OR
Maybe startup isnt for you? Thats just fine, its not for everyone and millions enjoy happy lives and families being employed. Once you admit this it may become less emotional for you and you might actually feel much better mentally!
I think its kind of problem for many readers here: HN pushes that mantra that every hacker have to start something himself.
I will have sufficient savings soon. For me it's not a question of if but when. It is the wait that's killing me. And then I see questions like this that make me feel even more impatient. But I truly appreciate such questions. Keeps me steadfast.
1. Immigration - I am an immigrant which makes launching your own company hard. I have a few years before my permanent residency comes through
2. Point #1 can be very demotivating. I have some ideas, and I keep playing with projects [Nothing worth releasing, or even having much potential, mind you] but not knowing if and when I can actually do something about it proves very unsettling, and ambiguous
3. My work permit requires a full-time job. This can be very consuming as many other HN'ers know. Does not help with the motivational aspect of it
Despite all this, I have hopes. HN provides valuable insights, and stories like yours provide encouragement. Perhaps it will remain a dream, for I am already 32 and I don't know where I will be a few years from now.
Here's to hope! :)
[Congrats on your 3rd launch]
Its difficult but its better than sitting gloomily that you cant do anything (like I did for a while).
Also theres so much to learn before you start your own venture - networks to be a part of, understanding VC/Angels, knowing as much as you can technically. Understanding business ,talking to customers, getting feedback.
Theres so much you could be doing. Stop focussing on what you cant do!
I work very hard to be good at what I do. My current focus is on learning as much as I can, regarding whatever it is that needs my immediate attention as well as aspects that may help later with a startup (if it ever comes to that). I am single with no debt whatsoever and I pack away as much as I can save (I am somewhat of a minimalist and live very frugally).
Regarding HN - It probably is the most relevant source I have found. Lot's of great advice and articles, lots of motivations (@patio11 comes to mind) and most importantly the company of (somewhat [1]) like-minded folks.
[1] - I say somewhat mostly because I doubt many others are people attempting to immigrate.
There are many thing to master in this life. Business is just one, you name others(hint: family, prof skills, sports, etc). Think about it.
Thanks for the vote of confidence.
dont wait
hmmmm, I think everything else is either fall out from the depression or an excuse to avoid facing fear. Fear of personal failure, fear that I'm not elite, fear that I don't "have what it takes", etc.
I'm also "old", 40yr, and I hate to say it but I feel less energized, less excited about the world than I remember feeling when I was younger. Change the world? Make "it big"/millions? Be famous? Meh, it's time for my nap.
It might be that you read way too much HN - This resource pushes towards starting company. Its not the only way to go for hacker! Relax and enjoy your life!
PS I was super surprised to see that so many replied about being stressed about not starting a company today. I am sorry about that, did mean to push anyone when asked this question. I think that you can only start company being in a good and optimistic mood! Stress/scare is a first warning sign!
If some deep part of you wants to try starting a company, it's not healthy to suppress that, and if you do, my guess is you'll eventually regret it.
You MUCH more likely loose all you money when start a company in such situation.
Programmers(especially good) are well payed($100k-$300k) (not dentists, but still:) ) and secure jobs. You can enjoy happy life with you family and be 9-6 employee. Besides you can join the RIGHT startup at the right time and get something like 10% less salary and options that might make you quite rich. The trick is in picking the right company at right time.
Then, school starts in 3 weeks. I have no money, and many expenses. There's so much that I feel I need to learn before I can do anything useful - I've never made anything big from scratch, and am only now reading about good program design. I should 'work on open source' first, or put in appreciable time at a large company first. I should pay off my growing student debt first. It feels like I only become motivated to do real work when I'm about to be pulled away from my computer.
Excuses spring to mind so quickly. I don't think I should be starting a company right now; I think I should finish this last year of school and then work until I pay off my debt while learning practically, then move to a startup hotbed and join a small group, and then I should be involved in starting a company.
Unless, of course, the 'right idea' strikes at the 'right time', and I find myself working with a tireless passion all of a sudden.
I guess if you read HN you somehow feel guilty for now starting your startup :) Really shouldnt be the case in you situation. Enjoy school, get gob in big company (like Google, Apple), pay off debt quickly, then get job in startup, keep working within open source community, get some real world experiences. Maybe try yourself in sales or something not related to coding(was great experience for me). You will feel the moment once you have something that you really want to start for yourself. Good luck!
By far, the single thing most budding "entrepreneurs" lack is encouragement. It is unfortunately that simple.
Most people will tell you it's networking, or having capital, or a business plan, or even luck. All of those things are Step 2. Step 1 is starting, it is the point most people don't get past.
Novels 3/4 done; "great idea for a movie" that never makes it to script; business idea that never makes it past the cocktail napkin.
And all of that, in my experience, is not fear of failure but fear of the unknown. It is identical to the "cold approach" in dating. You're not afraid she'll mace you, you're afraid she'll ask you to sit with her and then you won't have anything to sustain the conversation.
"Will the world discover I'm a fraud?"
There is so much self-doubt and a lack of self-confidence. There are a myriad of reasons, summarized under the umbrella "we were taught to pursue security, not happiness."
No amount of startup capital can fix this problem. You will make poor decisions, you will stop short, you will be tentative, you will be nervous with the money. The problem is you, not the system.
As time and generations pass, we don't learn to deal with failure, we are taught to avoid failure. Instead of sending the kids outside to play and teaching them how to be safe around sticks/bullies/heights, it's easier to leave them in the playroom.
The solution, therefore, is to fail. A lot. And as fast as possible, as young as possible. If you're <25 go hit on ten women a night, cold, and get shot down. Feel what it's like. It's not _so_ bad, is it? Better than wondering.
Forget about finishing your novel. Put up the first five chapters on a blog. Force yourself to read the comments.
Think you're a filmmaker? Put up ten photos-- still pics-- on Flickr. And invite the hate. See if you really have an eye for this. If you don't, now you are free to try something else.
Etc.
At best, they may love you and there's your encouragement. Or maybe someone sees your work and a collaboration is born.
At worst, they hate you, and you realize you're still ok, you didn't run uptown for heroin.
Either way, the failure will hold your hand and walk you to success.
Of course, nothing stops me from working it once the kids go to bed but it's frustrating, tiring and is taking a very very long time... and then lack of motivation and/or distractions are big problem.
DISC: Above is just my imho, listen with caution, i dont know your story well enough to advice.
In other words: NH will not help you to become better programmer/hacker. Just look at http://news.ycombinator.com/ at this moment and see that there are only few tech links there - rest is about "why facebook is better than google" bs.
My point is: If you ultimate goal stable financial situation for your family you can less risky archive it by becoming better programmer.
On meaningful projects: is working on google/apple/any company you like meaningful enough for you?
All above is just my imho of course..
I'm working on trying to get a hold of work in the US so that I can start the journey back to permanent residency (moved away and am 'back to square zero,') hopefully that can net me some fun people to work with.. But you know, years off, even if I manage to get a hold of a job. I've had a fair amount of smaller companies who have been interested, but not capable of bringing me over, and my (rather few) attempts at getting into larger companies have been stopped thus far by my lousy résumé writing skills.. Have a couple in the works that I still have hope for, but we'll see.
So now I got that off my chest, congratulations on your launch btw! :)
I moved out to the bay with $1k just a 1.5yr ago to find a job after college. I thought it was going to be awesome. Found a job at a great company, got to meet some really great people, learned a lot, but come to find out my wife is not coping well with the new location which is really consuming time and energy. I spent the early part of this year trying to figure this puzzle out, but ultimately it is what it is.
So at this moment, I need to break away from the destractions. Moving back home in late December to the midwest where I can live on a fraction of what it costs out here. I'll have a happy wife that will have the ability to buy a house for 80k and will be with her family/friends. I plan to do consulting (which I'm already starting to build relationships for) to earn money to live / bootstrap with, and I'll start working on a business away from the gamedev train.
If building something in the midwest that ultimately brings me back to silicon valley, oo-rah. But, in the end, a location isn't going to define me.
I see how much I have left to do, think about how long it will take, and then start thinking about how to speed up the process... automate it.
I start to think about whether or not I am actually getting what I need so I don't get through 3,000 units and need to change something and have wasted the work. I think about how to scale the system to use multiple workstations, and multiple central servers because I can't store 10,000 units on the one server I have.
I'm working on a shoestring budget, and have creditors calling me every day. I borrowed $40,000 a few years ago hoping that that would help me get going in anticipation of another $100,000 I was going to get, but that fell through and I was able to use less than half of what I borrowed before the rest was needed to save my mother's business.
So, that's what's delay'n me.
Usually when the urge strikes, my day job starts taking up too much time, or life happens, or I realize my idea is stupid. This time, however, I'm just going to go for it. I don't care that the product I'm building is in a VERY crowded space. I don't care that there's no 'killer feature' to draw the crowds in. I don't care that it really isn't that marketable. It's a product, and I'm building it -- and while I don't expect it to set the world on fire, I've stutter-started enough times in my life that I feel like just finishing something and releasing it will be a huge step in the right direction, so that's what I'm doing.
You won't read about this product on TechCrunch, and you won't see it lauded as the next great thing, but you will be able to register for it and use it, and ideally, within a month and a half to two months. And you can bad-mouth it all you like, I'll have done... something.
That said, I don't honestly know how much better mine will be than something like osTicket, except to say that the workflow will be dramatically different.
Thanks for the well-wishing. I'm sure I'll make an equally tentative post when I release.
Remember there is always place for another player in ANY market. For example read article that explains why 1% of search worth 1B. Even if your market share is going to be 0.1% in the beginning and you are passionate about what you do - i believe in you!
Best of luck with that!
Now I'm in limbo trying to recover as quickly as possible. I still have lower back pain near my kidneys which makes it hard to sit in a chair.
It's not that bad actually, I'm just finding it really hard to get the motivation to work consistently.
And the first user with a problem 3 hours ago.
I'll feel ready to do something big (and have enough knowledge to possibly succeed) in a couple of years.
Bottom line, my motivation right now is I have to do something, NOW. I'm 30 and I would like to start a family soon, going to get marry next year. I don't want to be in a position where I kick myself in the butt 5 yrs from now - "Why didn't I do this 5 yrs ago when I had time?" Even if I were to fail, at least I can say "I tried."
Good energy, but you'll want to work on control, mister.
You're far better off with a small slice of a big pie than a big slice of a tiny pie.
So it seems I'd have to go it alone, and my ideas are too big for my time. If I had some simpler ideas I'd definitely see if they held water, however. I definitely have the application, server, and DB skills to make it happen.
I have a few hobbies that might turn into something someday, but I think I need a bit more recovery time, and I think I'd rather share the hobbies with the world than sell them.
I'm still working on it at night, got a new idea this past month and working making it happen at home after work. Also got the company setup but other than that, I can't quit working the day job.
I've been working on a small iphone app side project. If it gets a little traction in the app store I will feel much better about doing my own stuff!
The greatest thing about this schedule is that even when you are not working on it you keep thinking about what to do next. It turns out that when you actually start coding you are supper productive as all you next steps already thought through and prioritized, you just new to type/debug them! :)
So basically, I'm one step away from building the app.
I'd love to see an hours-long screencast of how you guys kick off a project.
Start by getting a job in "something you like". Learn maximum from it. When you will learn enough(you will feel that, believe me), just quit that company (bonus for taking some of its clients) and start you own!
Dark side, i know. But it works!
Start working on the product. The product that I'm building right now was named "something maybe" for weeks until the right name struck (that had an available domain name).
Historically, I've moved forward in leaps and bounds until either a problem presented itself or I'd get bogged down in something so trivial as a product name. Really, it doesn't matter.
In retrospect (and I have no idea whether or not this applies to you), I was stalling because I didn't know what to do after that. If you're stuck on a company name, simply substitute "working title" until you get moving, and the name will come.
My last company had (IMO) a great name, so I'm struggling to measure up.
Domain names are becoming a serious problem. I spent a couple of months coming up with names before finding something remotely passable. Even now I am not happy with what I have, but the dismal return on effort prevents me from wasting anymore time on it, at least until I have a growing customer base.
That said, my excuse is: Before I got into software dev I tried to get into the music business. Unfortunately, that's much more about salesmanship than it is about music - you have to convince bar owners and club owners to put you on, you have to advertise your gig, you have to try and make a profit and pay your band, rent a van, etc. etc. It put me off being a musician (that and arrogant singers/drummers :) ). I don't want to be put off being a software dev too. I need some way of working past my disdain for that side of things. Then I'll be fit to start my own business.
Although, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm hoping I'll find some friends at Manchester Uni when I get round to going.
PS: I dont know why somebody downvoted this and dont really care about that. This was a case that changed lives for at least two friends of mine. I hope somebody might benefit from that. Its a question of like $500 for somebody in the UK. I fail to understand when ppl from well-developed countries complain for such small issues. Read what it takes from somebody from india china or pakistan to get to where you are right now and get how PRIVILEGED and blessed are you !
There's also the minor technicality that USCIS won't let you in the country with only a one way ticket.
Problems with US "immigration" for entrepreneurs are mostly overrated. In fact most of entreps dont need to immigrate until they "make it".
Been there. Done that.
If you really want - you can do that rather simply after making some research online. Not talking about getting citizenship or green card here(although its also quite double). Especially if you are from UK. So to me its a weak excuse, sorry.
PS: Proof - even YC accept foreign teams without any hassle.
Emphasis on Salford. There are places in UK that are viable for startups but Salford is just not one of them. The issue here is that I don't have enough money to move yet, so it's not entirely a weak excuse.