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Comment by antigirl | Hacker News Reader

This might be slightly offtopic but I've been thinking of working on my own ideas for a decade now. I tried working on projects in the evening and weekends but there isnt enough time. Not only does it effect your social life but also effects your motivation and drive in general. After looking at code on a screen for 7 hours, last thing you want to do is go home and look at more code [I guess this depends on your age, i'm 32 now - not an night owl no more]

Anyway i started contracting last year for this exact reason, at around £300-400 day rate and now i've saved enough to quit and follow my 'dream', my last day is JULY 7th. I have enough savings to last me 2 years, sustaining my current social life. no frugalness.

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I'm in the same boat as you and same age group. But I'm not sure if I can quit my job because it's a very nice job with a nice group of people. And there's no guarantee that if I go my own way, I will succeed. Leaving would be very difficult for me right now. I wish you all the best for your startup journey!

I think your approach is a good one. You're exactly right about working all day and then coming home and trying to work some more, the motivation is just not there. You need all your time and energy to focus on a startup.

I'm currently contracting and trying to build up a financial cushion so I can do the exact same thing.

Unless you catch lightning in a bottle, you'll need 4 years.

4 years for what? To find product/market fit? To become profitable? I presume you are referencing some rule of thumb that is not familiar to me...?

Maybe that it always takes twice as long as you planned?

OP is not experienced. OP has no idea what he's doing. It will take him 1 year to realize the idea he chose sucks. 1 year to panic and freelance while he figures out what he's doing next, then 2 years to reach profitability.

Four years is an absurd amount of time to get to break-even (ie paying yourself an income that covers your bills and the company bills), particularly if it's a one-person bootstrap.

Lightning in a bottle is 1-2 months to break-even under the bootstrap scenario. 6-8 months is closer to reasonable depending on cost of living for where someone is living. Anything much beyond that time-frame means something is very, very wrong (or it's a particularly unusual business being formed, requiring years of build time).

Four years to get to a few thousand dollars per month in sales? I don't think so.

No, it's just being realistic. It took me more like 8 years to build up to a respectable salary. After the first 4 years I could pay rent and buy groceries but not much more.

You're one of my heroes, keep up the good work :)

This implies he must have had backing from other sources. Not encouraging for people who don't have that.

Only after he made it.

You do have that though. Same as I did. I was working contract and consulting gigs during those 8 years (and the 5 years before that while building out earlier, failed ideas).

Sounds like you're experienced, which is great. Tell me about the first business you started and how long it took you until you were able to live like you live today.

I totally agree that it's very easy to get to a few thousand dollars a month in sales. It's getting beyond that which is hard.

"Very easy" is an interesting way to put it.

How long did it take you to get to a few thousand dollars a month cheez? Out of interest, how far into your career was that?

I'm not sure I'd class getting to a few thousand dollars as "very easy", certainly do-able for a lot of businesses with a few months to a years hard work, but I wouldn't call that "very easy", personally.

Since you asked: it took exactly one month and about 4 years into my post-university career to get to a few thousand. A lot of it was right place, right time of course.

The one thing I did right was find the market first, then built a product for that market.

I think this is just a disagreement over the term "startup". For something like a new restaurant, or a mom and pop store to be profitable, it might take many years. But most actual startups are going to validate an idea quickly and either make money or not in a short amount of time.

You have examples? Every startup I've been with has been many years to profitability and the common names follow that pattern as well.

Some get traction, or maybe growth early on, but actual startups don't seem to "make money in a short amount of time"

I guess it depends on what you consider "making money" to mean. In this case, I felt we were discussing making the equivalent salary to the full-time job you would be giving up. There are certainly other definitions.

But overall, I think a startup's job is to validate an idea, then grow. If you can't make money at first, you probably don't have a valid idea. The next phase is pure growth--and I'm sure very few new businesses can make money AND grow at the same time.

> £300-400 day rate

How do people earn so much?

As far as I know that's really not even a "fair" rate in the US at least. I.e. full time employees with benefits can pretty easily make more.

I earn that much a week in Canada...

Sounds like you are being underpaid! I would expect an entry-level developer to make at least $75k a year, which would work out to $300 a day.

300 CAD to GBP = £180

Contract rates for Javascript developers in North West are £300-400, London contract rates are £400+ I've got a BSc and MSc and have been working as a Frontend/JS dev for the past decade. HOWEVER that is negligible, theres a lot of good self taught dev's out there that are contracting and in really decent positions.

Also theres more jobs than good dev's in England, i get job at least 10+ job offers on Linkedin in every week

A 100k salary is roughly 400 per 8 hour day worked.

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