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Comment by tiborsaas | Hacker News Reader

> I've decided to quit my job to boostrap my projects à la IndieHackers.

I did this and it was fun and everything, but I never made a single cent. I did grow my personal network though :) If you value learning from others, keep your job and only quit if you make at least 50 to 75% of your salary AND you see constant growth.

> using a stack such as Python/Django + HTML/CSS/JavaScript + eventually iOS

Another red flag. Technology doesn't matter and the fact that you mention this instead of business validation you should think twice before making such a commitment.

EDIT: I forgot to add that the technology part is at most 10-15% of it. The rest is boring marketing, tons of spreadsheets, Google, Google, Google, Email^n, more spreadsheets and business operations if you are lucky.

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>> Another red flag. Technology doesn't matter and the fact that you mention this instead of business validation you should think twice before making such a commitment.

This is a very, very true. I also did this, quit to work on a side project for about 8 months (2008). I wrote a lot of code, but in the end the project had a couple of hard problems and the market was a small number of large corporations. When I finally realized this, and ran the numbers, I discovered my folly. That and I found myself web surfing all day instead of coding. Went back to work.

Next project (2011) I also didn't validate the market, but kept working, it never launched. For my third project (2016) I launched but didn't validate the market either.

What have I learned? Validate the $#@!ing market before writing a line of code! I'm still trying to figure out how to do this however.

Talk to clients first. Say "what's are some problems that are stopping you from making money, I want to help you solve them and I'll only bill you if it works". You don't have to say that to too many companies before you find a problem that isn't just unique to them.

Ah this is a very good idea. I had always wondered (even as someone that's started a couple of businesses before) what would be some practical, efficient, useful and free (beer) ways to probe for market opportunities, and this seems like an excellent method.

Another one that quit his job to bootstrap own projects, and only made some 100 Euros from them..

It is hard, really hard, and I even had some kind of a business plan. But one thing is sure, you'll learn a lot about yourself from the process.

I'm now teaching CS classes on a local university.

> "...Technology doesn't matter..." <

Key point this one.

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