Sidepact: start a company with a full-time job | Hacker News Reader

Sidepact: start a company with a full-time job

sidepact.com

143 pointsmanderchar55 comments

Hm. I’m a little puzzled. If you can’t meet other people to talk, you’ll have problems forming a firm. So my counter-offer to people reading this: meet with each other for lunch every Sunday. It’ll be $15/lunch. After 12 weeks of lunches you will know if you like the people and whether they have thr skills and can form your team anyway and not give anybody anything, especially the 1%. To find people who care, form a meetup, post on HN and Reddit. If nobody replies after 12 attemps, your idea is wrong and change your idea. This method lets you iterate through 5 ideas a year. If you dont have the idea and like coding - there are hundreds of post on how to find the idea. Ping me if you still have no idea. I can give you hundreds of ideas that I have no time building.

We really hope that people feel inspired to do that too! We've found that for some founders, having structure and shared commitment go a long way and we'd like to support that part of the process. The equity is also there to ensure that the organization has aligned incentives and skin in the game.

Make it be $300/month. This would align people too. Or maybe publish the list of VCs and angels who will come to pitch week. If its Andressen Horowitz or Sequoia or Mayfield, that makes sense

We've thought about charging more to ensure commitment through the program, but we'd like to make the program as accessible as possible (especially for our first cohort).

As for the VCs and angels coming to pitch week, we're actively working on this and hope to have more to share over the coming weeks.

How will that work?

Does an actual organization actually get created during this program?

Who owns the intellectual property?

I contact a friend of mine the decides to be a customer of something, the team decides not to pursue it?

People used to summarize YC in a similar way. The devil is usually in the details though. I think this program could be valuable to a certain type of aspiring founder.

Attempting to market to random people seems like it is a different approach, perhaps complementary to this one. To me it seems like Sidepact is essentially acting as the curator of the top of the funnel you describe. They do the work of collecting people interested in doing something, then iterate together until matches are made and ideas are moved further along.

I think this is a better approach for people who say "I don't have an idea". Usually what they mean is that they don't have an idea they think isn't already covered by deeply entrenched incumbents (internet search) or hopelessly swarmed by competition willing to race you past the bottom of (quality x price) you're willing to stop at (games). What these people want is confidence and support to follow-through on them, even if they don't seem good, or to develop that spark that sets your idea apart from the rest, not a list of ideas to work on.

> The program charges a $30/week to cover costs and participants must be located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sidepact takes a 1% equity stake in companies from companies formed during program upon incorporation.

PS OP: there's a small typo in this copy on the site that I've edited out here, 'the program is...'

Thanks so much! Fixed. :)

I would have thought that paying the fee would have been enough. A one percent stake seems a bit ... I don't know. They aren't investing or anything, right?

Right, this is a co-working space that does mild cofounder screening and takes 1% of your company.

A co-working space used only on Sundays.

If they can make connections better than I can on my own... if they can, say, evaluate and help negotiate a partnership with a business person better than I could and/or provide good ongoing advice and connections... or if they provide a prestigious credential, it's cheap.

Of course, I don't know if they can provide any of those things not worse than I could provide them myself.

I do think the fee alone would be too low, unless it's just a social club. And... if the founders fail to convince people of the above, that sounds like it could be a good way to take it.

The equity is also there to ensure that the organization has aligned incentives. From our conversations with people that have just a desire to start a company, but may lack the experience, team, or social capital to do so, we believe the equity stake asked for is reasonable.

I'd expect for a 1% stake to get something of value in return, like access to investors (angel and seed stage, not VC) to at least pitch the idea to, office hours with successful other company starters, etc. The $30/week covers what you're offering already and it seems like you get the 1% for basically nothing. On the other hand 1% of most of the companies that come out of this is likely to be worth not much.

We aim to provide teams access to relevant angel/seed investors on the demo day at the end of the program.

"Aim to provide" is pretty loose. There really should be a guarantee of some sort in there. Not to be funded, of course, but something.

It's not so much a guarantee we (the potential users) want, as something showing that the company could credibly provide that access.

That makes sense; and we will have more information on this front.

As a side note, aside from the above sources of value mentioned (essentially access), one thing that we're looking to provide is some structure and community to those who are also looking to start a company. We recognize that this is not something necessarily every founder needs

it's something I need very much. but part of needing it is that I'm not... particularly qualified to evaluate your ability to give it to me, which makes things difficult.

Really, that's the hard part about hiring help in general; the areas where you need the most help, you generally don't have the skill required to recognize skill, so you are reliant entirely on credentials, and even picking which credentials to select for is difficult when you don't know the field.

> Week 7-11: Build, prototype, and validate your solution with prospective customers

> The time commitment is Sundays 12-6PM for twelve weeks in fall 2018

Is 24 hours really long enough to build something valuable, prototype it and validate it?

When I build things in my spare time it takes me way longer than that... but then I don't write code full time for a living so maybe I'm just slow...

I think the usual approach with these 'sprint' methodologies is to use software like InVision, Figma, etc. to mock-up a prototype. No sense coding before you've got proof positive that users will care, the thinking goes.

See: http://www.gv.com/sprint/

We anticipate that mileage will vary by team, and that we'll support teams to reach these milestones. This includes helping find those customers and prioritizing feature development.

Often times you don't have to build anything to validate an idea. Talk to potential users and get a commitment to pay for a product.

It isn't cool to try to boost your post with promotional upvotes, whether from sockpuppet accounts or friends. That is against the rules here (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) and we ban or penalize accounts and sites that do it.

Out of interest, how did you pick it up? (I understand you may not want to reveal this)

Yeah, that's one of the few cases where intellectual curiosity (the driving value of HN) has to yield to administrative secrets (boo). In case it helps: the answer is not that interesting. I just can't publish it because then we'd burn the method.

Sure, I figured as much

I would have thought that many companies have intellectual property clauses that grant ownership of all IP to the employer, whether that IP is created on company or personal time.

How do you address this?

In many parts of the country, this is effectively unenforceable. California, for example.

Depends where you live. California law renders those clauses null as long as the IP is generated outside of work, without use of employer equipment, facilities, internal knowledge or other IP already belonging to the employer. There are some potential issues if the side work "relates to the employer's business", so running any specific plan through a real lawyer is a good idea at some point. But, as far as I have heard, doing this is not uncommon when the side-project does not compete with the employer in any way.

IANAL. For specifics, see § 2870: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

Presumably some other jurisdictions have similar laws, and that is a factor in your job search if you are planning to work on anything on the side: pick a location with laws that allow this. Failing that, you can negotiate to retain IP on existing side-projects when you join a company, as an amendment to your contract.

Cofounders of Sidepact here.

We’re looking for ambitious engineers with or without full-time jobs, who want to start a company. Sidepact does the work of matching you with a team and establishing shared commitment on a meaningful problem. It’s like an extended hackathon, with the goal of bringing you to the validation and launch of your startup.

That’s our vision, and we hope you’ll join us!

I sense that this aims at solving the existential crises that a lot of young engineers at FAMGA are having.

Definitely selling shovels

Sounds like you’re trying to network people who want to “do something” but don’t have anything in-flight. How do you feel about engineers who already have a side hustle going and would like to find help to ramp it up?

That's wonderful! We only ask that you come in with an open mind to other ideas and share the ownership of what you build together.

Will you be open to someone who can drive every Saturday for 12 weeks to SF?

Absolutely!

This is a great idea. Can I apply with the following profile?

Entrepreneur currently working on scaling a startup I founded a year ago. Have a list of business ideas would like to pursue. Assembling a team is the biggest challenge.

Have skills in taking a product from idea to market fit. (technical + marketing)

Yes, you fit the bill! :) We ask that you come in with an open mind to others' ideas and share the ownership of what you build together.

This is very interesting to me. Not in SF, so I can't take advantage, but I'd certainly strongly consider an incubator service focusing on currently employed entrepreneurs.

Man, this would be great way to soak up a bunch of concepts and then hire out a team of full-timers if those hobbyist founders happen to gain some traction.

Wish there was one for non engineers

Given that there's no formal qualification as an engineer you could probably just show up and get away without writing any code...

We have interviews ;)

That would be awesome. Maybe you can start one :)

Can I e-mail you for help on how to do that?

Wish there was one for non bay area people done remotely

Could that work? I'm wondering aloud.

how do you get them to keep paying you the 30 weekly fee? how long do they have to pay it for?

The program is 12 weeks, so the fee extends through that duration. At the end of the 12 weeks, there's a demo day (similar to YC). The fee aims to cover basic venue costs, snacks, and shared social events to build camaraderie.

oh yeah, thats smart - good idea!

You should bill the $360 to the investors instead of the engineers. It will also prove to the engineers that you can round up the investors.

but how can I run a company if I have no time after my full-time job?

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