5 ms·

Having done several options -- entrepreneurship, job, internal entrepreneurship, and consulting, my advice: - Entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle. Stay in a job

by blagie 4y ago

Having done several options -- entrepreneurship, job, internal entrepreneurship, and consulting, my advice: - Entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle. Stay in a job unless you have a good idea and are ready to execute. - Try your idea internally. Starting a new product in a company is easier than outside. It doesn't have a $1B upside, but it has enough upside, in all respects (not just financial -- learning, credibility, etc.). - If that doesn't pan out, go external only once you're pretty confident of success. My experience is that entrepreneurship isn't so much hard or take luck, as it takes a lot of groundwork: - You want a diverse set of skills. Management. Finance. Sales. Technical. Legal. Market research. Etc. It's not a place for specialists, and it takes time to develop those skills. You also ought to enjoy (or at least not hate) most of them. - You want good market timing, which comes with experience. - You want a good idea with traction. That's where nights / weekends fit in. Nights / weekends don't give enough time for a successful startup, but they give enough to do early prototyping. Doing a (failed) startup as a student is a good learning experience. I wish I had done it. I don't wish I had done it three times, or as an adult. Oh, and selling false dreams is part of being a successful entrepreneur. You'll get zero customers if people think you're on the verge of going broke. Every business I've seen takes a "fake it until you make it approach." If you rely on blogs for what entrepreneurship ought to look like, you're in for a nasty surprise. A better option to learn how to do a startup is a job at a startup; you'll see the process from the inside.

mikestaub 4y ago
This is the best advice I've seen on this website in years!
drewcon 4y ago
This is excellent advice. I followed roughly this path until I was in my late 30s. Now have a startup that is growing because we put in essentially 5 years of groundwork, while working full time day jobs, building product in an industry that isn’t sexy, being “lucky” (patient/observant) enough to ride a new federal regulation, having go throw away an entire product after 2 years and starting a new product in the same space/customers, showing customers we were in it for the long haul FOR THEM, with a well rounded seasoned founding team, business model first, taking the right amount of investment from the right investors at the right time. In that way I think entrepreneurship IS actually a lifestyle, but the behaviors are not what OP alludes to. The lifestyle is falling in love with a problem or a type of customer or both and just seeing what you can do to help while building a business along the way…SUSTAINABLY. If your version of lifestyle is somehow BEING caught up in acting a certain way based on influence (I have no idea what an indie hacker is), that seems destined for failure. TLDR. Go live your life, get a normal job to build security, don’t try and start a company at all, wait for a problem/opportunity to find you.
- blagie 4y ago
  This is the right model. The vast majority of successful startups I've seen in my extended circle of friends didn't target other programmers or programmer-like consumers. Most startups try to build another database, web framework, or data service, or whatnot, because that's the problem programmers are familiar with. The next ones are consumer products, assuming consumers look like SFO. The competition is fierce, and very few succeed. My experience is that in virtually any other industry -- I don't care if you're in construction, shipbuilding, or farming -- there will be many low-hanging fruit which people in that industry won't be competent to solve. If you: - go into some (nearly random) industry; - keep your head up enough to gain an understanding how it works; and - build out a network of connections you trust and who trust you entrepreneurship is easy. I guess the other piece is keeping your toe deep enough in tech that you can pull together a good team and solve problems a typical IT department can't solve. But that should be the easy part for readers here. You can even start consulting. In the same way as a tech company doesn't want to outsource its core competency but is happy to outsource legal, payroll, and similar, the opposite is true in most industry. I've seen industries on HN where you (the typical HN reader) could outperform a whole 20-person team because the tech they hire is so incompetent. That's not a tough sell.
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    I think one issue (for those of us who are the kind of people that read this site) is that "entrepreneurship" and "startup" are overloaded terms. Most of the discussion here is about "startups" with huge growth ambitions. But what you're describing here is just "starting a business". Both things are "entrepreneurship", but they are extremely different beasts, with different paths to and likelihoods of success. The billion dollar "startup" narrative is so seductive, but most hard-working ambitious people who want to be their own boss should just be starting businesses in the more traditional sense, taking on smaller investment or debt more wisely, paying attention to costs and revenues, and growing organically. This is no different than business starts in any other era, it just happens that a lot of viable businesses now happen to benefit from focusing on software.
    - 4y ago
miraculixx 4y ago
Well yes and no. Innovating as an employee sucks because somebody else gets all the benefits.
- rebelos 4y ago
  You can only get the benefits as a founder if you have the same lever as the company (which you usually don't).
- blagie 4y ago
  Well yes and no. Most of the value created goes back to the shareholders, but it's just about the fastest and easiest way to move into management (or upper management). If you do internal entrepreneurship, and land leading a division with a VP title, a few things happens: 1) You learn a comprehensive set of skills needed to run a business end-to-end, and you have the benefit of corporate resources to teach you 2) You gain the credibility needed to be a successful entrepreneur 3) Your salary does go up (quite a bit). You're not making $1B, but you are unlikely to be below $300k, and $1M is within reach. That's a fraction of an exit, but it's enough. 4) You build a network which carries over past the current job. .... and so on. One of the upsides is that if you can manage internal risks, your odds of success go way up, and if you mess up, the downside is rather small compared to entrepreneurship. Adjusted for risk, expected returns can be greater (to me, $10M is worth only a little bit less than $10B, but $10M is worth a lot more than $100k). At this point in my career, I'm in an organization that has supported my internal entrepreneurial efforts, and I much prefer that to being out there on my own. I'm also primarily motivated by impact, and I can have much greater impact from where I sit. That's motivating too. If and when the organization changes, I might jump back into independent entrepreneurship, but I'm very happy where I sit.
- gofreddygo 4y ago
  Somebody else also takes the loss when things go sideways. No free meal.

by blagie 4y ago

mikestaub 4y ago

This is the best advice I've seen on this website in years!

drewcon 4y ago

This is excellent advice. I followed roughly this path until I was in my late 30s. Now have a startup that is growing because we put in essentially 5 years of groundwork, while working full time day jobs, building product in an industry that isn’t sexy, being “lucky” (patient/observant) enough to ride a new federal regulation, having go throw away an entire product after 2 years and starting a new product in the same space/customers, showing customers we were in it for the long haul FOR THEM, with a well rounded seasoned founding team, business model first, taking the right amount of investment from the right investors at the right time. In that way I think entrepreneurship IS actually a lifestyle, but the behaviors are not what OP alludes to. The lifestyle is falling in love with a problem or a type of customer or both and just seeing what you can do to help while building a business along the way…SUSTAINABLY. If your version of lifestyle is somehow BEING caught up in acting a certain way based on influence (I have no idea what an indie hacker is), that seems destined for failure. TLDR. Go live your life, get a normal job to build security, don’t try and start a company at all, wait for a problem/opportunity to find you.

blagie 4y ago
This is the right model. The vast majority of successful startups I've seen in my extended circle of friends didn't target other programmers or programmer-like consumers. Most startups try to build another database, web framework, or data service, or whatnot, because that's the problem programmers are familiar with. The next ones are consumer products, assuming consumers look like SFO. The competition is fierce, and very few succeed. My experience is that in virtually any other industry -- I don't care if you're in construction, shipbuilding, or farming -- there will be many low-hanging fruit which people in that industry won't be competent to solve. If you: - go into some (nearly random) industry; - keep your head up enough to gain an understanding how it works; and - build out a network of connections you trust and who trust you entrepreneurship is easy. I guess the other piece is keeping your toe deep enough in tech that you can pull together a good team and solve problems a typical IT department can't solve. But that should be the easy part for readers here. You can even start consulting. In the same way as a tech company doesn't want to outsource its core competency but is happy to outsource legal, payroll, and similar, the opposite is true in most industry. I've seen industries on HN where you (the typical HN reader) could outperform a whole 20-person team because the tech they hire is so incompetent. That's not a tough sell.
- sanderjd 4y ago
  I think one issue (for those of us who are the kind of people that read this site) is that "entrepreneurship" and "startup" are overloaded terms. Most of the discussion here is about "startups" with huge growth ambitions. But what you're describing here is just "starting a business". Both things are "entrepreneurship", but they are extremely different beasts, with different paths to and likelihoods of success. The billion dollar "startup" narrative is so seductive, but most hard-working ambitious people who want to be their own boss should just be starting businesses in the more traditional sense, taking on smaller investment or debt more wisely, paying attention to costs and revenues, and growing organically. This is no different than business starts in any other era, it just happens that a lot of viable businesses now happen to benefit from focusing on software.
  - 4y ago

miraculixx 4y ago

Well yes and no. Innovating as an employee sucks because somebody else gets all the benefits.

rebelos 4y ago
You can only get the benefits as a founder if you have the same lever as the company (which you usually don't).
blagie 4y ago
Well yes and no. Most of the value created goes back to the shareholders, but it's just about the fastest and easiest way to move into management (or upper management). If you do internal entrepreneurship, and land leading a division with a VP title, a few things happens: 1) You learn a comprehensive set of skills needed to run a business end-to-end, and you have the benefit of corporate resources to teach you 2) You gain the credibility needed to be a successful entrepreneur 3) Your salary does go up (quite a bit). You're not making $1B, but you are unlikely to be below $300k, and $1M is within reach. That's a fraction of an exit, but it's enough. 4) You build a network which carries over past the current job. .... and so on. One of the upsides is that if you can manage internal risks, your odds of success go way up, and if you mess up, the downside is rather small compared to entrepreneurship. Adjusted for risk, expected returns can be greater (to me, $10M is worth only a little bit less than $10B, but $10M is worth a lot more than $100k). At this point in my career, I'm in an organization that has supported my internal entrepreneurial efforts, and I much prefer that to being out there on my own. I'm also primarily motivated by impact, and I can have much greater impact from where I sit. That's motivating too. If and when the organization changes, I might jump back into independent entrepreneurship, but I'm very happy where I sit.
gofreddygo 4y ago
Somebody else also takes the loss when things go sideways. No free meal.