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Comment by rb808 | Hacker News Reader

Creating a startup is very tough, If you have a great job I'd be careful. If you can I'd try to do something small as a side project first and see how much money you can make. A lot of people here are good coders but have no clue about business, if that is you tread carefully.

It also depends on how much experience you have. If you've been working 1-2 years I'd say no way. 5 years: maybe.

But as others said its good to do when you're young. Combined with living in Thailand or something sounds great.

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Entrepreneurs that go to Thailand to start a startup are mostly digging their own grave. Talent may be everywhere, but opportunity is not. I have met a couple of founders that moved to Thailand that didn't make anything of themselves. They mostly went there for a cheap living and ended partying most weekends. I would advise against starting a startup in Thailand.

The problem here is the dilemma when to go full-time. Its always a tough call. Compared to a side-project building up a scalable business model is a different ball game altogether. So brace for that once you go full time everything changes and without going fulltime you'll probably reach nowhere

What's a good filter for knowing when to go full-time? Covering your monthly expenses?

I have a consulting business that pays me handsomely. But I also have a side business that has paid for my monthly expenses the last 3-4 months. Would that be a good metric to jump ship from consulting and go full-time with the side hustle?

Yeah, that sounds fair. But there is a small caveat here thou. The income from side projects are so volatile, sometimes you can't predict on them. You can only make them stable if you invest enough time on it and study the usage pattern. And most of the time you'll have to get on full time to get those metrics. So we will get back to that chicken and egg problem again

That sounds cool. A fair idea. Working on a side project, validates it and then take a decision based on that. Experience also plays a major role.

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