37 ms·

after thinking about it a bit more, and from my experience in yc this summer, i cannot imagine how anyone could do a start up successfully part time. there may

by jmtame 17y ago

after thinking about it a bit more, and from my experience in yc this summer, i cannot imagine how anyone could do a start up successfully part time. there may be a few examples, but i don't know of many. i did it in school with my cofounder, and i could feel the gpa's drop. surely your employer will notice you slacking if you're trying to work too hard on a start up. even the ones who do it full time seem to struggle. if i had to guess, it probably feels a bit like raising money and programming at the same time. maybe less painful because you can program for about 14 hours out of your day. but i really am a skeptic, and i'd say that having the laser focus is one of the best things in a start up. our competition moves pretty fast, we would probably not be standing where we are now if we did this as a side project.

warp 17y ago
I don't think spending your evenings on a startup is necessarily bad for your employer. Someone spending considerable amounts coding on his/her startup in the evening still brings the knowledge and experience of doing that back to the full-time job. At home you're working on projects you care about, you invest time in learning about new technologies, you research best practices, etc.. That actually adds value for your employer compared to those employees who go home to the wife and kids and don't spend any of their free time thinking about code. Ofcourse, you shouldn't overdo it and arrive at work a zombie, but that would also have a negative effect on your startup work, so I don't expect people to actually do that.
run4yourlives 17y ago
i cannot imagine how anyone could do a start up successfully part time. The same way you raise a family with a job, or have a hobby with a job, or even watch TV with a job. It's difficult, but not impossible. It requires a lot of dedication and commitment, and more hard work than you can imagine. It also takes longer to complete. our competition moves pretty fast, we would probably not be standing where we are now if we did this as a side project. This is perhaps the biggest concern. But it's less of a concern if you've identified a pain point in a market and are working towards solving it; especially in a b2b market. The consumer facing "fad" development (not trying to be derogatory) moves much faster and carries less of an attention span, so I wouldn't recommend part-time work if this is where your product is targeted. That being said, I'm with 37Signals' approach of building a business, not an acquisition target, so in general the whole process is slower.

by jmtame 17y ago

warp 17y ago

I don't think spending your evenings on a startup is necessarily bad for your employer. Someone spending considerable amounts coding on his/her startup in the evening still brings the knowledge and experience of doing that back to the full-time job. At home you're working on projects you care about, you invest time in learning about new technologies, you research best practices, etc.. That actually adds value for your employer compared to those employees who go home to the wife and kids and don't spend any of their free time thinking about code. Ofcourse, you shouldn't overdo it and arrive at work a zombie, but that would also have a negative effect on your startup work, so I don't expect people to actually do that.

run4yourlives 17y ago

i cannot imagine how anyone could do a start up successfully part time. The same way you raise a family with a job, or have a hobby with a job, or even watch TV with a job. It's difficult, but not impossible. It requires a lot of dedication and commitment, and more hard work than you can imagine. It also takes longer to complete. our competition moves pretty fast, we would probably not be standing where we are now if we did this as a side project. This is perhaps the biggest concern. But it's less of a concern if you've identified a pain point in a market and are working towards solving it; especially in a b2b market. The consumer facing "fad" development (not trying to be derogatory) moves much faster and carries less of an attention span, so I wouldn't recommend part-time work if this is where your product is targeted. That being said, I'm with 37Signals' approach of building a business, not an acquisition target, so in general the whole process is slower.