a year and a half of grinding to make our first dollar. Now we're ramen profitable and still growing strong. [1] The reason it took so long is because I was an inexperienced founder. I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... These are not things that software engineers at big companies have to worry about. It took years for me to pick up these skills, and I'm still learning loads. And I'm so glad I learned them because now if I started all over again, it'd take a fraction of the time to build something successful. Now, different people are different. If you really love solving technical problems and don't really care about sales/marketing/business, being a founder might not be right for you. If you have a low risk profile, or care a lot about work/life balance and comfort, big companies can be great for that. [1]: https://canny.io https://canny.io
  • riku_iki 8y ago
    > I could build the product, but stuff like getting customers, pricing our product, writing a landing page... It would be extremely interesting to read what lessons you learned on this road :-)
    • a13n 8y ago
      Ask and you shall receive! https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/ https://canny.io/blog/saas-startup-ramen-profitability/ https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/ https://canny.io/blog/lessons-learned-bootstrapping-saas/
      • riku_iki 8y ago
        Oh, thanks!
  • justboxing 8y ago
    How are you just 'ramen profitable' when your lowest / basic plan to track just 100 users costs a whopping 50$ / month [1] ? Don't mean to come off as snarky, but, unless you are targeting corporations and enterprises for your service, your pricing model [2] would be too much for most bootstrapped companies and early stage startups... [1], [2] https://canny.io/pricing https://canny.io/pricing
• grosjona 8y ago
  I went back and forth between corporations and startups. The money and hours are way better when working for a corporation; especially if you manage to get a contract position with a high day rate. But I've realized with time that I'm just not built for the corporate world so it's not even an option for me anymore. After 6 months working for a corporation, I feel like shit and I have to quit for my own mental health. After working for startups for a while and taking risks all the time, I'm no longer the same kind of person as the typical corporate office worker and it's hard for me to fit in such environment. If I didn't have better options, I would probably do contract job hopping from one corporation to another every 6 months... I did that for a while and it gave me a certain feeling of control over my life which made me feel kind of like a one-person startup.
• deweller 8y ago
  Having a paycheck and being an entrepreneur is not an either/or proposition. There are things in the middle. You can find a well-financed co-founder and get a commitment for a paycheck for a fixed length of time (1-2 years). You will probably receive less equity in this situation, but you can still get enough equity to feel like a true co-founder along with enough of a paycheck to not be stressed about making ends meet.
• justherefortart 8y ago
  Nothing prevents you from doing both in all likelihood. Enjoy working 2 jobs and making 1 income. If you quit, you'll still be working 2 jobs but with no income.
• danni 8y ago
  Not leaving a corporate job, but slowly transitioning from freelancing to working on my SAAS business (https://www.scraperapi.com https://www.scraperapi.com) full time. I'll throw out the suggestion that maybe you should seek a bit of freelance work on the side so you can have some level of income while you work on your business. Even if it's just 5-10 hours a week, if you can get $100/hr from someone for that you can cover a large portion/all of your living costs if you live frugally. Good luck!
• glancast 8y ago
  I started a SaaS business, which is now my full-time gig -- I would say don't leave a job until you have something producing a ramen-noodle level salary for you. When I was able to pay myself $2,000/month it was enough to live on for my situation at the time. I was working 80 hour weeks in my underwear, scrambling to answer support requests, fix bugs, and move the codebase forward. If I had to do that while also trying to find product-market fit and worrying about running out of money, I might have broken down. No regrets with my decision now. Once my business slowed down (read: I automated much of it), I actually went back and spent two years at a startup + 1 year contracting to bring in some extra money and get new experiences. The extra cash was certainly nice, I used it to setup a nice start on retirement and buy a house. Ultimately, though, my hatred of corporate politics and building wealth for the capital class without equity of my own led me to re-focus on my SaaS app. I've been enjoying the freedom and challenges ever since.
• tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  No regrets but there are a couple of things that made the decision easy for me. 1. I started by switching to contracting, I had a good reputation in my niche and plenty of contacts. Mostly it was lots of fairly short contracts which allowed me to develop my own product in the inevitable quite periods between jobs. I did this for two years before I quite contracting. 2. I wasn't a very good employee, it wasn't until some time after I left the corporate world that I really understood that it didn't suit me. 3. I'm a saver, it would have been much harder to do if I lived from pay check to pay check.
• wenbin 8y ago
  I don't regret. I left my day job in late 2016 and started to do this startup thing. I'm still very happy. I've seen people who left day job to start companies and became very unhappy very quickly (within 6 months). The key thing is to have the right motivation and to manage expectation. If the primary reason to start your own company is to look good in front of your other fancy friends, then you'd better not do that in the first place. Doing startup is roller coaster. You won't look good in front of others all the time. Actually, for a long period of time (many months ~ many years), you may look pretty bad, in terms of product metrics, income, company reputation... Some of my friends asked me whether they should start a company, I typically suggest them to answer these questions first: * Have you made over $10k on your own? Not from your day job salary. Not from public stock market. Making money needs practice. You start a company to make money. You'd better have some experience of making money first. * What's your longest project? Have you worked on anything for multiple years? Grit & patience need practice. Building a successful company takes multiple years, even decades. Be prepared. * When was the last time you were insulted by others? If you grew up in a very comfortable environment (rich family, great schools -- because your parents went to those great schools too, great companies, ...), probably you already get used to compliment for your entire life. Now you are going to face very very diverse set of people who don't know your family background or don't recognize your family name, if you start a company. If you are the kind of people that are easy to be upset, you'd better stay in the friendly corporate. * What happened when you broke up with your ex or your friends? People relationship is complex. You'll experience a lot of bad people relationship if you start your own company -- breaking up with cofounders, firing employees, fighting evil investors, fighting con man, fighting bad reporters, dealing with malicious users, dealing with competitors (sometimes in person)... All kinds of drama. You'd better practice this kind of things before starting your own company.
  • majkinetor 8y ago
    Nice points m8.
• adamnemecek 8y ago
  I quit my job to work full time on something I’ve been wanting to do since I was like 12. It’s been like two years now, mich longer than expected, but there was a lot of shit I had to plow through, the project is more researchy than I thought. I don’t regret it whatsoever, what I regret is stressing myself over launching ASAP in the first nine months of this thing, which really caused me to burn out. I would never take time off cause I thought I was wasting money, but it’s impossible to do that in the long run. If you want to play a game, play it, you’ll return back to your project soon enough. Here’s my project, it’s not launched yet but check it out https://www.ngrid.io https://www.ngrid.io