I'm a nearly broke developer/entrepreneur and felt like venting | Hacker News Reader

I'm a nearly broke developer/entrepreneur and felt like venting

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194 pointsk33n52 comments

I sympathize. You describe 3 problems (depending on whether I'm reading you right).

1. You quit working on a client project. It's not clear whether you notified anybody, but it sounds like the work was billable until you decided to abandon it - which means your participation had to be replaced or written off, both of which are a bit expensive.

2. You don't know when you'll reach point X with the SEM project, and all you have been promised when you do reach it is an audition to ask for capital investment.

3. You have almost run out of cash because you spent it on stuff like an iPhone 4 when it was flowing, and are probably eating nothing but junk food.

It sounds like you're immersing yourself in dealing with the problems of coding in order to avoid dealing with the less tractable problems of money, personal interaction, and working pattern. You say nothing about attempting to sell your product elsewhere: it seems you don't like selling, and/or the product may be in a legal grey area in that the company in Charleston may have a claim on the IP because they paid you to work on it.

This is an unhealthy situation in multiple ways. I suggest you borrow some money from where you can to pay off your landlord and live for the next month or two on a basic but healthy diet. Then, look for a job. If your relationship with your friend is still good, then ask him to evaluate your progress so far, set short-term milestones for incremental improvements, and limit the amount of time you put into it until your financial emergency is over. If you are isolated, indebted and anxious then your non-provable design theories (UI, architecture) are probably not very good. This says nothing about your skill, it's because you refer to 'a horrible string of rewrites, starts from scratch, and UI redesigns.' That's what happens when you lose perspective and confidence at the same time.

At present you are your own employer, and you are mistreating yourself as an employee by failing to provide yourself with a paycheck or other forms of professional support. Quit your abusive job and see to your basic needs first.

You couldn't be more right. After reading all the comments here and on the blog post, I've decided that I've been in my own little world with this app for way too long, and I need to go do something else for awhile.

If it's really worth doing, I'm sure I'll pick it back up again once I'm back on my feet.

Hardball: "Are you playing to play or are you playing to win" This is a good book, which used to be used in the Harvard MBA curriculum. I really like the last chapter which discusses some points on what to do when u really need a win or to bring a company back. These points i believe can apply to your personal life and a business, i will use it in a personal sense:

1. Survive first then gain competitive advantage: In that make sure you survive first.....so get income(9-5 job, freelance, anything), then get competitive advantage(make yourself feel special) by starting a business.

2. Make everything Fast, Focused and Fundamental:

Fast-- This relates to the time element, every task/action should have a stated timeline in which it should be achieved.

Focused-- These key tasks/actions should be protected from other tasks/actions cannibalizing time.

Fundamental-- Only efforts that go to the heart of the matter should be pursued. Only actions that are going to make a big difference to the underlying should be pursued at this point.

3. Don't tolerate failure to deliver more than once: Two or three failures to deliver suggests a lack of will, incompetence or even subversion. This applies to anyone.

You should now ask yourself, am i satisfying point 1? Then make your way from there.

Give us a donate button and we will help you pay the rent at least, the time you find a paying gig.

Do people actually do this? I've seen donate buttons before, even clicked them a few times, but I never imagined anyone received a sizable chunk of money this way.

Go do something else BUT let others evaluate your product in the meantime.

Open it up to discussion; why you designed the UI a certain way or why it contains features XYZ vs ABC. Allow yourself to be critiqued.

Kudos!

You'll thank yourself for taking this step now. Remember that finding paying gigs also takes time, and beggars can't be choosers (of clients)

This is alot like my own situation. I quit my job last year due to stress issues with coworkers, and I spent most of the last year writing an iOS app just so I could put something more modern on my resume. Mid project, the iPad came out and I felt I could take a moon shot into actually making a small amount of money at it by retooling to better fit the new platform. Unfortunatly, my solo work took too long and I missed a couple of market windows. And I needed to cut so much functionality in order to simply “ship” that I might not have made a “minimum viable product” any more. Finally, my ad campaign and press releases haven’t got much traction.

I had a cushion to live of off for the last year, so I’m not yet at the breaking point. I’m thinking about writing a postmortem and posting it here at HN after I decide if my project is worth salvaging. (If you’re curious, my website is http://www.concernwormwood.com/ .)

Dude, what the heck are you doing?

1) It sounds like you're doing all the work. Your "co-founder" - what is he doing?

2) Oh that's right - he's doing his other business - presumably the one that pays your income. How did that arrangement work out? Are you an employee of that business?

3) This sounds like a way to get royally screwed. Let's say you make the product, it turns out to be a success. Your friend can say that its IP of his company - that you were just an employee - or worse, you were a contractor. When you worked on that project, what agreement did you sign? Is there something there that says "any work derived by contractor as part of this project becomes IP of Company"?

4) This sounds like the classic, "I have a great idea, here, you develop it, and i'll give you no income and 5% when it's all done" scheme.

5) A demo is good, but it should not be an end all be-all for funding. The best ideas are the ones that leap off the paper. If you need more motivation/funding - there a dozen groups like Ycombinator now. Don't quit at just them. A true entrepreneur never quits!

6) Don't be an architecture astronaut. There's no point re-designing everything when you don't have a paying customers. Put stuff together, slap it with duct tape, whatever. You don't get users if it's just sitting in a github repository. If your site experiences growing pains, that's a GOOD thing.

7) I would cut bait and run, but make sure you pay your landlord back. It seems like he's extending a lot of faith in you by letting you be 2 months behind in your rent. Don't screw him.

8) Get a real job, and gain a savings cushion. This market that your targetting is full of consultants/hipsters/experts that are probably making a decent stream of cash. This will also help you generate buzz for your project when it's all said and done.

1, 2) Exactly right. This isn't a knock on him though. He's got a family and has to pay the bills. Plus he doesn't code at all.

3) Absolutely. I'm not worried about getting screwed in this instance, as we're good friends and have built up a lot of trust over the years. Then again, people usually don't expect to be screwed over.

4) More or less. I had a decent salary up until a couple of months ago. It was enough to keep me barely afloat while going out and actually having a social life.

5) Couldn't agree more. Quitting is not on my menu, the YCombinator interview fell into our laps so I ran with it. I would never have sought funding at that stage if it were up to me. I could see doing it now though.

6) This is great advice that's hard to follow. I'm trying to get better at this all the time.

7) My landlord is a super nice lady and I will definitely not be fucking her over.

8) Yep. This is my only option at this point. I am going to get a Web dev job and get my shit back in order.

Been there, went so low once it was dog chow just to survive for a few days. Proximity is a bitch when you don't live near a tech hub, even worse when the people around don't understand what you do.

Do yourself a favor, if not just for the peace of mind. Look into the labor laws regarding ip in your state. I found mine by searching for [state law labor code] then read through to find the laws regarding intellectual property and inventions. Find out how fucked you really are in terms of the law and the agreement you have with your friend.

Hopefully you're working with good people, and in my experience everything changes once money is involved.

Once you get back to your project, set a schedule for your milestones. It's one thing to be disciplined, and another to know how long it will take to get your product usable and to market. Especially if you're building alone.

Good luck, I'd be grateful for the community that's behind you.

Good. Rest up, too. Maybe pick up some other hobbies? This will also help you approach your existing problems in a new and interesting way.

There are tons of ideas and startups out there. Not every idea will work out. Life is too short to kill yourself over just one.

You need to take a break from software development for about 6 months.

Really.

About 1.5 years ago, I was in almost exactly the same state of mind that you're currently in. So I quit my job and lived off of savings for a few months. I played a ton of Left 4 Dead and met a lot of awesome friends (most of whom are still friends to this day). I did almost nothing programming-related.

At a certain point, about 6 months in, I simply lost interest in playing games, and went back to programming. I felt rejuvenated -- actually, I felt like a completely different developer. I was now way, way more productive than I ever had been before.

So, take my story for what it's worth. It may not work for everyone, but the takeaway is, I once had a mindset very similar to "All day I've been tempted to just pop an Advil PM and go to sleep. But if I stop moving, I'm fucked, so on I go coding." It was a terrible time in my life, and I solved it by taking a complete break from software development for about 6 months, and wound up a much better developer (and much, much happier) because of it.

I am doing this right now. After 1.5 years of shuttling back and forth between two town every week, I'm now, "running a 1 man mental ward in my apartment as head shrink, head nurse, chief bottle washer, and patient."

Wow, a video game staycation. That sounds awesome!

You're running out of runway and have two choices:

1. Safely abort take-off: Stay back on the ground, join the rest of the employed world, and find a salaried job.

2. Crash: Let your emotions get the best of you, and stubbornly try to take flight in spite of the laws of physics working against you.

There's no shame in choosing option #1. People that do so have the option of taxi-ing around for a while and attempting another take-off. People that choose #2... not so much.

Now, I'll stop with the bad airplane analogies :)

100% right. I will be following this advice.

Yep. I've been there, and still paying back the loans I borrowed which finish end of next year. Third times a charm though. I now have 16% equity in a performance management biz which is doing well. I believe most successful business men go bankrupt or got themselves into serious debt. Believe me, you're not alone in your desperate situation and I hope your situation improves quickly!

I wish I had a link to the report, but the Canadian government did a study where they showed exactly what your intuition told you. Even successful entrepreneurs had notoriously big debt loads in the early years. We're not talking double the average, but sometimes 4-5x that of salaried folks. Of the unsuccessful ones, a significant chunk went bankrupt due to their high levels of debt.

Charleston is a beautiful city. I came very close to moving there twice in the past few years.

Get a J-O-B there for a while and stabilize your money situation. Enjoy Isle of Palms and the rest of the city. Go up to Hilton Head, down to River Street in Savannah. Heck, go down to St. Augustine for a longer trip.

Clear your head, get some money. Then, if you're game for the entrepreneur game, go for it once again, being careful to not get into the situation you're in now. You won't be the first who's gone that route.

Seems like you have more domain expertise than you know what to do with. Time to fashion yourself into an Adwords expert, or maybe shoot these guys an email, they're a YC company:

http://adgrok.com/

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=antongm

If I was you I would give them a call and don't take "no" for an answer; push for a restraining order.

Nice timing to the Techcrunch post on Adgrok: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/09/adgrok-simplifies-keyword-b...

Sounds more like your colleagues have lost faith in the project and you want to continue on with it. If that's the case then it may be time to find a J.O.B. and put this on the sideburner. If you have faith in it, have collected plenty of positive feedback, and have interested parties lined up to use it, then there's nothing wrong with going to earn a paycheck to take care of your basic needs first. It may take longer but it may also refocus you on the tasks at hand.

That... or go get some angel funding. There are more incubators/angels than just PG. How about family? Friends?

Though it really sounds like your cohorts have lost interest (since they don't seem to be out hustling for more funding and have told you you need to work without even ramen money).

This what I would do in your situation:

1) Calm down - Right now you are more than likely worried about your future, but being emotionally upset is not the best time to make decisions. I would suggest getting an Indian head massage from a professional, take one every day for 3 days. Go with one you find on Gumtree(don't look at me like that, it's just a massage).

2)Exercise - This also is targeted at your emotions, getting endorphins in your system. Doing this will allow you to feel happy and confident. Do 30mins at least 75-80% of your maximum heart rate for as long as you are in this situation. You can take a break once a week. If you are dieting, stop. You should try to keep your calories at maintenance level now. Cutting back on calories can lead you to be more depress or emotional.

3)Get around people who don't care - At this point you should try to put as much distance between you and any other person who would express sorrow at your current situation. Any contact you have with them is simply to inform them of the situation. We are trying to avoid you having a pity party.

4)Get a contract job - At this time you might want to consider finding a 3-4 month contract job to resolve your cash flow situation.

5)Borrow Cash - Before you get your contract job, you might need to get some immediate influx of cash to cover your expenses. At this time, you should be calling a family member to borrow some cash to stay afloat. At this point you should be calm and relax, reassure them that everything is going to be alright and soon you will have a contract job to repay them.

6)Don't Quit - When you are working the contract jobs, use this time to jot down ideas. Have about 1000 ideas over the 3months for your startup. This would keep the passion flowing for the startup. Also, it would be a good time to do customer development; find those 10 customers that the smart bear guy talked about. You might even have to pivot your start-up but that is all good, just don't quit.

There is no such thing as a perfect app. That is the first problem I see. Developers often fall victim to this line of thinking, and who couldn't? I mean, after all it is your baby, of course you want it to be perfect.

That's not reality though. You need customers. Not perfection. I think you should set a goal for yourself to release by the end of the week. I'm not kidding. Get it out there and validate the product. Find customers. And read more Jason Cohen.

Good luck.

OP, I really hope things turn out for the best for you.

There's another lesson to be had here: save more than two months' worth of living expenses when you're still drawing a salary. You never know when shit hits the fan.

It really is time to cut your losses as much as you can. First things first!

Github released a service today for IT job postings, sounds like you might want to check them out, as well as any other short term way to plug the hole so you won't slide (further) in to debt.

Then, when you've stabilized your situation you can start to figure out what to do next.

I live in Charleston. If you need a loan, a sympathetic ear or a sympathetic beer, find me on Twitter @warwickp any time.

I would suggest taking a brief vacation (1-2 weeks) but go totally unjacked, no laptop, no Internet. Relax, think about life and appreciate life in general, eat healthy. This will recharge you nothing else. Then, come back and find a good job. With your experience this shouldn't be too hard.

Go find a gig and keep bootstrapping it. Even if you're close but not there yet, get some income coming in from somewhere so that you have the opportunity to ship it. Be smart, be frugal and keep yourself afloat so you product can see the light of day!

It sounds like you have yet to release a usable version. You mention that you worked on it a lot, and wanted the thing to be perfect, but a newly released product is never perfect. Get to a point where you can release what you have, and then incrementally improve it.

Since you'll likely be getting a job to support your own efforts, you probably want to reach an agreement with your current partners to phase them out, unless they have useful effort to contribute. Since they supported your effort for a number of months, though, they do have some sort of legitimate claim on some of the work you've done, so I'm not sure what the agreement would look like.

If you know Adwords/SEM at all it should be pretty easy to find a consulting gig for local small businesses. Charge a percent of spend or $100-150 hourly for your time. This is what I did when I invested lots of money into my business and needed some extra cash. Most businesses don't know anything about online advertising and would be extremely eager to let you set up their campaigns. My email is in my profile, feel free to get in touch if you want to know exactly how to pull this off.

I sympathize with a fellow geek... I almost ran out of money trying to get a couple of projects off the ground. Had to run back into the arms of "the man" to get my daily bread:) I need someone to do one of those "stand by the side of the road" ads for my site (www.meshipu.com), don't worry you wont have to ware a costume:) If you are interested let me know, we can work something out that might help you to at least stave off homelessness for now. email: questions at meshipu.com

I tried to email you but it bounced back to me. I am intrigued by your ad idea though. I'd be happy to get some more details. I could totally goad a super hot chick into doing it.

hi k33n, Sorry about the bounce...The problem should be fixed now.

Edison took 6000 tries to find the right filament. There is no harm in trying again - now or later.

Wow. Just think about how much burnout he suffered before finally succeeding.

haha. 2nd best pun of the day (best was "P=NP'ing ain't easy")

Sorry to hear you're having such a rough time, it's tough when the money dries up. Good luck in the future.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

http://37signals.com/svn/archives/sanaz_ahari_just_ship_it.p... (replace big company with (seemingly) unlimited budget).

Ahh..the Magento trap. You seem to be suffering from burnout.

My advice to is....leave it all behind. Pay your bills and move to your parents house for awhile if you have to. Have no payments haunting you. I believe that what's causing you all that stress is the rent.

I know it may sound ridiculous but your parents will help you by supporting you on this difficult time. And you can use that time to get your business straight.

Or maybe you need a restart, refresh, start over. If so, give yourself a few weeks or months, and do something unrelated to your job. Learn a new skill, work on something different. That will clear your head up and maybe bring some cool ideas. Then evaluate if you still want to work on this.

When you're sitting in your rocking chair and you're yelling at kids to get off your lawn, before you fall back asleep are you going to wish you stuck it out for a few more months to see what happened?

Man, that sucks. I grew up and lived in Charleston for years before moving to the Denver area (I'm planning to move back next year...yes it's that nice there :)). Like you I also got screwed (though not as bad) by my potential co-founder. He flaked out after I moved here, but luckily I hadn't quit my job yet.

There are not that many tech companies in Charleston. I'm curious who exactly were you working for. The situation sounds a bit shady and right up the alley of a couple of companies I know of there.

Stop working on it for a while, go get a job to sustain yourself, save up some money, working on it weeknights/weekends and once it's it at point where it reaches some sort of critical mass, quit the job and live off of what you saved up. It's like when you're playing starcraft, you don't have an adequate supply of minerals, and you keep unsuccessfully trying to harass the enemy. It's not going to do anything. You have to focus on getting some dough, ramping up your production and then punk the enemy.

I'd definitely go back to paid work, first and foremost.

It's always darkest before the dawn...or before it somehow gets even darker.

I know there are all kinds of debates here about "Quit and follow your dream!" vs "Do it nights while working a job during the day" Sounds like you tried option 1 and it didn't work out. Maybe it's time to give option 2 a try, assuming you're not so burned out that you'd rather just chuck it all.

I know and understand the feeling. Let it out and start managing the next second, minute, hour and day, little by little !!!

I've been in a very similar situation for almost 2 years. I keep getting sucked into startups that sink for whatever reason before they get off the ground, and it digs me in deeper every time.

No advice here - I'm still dealing with the problem myself - but I agree, it sucks.

I'm curious–is what you guys presented similar to what AdGrok (YC S10) is doing?

I wish you the best of luck, but personally I wouldn't stick around. Regardless of who owns the IP, you have some newfound knowledge/domain expertise. I would pack it up and head west.

Oh, this is bad. You should rethink, maybe try something totally different. When you have the killer idea, it is still time to restart. Didn't you think about it, when YC did a review and decided against your project?

Anyway kudos for keeping trying and good luck.

I feel your pain, man. I have no prescription for you except to just keep on trying different stuff, but IMHO you have every right to vent.

I've also had Magento projects rob me of my dignity, so therefore I'm inclined to be sympathetic.

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