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Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

This is why I advise people to develop a working prototype in their free time while they're still employed.

I see this a lot but I feel its quite difficult to actually pull off. Even though your mvp can and should be shitty sometimes it still takes a lot of effort and talking with potential customers to even figure out what you should be building, and its extremely difficult to do when your still trying to work a full time job. Maybe someone who has actually done this before can offer their perspective

It resonates with me a lot. I have this idea I would like to test. But once I'm done with my work (I'm a PM under french lockdown, I spend my whole day in front of my computer), I really need to disconnect, spend time with my 3 kids and wife, or exercise.

I'm afraid that if I spend my evening and nights into trying my idea, I would either 1/ not get results fast enough and hence loose faith in the project or 2/ get burned out and hence disgusted by the project.

Or maybe it's just the lies I like to tell myself to be comfortable with keeping on procrastinating this...

I also was thinking like you but at the end I understood that I shouldn't have huge expectations. I decided that I just need 1h each day for implementing MVPs. After 3 months, I get used to this and can't imagine day without this hour.

I'm in a similar situation, although with only 1 kid yet. I think you're spot on that building a working prototype in your free time will be either slow or exhausting.

But most of this start-up advice seems to be geared at single college students, and they'll have enough free time to pull it off.

But most college students don't have enough domain knowledge to bring innovation

This trade-off doesn't go away when you start a company. It actually gets worse because not only do you lose that personal time, but you also have 100x the amount of stress.

Do 4 hours every Saturday evening after all have gone to bed for 6 months and you will have an MVP.

I kind of disagree with this. I started building my previous startup while working full time in another job. It is easier than one might think

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