I've found that my coding time hasn't really increased much since going full-time, and yet I'm vastly more productive. The limiting factor in startups does not seem to be time: it's attention. Having that extra 8 hrs/day to think about the problem - and more importantly, not having to shift gears and think about my employer's problems - makes all the difference in the world.
I've found it also changes the incentives around development and leads to better development practices. For example, I was much less likely to use frameworks or large libraries when doing this part-time, because I didn't have a solid block of time to thoroughly learn the library. If there was a major problem in the design, I'd be inclined to hack around it rather than tackle it head-on, because I didn't have the necessary brain-cycles to hold the whole problem in my head. I'd often cut the design down to what I knew how to do, rather than the product I'd want to use, because that was all I could handle in blocks of an hour.
I don't think it's really speed that suffers when you work part-time. Rather, it sets a ceiling on the difficulty level of the project you can do. So you're fighting over the same problems as all the other folks who're doing startups part-time, while many of the harder problem lie unsolved.
I'm currently doing requirements gathering for my first project, and I've already done around 400 lines of coding. I wish I wasn't alone.
I got burned last summer by bringing people on board too early. I'm the hacker-type.
The other people were the kind whose strengths too were different from mine. One was a high-powered client-interfacing guy, who has since taken a full time job as an IA, after the failure of his own Web 2.0 startup (all in under a year!). The other, and the troublemaker, was a high-powered marketing person who wanted to fasttrack the branding campaign before I even had a product or clients. We'd all worked together well in the context of a larger company, but we couldn't reconcile our directional aspirations for a startup.
So this year, I'm alone. In Northern Virginia's technology corridor. I would love a hackerly co-founder, or at least someone to bounce my ideas off of. All my friends from CS classes keep moving to the West coast to work for the Googles and Microsofts of the world. I have a feeling my YC application this year is going to be rejected simply because I'm a sole founder.
The application certainly makes it seem that this is the case.
I suspect this YC app field sends you to /dev/null. In the html, the select's name is "badness" !
It could be fairly interesting to see if a couple of technical people, working on different products, could act as one company. Both parties get the benefits of having someone to look over their shoulder (as they have a financial stake). You also get the sum of both sets of secondary skills and contacts. The downside would be a split in focus, but that should be no worse than the two working individually.
Kind of a more-intensive, tech version of the Tuesday Night Music Club.
First rule: no bringing your girlfriend, even if she is Sheryl Crow.
It's weird how stability (and yes, coming from consulting and startuppery, this lion freely recognizes his gilded cage) and lack of where-is-my-next-paycheck-coming-from frees the mind to coding pure-fun stuff.
However looking at what I really want to achieve I have decided that a startup is the way to go for me. Exit planned for September. Unfortunately it's not something I could run concurrently with a full time job, or else I might launch earlier to reduce risk :)
To answer the original question: Specs, use cases and UI mock-ups were 12 hours a week for 3 months. I wrote the first prototype this weekend (60 hours), so now I will be doing increments towards a stable production version, planned 12 hours per week.
So 4 nights a week we would meet at kinko's at 1am and work until about 4 am together. I would sleep for a few hours early morning and I'd also sleep for a few hours after I got home from work.
We weren't coding, just writing a business plan. We actually won an SBA business plan contest and got a little money to start the company. This was definitely the craziest hours that I've ever worked.
I have been working FT for a large company for the past 5 years (past year remotely from home) and am really excited for moving to full time on my startup.
The application works well and we hope to break free of part-time mode this summer. Opportunities for improving our product and exposure are limitless, so I guess that means the time we can/should spend on it is also limitless. ;p
fp's comment is right on: "The limiting factor in startups does not seem to be time: it's attention."
During first idea, I was a bachelor, and used to invest more time on business development activities, product planning & management, networking events, mentoring sessions, reading books + blogging. I used to spend daily 3-4 hrs of evenings for this. My co-founders were doing coding. I did this for 1 year. Then bcoz of certain concerns, I left this project and started another.
During second idea, I got married, so working in the late evening was not justifiable. I used to work in early morning from 4am-7am, mostly coding and then in the evening, if necessary, meet some potential clients or advisors for business development activities. So daily I used to work for 4-5 hrs. Unfortunately, my other co-founders were married ones, and couldn't cope up with fulltime + mariage + part-time startup pace. So naturally, I was alone at the end, and after certain time, had to close the idea.
Now I again started with the third idea. Now I spend maximum time on learning technical stuff, and coding my application. Most of the times, I am the only one on this idea, I'm spending max time on developing product rather than building business, which I did lot in previous startups. I spend daily 2-3 hrs on weekday, and 5-6 hrs on one weekend.
In general, I try to put 15-20 hrs a week. Which i know are still very less for a startup :( I think having equally entrepreneurial and passionate co-founders, who are ready to slog hard in the part-time is very essential, which was the case in my first idea.
now i feel like i have the best possible situation.
I've found that when I go from "this is a cool project" mode to "going to turn this into a company" mode, the hours just start piling on.
I did build all products: (http://www.phonemyphone.com, http://www.craigslistautoresponder.com, and http://www.emptyspaceads.com) while working full-time at Microsoft, it seems really hard to succeed working part time on your startup.
My problem is that, while working on my own stuff is fun, I'm often too pissed off about the dayjob when I get home each day and I tend to ruminate.
Sometimes I just end up not doing a hell of a lot. But other times I can salvage the rest of my day -- I'll take a quick shower and nap, then plan on spending 3-4 hours at my favorite cafe with a specific set of bugs or features to work on before leaving.
In regards to the parent question , when I first start a side project I spend a fair amount of time on it afterwork. But it usually settles to 2-3 nights a week for a couple hours and 9-5 sat.
Sometimes you can think of neat features/ideas only when you think for long enough and observe for long enough and atleast I need to be fulltime for that
My teamate worked non-stop on it only 1yr ago, mainly coding the application - i was dedicating early mornings and late nights + weekends at it.
If it's an idea you truly believe in, it may be worth making that your full-time job. But it is a risk, you just have to decide if it's worth taking.
The easiest way to reconcile is to quit and do the startup full time.
People shouldn't do things half-assed anyway. It's all about the focus.
Don't use ANY company resource (email, bandwidth, office supplies, their computers) to make your product.
Hopefully something will come of this summer.