Why you need your own company | Hacker News Reader

Why you need your own company

sivers.org

299 pointshholen50 comments

When he says "company", he means "project". Trying out new ideas is actually easier with a project because you don't have any company overheads. Innovate. Go crazy. See what sticks.

As someone that is prevented from working for my own company by restrictive US visa nonsense, I'm glad I can at least play around with side projects.

I agree that the post is mistitled and should be called Why you need side projects. The two quotes at the end of the piece support this:

“If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.” - Australian psychiatrist W. Béran Wolfe

“Find a happy person, and you will find a project.” - Sonja Lyubomirsky

I haven't read the article yet, going there next, but I really like that last quote:

'“Find a happy person, and you will find a project.” - Sonja Lyubomirsky'

I think of people who often try to make an unhappy person their pet project. It would be an interesting twist to do the reverse. As a life-long pessimist I have made many happy people feel sad. Were these my projects?

Pessimists are people that default to expecting the worst outcome. I know happy pessimists and unhappy pessimists. People who have left a trail of many happy people feeling sad behind them are called assholes.

I understood that quote that if you find someone working on a project, they are happy.

It´s better to test your idea if you have the optimal (or at least necessary) structure for that. I call it "company".

A little off topic, but: Sonja Lyubomirsky's book on happiness is great. A friend gave it to me as a birthday gift a few years ago.

It depends what you want to experiment with. If you have real users who are paying you real money there are things you can test you wouldn't otherwise be able to to.

eh, the IRS will call it a "company" even if you don't, unless there is zero revenue and you are paying for it out of post-tax dollars.

For him it's a company, for others it's a project. If you're 'playground' is the business world then you're going to need a company to play. If you're 'sandbox' is a literal sandbox then you're going to need either someone to hire you to build it or somewhere to pawn you goods. Either way, this is cross-applicable to many things besides the author's specific example.

Anything Sivers says is gold to me but in this case I think you're adding something that makes it a little more correct. Yep, definitely being merely a project makes it easier and more agile, less risky, than if it's formally a company. I think that there's a certain extra invigorating constraint that happens if you also approach a project from the angle of, "How can this make me a big profit?" or "How could this change the world for the better?" and those can give extra motivation and clarifying structure around what would otherwise merely be a hobby project. I think both approaches are good though, based on my experience.

There's probably an advantage to having a company set up already. With that taken care of, there's less to deal with if you decide a side project is ready to launch for real.

And, perhaps, if you set the company up first, you won't rush it and possibly screw something up, in the hurry to get your side project on the market.

Of course, the visa thing would be an obstacle to this.

Sure, it's easy to be successful when you've been successfull and there is no problem using your company as your own virtual playground, when it's your second (or third) company. For the rest of us we just have to work our ass off.

Agreed, he has already achieved financial freedom so it is a lot easier to experiment with throw away companies and projects. Others have to find that balance between working on fun activities and those that earn you income.

"Sure, it's easy to be successful when you've been successfull and there is no problem using your company as your own virtual playground"

Possibly but also remember that when you have something you have something to loose as well.

Keep in mind that Sivers is a massive workaholic

Agreed -- there's also the survival bias at play here. We only hear and read the blogs of those that already made it - dabbling in hot springs of financial freedom - in hindsight.

More interesting are the reads of those about to take off, in real-time - e.g. Chris Granger

"I could not have been more relaxed. My head was empty."

And pockets were full! That's the main factor I'd say.

http://sivers.org/trust - Well, not entirely.

A good motivational post and it works when you apply it at a personal level. However when you have employees and they are constantly jumping from one of your experiments to another, without your project achieving much traction among users, it can become horribly demotivating.

If you like reading classics like this one (which is from 2009), you might want to check out my side project that features these each day: http://www.waybackletter.com/archive/daily/06-10-2012.html

Hey really good work. I have been enjoying your newsletter since Wednesday. More time down the drain but its still good. Do you personally curate the articles or is it automated? edit: forgot to say thanks!

This one is semi-automated. I used the HNsearch API to populate each section, but have to do some manual fixes for broken/bad links. My other project, Hacker Newsletter, is curated by hand each week.

Cool project. I've officially made an exception to my rule of never signing up for email lists ever ever ever. Looking forward to my first issue.

Any reason why a "company" would be more needful than a "project"?

In the context of this article, I think you can safely exchange those two words. I'd even say you can exchange company by side-project and the advice is still solid.

It's probably because running a company usually means you have more resources and money available to use than just doing a project. I guess that it comes with a lot more constraints than a project though in some areas - you might have really good ideas that you want to try but if they're too big and too much of a gamble, you can't really just do it and risk your investor's money...

Equipment/software/subscription purchases are tax write-offs.

A company has customers. Part of the value was that he could try out new products/features on an existing customer base.

That part resonated with me and after parting with my company was something I definitely missed.

A company presumably has the relevant filings and registrations done, and tax and accounting processes set up, so if a project starts generating revenue or is ready to do so, that's all taken care of.

ie, you're not sitting there with an app ready to go in the app store, trying to decide which business structure to use, how to get it established, filing to get a tax ID #, etc.

Plus, write-offs.

This post conveniently assumes that "company" means "wildly successful company".

I didn't get that impression at all. After all, Derek wrote this post in 2009, and if you follow the links, the company he rushed back from the hot springs to found seems to have gone nowhere.

All he's really saying is 'you need to be executing on your ideas to be happy, not just thinking about them.' Which is true for a lot of people, myself included.

> All he's really saying is 'you need to be executing on your ideas to be happy, not just thinking about them.' Which is true for a lot of people, myself included.

Oh, sure, I don't doubt that's true for many people, it's true for me as well. However, in order to easily test various things, you need to have a lot of people/datapoints to work with.

It's amazing if you have a product that many people want to use and resources with which to bring your ideas to life, but most people who own companies are probably too busy getting those companies to profitability (or improving it) to try any big ideas.

It seems to me that the author had the liberty and ability to try new things a lot (look at the experiments he lists), which requires a good team, an audience to test your idea with, etc...

However, in order to easily test various things, you need to have a lot of people/datapoints to work with.

I don't know, I've built lots of things that look amazing in my head, but appear far less amazing once I've actually implemented it. While I am just a single data point, the process can provide enough information to realize that it was a bad idea.

I will agree that having more data points has its place, but building it just for yourself is often worth it.

The "playpen" or "sandbox" itself doesn't have to be "wildly" successful, but the entrepreneur must have the wherewithal to launch a company with a sufficiently large team to execute all those ideas. This entails either a successful exit for a prior business or pre-existing resources. It is possible to do so without such resources, but that would mean a much smaller vision and more limited sandbox.

It is interesting that for the entrepreneur the business becomes play. Meanwhile, for the employees, it is often still work. I wonder how this affects the work-life balance. Since it is the entrepreneur's passion and vision, he or she may very well not desire the same balance the team needs.

Not quite. I think the author was focusing more on any company that you have a stake in and can redirect its focus.

Technically, as long as you're a director of operations, you can redirect the company's vision any way you please. Just hope that the employees stay with you on your wild ride.

Awesome read, I'd love to see an update on his projects (since this was from 2009)

His holding company's website gives updates of what he's working on (http://nownownow.com/). In addition, he released a book last summer called 'Anything You Want' (http://www.amazon.com/dp/1936719118?tag=cdbaby).

I found this to be very true for me, in a different context. Last spring I quit my job to take a six month road trip visiting as many national parks as I could. It had been a dream of mine for several years, and I loved it.

What I found, though, was that I no longer had any goals I was working towards. I was living my dream, and loving it, but without something to plan for and strive towards, my imagination and planning abilities became detached from my surroundings, and my daydreams and long-term goals became more and more baroque, until I had an entire dream-universe in my head. It made me realize that humananity, or at least I, need to have something they're working towards, a goal of some sort.

I saved this article and plan on re-reading it a few times.

I have kicked around for years the idea of having a small company with multiple projects. What is holding me back is not money (I have enough passive income) but that I have a difficult time letting go of my consulting business. I generally only work for very good tech'ies and I constantly get exposed to new ideas and technologies while working. Since my wife and I live in a remote area (Sedona Arizona - small town in the mountains) I rely on interactions with tech-saavy customers.

I'll probably keep doing what I do now (consulting 2/3 of my time and spend 1/3 of my time on side projects that don't have to succeed in making money).

Personally I've found that having my company gives me something to pin all of my personal projects, freelance efforts and stuff that belongs to me on. Eventually this grew to the point where I was able to leave my full-time job, and I'm not sure that would have happened if I hadn't gone through the motions of registering a company.

Am jobless, am broke and i want to start my own company. Am currently working on my web app that i really hope will turn out to be my first company. Keep you posted

This may go against the common current on HN, but if you're jobless and broke, you might not be in the best place to start a company, especially considering that often times companies aren't profitable in their first year. Do you have any resources to pull from? Family? Friends? Do you have a place to stay? Can you survive for a year not drawing a salary? If you're jobless, broke, and 17 living with your parents then you have a huge resource to draw on to make this happen.

My advice (for what little it may be worth) is that you find a job related to what you want to do. Learn all you can, live frugally, and store up as much cash as possible. Do this until you have enough in savings to live modestly while you get your company to the point where it will support you (I.E. Ramen profitable).

Am 26 and just moved back home where i hope to make this happen. Do i have resources to pull from? Not really and to be frank with you i don't know what to expect. About getting a job? My fear is i might get comfortable at it and just give up on my dream. Thanks though

When I was jobless and broke, I didn't have a computer. Difficult to start a web company.

I think if any of my investors heard of my company as a "playground" they would rip my throat out.

To live is to work. To create. To make things. Without work the spirit dies.

Sounds like one of those "idea guys" who thinks everything they think of is brilliant, but doesn't have the talent, discipline, and skill it takes to create anything. People like that get on my nerves. Learn a skill other than sales.

He's certainly not an idea guy, he's the founder of cd baby if you know what it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_Baby

Well, he did create CD Baby which was (and still is) a fairly successful company. And my understanding is that he wrote a fair amount of code there.

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