Ask HN: Side business – how to get started? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Side business – how to get started?

48 pointsyokutown22 comments

I see so many people doing side projects or business. I have excellent backend data engineering skills in the data analytics space.

However, I honestly don't know anything about front end and don't know where to start?

I don't feel motivated enough to learn Javascript/Node etc. Frameworks are evolving very rapidly. I am sure how much learning front end will help in day-to-day job as well. I am good at getting things done. When I look at good freelancers they are often charging $50 or more per hour. I don't want to spend a lot of money just to build a website.

Do you have any suggestions on how to get started and what are ways to build a side business?

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I've collected 35 stories of solo-preneurs at https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/wjRD/collected-stories-o...

This might be of some inspiration.

That being said, the one thing you cannot skip is building the product.

If your product is a website, then you either have to learn how to do it, both front-end and back-end, or hire someone to do it.

If you don't know where to start learning, you can start at https://www.udacity.com/. They have free and paid (but still cheap) web dev courses.

There's really never been easier to learn web programming, with so many free resources.

If you're overwhelmed with choices, learn React + HTML/CSS (frameworks like React are about easy way to create HTML; you still need to know what HTML/CSS to create).

Very interesting, thanks you a lot!

Interesting stories. Thanks for sharing.

^ This guy wrote SumatraPDF, everyone's favorite PDF reader on Windows. Thanks Krzysztof!

I think there's two questions here:

1) How to start a side business?

Make something people want, charge money for it, and figure out how to market it. Not necessarily in that order.

2) Where to start with front-end tech?

Use as little of it as possible. Plain old HTML, and forms that submit to a server are all you really need. No fancy JavaScript. CSS is nice, and probably a bit more important but also not strictly required.

I say this as someone who makes a living writing JS/Node and charges well over $50/hr. After your project is bringing in money, then you can look into learning front-end fancyness. Or just hire me ;)

Maybe partner up with someone who does have full stack web development skills?

I think there are plenty of good side businesses where data analytics combined with a great interactive web front end to visualize the data could be profitable.

Such a partnership need not cost much money at all to get started. You could launch a product on an inexpensive Digital Ocean VPS.

I don't feel motivated enough to learn Javascript/Node etc.

Well, there are two basic paths.

1. Pay somebody to do that stuff.

2. Learn it and do it yourself.

You've already eliminated option 2, so the equation doesn't seem very complicated to me. Maybe you can find some offshore talent, or still-in-school (or just-out-of-school) folks who would be willing to work for a relatively inexpensive rate? Or you could "pay" in equity and have a co-founder.

I guess you could argue that there is also a hidden "option 3" - invent an artificial general intelligence and make it do the work for you.

Well you can either learn how to build frontend yourself or pay somebody to do it. And as always you get what you pay for so somebody good will charge a lot. That should help motivate you to learn.

You don't need to learn JavaScript or Node initially. It's perfectly fine to start with old school front end built with Rails or Django.

Dynamic HTML generated on the server. Which could be Node but doesn't need to be. PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby will do just fine.

You need to learn HTML and how submitting forms works at the very least. And probably some CSS. You can start with that.

And by the way, $50 per hour is not even that high. There are some too frontend experts charging double that or more.

So unless you got big budget for this side business I'd recommend to learn very basics yourself and start with simple UIs that you can write on your own. Later if the side business takes off you can hire front end experts to take it from there.

Maybe check the algorithmic stock market trading, looks like you have the background, just get some data and start testing different trading strategies, the upfront cost if minimal and if you find something that is working for you you can start trading with real money and then do it for friends and family, etc...

I have tried this. Very good chiice. You can easily make more than bank interest.

You can also easily lose money too.

That's why you have to test a lot before putting a single penny on the line...

I have built a few startups in the past, and am currently building 12 startups in 12 months at http://blog.12startupsin12months.in/ . Like the @nfriedly mentioned. You really have 2 questions. I always ask people to get their product validated with at least 20 customers. For this you probably just need a simple landing page asking for an email. Make sure you are building something that provides value.

The next part is actually building the app. I am a developer so my advice may be a bit biased. But, I would ask you to learn a front end framework. If you don't know an JS frameworks yet, I'd ask you to take a look at Elm. Once you have the first version out, and grows beyond your capabilities you can hire folks to work on it.

you can't build 12 startups in 12 months. You are building 12 hobby projects in 12 months. Big difference.

It's more like building 12 startup MVPs, to test the market, in 12 months

Well, what is the difference between a hobby project and a startup? Is a startup something that brings in money? If so, I am definitely planning to monetize all the 12 startups. Does a startup need someone who works on it full time? If so, I am working on these things full time. These products may be small but they are real products which will have real customers.

You seem pretty sure you'll have real customers.

Yeah, The first app that I am building has a lot of competitors. So, it is not really a question of whether the market is there. I definitely need the confidence If my startups are going to be successful :)

It sounds like you are worrying about skills & tech before having a problem to solve or a product to build.

Investigate some ideas, find a need and a solution you want to build. Keep things simple and see if there is demand.

You can decide then what skills are important and either learn as you go or hire. You will be much more motivated to learn if you have something specific to build & customers waiting.

Do you feel motivated to learn marketing? Because you will need that too. Its ok to farm out or even team-up with people though, so build a network of potential partners.

Do you have good ideas? And can they become viable side businesses?

I do frontend mainly and know a bit of backend as well. But don't have good ideas to work on :(

You can hire me for 20$ per hour. I'll help you build the mvp if you have an idea. PM me if you're interested.

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