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Comment by gozman | Hacker News Reader

1. I was a software engineer that got an MBA and was doing management consulting. 2. Over 80k / year 3. My runway is private, but we financed ourselves by taking on short-term iOS/Wordpress dev/design consulting gigs to stay fed.

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Thanks. Did you change your standard of living to to follow your dream? If so, to what extent? Are you now eating raman? Also, do you have any dependents (wife, children)? Oh, and how old are you?

Sorry, I know you are really interested in sharing your product but many of us want to know what people are willing to give up to chase their dreams.

Thanks again.

+1 "many of us want to know what people are willing to give up to chase their dreams."

I did change my standard of living somewhat - I didn't travel this year as I usually do, cut out most useless expenses and took public transit whenever I could. We need surprisingly little to live when you think about it. At the same time, I made sure to take on small paid projects to keep fed.

I don't have any dependants, but I am married and contribute to the household financially. That hasn't stopped, I just had to take it into account when planning my runway.

I'm 28. At this point it's an experiement, If I can turn this into a business I will, if not, I'll dive back into the salaried way of life. It's a great way to live, but I just had to give my dream a shot.

get lots of exercise too! hit the gym at least 3 times a week, one hour per session.

Totally love your suggestion. I myself am on my own Startup for over 4 years now. Once I realized that Startups should be treated like marathons, I myself started running. I run about 5km, five or six days a week. To me running has had a big contribution in staying healthy and coping with stress.

I hope he's not eating ramen! Staying healthy is important. Good luck!

I'm in a similar situation (quit high-paying job, following startup dream).

May I ask how you broke into dev/design consulting? I'll have to go that way too, and soon. But I'm still a bit mystified about where one finds consulting gigs... Places like ODesk/Elancer?

+1 - best fastest way to find freelance jobs? edit - not sure why this was downvoted 4 times - but to elaborate on my question - what were the most rewarding gigs - in terms of ease of getting hired & finding them, most money, learning stuff that was relevant, expanding network, bbb

the best way is to expand your network and go to networking events. go to mobile meetups, tech meetups, business meetups, etc. From there you will notice a lot more opportunities will arise. This is also assuming you are good at something. Wether it's development / design or making pancakes. You have to be good at something before someone else will bring you on as a consultant / freelance.

Networking by and large will be your best bet. An odesk may get you some short-term work, but it won't necessarily be all that high paying. With a decent rep on odesk or elance you might get some good gigs, but those will probably develop in to non-odesk relationships with clients ("going direct").

I don't know many people who use odesk who pay more then $20-$25/hour, and it's typically for smaller type stuff. There are people who get "I want a full copy of XYZ for $500" and a number of people who bid on that, but there's "real" projects in there too sometimes. I just have a hard time looking at elance/odesk sites as something that 'real' companies use for 'real' (read: valuable) projects.

I didn't cover "pricing" in my post since it all varies based on your situation, your location, your skills, and the project itself. (crappy project/crappy client = ++rates).

I know a few YC founders that pay $70/hr - $80/hr for really great Rails devs, iOS devs, and front-end engineers that are not local to SF/PA (mid-west devs or southeast devs). I think the price for an experienced Rails freelancer in a big metro is around $100/hr - $125/hr.

On the design side, I have friends in DC, SF, and Chicago that are top notch visual designers and have worked on big "brand" sites, and depending on how busy they are, they'll charge anywhere from $75/hr - $80/hr. An art director I know will not go below $150/hr bc it's not worth his time to do more work outside of his day job.

But there are price inefficiencies everywhere, and if someone fresh out of college doesn't really understand how good of a designer they are or the going rates for freelancers, then you can find someone who's good for your MVP for $25/hr.

All of the above assumes you are pricing projects on a straight hourly rate (legalese = "Time & Material Rates").

Be warned that most small business owners will want firm-fixed pricing (ie - "I want a fully redesigned site for $a,000"). In that case, you'll need to figure how long it will take for you to complete the project, add a 10% - 15% buffer for client changes/indecision, and then settle on a firm-price of $x,000.

It takes patience. I left a finance to learn to code a couple of years ago, but only got smart about networking last spring. I'm just now beginning to bring in some freelance / consulting jobs. You just have to keep at it -- and deliver on time, on budget, on spec.

I don't know how the author of this post found consulting gigs, but the way my friends did it and the way I did (before going back to a design/dev agency) was by first and foremost deciding on a the type consulting service we're going to offer and then partnering with other freelancers on projects. Another friend did two "free" gigs to build a portfolio and have references to send prospective clients to, and that got the ball rolling.

If dev, then will you be providing back-end dev? Front-end dev? What language/framework? Any CMS preference? Or blogging tool preference?

If design, are you helping out with everything from UX/strategy to branding/visual design, or are you just taking black and white wireframes (UX design) and turning them into fully baked/designed photoshop files?

If marketing/SEO, then what sub services are you offering? Social media management? Blogging/ghost writing? Pay-per-click management? SEO backlinks?

Two things to remember. 1) Most small business owners aren't going to roll the dice if they are your first client unless you can sell like the best of them. 2) Your reputation is your source for new business/referral business, if you are poor in one or multiple areas (let's just say design and marketing) but are an expert in one area (let's just say back-end Rails dev + front-end HTML/CSS/jQuery), then focus on providing services/consulting where you are the strongest.

The quickest way to start is to either to free work/discounted work for a family/friend or find a designer that doesn't do what you do and figure out way to partner/work together. If they get a client, partner up to do dev component. You could also find a marketing/seo freelancer and help them setup custom Facebook tabs for their clients.

Once you have your initial client or two, then put up a site and list it at sortfolio and other relevant directories. From there, blog often about topics that you are familiar with, topics that are relevant to the community you are trying to help, and make sure you are relevant. Go to meetups, attend local events, be part of the community, and don't be shy. If you are shy, you are not going to be heard. If you aren't heard, you aren't going to be considered for business opportunities.

It would be interesting to see more details in a blog post about your transition, such as whether you started working on this before quitting your job, how long since you quit your job, what the makeup of your team is, how you met your team, etc. This looks really cool by the way, good job on launching!

EDIT: Correcting typos

28, an MBA and 80k / year. I must be doing something very wrong.

Me too. 29, no MBA and not even half of that :-)

I'm 26 and I make 160k in financial services. Its enough for me and a girlfriend to afford a 600 sqft loft.

80k will get you 5 roommates and bedroom with a curtain.

In San Francisco 250k to 300k/y is high paid. 100k-150k is making it, 80k would be in the low paid arena.

Nah,you can get a nice 1bd in SF for $2100 a month and save $1k/mo

"San Francisco ranks third of American cities in median household income with a 2007 value of $65,519." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco#Demographics

You're full of shit.

Meh, quit whining. Try 32k in Boston and get back to me about "low paid"

I've got a 90m^2 flat next to the beach, a car, a girlfriend who has no income since November, a cute dog :-) and money in the bank. All paid with my less than 40k€/year income. Of course this is not The Valley, this is Barcelona.

I didn't know that living there was so expensive, I'm sorry for you :-(

I'd love to hear about your experience as a tech person getting your MBA.

Also, great idea and website. Oddly enough I just heard a presentation yesterday about MobileIgniter, who amongst several other things, does something similar. They did the TechStars iOS app, which does exactly the same thing - pull blog entries from WordPress. Nice work!

Since when is 80k / year "high-paying"? Hopefully the per diems were high enough to compensate the salary level.

I don't know what you consider high paying but to me that seems like high pay

You have to realize that in Quebec, Canada, that's actually a high-level salary.

If you are living in NYC, nah.

Depending on where you live that can be considered to be in the higher scale as far as pay grades go - and obviously in other places it might be lower or average. You can't only go by what people are paid where you live.

Whoa. Let's not forget that 80k/year puts a person among the top 0.78% richest people in the world. [1] Just offering a bit of perspective.

[1] http://www.globalrichlist.com/how.html

You have to put up a blog post on this...

Completely agree, it'd make for a very informative read. You quit your job, worked hard, and now have something impressive to show that many people seem to want to purchase. I'd say you're on the right track!

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