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You're living the HN dream by quitting your job to do your own thing, so how's it going? Are you better off doing this than working at Yahoo? I'm sure other pe

You're living the HN dream by quitting your job to do your own thing, so how's it going? Are you better off doing this than working at Yahoo? I'm sure other people are curious too.

jmathai 15y ago
That's a separate post altogether. I'm definitely not just living the good life as I have a wife, a 2 year old son and another on the way. My wife stays at home with our son. So this is serious sh*t for me :). It's going great though. I've had numerous side projects and co-founded a startup for a few years earlier (no successful outcome). This has received much more traction and interest so I'm riding that out and trying to build it into something I can do for a long time.
- dlf 15y ago
  lmao... "not just living the good life as I have a wife"
  - jmathai 15y ago
    Glad my wife's unaware of Hacker News' existence.
- danso 15y ago
  Absolute props to you. Some of us without families (ok, me) have a hard time doing side projects while being single. And bonus points for building something that I'm definitely interested in...Flickr is showing its age....
  - ryanmarsh 15y ago
    I love my wife and my children dearly, but oh that precious time I used to have for side projects... Now I just forgo sleep.
    - jmathai 15y ago
      I miss sleep.
      - jsemrau 15y ago
        That's why I created just15min. http://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/just15min/id471609083?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/just15min/id471609083?mt=8
    - voidfiles 15y ago
      I found that having kids, and wife accelerated my progress on projects by making the time I did have mater more. http://alexkessinger.net/2010/06/13/two-kids-in-two-years-best-time-management-strategy-ever/ http://alexkessinger.net/2010/06/13/two-kids-in-two-years-be...
      - jmathai 15y ago
        I definitely agree. I think it's hard to sell this as a "benefit" to others who haven't experienced it though.
- wahnfrieden 15y ago
  I'm curious, how early did you start measuring and learning from your product - did you spend 5 months doing this before launching anything, or have you had prototypes or anything to get user feedback (qualitative or quantitative) starting from early on?
  - jmathai 15y ago
    Well being open source meant that we released the first prototype about 2 months after we started development. We got lots of bug reports and feature requests but the last 5 months have been primarily focused on development of the platform, web application and starting the Android/iOS apps. All of which we release as early alphas as soon as they're functional. Not sure if that answers your question though. We're not super structured with the feedback we've gotten so far --- we just track bugs and issues and prioritize them.

You're living the HN dream by quitting your job to do your own thing, so how's it going? Are you better off doing this than working at Yahoo? I'm sure other people are curious too.

jmathai 15y ago

That's a separate post altogether. I'm definitely not just living the good life as I have a wife, a 2 year old son and another on the way. My wife stays at home with our son. So this is serious sh*t for me :). It's going great though. I've had numerous side projects and co-founded a startup for a few years earlier (no successful outcome). This has received much more traction and interest so I'm riding that out and trying to build it into something I can do for a long time.

dlf 15y ago
lmao... "not just living the good life as I have a wife"
- jmathai 15y ago
  Glad my wife's unaware of Hacker News' existence.
danso 15y ago
Absolute props to you. Some of us without families (ok, me) have a hard time doing side projects while being single. And bonus points for building something that I'm definitely interested in...Flickr is showing its age....
- ryanmarsh 15y ago
  I love my wife and my children dearly, but oh that precious time I used to have for side projects... Now I just forgo sleep.
  - jmathai 15y ago
    I miss sleep.
    - jsemrau 15y ago
      That's why I created just15min. http://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/just15min/id471609083?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/jp/app/just15min/id471609083?mt=8
  - voidfiles 15y ago
    I found that having kids, and wife accelerated my progress on projects by making the time I did have mater more. http://alexkessinger.net/2010/06/13/two-kids-in-two-years-best-time-management-strategy-ever/ http://alexkessinger.net/2010/06/13/two-kids-in-two-years-be...
    - jmathai 15y ago
      I definitely agree. I think it's hard to sell this as a "benefit" to others who haven't experienced it though.
wahnfrieden 15y ago
I'm curious, how early did you start measuring and learning from your product - did you spend 5 months doing this before launching anything, or have you had prototypes or anything to get user feedback (qualitative or quantitative) starting from early on?
- jmathai 15y ago
  Well being open source meant that we released the first prototype about 2 months after we started development. We got lots of bug reports and feature requests but the last 5 months have been primarily focused on development of the platform, web application and starting the Android/iOS apps. All of which we release as early alphas as soon as they're functional. Not sure if that answers your question though. We're not super structured with the feedback we've gotten so far --- we just track bugs and issues and prioritize them.