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Comment by okeumeni | Hacker News Reader

Most assumptions you have can only be verified by you.

My advice is: try doing something on the side first, something that people can actually use, share it with friend and see how you feel about feedbacks. I found for myself that the greatest motivator is your will to build something useful; your major test will be how you bounce back from negatives.

How many hours you put in, when do you work even whether you should leave your job or not will depend of your level of motivation, it’s hard to build a startup without sacrifices.

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My advice is: try doing something on the side first, something that people can actually use, share it with friend and see how you feel about feedbacks.

Well, what I've found is that most of my side projects don't get very far, because I invariably end up pulling a bunch of long nights at my main paying gig, and that saps the motivation considerably.

Also, maybe I need ruder friends, but I've found much better results sharing stuff with strangers. They're more honest. Friends are biased by their desire to make you feel good.

Swap your day around. It sounds crazy, but from the sound of it, you're crazy already, so that shouldn't be a change.

What I mean is:

* Wake up at 3am

* Work until 1 hour before it's time to go to the office

* Have a 1-hour nap

* Go to work, and work until you can't work anymore

* Go home, sleep

You'll have no social life for about 6 months, but you'll spend the best hours of each day working on your baby. After 6 months, you'll probably have something worth launching and/or quitting for.

This is not for the sane, but it's doable. I did it, and I don't regret it.

Post it HN. I dont think HN readers are biased(even if some of them are your friends) :)

I'm not so sure. The posters may not be biased, but that doesn't mean that the comments aren't. I've seen some ideas that were just not all that great get lavished with praise.

It's possible that I just missed what was so useful about the site in question... but it's also possible that those who didn't like the site didn't comment. I didn't like the site, or indeed care about it at all, and I'm not the type to want to hurt someone's feelings, so I didn't comment on it.

Friends or not, I think the best feedback is likely from users who have the problem you're trying to solve. The best question is probably "why wouldn't you use this thing?"

More often, I see feedback (from all sources) focus on implementation, when the real response should be "your basic idea is dumb."

Why not build and solve a problem you have?

Actually, I have two side projects that are exactly that. But I keep ignoring them. That's the problem :) My user is getting upset with me, and about to look to my competitors.

Perhaps the problem isn't painful enough?

Why not build and solve a problem you have?

because he's following the herd

Hi, troll.

You don't need ruder friends, you need a partner or two who are equally enthusiastic, nay who are BANKING on that project succeeding. Hopefully they are banking on it because they are really passionate about the idea and really want to get out of the boring day job.

Like you, I spent almost 3 years trying to start one project after another that fizzled out. For some I even had a partner. Unfortunately it was always a "side project" for one or both of us. Till I reached a point of desperation and frustration with not doing my own thing, and till I found partners passionate about the project just because, I found it pretty hard to get up at 5 to code too. Now I know I'll let not just myself but also them down if I show up without getting my stuff done.

Seriously, the formula to finally starting a startup is simple

a) Get desperate (passionate) b) Find similarly desperate (passionate) folks.

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