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That time I told my wife I wanted to quit my job
- jonny383 5y agoSounds like you're the wife, frankly.
- happytoexplain 5y agoThis seems petty and meaningless.
- dqh 5y agoWhat is that even supposed to mean. It’s certainly not a comment that belongs here, or anywhere.
- redis_mlc 5y agoFalse, this is a very germane topic for a startup forum. Most wives WILL NOT go along with a plan to start an unfunded startup and WILL leave you if you quit your job and can't support them at the same level as before. In fact, most women have a "backup plan/husband" at all times. You can read about hypergamy and monkey-branching to understand female psychology and need for security. It's universal, so it doesn't matter what country you're in, although some religions suppress it in practice. I don't like the overwrought ("beta") presentation of the blog article, but the salient relationship points are very real. He's a lucky guy to have an understanding and agreable wife. If you're a man and don't understand what I'm talking about above, then expect to be blindsided by your family after career changes, since this happens every day around the world.
- macksd 5y agoTo the dead comment that wrote "If you're a man and don't understand what I'm talking about above, then expect to be blindsided by your family after career changes": as if this thread didn't start by implying a "real man" would blindside the mother of his child with startup plans without considering her input. You condescendingly refer to female psychology and a need for security, without stopping to look at your own selfish motives that started all this?
- snowwrestler 5y agoPlease don’t quote dead comments to continue arguing with them.
- dang 5y agoPersonal attacks (or whatever this is) will get you banned here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Edit: since you've been egregiously breaking the site guidelines a lot lately, we've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- yuy910616 5y agoHaving a supportive spouse is basically a superpower.
- ezekg 5y agoAbsolutely agree. Thanks for reading!
- yen223 5y agoBeing a supportive spouse is too
- nineplay 5y agoI'll stretch the analogy and say having a supportive spouse without being a supportive spouse is Kryptonite. I'll assume that should the OP's wife express that she was at the breaking point that he would be similarly supportive of her desires.
- blunte 5y agoA non-supportive spouse may simply not understand you; or they may be caught up in their own struggles; or they may not be the right spouse...
- notsureaboutpg 5y agoThis isn't true at all. It's about expectations. If both spouses expect the exact same support, it's difficult / impossible. I see most successful marriages where each spouse does what the other is not as good at doing, where they complement each other and don't resent that they ~always~ do one thing while the spouse ~always~ does something else.
- Jensson 5y agoDifferent kinds of support requests are very different. "Please don't ask as much of me in the future, I am at a breaking point" "Please do more for me in the future, I am at a breaking point" You see the difference in these two? In the first you ask for yourself to do less. In the second you ask for your partner to do more. The second often leads to your partner also burning out and then nobody has any capacity to spare creating a horrible situation. The super power isn't the support part, but being able to live with less part. Demanding high living standards and thus high workload from your partner is the kryptonite.
- hellisothers 5y agoWas excited to read a feel good story about good relationships and the ability to strike out on one’s own. Then got to the “~taxes~ theft” and it killed the buzz. Why even include that? Whole article built on the privilege of being able to build your own business but calling the thing that built the infrastructure to make it happen theft :\.
- hauzjk 5y agoI'm pretty sure its just a lil joke
- ezekg 5y agoCan confirm, it was definitely in jest. But I am a libertarian, so I have to spread the good word through memes whenever I can.
- lolpython 5y agoIt takes some experience with writing to learn to remove asides like these that detract from the main point. It’s extra weird that they did this on the company blog. Hopefully a couple extra editing passes are done in the future.
- lurker2093 5y agomajority of taxes aren't 'building the infrastructure' that enables one to start a SaaS.
- 5y ago
- softwarebeware 5y agoCool read, always wanted to take my own idea to market and succeed with it, but never actually found that unique idea that someone wasn't already doing better, unfortunately. "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" -William Gibson
- lolpython 5y agoQuestion for people in this situation - did you worry you wouldn't get to spend enough time with your kids? Work/life balance can be zero-sum and starting a new business generally leans hard on the work side of things.
- ezekg 5y agoYes. I still worry about this all the time. But I get off around 4 or 5 every day, I take a 2 hour lunch every day, and I get to spend time with my 2 year old daughter until 9pm, then I spend time with my wife until midnight. I built my business around being able to do this. I don't want to "grind" to have a successful business, and you don't have to, although growth is of course slower than if you did sacrifice your personal life for your business more than I did. I ran it on the side for years because it gave me freedom to not grind every day, at least up until it got too big to do on the side. Towards the end it was definitely a grind. But the first few years when I was under $5k MRR were easy (relative) to do on the side because I chose boring tech and things just worked.
- chasely 5y agoI'm where you were a while ago. We are having our first kid at the end of this year, and I have finally found a side project that aligns my passions and a potential market. I'm scared of what's to come, knowing that I want to spend time with my kid while still being a good husband and making slow yet steady progress on my side project, all on top of having a full job. It feels overwhelming and I'm not even in it yet.
- jkestner 5y agoI feel you. Don't be scared; embrace the knowledge that your productivity will crater for a while. Everyone's got different needs, but you will find yours reprioritized for you once the baby becomes a reality. Step back down Maslow's pyramid to basics like sleep and survival of your family. And enjoy it—not much choice!
- kureikain 5y agoCongratulate on your journey. The ability to build a SaaS, sell it as a subscription to other is amazing. Compare with our old parents, without a computer, they need a huge chunk of money to setup a biz(buying equipment, office space etc). Especially when you're one of the erly to market(look like keygen.sh is a great one) and can move fast enough, in a market that people are willing to pay more than $50 per month, it can grow very quick. Good job rolling it out and make it sustaisable.
- ezekg 5y agoThanks for the kind words, and thanks for reading! Being able to build a SaaS with little capital, given you have the skillset, is pretty wild indeed!
- atarian 5y agoIs there something like this for Chrome/Firefox extensions?
- ezekg 5y agoI have quite a few customers that use Keygen for browser extensions. Is there anything here that you see that wouldn't work with what you're thinking?
- blunte 5y ago> losing the moments I had with my family because my mind was so overloaded and preoccupied with things that ultimately didn't f*** matter. 12-18 mo after joining most companies in my career, this was my feeling. It's awful. You literally fight to make things better in a company, to help the company earn a bit more profit. There are the enviable? people who can just work the 9 hours, do the job, not get committed or emotionally invested, and then leave the job when they walk out the door. But for some of us, there's the vision of what could be, and the absurd obstacles preventing us from reaching the what could be. Even so, the what could be often just means a percent or two more profit for the company. If you're saving babies and solving world hunger, it matters. If you're helping telecom companies recover from problems related to the 1980s billing systems which they never bit the bulled and replaced, it ultimately means nothing. > A weight was lifted off my shoulders. Until you feel this weight, and you walk away, you cannot know what this feels like. For the author, in such a short sentence, it sounds immediate. For me, 6 weeks after quitting a permanent contract (which is the kind of guaranteed security we're not used to in the US unless you're exective with a golden parachute), I'm finally coming to grips with my freedom. It's like a sponge that has been squeezed into a 1cm cube. If I could give my younger self advice, it would be to NEVER go work for a company unless you were absolutely passionate about their mission. Never work for the money. You could work for the money and die rich, never having lived authentically. Or you could live authentically, rich or poor, and die satisfied.
- twalla 5y agoMy advice would be the absolute opposite. "You are not your job, don't break your back making some other (probably already rich) dbag rich(er), take care of yourself and those you care about first and foremost". It's entirely possible to live authentically without being particularly passionate about the field you earn your living in - I don't have a passion or "dream job" in the software field because I don't dream about labor. I'd much rather be skiing, building stuff in my shop or fishing. This doesn't mean I don't like my job or that I don't find it interesting or that I'm not a good/productive engineer - it simply means I derive meaning in life elsewhere.
- blunte 5y ago
- im_down_w_otp 5y agoWe're a keygen.sh user for our Modality product at Auxon. It's excellent. Some folks on the team have experience with some of traditional "giants" in the space like Nalpeiron and Flexera. Working with keygen.sh is an absolute joy by comparison. It's not without a few oddities and caveats of its own, but the experience writ large is so incredibly positive that those few issues are easy to forgive and forget. It's really interesting to get some backstage access to how this fantastic product came to be and what underpins the motivating thesis behind it. From one founder (also with little ones and a fantastically supportive partner) to another, my hat's off to you. My many thanks to both you and your partner. Being able to just grab keygen.sh and integrate licensing into our product helped us go from MA to GA in about a week and was also essential in getting some investors over the hump to funding (because we could show traction and an easier path to more of it). As a result, I got to reduce my stress level and spend more time with my kids over the summer.
- ezekg 5y agoThank you so much for your support! I'm super stoked to hear that Keygen has been able to benefit you personally, and also your company.
- silexia 5y agoNever take on funding or sell. Both of those will result in the death of your business.
- im_down_w_otp 5y agoI don't think that's necessarily always true. I do think that it can be very, very dangerous if your business doesn't _exaxtly_ fit whatever the prevailing thesis du jour is for how VCs decide that unicorns are made. The reason I say that is because you're basically dealing with two classes of customers at that point. One for your product and one for your equity, and if there's gross misalignment with either you're going to have a bad time. If the latter fundamentally doesn't understand the former, you'll have a bad time.
- pier25 5y agoGreat read. Thanks for sharing and congrats on your success! I'm in a similar situation. I'm working on a thing and my wife has been supporting me for some time now. Years ago she told me to leave my job and focus on my thing, but I was afraid. I've been working since I was 19 years old and I have trust issues. It was very difficult for me to believe in myself and jump into the void but I'm 42 and if I don't do it now I will never do it. Anyway, I'm a couple of months from the first beta launch. I'm happy, anxious, afraid, hopeful... all at the same time. I hope I'll be able to write a similar blog post in a year or two.
- emadabdulrahim 5y agoBest of luck with your launch and post launch!
- pier25 5y agoThanks!
- pcurve 5y ago43 here. I admire your courage. Hope to see your project here posted soon!
- pier25 5y agoThanks! You bet I will post a Show HN post!
- ezekg 5y agoThanks for reading, and for sharing. A supportive spouse is a great thing. I wish you luck with your beta! Looking forward to the Show HN.
- tkojames 5y agoWish you and the wife the best! I do not have the courage to do something like that. Even though my wife would tell me the same thing. It is quite amazing to find someone that truly cares about you! Cherish it. I have trust issue as well with my crazy family life. I really look forward to reading your blog post about this. You got this!!
- ajkjk 5y agoUh.. why was it so hard? do you not talk to each other about whether you're liking your job, or planning to stay, regularly?
- ezekg 5y agoVenting about how much you dislike your job, and telling your spouse that you want to quit your job and quarter your income are 2 completely different things.
- pm90 5y agoThe author says: > was making about half of what my senior software engineer position at $CRYPTO_EXCHANGE was netting me This seems like something one would certainly share with ones partner. The authors yearning for doing the side project also seems like something that would come up in conversations in a healthy relationship. Disclaimer: I’ve never been married but have been in serious/committed long term relationships. And I’m not a therapist either.
- ezekg 5y agoI am the author. I can promise you, after I left my job, I more than quartered my total income after taxes and other expenses such as insurance.
- ajkjk 5y agoTwo things that you ought to be able to do any time you wanted in a communicative relationship.
- gerdesj 5y agoTa for sharing your experiences. It's quite clear that you are sharing some pretty raw bits of your life. "I just finished reading 1984." - No one ever finishes reading that book, per se. It reads you and then spits you out. "and I still don't have a go-to growth channel" - no idea what that even means. Me and a couple of chaps have been running a little IT business in the UK for 20 years. We have around 20 employees and t/o about GBP1.5M. Nothing fancy. If you can pay the bills and sleep at night, I call that a win.
- travisgriggs 5y ago> "I just finished reading 1984." - No one ever finishes reading that book, per se. It reads you and then spits you out. Amen to that. Of all scifi books to use as the “things have come full circle” closer, this seemed deeply ominous and disturbing to me. It’s like some sort of “this could go super cool or all come unglued” season enders. I wish this guy the best of luck and hope it just gets better. The beginning to a happily ever after. But if the tragic ethos of 1984 is his victory lap, my anxiety worries there’s a darker sequel to this story a few years down the road.
- effingwewt 5y agoTo me, that's the win! I still can't believe 1984 isn't required reading. I wonder if anything pertinent/worthwhile is any longer.
- thargor 5y agoWhat does t/o mean?
- brightball 5y agoOnce I got cussed out by a business owner. Showed it to my wife and she told me to quit my job. Said we’d figure it out, but that she didn’t want me working for somebody like that. I knew it needed to happen but I’d been stressing about how to tell her for nearly a month. The amount of relief that came from her approval and endorsement was incredible. I was less nervous about quitting than I was nervous about telling her. Props to you man. Well done.
- giantg2 5y agoLucky you. My wife tells me to quit my job because I hate it so much. The thing is, there's no alternative that pays the bills and she spends more on her hobbies every month than I do on the mortgage, and she doesn't help with family bills.
- dimitrios1 5y agoIt may be time for you to have a conversation with your wife about this.
- giantg2 5y agoShe doesn't want to talk about stuff like this.
- dimitrios1 5y agoAnd I didn't want to talk to mine about my gaming addiction. Thankfully I did, after seven years, and it saved our marriage. Help her understand that this really impacts you, and you'd like to work on a solution together. She may be spending so much for a reason you may not be aware of as well. A healthy relationship must be able to have this type of communication. Keep trying. Best of luck, friend.
- IAmGraydon 5y agoI would recommend relationship counseling to open up communication a bit. She need to learn why her spending triggers your anxiety. You also need to learn why fear shouldn’t drive your decisions. Most importantly, resentment is cancer. End it at all costs.
- carapace 5y agoI can relate to this on a much milder level. Story time. I was once working at a startup that was doing very well (growing rapidly, getting investment) despite the founders being pretty incompetent. They didn't know what they were doing, and they wouldn't listen to me about how to do things better. I have no problem quitting a job if my bosses are incompetent or if I feel I'm not able to contribute, but in this case my girlfriend at the time was nervous about it when I brought it up, and I let that override my urge to quit. A couple of months later they fired me. I experienced a powerful wave of unfamiliar emotion when I read the "your fired" email and it took me a moment to analyze it and figure out that it was relief, a wave of relief. It was one of the very few times in my life when I've let other people convince me to ignore my gut feelings. I'm not blaming my ex-girlfriend, it was my decision, but it was the wrong decision. - - - - For your amusement here are some details of the business: they had no QA department, the users were our QA. All of the business logic was in stored procedures in the DB which, as a result, was always on fire even as we continually upgraded the hardware. Our HTML was 25% white space because our PHP guy liked deep indentation. He was a terrible programmer but he was a co-founder and a friend of the DB/sysadmin co-founder so he couldn't/wouldn't be fired. I tried to explain to him once that arrays, linked lists, and hash tables were different things but he refused to believe me because the only experience he had was with PHP and JS. The DB/sysadmin guy was a total "Master-Blaster" (You know "Who run Bartertown!?" from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), if the CEO asked him to do something he didn't want to do he would throw actual screaming fits or just lie to him and say "That's impossible." They built a skating half-pipe in the office even though none of them skated. It was madness. But the users loved us and the numbers went up and up, so investors were lining up to vie for the chance to give them money. Eventually they (the investors) sidelined the three co-founders and now the company is a Wall street darling and a household word. Go figure.
- sergiotapia 5y agoUs men with wives like this are empowered beyond measure. Treasure your wives gentlemen. When I was thinking about making a change in my career my wife immediately said do it and supported me 150%. I wouldn't be the person I am today or have the success I have without my supporting wife. Thank you for sharing OP!
- nicodjimenez 5y agoNice article and nice looking product. One suggestion for your website: more articles on general advice for how to sell on premise software and what types of business models work best depending on software usage patterns and software delivery. People don't want more features, they want more advice.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- vncecartersknee 5y agoGood for you I guess. Virtually no one has the privilege of being able to just quit their their shitty job and take a risk like that but nice if you can.
- doppp 5y agoHey ezekg, I know this is not the subject of the post but what was the desktop app you were working on and why did it flop?
- ezekg 5y agoIt was an app that spun up and managed environments for WordPress websites, including local envs, with 1-click deploys and DB migrations to most hosting providers. Eventually expanded out of WP to other types of apps. It flopped for various reasons, but the main being bad fit with co-founders. It was a first to market competitor to https://localwp.com https://localwp.com, who ultimately won out. gg
- zw123456 5y agoOMG, this reminds me so much of a very pivotal point in my life. It was way back in 1987, and I had quit my very stable job with a telecom giant (Bell Labs) to go to work with a bunch of buddies on a start up company, we had developed a very cool new network management technology for IBM SNA networks (google it, in the way back times that was the shit). Anyhow, I had been working my ass off, night and day, like you do on gigs like that. My wife of 5 years thought I was cheating on her. HA ! that would have been a lot more fun ugh. Long story short (you can fill in the blanks, fights etc.). So one day comes where, the dream comes true, IBM offers to buy us out, but I was in sort of a fog and worried about my marriage and moving to Bocca Raton was probably not going to fly. I get called into my bosses office and he goes through my options, all foggy as hell to me at the time and I sort of grunt and point at taking my profit sharing pay out rather than moving. So OK, in my mind I had just got fired. I go home and on the dinning room table there is a bunch of papers, divorce papers, my wife comes in and tells me she wants a divorce. OK, so I lose my job and marriage on the same day within hours. So what do I do? Well heck what any sane person would do. I grab my wind surf board and throw it in my Scout (wish I still had it, wife said it was a piece of junk, ha, worth a lot if I had kept it). I grab the dog, she knows the drill, hops in the Scout, I make a quick pit stop for a 6 pack of Pacifico and we are off to my favorite beach. I take Heidi, my dog, on a couple of baby spins on the board, she loves that. Do a little shredding. Then back on the beach she sits and stares at me, you know dogs know. Sipping on my beer. And it hits me, duh, wait a second, what the heck did my boss say again about profit sharing ? My mind starts to clear, starts racing. I finish that one beer and head back to the house. I check the papers, Fuck ! I am a millionaire, 3 months from now when the deal closes. Oh, let's check those divorce papers, huh, it can be done in 90 days. So suddenly I am a super helpful husband with the divorce, I will sign everything and run it to the court house of course. Let's just get this silly thing over with, you are totally right. Anyhow, funny how stuff hits you. Anyhow, never married again. Did one other start up after that. Been done since. Never happier. That was, for me, that moment, I will never forget. I went from the depths of hell to bliss in a moment of clarity.
- echelon 5y agoAmazing life story. Thank you for sharing. Did your wife find out she lost out on millions? Was she angry? Did you reconcile? What are you up to these days?
- thiscatis 5y ago> I enjoyed being a part of new startups, those that were still "scrappy." But each time, once that growth-stage hit and managers started coming in to make things "more efficient", that's when I knew that those types of places weren't for me. I used to be in this position but then I actually became pretty passionate about making sure startups can make it through the growth phase and still deliver.
- redis_mlc 5y agoThis is a very germane topic for a startup forum. Most wives WILL NOT go along with a plan to start an unfunded startup and WILL leave you if you quit your job and can't support them at the same level as before. In fact, most women have a "backup plan/husband" at all times. You can read about hypergamy and monkey-branching to understand female psychology and need for security. It's universal, so it doesn't matter what country you're in, although some religions suppress it in practice. I don't like the overwrought ("beta") presentation of the blog article, but the salient relationship points are very real. He's a lucky guy to have an understanding and agreable wife. If you're a man and don't understand what I'm talking about above, then expect to be blindsided by your family after career changes, since this happens every day around the world.
- amosj 5y agoThank you for sharing, especially your transparency about your doubts, your savings and your time. I find this inspiring and encouraging
- r3n 5y agoThank you for sharing this. I'm suffering from work burnout and are planning to quit my current job to pursue a more balanced, self-sustainable way working for myself. Seeing your post help me understand I'm not alone.
- nerdwaller 5y agoCongrats Zeke, we miss you at `$CRYPTO_EXCHANGE` but are glad to see your project grow and you do well!
- nicbou 5y agoThe wife is the hero of this story. Take good care of her. She's been patient and supportive, and I'm glad that you're aware of it.
- metadata 5y agoAh, yes, that burnout when trying to start a new thing alongside a day job. Happened to me as well, and it was hell. Back in 2001, I was living in a small village half an hour drive from the city. We thought living in the country will be fantastic. I had a great job, working for a US company. Super-hard and very interesting projects, I could come and leave the work as I please. Then, 9/11 happened and all investors disappeared. My pay was cut in half. At the same time, had to go to the army (I chose civil service to pay that out), so I could only work half-time on my job - another half of my pay went away. Suddenly this was unsustainable, and I had a pregnant wife. My solution - no problem, I will start my own business. While it all worked out well in the end, the next year was terrible. I would leave the house at 6:15AM, be at the civil service until 3PM. Then go to the job and work until 8PM. Then go home and work on the side project until 2AM. Relationship with my wife deteriorated to the point of almost no return as I was overstressed and impossible to live with. We constantly struggled with debt. And my brain fried from overwork and lack of sleep. People would speak to me and I would not remember it after 5 minutes. It took a lot of time to get back to normal afterwards. In hindsight, starting a side project was a terrible decision for that time. I should have made sure to safeguard the health of the family. We should have moved back to the city. We could have moved to live with my parents for a while. Anything would be better than the path I took, in my arrogance and need to provide for my family the way I decided is the way to go. The same financial independence would come, with far less stress, if I stopped to reevaluate what can be done - and talked with my wife more. When someone asks me for advice, I always say - do not risk everything for the chance of success. With family, it's family first.
- hycaria 5y agoI would have said in hindsight it was not the best time to get pregnant or that your wife could do a side business too but YMMV :)
- metadata 5y agoWell, there is a fact that "we got pregnant" before the 9/11. As of why my wife couldn't have started a side business while pregnant - some things are, well, private.
- zabaki 5y agoGoos for you man! Keep it up!
- c_o_n_v_e_x 5y agoIn high school, I started a summer job as an apprentice and eventually worked my towards becoming a state licensed contractor. With my license, I started my own business which helped (partially) cover my costs for going to college. After graduation, I gave up the business because I was tired of sweating in the field day in day out. That small taste of being an entrepreneur poisoned me and I've been left with the want/need to do it all over again. I don't like managers and crave autonomy. My problem now is that I have no shortage of ideas, I'm interested in everything. I find it hard to focus and I'm paralyzed with so many ideas. I question whether I should have ever given up the service business! Hats off to Mr.Keygen for making the plunge. Your success is motivation for a lot of us!
- mastazi 5y ago> I enjoyed being a part of new startups, those that were still "scrappy." But each time, once that growth-stage hit and managers started coming in to make things "more efficient", that's when I knew that those types of places weren't for me. I went through this at least 3 times now, and I don't know how to break the cycle. I probably never will.
- secondcoming 5y agoWhat's the problem? Making a company 'more efficient' makes it more attractive to potential buyers.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mastazi 5y agoUhm someone buying the company would make things even worse, based on my personal experience. I would probably resign before it happens.
- aehlsf 5y agoSo sweet! Thanks for sharing!!
- sguav 5y agoIt makes me glad to read such success stories as I can partially relate. I have been working on 2/3 side projects for almost three years now, and my partner realised soon how much happier I am when working on my startups and ideas...but mistrust in myself is still too strong. Also I only have experience with "manufacture-centered" businesses, maybe the risk with a Saas feels different?
- EliRivers 5y agoI was on my 4th job before I discovered people usually find a job to move to before they quit. I can only imagine the psychic damage done to people who hate their jobs, feel sick when they think about going in to work the next day, spending hour after hour in situations that just make them miserable, but can't get out. Can't afford to just quit. In my mind, it would feel like serving time. Feel like a prison sentence with no release date. I recognise my good fortune in life in being able to just quit; even just knowing I always have that option makes everything bad in the life of employment more bearable.
- slfnflctd 5y ago> like a prison sentence with no release date I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would rather be homeless than trapped in a job that's making me miserable with no end in sight. It's dehumanizing. Of course, many people don't have that choice (I may not either if serious medical issues come up)-- there is no doubt in my mind this causes terrible suffering and contributes to many suicides.
- lmilcin 5y agoI would not discount working on a side project alongside your day job. I think the absolute greatest benefit of this is that if your project doesn't work the only thing you have lost is some of your time and effort. I know people who had "idea" and they decided they have some money saved so they will quit their day job. And in most cases it just doesn't work. One friend ended up getting divorced and then re-hired and with debt for the rest of his life. It is important to remember that most ideas do not work out in the end. But there will be more ideas. I think the healthiest process is to approach your ideas with mindset that what you get is you can either succeed with your idea or you want to set yourself up better for the next idea that comes. If you look at success stories more often than not they are preceded by failures. If these people treated their idea as if it was the last one they will ever have, they would fail right away and we would never hear about them.
- ryandrake 5y ago> I would not discount working on a side project alongside your day job. If you choose to do this, read your employer's IP assignment policy very carefully. If you work for a large or medium-sized tech company, it is likely that your employer asserts ownership of all IP you produce, at work or at home, using their equipment or yours. This ability is limited in some regions, but even California allows companies to do this if the subject matter of the work is in some way related to the company's business. You don't want to spend 2 years working on a startup, have it gain some level of success, then have your former employer's lawyers mire you in IP lawsuits for the rest of its existence.
- lmilcin 5y agoI have worked for a dozen companies and I never seen them trying to smuggle something like that into my contract (but it might be because I work in Poland though mostly for foreign companies). Personally, I would NEVER work for a company that would try to take ownership of something that I made on my own time, effort and resources. And while I never had anybody try this one on me I had companies try other stuff. One company tried to exclude me from my industry by smuggling into contract that I agree not to compete with them for a year after leaving them, competing defined as working in any way with other companies this particular one has any ties to. And since they produce popular banking software and also deliver contractors to practically every Polish bank, it would mean I would be excluded from every single bank doing business in Poland. So I just politely wrote them that I cannot accept that but I can agree not to work for any company that I personally get involved with through working with them and they grudgingly changed the contract terms. In the end, if you are polite and reasonable it is almost always possible to modify the contract terms.
- roel_v 5y agoI guess I'm going to get flamed for this, but if I may offer some unsolicited advice on business growth: tone down your personal Instagram a bit, to be a bit more 'neutral'. I know you (or others reading this) will probably take this as a personal attack, and really I'm not picking 'sides' here (I'm not even American, I don't care), but it's 2021 - I'm 100% confident you've lost customers over this. Especially given the demographic you're targeting. A licensing back end is a major part of a software product, and outsourcing that is a major leap of faith. The developers using your product need to trust you, and if they know you're a small operation, they'll look into things like your personal online presence. People do pick up on these things.
- joeberon 5y agoDefinitely agree, it's just not a good look.
- dandellion 5y agoI was curious so I checked it out. While I'm not American, and where I live that's not a thing, and I personally don't like it, it would seem kind of ridiculous to decide to use a service or not based on that Instagram.
- toolz 5y agoYeah, the comment had me curious as well. It's literally just a guy posting pictures of his guns and family. The most dramatic thing on there was the bio part that said "politically incorrect" while appearing to have nothing political on the page. Are pictures of guns offensive outside of the US? I realize growing up in the US with a family of hunters has me desensitized, but I can't imagine being upset at someone whose hobby is going to the shooting range.
- danieldk 5y agoAre pictures of guns offensive outside of the US? I realize growing up in the US with a family of hunters has me desensitized, but I can't imagine being upset at someone whose hobby is going to the shooting range. Yes. The sentiment of many people in Western Europe [1] is that weapon-carrying Americans are at the very least somewhat lunatic. Big disclaimer: this is not a value judgement, this is not a discussion I want to immerse myself in now ;). Just an observation. [1] I don't know about other parts of the world.
- Markoff 5y agoTLDR don't worry about things (in advance) unless you have reason to worry about
- querez 5y agoI wonder if the author can see the irony in having a SaaS business, yet equating taxes as theft. Definitely a weird look about all of this...
- detcader 5y agoWhat a buried lede: the more communication in a relationship the better
- dcchambers 5y agoI wasn't familiar with Keygen before but this looks pretty cool. In your blog post you mention you want to be the "Stripe of licensing" and it seems like you're certainly on your way to that goal. The website feels very "Stripe-like" - in a good way. Equally professional but plenty of nerdy stuff right there in the open. A good way to sell to both developers who need to use your tool and the higher-ups making the decision to purchase or not. Congrats and good luck!
- mxuribe 5y agoBeyond earning a salary, the 2 biggest issues i face if i were to "go it alone": 1. My lack of skills as a lead salesperson. I'm really effective at many roles - both for enterprise and start up (e.g. - CTO, dev, BA, product mgr, project mgr, etc.)...but when it comes to selling/sales...wow, do i suck...at least as the lead. I'm really good as a wingman/second banana...but to get leads, or close that deal as the lead salesperson...well, that has been my greatest weakness...and honestly one that i've never desired to be good at...but then if i were to go into business for myself, i would either need to improve, or get a partner who is good at that. 2. Secondly, the cost of health care - at least in the U.S. (where i live/work). I'm able to bring lots of other costs down (home mortgage or apartment rent, etc.), but not health care...at least not for my family's needs (*NEEDS*, not wants!). So, if/when i were to go into business full-time for myself, i would need to ensure i can cover such costs...and that makes things quite difficult...especially as per my point #1 above. ...Which is all to state that i'm highly respectful and in awe for folks who *can* make it on their own. Kudos to the post author, and to anyone else who can make it happen!
- ElectricMind 5y agoStep 1) Find a good moral girl who is happy to be your wife Step 2) Wake up from dream I don't even know how guys are getting married without prenup these days and asking "wife" permission to do certain things..
- ezekg 5y agoThat's a terrible take. Marriage is a team sport, even more so with kids. Would you sell your business without discussing it with your co-founder?