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Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

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...?

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

Only after he made it.

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.

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