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Because when a competitor comes along that does have venture funding, they will leave you in the dust. They will be able t do more in less time and scale faste
by tirrellp 19y ago
Because when a competitor comes along that does have venture funding, they will leave you in the dust. They will be able t do more in less time and scale faster, while your hobby site remains just that.
- Kaizyn 19y agoThank you for pointing out that small matter of competition. That was something I certainly had not taken into consideration. With regard to your point on calling it a 'hobby' though. Because its possible for someone to put in 30-35 hours a week (over and above one's full-time commitment at the day job) if they're willing to work hard during 'free time', could this not serve as reasonable mitigating circumstances?
- ph0rque 19y agoWorking 70-75 hrs/wk is just not sustainable over the long term, you will get burned out, fired from your day job, and won't want to continue working on your project.
- nostrademons 19y agoThe problem with a day job isn't really the time it takes up, it's what it does to the remaining time. Yeah, you've in theory got 30-35 hours a week of "free" time. However, it's likely broken up into an hour before work, a couple hours after work, and 10 hrs/day on weekends. And your full attention won't be on your startup during those blocks, because you'll be worrying about having to get to work or exhausted from having come home from work. I've found that nearly all my completed projects have required the ability to say "Fuck it" to all my other commitments and just concentrate on them. My first project for FictionAlley was done during summer vacation. The big rewrite of FictionAlley lingered for 3 years while I kept putting it off for college coursework, and only got finished because I put in a 4-month gap between graduating and getting a job. Scrutiny was done instead of studying for my physics final exam, which I ended up flunking anyways. My most successful project at work involved blowing off all my boss's requests for busywork, which made him pretty mad at me until he saw the result. Once I had to start paying attention to his busywork again, my productivity dropped way off.
- epi0Bauqu 19y agoAt least in my cases, I have found this to be simply untrue unless it is related to ad spending. A good hacker or two can develop quality scalable software as fast or faster than most VC backed companies.
- webwright 19y agoAnd quality scalable software sells itself? Sometimes, but not usually. There are plenty of examples of lower quality software burying the better product because of sales and marketing horsepower.
- epi0Bauqu 19y agoI never said anything about selling and neither did the comment I was replying to (at least the way I read it). In fact, see my other comment on this thread about why I think you might want to take VC funding if you need to blow out a sales channel.
- steve 19y agoAh, the old "marketing is a myth", "build it and they WILL come" argument.