Bootstrapping - the secret work week | Hacker News Reader

Bootstrapping - the secret work week

onepix.me

47 pointsdholowiski40 comments

I did this while working for a startup in the late 90's. I built the site in 6 mos of hacking away from 8p to 2a every day. My days usually went: arrive at work at 10am, leave at 7p. Eat from 7:30-8. I worked, my wife read or watched tv. She went to bed around 11, I came in around 2a.

After 6 months she was pretty pissed about the schedule. But after 7 years of bootstrapping, we sold our "side project" for over $10 million and she's pretty happy about it now.

This pattern simply isn't sustainable and should not be maintained for anything other than short bursts.

The level of those short bursts is variable based on your own individual conditions (i.e., single college kids vs. married fathers of two), but the end state is the same if exceeded: burnout.

My advice would be to find a method that works well, and do it longer. The world is not going to end because your MVP wasn't released in three months.

I've also tried the same and found myself getting sick quite often. In my experience, the downtime from being ill practically canceled out the late nights.

This is really ground breaking stuff. You mean to tell me that instead of enjoying my friends and family and experiencing all that life has to offer, I can simply work on my Web app? Whoa.

Seriously though, why sacrifice so much for a mere 'side-project'? Either get a better/bigger idea and make IT your full-time work, or find a 40hr./week job that is fulfilling to you.

There is no other side project that will be as rewarding in the end as living your life freely with your family and friends. This is the last thing you should be sacrificing.

You're making the mistake of assuming your values are universally held by everyone else. They aren't. Some people really enjoy building something, even if that means not spending as much time with family/friends. Different people have different values/priorities and are in different parts of their lives (i.e someone with kids spends significantly more time with their kids than someone without kids).

You seem to be implying that the only value someone could get out of building something is a full time job. That's not true at all. There's value in learning and getting better at building things. There's value in enjoying what you do and taking pride in building something you're proud of, even if it never makes a dollar.

And you imply that there isn't value in having friends and family, spending time with your spouse and kids. When a person has a spouse and kids they have responsibilities to their family. Not everyone has your values either.

As someone who has just taken his first employment, I've only been self-employed up to this point, I've found that even a 40 hour work week is restrictive. I'm still used to spending time with my family when work is low, or when I need to distance myself from a problem to properly think about it. I can't even lean into the other room now and ask, "Hey, anyone else want a cup of tea?" on my weekdays now.

I've fallen straight into schedule hell because I am a morning person, and now my only real time to "do things" with friends and family is in the evening... when I want/need to get some sleep.

You might call it selfish if you like, but how selfish is it to

> There's value in learning and getting better at building things. There's value in enjoying what you do and taking pride in building something you're proud of, even if it never makes a dollar.

at the cost of your friends and family? Especially your family! Too many kids grow up without parents because their parents are selfish workaholics.

Just because the values aren't held universally doesn't make them invalid. Sometimes, what is held universally is the worst thing you could possibly hold. You might grab an electric fence and feel okay, but who are you touching that's getting shocked in your stead?

The only thing I'm implying is that different people have different values/priorities. My post explicitly states that some people have more family obligations than others.

That said, friends and family isn't a specific obligation for a set number of hours, that if you get in 30 less minutes one week it all blows up. It's a continuum of possible activities. Everyone needs to make their own choice. It seems silly to criticize someone else for doing a "side project", by implying that it must always be at the cost of friends and family. It's not.

I find it interesting that you react so strongly to this. Is it your belief that everybody should be working a 40 hour work week, and spending the rest of the time with their family? If so I suspect you're in the minority on HN.

My issue was mainly with this line: "But if you're not willing to sacrifice everything, then why are you even here?"

I feel like this mentality is being bred in the startup culture solely for the benefit of companies with very little thought given to the potential impact it can have on someone's life. Working 40 hours a week you probably have ~30-35% of your life free to do with as you please (after sleep, work, commute, etc.). I'll let you do the math from there when you work 60-80 hours. We don't get enough sleep. We don't get enough vacation time. We don't have enough time to recover.

I feel that humans need balance in their lives. Balance will provide fresh perspective and allow you to continue being good at what you do. You have to "stop and smell the roses" as they say. I also feel like today's society is out of balance.

I feel like 40 hours is the most anyone should ever have to work. I feel like even that is too much. Unfortunately it's necessary in today's society. Mostly because a lot of what we develop and create doesn't actually allow us to work less. Usually it just makes a couple dudes rich.

Assuming you are doing this to create a business and not for... fun. Work smarter instead of longer. Sign up for the Micropreneur Academy they have a lot of great articles for working smarter http://www.micropreneur.com

It boils down to stop trying to do everything yourself. Put a dollar value per hour on your time and aim for $75 - $100. Then you realize doing something yourself is NOT free but extremely expensive. Then you can look into outsourcing (programming, virtual assistant, copy writing, etc) with a more open mind. Once you are doing that you are making much more effective use of your time and you will not need as much time to get more done than you are now.

Following this (especially points 6-8) worked really well for me http://sivers.org/how2hire.

It took me a really long time to get this and actually do something about it. It's very liberating and exciting to see completed work come back.

One month of doing this in my spare time has cost me 196 hours of my spare time. At $75 an hour, that's $14,700. I do have 196 hours of spare time, I do not have $14,700.

So you have spent $14,700. You could have reduced that to $4,000 by outsourcing at a high $20/hr and got it done sooner. You might have been collecting revenue by now. Your project would have been further along and you'd have more time to enjoy life, move the project even further along or do another project.

How much does it cost? Their page doesn't say.

$50/month

I did this (for six months) up until recently (quit my job) and I can say that it's a great means for getting your project started. If you're in a situation where you don't have a lot of money saved up and need a job, nothing beats spending time in the evenings and weekends working on your idea. The only caveat that wasn't really noted by the author is that it's NOT EASY. When all of your time is occupied with work (even if you view your project as fun/something you enjoy, it's still hard work), you can get worn out very easily. Be warned that this requires a lot of dedication and focus (sometimes you skip going out on the weekend to build a new feature). It will suck at times but once you get into a flow, it gets easier. What's more, make sure you explain what you're doing with any significant others (girlfriend, wife, boyfriend, husband) as this will detract a lot of time from your relationship and you'll need support for what you're doing.

This is true. It becomes second nature.

I have been doing this for four years basically working two full time jobs. It is not easy. During this time I have even relearned to code (Wrote some Java apps ten years ago).

It is not the ideal situation. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone because it's very hard to do a great job at both. Unfortunately I go back and forth when I'm succeeding at one the other usually suffers. When I'm succeeding at both at the same time it's usually because I've been working on the rings that are currently succeeding in alternating patterns for a long time and it just happens that it's finishing around the same time.

I have learned a lot and wouldn't go back and change much but I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I don't know from first hand experience but it seems a lot like those stories about someone working a full time job and going to law school at the same time in their mid thirties. Your life disappears and I doubt they'd recommend the same path to anyone else, but it can work.

I'm doing a less intense version of this now. Taking breaks (sometimes whole-day breaks) helps prevent burnout. Nontechnical breaks are especially good: house chores, exercise, meals. (I actually let the dishes pile up a bit so I can wash them as a break and come back feeling productive.)

For me finding something to wind down every couple days at the end of the day to bring me back to reality and out of the world in my head helps a lot. I wouldn't have been able to do it for as long as I have without it.

I watch movies. Lots of movies. Probably two a week on iTunes. I end up getting a little less sleep usually because I don't start them until 11 or 11:30 but it seems to help me keep my sanity.

"But if you're not willing to sacrifice everything, then why are you even here?"

I hope you're not suggesting that an entrepreneur must be willing to sacrifice family time (or having a family at all) to be successful.

Because that's definitely bullshit.

You could follow in the footsteps of real productivity whizzes like Paul Erdos and replace (most of) your time spent sleeping with amphetamine use.

"Drugs!?" hey, don't make the mistake of assuming that your values are universally held by everyone else...

How long will you be able to pull this off? 2 weeks? Maybe 3 weeks at best. And you'll be suffering from burnout so bad you wouldn't want to look at your project ever again.

I suppose that depends on the individual, their life situation (single, married, college student, full time job, etc), and how long they can stay excited about their idea.

I'm curious about how long the OP specifically has been pulling these 49 hour additional work-weeks.

I'm at about 6 weeks now, and counting. Part of the reason I need to do this is that I'm a relatively novice coder so it takes me 2-4x as long to do anything as a 'good' coder would. I understand, this kind of work is not sustainable, but it's very satisfying to get so much done while still working a day job. And of course, this has a ton to do with my life situation... single, living a long way from family, few friends - this would clearly not work for most people.

Not only will you quickly burnout but that kind of intensity makes you very susceptible to getting sick. A couple of sleepless nights from stress and one crowded bus ride -- wham! -- you have a flu bug.

If you get bored with a project in 2 weeks then I would not try to build a business around it. If your current job is not overly stressful, then you should be able to do this for 6 months to a year.

It's not about time... in fact having less time helped me a lot to bootstrap my company, we have a few signups right now. And yes, this sounds 37signalsish.

I'd say it's more important to have co-founders that like the bootstraping idea too than having more time.

My startup, btw, is something like Punchd but not requiring everyone to have an iPhone, I built the web application (Python, Django... I even have some tests (integration and unit tests)), a mobile web app (JQuery UI), an iPhone app, web admin dashboard (stats, pretty graphs), etc etc.

All this in like 4 months of bootstraping, putting 1-3 hr a day (sometimes a lot more) and a saturday or sunday here and then. Seriously I think we have most of the features that Punchd or Five Star Card have and all this with my own money we own 100% of the company.

By far we're not profitable, but as soon as one client starts paying (next month, crossing fingers)... boom profit.

I don't know, maybe we have a very good work ethic, but we do fuck around a lot! (Hacker News, parties yay!)

  It's tough when you're bootstrapping a web app and 
  still have a day job.

Beware of $dayjob claiming your $idea once it shows signs of taking off.

I think you should tell your day-job about your potential business before you start. Get them to sign something that says

1) You agree not to use equipment/premises belonging to $dayjob to build $idea

2) You will never work on $idea during any hours you're getting paid by $dayjob

3) $idea does not directly compete with $dayjob

4) They recognize that they have no claim to $idea or anything else you build to support it

If $dayjob is a large enough to have a dedicated HR dept they probably have a specific form to fill out.

Perhaps but it's usually very damaging to your prospects to raise this issue during the hiring process.

Most employers don't want to hire someone who is running a business on the side - they want all your attention focused on their needs and couldn't care less about yours.

Also depends on where you live. For example, in Washington an employer cannot claim ownership of something you built in your own time, assuming that you didn't use any of their resources.

That may be true. I still think you're smart to clear away potential encumbrances before actually starting.

If nothing else, it will make your life easier if you ever want to take on funding for your new business.

I like it, I've done it... but you've really got to take Sunday off. Working seven days a week can only last a month or two before you start dying.

I did this for about a year while bootstrapping a project and it was extremely tiring. Also, I had a one year old at the time. I recently abandoned the project for other reasons, but even had I continued, I'm pretty sure the pace would have burned me out sooner or later.

Now I've got the itch to pursue another idea, but I've got a 2 year old and a 4 month old at home so I'm a lot more wary.

I think if I was to have another go at it, I'd find a co-founder who has a similar family situation so we can help each other through the rough patches. Going solo with this kind of schedule and having a family life is a little maddening.

Although this might work for some people I have found personally that creating a sustainable lifestyle is probably best. Setting a schedule that is mentally, physically, and emotionally draining is not a recipe for success in my experience.

The process of building something (although difficult) should be fun (at least part of the time). If you're having a great time doing something chances are you are more productive and willing to stick it out over the long term.

If you need more time freelancing could be a viable option that affords you the financial and mental stability of a regular job while working on your own project. The reality is that there are probably many ways to go about this but I think it is important not to sacrifice your happiness. If most startups fail, throwing your life at it (Social, Romantic, etc.) will certainly make things worse if your project does not work out.

This pattern has worked for me too - except for the crippling tendonitis I ended up with, not to mention finding out that my girlfriend (since high school) felt so abandoned that she started cheating on me. But you can't beat this system for productivity.

I do love the morning work hours. I've been getting up a bit early lately to work on stuff and I love it.

That being said, I prefer more work life balance. I do suggest looking at how much coding you are doing and make sure you aren't doing too much. One of the biggest mistakes I made with my last startup was thinking coding would make us successful. I should have spent more time measuring and selling and not pivoting every time we received criticism or a "better idea."

Good luck!

Have you thought about working part time? Work 20 hours instead of 40 hours for your day job. Trying to keep up with this kind of schedule is really detrimental to your health and you can't buy your health with any amount of money. Don't forget, building a company is not just about having a good product, it's also about networking and communicating with your potential users.

This reminds me of part-timing graduate school!

It's a hellish experience, full of not being able to do other things with my life including maintaining my health and expanding my life outside of the computer screen!

A few meta-comments if the author comes here:

- Chrome complains about resources served as non-ssl

- I could not find your name on the site (I just wondered who was being the service)

Hope this helps!

Thanks. It's me (name, email in my profile) and I'm still working out some kinks on the site... because i use Disqus for the comments they are being served non-ssl which is causing the error... I have to fix that.

haha, so, work nights and weekends. Thanks for the tip :)

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