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My favorite analogy: Raising kids. Quit your day job and raise your kid, putting all your energy into them. When you're out of money 6 months later, you still
by MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
My favorite analogy: Raising kids. Quit your day job and raise your kid, putting all your energy into them. When you're out of money 6 months later, you still have a 6 month old kid. Maybe they can walk a little sooner than their peers, but you can't artificially grow them into a teenager. The same is true with growing a user/customer base. Some things just take time.
I wish I could quit my job for 1 month while I build the core technology, then get my job back while I build the userbase. Since that's usually not an option, I'll spend 3-4 months of spare time building the technology while I keep my job, then grow it organically over time.
- icey 17y agoYou'd be amazed at the number of places that are willing to grant people a month long unpaid leave of absence for a wide variety of reasons.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y agoTrue. I'm just worried that requesting leave to start my own business would raise too many eyebrows. It's not exactly something a love-my-job employee asks for. And I do really like my job.
- icey 17y agoIf you were going to try to do this, I'd recommend not mentioning that part of it. Say you've got a big project you're working on, or whatever. Of course, it all kind of depends on what your relationship is with the people you work for. Maybe they already know you have the entrepreneur bug.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y agoYeah, my manager reads my dev blog and knows about all my side projects.
- icey 17y agoIn my (limited) experience with this sort of thing, that's the type of manager who is far more likely to be understanding of what you're trying to do. I was able to get my consulting company off the ground by going from full-time employment down to 3 days a week, and I used the other 2 days a week to pick up clients and freelance. I did that for about 9 months before I went to consult full-time. After that, I kept my old company as a client, and when they needed help, they had the benefit of dealing with someone who already knew all their systems.