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Lots of us have tried this, and I bet many of us found that rather than being able to work on your product, we found ourselves caught spending all our time find

Lots of us have tried this, and I bet many of us found that rather than being able to work on your product, we found ourselves caught spending all our time finding the next consulting gig to put food on the table. The people I've seen find success with this model took their proceeds from consulting and paid someone else (affordably) to build their product. It might not have been exactly how they would have done it, but it got done. I've also seen people be very focused and take a couple months, burn some savings, and get a product up and running, and then pick up gigs to keep themselves afloat. Don't underestimate the cognitive overload when you are trying to keep a client or two happy and you are trying to build your own product and get it marked at the same time. If you have a good working relationship with a business partner or two, it can make all the difference. Likewise, if any of your are married or in long-term relationships, do not overlook the importance of maintaining those as starting companies and/or basically holding two full-time jobs while you bootstrap can put a lot of strain on things.

indekkel 4y ago
We are both married with kids, so I definitely have to manage my time correctly. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, we were thinking of doing contract work until we built up enough money, and then quit the contracting business and work full time on the startup. At least for me, there’s no way I can hold two full-time jobs, it would eat into my family time too much.
- poulsbohemian 4y ago
  >we were thinking of doing contract work until we built up enough money, and then quit the contracting business and work full time on the startup. Awesome if you can do that. It's possible I never had the network I needed to really thrive, but the few people I saw do really well in contracting were parma-temps, IE: they basically left their previous full-time jobs and became full-time contractors to those jobs. My own experiences over roughly a decade were that you can spend a whole lot of time having to chase the next client, and just when you think you are starting to really set aside some good money here comes another little downturn or break between projects. Keeping your day job and finding ways to get the product bootstrapped on the side is hard work, but I've seen more people find success that path. Frankly, the most successful people I've seen already had a nest egg from hitting the birth lottery or from a windfall in their day jobs.

indekkel 4y ago

We are both married with kids, so I definitely have to manage my time correctly. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, we were thinking of doing contract work until we built up enough money, and then quit the contracting business and work full time on the startup. At least for me, there’s no way I can hold two full-time jobs, it would eat into my family time too much.

poulsbohemian 4y ago
>we were thinking of doing contract work until we built up enough money, and then quit the contracting business and work full time on the startup. Awesome if you can do that. It's possible I never had the network I needed to really thrive, but the few people I saw do really well in contracting were parma-temps, IE: they basically left their previous full-time jobs and became full-time contractors to those jobs. My own experiences over roughly a decade were that you can spend a whole lot of time having to chase the next client, and just when you think you are starting to really set aside some good money here comes another little downturn or break between projects. Keeping your day job and finding ways to get the product bootstrapped on the side is hard work, but I've seen more people find success that path. Frankly, the most successful people I've seen already had a nest egg from hitting the birth lottery or from a windfall in their day jobs.