6 ms·
I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacati
by dagorenouf 4y ago
I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability.
When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year.
But the missing thing would be autonomy. The reason why I’m willing to sacrifice so much is because i fundamentally don’t like having to follow orders from a boss or manager. I’m arrogant enough to think i know better, and want to prove it by actually building my own thing.
Regardless of how silly it sounds on a financial level, the calculation makes sense once we look at the sense of ownership and autonomy over our own work. It’s worth more to me than any money I could make.
Ps: if you’re curious, the startup is logology.co
- JohnFen 4y ago> The reason why I’m willing to sacrifice so much is because i fundamentally don’t like having to follow orders from a boss or manager. This is why I do it as well, at least in part. The other part is that I get to control what projects I get to work on.
- s1k3 4y agoI literally just wasted so much money on a logo. Coulda used this post last week.
- dagorenouf 4y agoI hope you still got something you like!
- Delento 4y agoTbh it looks more like the dream of being independent was more important to you than actually solving a real problem. I find it very interesting that you value 'any startup' more than owning your own flat for example
- dagorenouf 4y agodefinitely, learning to solve a real problem is just something I had to learn to make that dream a reality.
- koolhead17 4y agoCongrats to that. We are on a same boat and freedom/independence was our reason too to start. Took us 6 years, we are revenue positive.
- dagorenouf 4y agoThanks and congrats to you too!
- prakhar897 4y agoIt's a logo generating site. Can you tell us why it took 5 years for 2 people to make?
- khoadlw 4y agoWhy? Because making is not selling.
- gareth_untether 4y agoIt took then that long to make it profitable. Big difference making something and making it profitable.
- seattle_spring 4y ago"I could build one of those in a weekend!"
- 4gotunameagain 4y agoI mean, between a weekend and 10 man-years there is kind of an inbetween.
- kerpotgh 4y ago[dead]
- dagorenouf 4y agoOn the building side of things, the main challenge is designing all the logos, my wife designed more than 800 so far. (almost every other logo generator site use existing icon libraries) It took a bit more than a year to have enough logos to launch, design the product and code the platform. In part because we were such perfectionists (which we aren't as much anymore). But launching was only the beginning, and soon the real challenge presented itself: how to find customers. Had to figure out a distribution and marketing strategy which we had no experience with, all the while improving the product. And this is why it's now been 5 years.
- 4y ago
- katsura 4y agoI've been following you for quite some time now, and I really appreciate the honesty and the way you share both the ups and downs of running your own small business.
- dagorenouf 4y agothank you, this means a lot!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thrwaway2023 4y agoHi, I just wanted to say congrats, your site and service looks very nice, proposition is clear, there is a spin which makes it different from other design agencies and I like the pricing tier setup, it makes sense (for me)! Made a bookmark for when this will come handy in the future.
- dagorenouf 4y agoThanks for checking it out, this means a lot. Note about the pricing tiers: you can upgrade between packages as your startup grows.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mattgreenrocks 4y agoThis is really cool. I'm in the branding phase of an app on the side at the moment, and I absolutely loathe trying to pin down the name and the logo because it is dark alley after dark alley until you reach some okay-enough state to launch with.
- dagorenouf 4y agoThis is exactly why we built this. Allows you to get a professional branding to start with even on low budget. Then you can go ahead and launch, validate your product, and come back to get custom work done when you need it / can budget for it.