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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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