Ask HN: I am at crossroads in my life. Pursuing my own idea or a full-time job? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I am at crossroads in my life. Pursuing my own idea or a full-time job?

9 pointshpolatyuruk7 comments

11 years ago, I started working as Jr. Web Developer in a startup. Founders were close to my family and they gave me chance to work there. I can say that we started company together because when I got hired the company was 1 year old and there were only founders, no one else. Two months ago I've left the company(There were some specific reasons for that). I was the director of development for 2 years and I've been always close to the management. After I left, now I understood that that company became my identity because for 11 years I slept and woke up with that company. I sacrificed my nights and weekends for it. Now I am stuck, not sure what's the next? Actually I am close to one path but I am looking for advice.

I've been always interested in startups. I began my tech career in a startup and I know what exactly a startup is. I read articles, books and watch videos, movies related to startup. I've always wanted to start my own company one day. Besides that, I am a full stack developer and I can build a product from idea to product.

Options for me:

1. I can apply to a software company and I can get hired with a good salary. In my free time, I can start building a side project. When I reach the ramen profit, I can quit my full-time job and focus on my project full time.

2. I have my savings. With minimum expenses, I can live with these savings for two years. So I can now start building a project and I bootstrap it with my savings. If I fail, I can apply for a full-time job.

I want to go with this second option but I have a problem. I have many ideas but I have an analysis/paralysis problem. I am not sure what to build. I am not a big risk taker and I don't have a business partner. So I want one man bootstrapped business. All the ideas I have are already existed in the market (as expected). I can choose a specific niche and build a product for that market but I am stuck at choosing the niche too. Please give me some advice.

Go for #2, but first spend a month or two seriously investigating potential startup ideas. Make it your job, 60 hours a week, to brainstorm ideas, research competition, create simple MVPs, etc. You likely haven't put as much effort into potential startup ideas as you have into your regular job, so don't feel inadequate or hopeless if you haven't stumbled upon the right idea yet.

In my experience, #1 never really works, especially if you are unsure of what the project will be in the first place. You have two years, which is more than enough time to build and test at least a half-dozen serious projects. If none of them work, go get a job with an awesome new portfolio.

This is a good thought too :-). Decisions...decisions...

I'd look for a partner. It's very hard to be a solo founder and it sounds like you're not sure of an idea/market, etc. I'd also start keeping a list of problems you face/solutions i.e. ideas for a possible product to build. It's very, very hard to build a business. If you're not sure, don't have a partner or idea, I wouldn't recommend you get into it just yet. I'd recommend you look for a company you're really interested in and get to know a market, how their business runs, etc. You may meet other potential partners there (co-workers) and you'll get to know a business niche, etc. So I'd recommend 1. for now. Also, differentiate when you start between a business and a project: a business really has revenues/a model to grow quickly while a project is something you build more for fun that may or not generate revenues or go somewhere. Projects can become the biggest businesses (google, facebook were started as projects), but you don't necessarily want to bet your savings on that initially. Just some random thoughts...hope they're helpful, good luck and congrats on the previous 11 years of dedicated, rewarding work it sounds like, nice!!!!!

I'm not going to point to one route over another. Frankly, you read as though you could use some time off. But here are a couple of things to take into consideration:

What I see (here and elsewhere. And I've experienced this myself a few years back) is that people tend to focus on the building part. Doubly so when it comes to software, because building something in this context requires hard earned skill that in the grander scheme of things few people have.

Only the building part is not nearly as important as the product-market fit and the marketing parts. And unlike the building part, which involves being independently creative the product-market fit part means spending a lot of time talking to people and iterating based on what they say. Then there's the matter of finding an audience, and marketing is a hard skill in its own right. I have come to the understanding that just as SWEs can figure out a way from input to output, good marketers do the same thing, but in the context of audience acquisition and messaging.

So with either of your options, it's worth thinking about how you plan on doing these parts as well. Whichever setting is more conductive to that kind of work also matters.

My advise is rather simple: start consulting startup candidates based on your extensive experience.

You are basically helping them avoid the hurdles you came across through your 11+ years of professional experience and you are pretty much giving them a number of steps ahead of other startups that have to go through trial and error until they make it, if they are lucky that is.

Try to write down the standard, cliched if you will, steps a startup needs to go through until they become functional and autonomous from a technological point of view.

I'm sure through this consulting experience you will be narrowing down countless of unique niche projects that could be offered as SaaS or even PaaS by you that could boost a startup's momentum AND help you make good money while doing two things you seem to love the most.

Now, as far as concern analysis paralysis, you can solve this by doing simple, standard writing; school-like if you will.

Dedicate a notebook, the good ol' pen and paper thing (lol), and write down each idea of yours by separating its pros and cons.

Concentrate on each project separately without letting your thoughts or worries intervene and narrow down each project's unique features until you feel pleased by what you have written up until the very end of it.

If you can, apply the logic of Normalization Form until you exhaust all potential commonalities each step has with its previous ancestor.

Doing so can reveal so many things to you, even help you extract common factors from each project separately and combine them to produce yet another project or idea that could lead to something interesting, let alone profitable if it gets the right attention and response from users.

I cannot think of anything else right now, but if you want to keep in touch to philosophize it a bit further, feel free to contact me via my email which is included in my profile.

Take your time to rest your busy mind and let me tell you something you need to hear: you got this mate, don't worry about it.

The less you worry, the less you pay attention to your mental noise, the clearer everything will become around you.

Keep it up mate!

Cheers.

An advantage of a regular job is the social and logistical support. Do you have a social network that can support you in #2? Or, an enormous amount of self-discipline?

You better do both.

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