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Comment by chr15 | Hacker News Reader

I left my job to work on my startup full-time, and agree with all of this. It's one of the hardest things I've done. I had to detach myself from material possessions and live frugally. I don't have much of a social life anymore because it's expensive. I've had to force myself to work when I didn't feel like it days at a time. Programming was no longer fun.

If you're not ready to sacrifice everything you have, possibly including your health, then work on your project on the side. You really do have to be crazy to be an entrepreneur.

The positives: It's thickened my skin, I manage my finances better, I appreciate things more, I treat people better.

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Thanks for sharing that. We've had a lot of articles lately that treat startups like 9-5 jobs so I think it's important that people like you give some perspective on how it's really like for the waste majority of startups.

This reminds me why passion is so crucial when starting your own business. You will work crazy under conditions that most employees would see as unreasonable and there is a great risk that the business will fail. But as long as your doing it out of passion you can motivate yourself through the hard times and, if it doesn't work out, walk away with the satisfying feeling that you followed your dream and gave it all you got.

Would you say that your passion played an important part in managing your business?

Absolutely. I chose the entrepreneurship route because it's something I that I feel I was born to do. Of course, I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle and a positive demeanor on the outside despite sacrificing a lot. It will take a lot of adjustments if you decide to bootstrap a startup full-time.

I can relate to programming not being fun anymore. After my startup was finally bankrupt I just couldn't get myself to sit in front of a computer anymore at all. I did a two week bartender crashcourse and did that for 3 months.

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