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Comment by CharlesPal | Hacker News Reader

I'm very curious about this guy's background. He seems to have experience in product development, marketing and customer acquisition.

Having said that... I'm not sure how long ~16k USD (10k GBP) lasts in London but here (Boston) that would not give too many months of runway. Not using consulting for at least a short time he is giving himself a small window for success.

I wish him the best of luck but his approach does seem a bit aggressive.

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Also, this means he needs about £2.5k/month to live.

Building a product based business that goes from making £0 to profiting £2.5k/month in 4 months is definitely an interesting challenge.

This is one of those stories that you wish you could skip to the last chapter so you can see how the book ends.

Living in London was quite expensive for me. He estimates four months:

"All my expenses come from the £10k but I can only make money from products (e.g. no consulting). London is expensive, so this gives me about 4 months."

Spending £2.5k/month to live in London? In your experience, how accurate does that sound?

Sounds about right, the London Living Wage (a suggested but not mandatory minimum wage for living in London) works out at just under £400 per week, so maybe £5k to live on, the remaining £5k for other expenses, etc.

Bear in mind it's not £2.5k/month for living expenses: it's £2.5k per month for all expenses: including building the product, etc etc.

That is living an fairly decent life. You could scrape on £1k a month if you really wanted to.

This is what I do, rent and bills is around £800 a month, and can live quite well on another £300 to £400, and that includes going out.

I spent 5 years living like that at my first couple companies. These days, however, my life is no longer organised in a way where that's viable. So 2-2.5k it is. If I was in a real pinch, I could temporarily get to 1.5k, but I feel like 4 months is about the right period of time for this anyway.

It's fairly common to pay at least £1k/month for a one bedroom flat in central London.

That's about me, post-tax for the past two years I think. Would go a lot further if I were single, but we can afford to rent a decent-sized 2-bedroom flat in a nice area without having to pinch pennies.

According to this video [1] he knows a little programming.

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0mfw69iQEI&feature=chann...

Living in the upper midwest US, 16k USD would probably give me a 16-month window. That's for a 1-bedroom apartment @ ~$500/month. Living in a 3-Bed w/ 2 other roommates would take it down to ~$300.

Brutal winters, though..

I'm doing something similar in Portland and it's about ~$500/month with roommates. So I figure the same: my $12k will be a 12 month window.

Our winters are lovely, as long as you don't mind a little wet.

I get lazy when I have that much time. Have tried it! :)

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