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you work on it nights & weekends to find out if it has traction. most things don't, but if yours might, then it's probably worth testing the waters. from what
by robfitz 18y ago
you work on it nights & weekends to find out if it has traction. most things don't, but if yours might, then it's probably worth testing the waters.
from what i understand, http://carbonmade.com http://carbonmade.com is a good example. three guys working part time (according to their 'story'), who now have a nice lifestyle business. they have big competitors, but have attracted enough paying users to do well for themselves.
so possible, yes. and learning web dev skills won't be a wasted effort, regardless of whether or not this particular venture works out.
if it's a big enough market to support several successes, i'd encourage you to take it on.
- yalurker 18y agoThanks for the input. I have some Python skills, so I just bought a Django book, I think that will be the fastest way for me to get something going. I haven't been this excited in a while. Not only do I need to learn a lot of new tech, I need to figure out a lot of the business/marketing side too. When to start trying to attract users, how to drive traffic to the site, how/if/when to bring in other developers. Any thoughts on how to determine if the idea has traction? Like number of users after a certain time or reviews/bloggers comments, or even gasp revenue?
- robfitz 18y agoyou may want to read 'founders at work' by jessica livingston (of yc fame). it's interviews regarding the rise of many successful web services (yahoo, hot or not, hotmail, etc). a lot of those companies started as hobbies or side projects, and one day the site crashed and the founder realized he needed a whole lot more servers to keep up with the growth.