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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

I believe superniche is good.

If you dont hate your job, I would suggest you to stay in your job until you validate your idea. It allows you to keep earning money while you are not actually building anything (validate an idea is not a fulltime job). And also it helps to keep you in the right mental state that your first idea most certainly isnt the right idea.

If you quit your job with an idea in mind and the plan of validating it then executing, it will be much harder to change or even discard this idea ("this idea is why I quit my job afterall!").

Validate your idea (with or without a MVP) before quitting your job. That's my two cents

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Thank you for your reply! I have tried to keep my job, but working a 10am/7pm job with a 90mn commute everyday left me with only the weekends to work on something else. Also it's become harder and harder to get up everyday to spend the day working on something that does not wholeheartedly passionates me. Hence the decision to quit.

Then go for it, quitting your job seems the right decision for you.

Just pay special attention if you are moving forward with an idea because the market, your customers are saying so. This is the only valid reason. All other possible reasons are probably pushing you to the wrong way (inertia, a gut feeling that this someday will be huge, people that are not customers nor remotely potential customers giving you positive feedback, to occupy your mind as you have nothing else to do, to take advantage of a tech stack knowledge you already have, etc)

Work in your side-project in a regular basis, 10am/7pm. You are always in front of a computer, anyways.

Don't throw away a comfortable situation thinking that you are running after a dream because you can finish without both of them (and this happen with the most of us). I'm much more happy now that I found another good job than when I left the last one to become a digital nomad.

Most employment contracts have clauses to the effect of "anything created using company tools or company time is owned by the company". If there isn't a clear dilineation between your work hours, work location and equipment you could get into a contentious situation. (I'm not an attorney but I recently consulted with one for this exact reason.)

Here is the thing:

You will lose motivation to work on your project. It will become so boring and tedious that you will want to quit. Businesses are 90% boring. If you can't hold a boring job before validating the idea then you will run into trouble. Don't quit or find another one that sucks less.

Look for a mediocre job that pays less, is closer to home, and has a lot less responsibility. This can free up some time for working on your side project and not leave you in such a vulnerable position.

So your job takes up ~11 hours of each day with your commute. Get a closer job. A few thousand dollars is not enough to survive on.

> Also it's become harder and harder to get up everyday to spend the day working on something that does not wholeheartedly passionates me.

Most people don't like their jobs. Most people hate their jobs. Go to work. Get money. Build a business at night and then leave.

If you blow through your savings and/or retirement in six months you're just going to end up in a worse position overall.

Do not rush important decisions. Explore options for a better job first. If you get 5 decent offers in a week jumping off may be much less risky -- it shows you can come back to a regular job pretty easily.

And build up your cash cushion. If you do try to bootstrap your project you want to be able to dedicate your time to them, not be stressed about how to pay for your next meal/rent payment.

you should definitely find another job, first.

There you go! You have 90 minutes / day to work on your side-business!

There are three things I've done that have personally helped me progress on my project.

First, I always took Sunday to work on it. Which is harder than it sounds because friends and family want that day. Eventually they'll pick up on it, be consistent.

Second, to help with the commute problem. I decided to dedicate an extra 30 to 60 min after work, before my commute to work on it. You're already at work, you're already forcing yourself to accomplish tasks, why not tick on task off for yourself before you hop on the road? I found that a lot of weeks this made me more productive than working Sundays as it was less likely to result in a few hours of web browsing. (I'm hungry and it's only supposed to be 30-60 min right?)

Third, if you dread waking up in the morning, that's usually the point where I will draw the line and get another job. It will seriously help you out if you're not stressed so much about your day to day work.

I get it, I feel your struggle man. I wish you the best either way, if you do quit, you owe us an update on how it panned out :)

It sounds like you are just upset with your current job. But bootstrapping a business will be even harder then what you describe and possible without any financial gain.

How long is your runway? Try to get your projects to revenue as soon as possible. If you can, perhaps you can do consulting work on the side to slow the burn.

Just my two cents, hire somebody else to finish the product. Pay them less than what you earn in a month and pat yourself on the back.

Spend your time on building the business (getting customers, building a brand name). That's hard enough IMO.

Have you thought of contracting or getting a remote job instead? I think one of the other posters had the best advice, which was to contract while you get validation that your idea can be a business, and then cut back contracting hours in favour of your own project as it gains traction.

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