Ask HN: I quit my job to start my own company. Now what? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I quit my job to start my own company. Now what?

13 pointsharisenbon13 comments

For the last 5 years I've been the lead developer at a technology company in Nagoya that specializes in digital signage and custom internet solutions.

Over the last year and a half, I came to realize that I was not happy at my current job, and that I was depressed with the way that much of Japan handles developments in technology, specifically their reluctance to embrace such basic concepts as data-driven development and customer pattern analysis. (or even such simple things as being searchable on Google!)

For Japan to succeed in a global (and even domestic) market, that has to change. I want to help bring about that change, and I've come to realize that I can't do that at my current job.

So because of a dream to change Japan (and the constant prodings of Patio11) come August, I will no longer be employed at my current company, and frankly that scares the bejesus out of me.

I have contacts, and I can probably make it as a freelancer, but that's not the reason I quit (although being freed of salaryman hours is a nice benefit).

I have a dream, but don't know how to bring it about. It may be a stupid thing to post on a public forum, but it is what I believe in.

Are there any of you on HackerNews who have been in the same position? What helped you see your dream through?

I quit my day job in May to work on an idea. It was a good job, but I simply had to do it so I quit within the week. Since then I've been working at home and it has been up and down--mostly ups :)

Looking at my journal* (personal work journal), it went like this: Tuesday: came up with idea. Wednesday: had dinner with previous startup CEO who I remained friend with. He expressed that it was a good idea and if I wanted to learn the pain of startup for myself, I should do it. Thursday: thinking... lots of thinking--then I came to a conclusion: it must happen NOW! Told my work people and they were very supportive. Friday: I left the company on good terms (the company told me to come back once I have my product developed, they'll be the first customer).

2 things I believe in: 1) you do it because you HAVE TO do it--you cannot live without it. 2) you're always about a few years late :P

With that being said: 1) I am married and my wife and I had some cash to sustain us for a few months so I do have a bit of a nest and health insurance is on the wife 2) My idea is very simple and I believe it can be accomplished within a short time. 3) I cannot live without doing it (living without passion is simply surviving)

If you truly believe in your vision, then you should have no problem laying your life down for your vision. If you are willing to put your life on the line, then like Scar Face "the world is yours"

Good luck, friend and always, fight like hell.

PS: *One condition the wife gave me when I quit was I have to keep a daily work journal. It's very helpful. My recommendation for you is to keep a journal--you will read back on this as perhaps the most enlightening self reflection. You don't have to write all thoughts, just what you did that day and the tasks will tell you what you were thinking.

Thanks for the support and the great idea about the Work Journal. I'm not very good about time budgeting, so I think that having a work journal will keep me on the right track.

(Also, I love look back at my current work memo months later and seeing what I was thinking months before)

With a wife like that how can you possibly fail! Good luck.

Thank you for the kind words. I will try my best and will update again on my project in a month or so :)

It seems to me you need to figure out how to actually make/do something rather than keep calling it a dream. From what you've described, I don't really see something you can do based on what you've said. If you're going to start a company, it has to be based around something more actionable than simply a dream about how things should be. Figure out how you think you can get there and where you/your company fit in that process.

I fully agree that I need to figure out how to make it actionable. I feel that there is an problem of education with regards to data-driven customer acquisition.

The first step is to start informing companies of the benefits that data analytics can bring, and how they're going to get tromped when companies that are doing deep analytics come into their market-space. Especially foreign companies that have been doing it for years, and make it their number one priority. cough cough Zynga cough cough

I think that is a perfectly actionable goal, but it involves mostly consulting. Consulting is something that I know I will need to do, but it's not something that can be sustainable forever.

What you need:

-a vision (MUST)

-a community of like-minded people who you can work with and be inspired with (MUST). You need people like these to figure out how to achieve your vision.

From where I stand, you best bet seems to be to offer a product that incorporates what you are trying to do and charge huge amounts of money from it (huge amounts of money because corporations don't trust anything that is cheap)

Thanks for the solid advice.

I'm confident in my vision (and that is one of the reasons I'm leaving my current job -- their lack of a vision and a dearth of leadership).

The like-minded people... I have maybe 4 or 5 amazingly talented people in my community, a mix of ex-pats and Japanese who are just as fed up with the malaise of the current generation of Japanese as I am.

Bringing a product to the table is something that I know is going to be key to bringing Japan into a data-centric mindset for Saas. However, there are so many wonderful solutions currently available in the west, that I feel that reinventing the wheel will simply drain time away from my consulting evangelism.

Especially at first, I think that bringing a pre-made solution wrapped in a consulting service is a better use of my resources than re-creating mixpanel and crazy-egg for the Japanese market.

Thanks again for the great advice. You've really given me a lot to think about.

Excellent! Good luck!

Hey man I live in Gifu and often go to Nagoya. Email me if you want to meet for coffee. （There is no contact info in your profile）. I don't know if I can help but i am in a similar position.

Sounds like you should start your own incubator or consulting firm on how you think things should be down. Do you have any money to help a few good startups?

Nope. ;)

I'm a middle of the road Japanese salary-man, so I really don't have the means to start funding startups, especially when I don't know if I'll be able to feed myself and my family next month. ;)

I did get the offer of seed money from one of my current customers to start my own company, but I really don't feel that I'm at the point in my life where I want to be responsible for employees.

Freelance to keep the money flowing, while nurturing and slowly funding your goal (not only a dream) is the way to go.

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