Not really a startup in the sense of a VC backed multi million dollar company but three working friends and me have bootstrapped a fitness websites with science based health advice, mostly free, to basically the largest fitness related website in the Netherlands. Currently employing people, which i think still sounds insane for a hobby project. https://www.fit.nl. 700.000 pageviews a month. App, 2 books, system for training and meal schedules etc. One now works full time as a lead/writer.

As a day job I'm a full time resident of orthopedic surgery. Busy days. I've done most of the programming of the website (custom theme on wordpress), product comparison engine and other custom pages. And server admin for discourse, mattermost etc

Some important findings:

- You have to care otherwise it becomes a chore. In this case it keeps people healthy. We give free advice that i think is pretty good, e.g on the forum, I love that part. The link with the day job is here. Lots of stuff i tell people during clinic hours applies here as well

- As its completely different it still feels like a hobby. Learning to do stuff is fun

- Clear separation of responsibility, do stuff you are efficient in

- A ticketing system for jobs, pick up stuff when you have time. Anybody can add to the ticket list but the list owner decides what comes first.

- Keeping the tickets bite sized. GIT to deploy, deploy often

- A time tracking system (Toggle) tracks time spent.

- Mattermost for private discussions and planning

- Meetups and fun activities to keep the group focused

- Managed main server (websynthesis) in case the website goes down and the other technical guy or me are unavailable. More expensive but less stress this way.