4 ms·

Ask HN: How'd you start your business while moonlighting?

How'd you separate your day job from your business you were thinking of starting and what is that business? Thanks

softwaredoug 6y ago
In my career I’ve been fortunate that my “entrepreneurial” interests aligned with my employer. So they have been willing to give me some time, and investment under certain conditions (still I put in a lot of my own extra hours, but shared in the upside). This is certainly easier at a small company where you’re a key contributor, but it helps tune the dial between stability and entrepreneurship. I’ve had little interest in starting and running a business, but have successfully pioneered new markets and products outside my employers main focus and constraints, to everyone’s benefit. Entrepreneurship need not just be about a business, but a whole new model of doing business or achieving personal financial growth IMO.
- apkallum 6y ago
  That's really interesting. Could you give some examples?
  - softwaredoug 6y ago
    I created a new consulting business for improving relevance of site search results for say e-commerce, etc. At the time my company did a mix of big data and search consulting. I took about half my hours to write a book (Relevant Search) along with 20 of my own. I created a tool Quepid (http://quepid.com http://quepid.com) to help optimize relevance for Solr and Elasticsearch. Along with colleagues, I started a conference: Haystack (http://haystackconf.com http://haystackconf.com) focused on the domain. I also made an open source plugin for integrating machine learning capabilities into Elasticsearch, and got Wikimedia to partner building it out further. All that fed the sales funnel for the services I was building out somewhat separate from the companies main business. As the demand picked up, we matured the products we offered in that market. Eventually the companies focus completely changed to what we were doing and away from the old model. I will say, while the company would probably try to support anyone doing this, ongoing support depended on results and momentum. I was lucky to have some success, so got to keep building after early proof of market interest.

How'd you separate your day job from your business you were thinking of starting and what is that business? Thanks

In my career I’ve been fortunate that my “entrepreneurial” interests aligned with my employer. So they have been willing to give me some time, and investment under certain conditions (still I put in a lot of my own extra hours, but shared in the upside). This is certainly easier at a small company where you’re a key contributor, but it helps tune the dial between stability and entrepreneurship. I’ve had little interest in starting and running a business, but have successfully pioneered new markets and products outside my employers main focus and constraints, to everyone’s benefit. Entrepreneurship need not just be about a business, but a whole new model of doing business or achieving personal financial growth IMO.

apkallum 6y ago
That's really interesting. Could you give some examples?
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  I created a new consulting business for improving relevance of site search results for say e-commerce, etc. At the time my company did a mix of big data and search consulting. I took about half my hours to write a book (Relevant Search) along with 20 of my own. I created a tool Quepid (http://quepid.com http://quepid.com) to help optimize relevance for Solr and Elasticsearch. Along with colleagues, I started a conference: Haystack (http://haystackconf.com http://haystackconf.com) focused on the domain. I also made an open source plugin for integrating machine learning capabilities into Elasticsearch, and got Wikimedia to partner building it out further. All that fed the sales funnel for the services I was building out somewhat separate from the companies main business. As the demand picked up, we matured the products we offered in that market. Eventually the companies focus completely changed to what we were doing and away from the old model. I will say, while the company would probably try to support anyone doing this, ongoing support depended on results and momentum. I was lucky to have some success, so got to keep building after early proof of market interest.