Do I have to do a startup in my area of experience? | Hacker News Reader

Do I have to do a startup in my area of experience?

7 pointscodegeek14 comments

I work in financial technology in my day job but lot of startup ideas that I get are not necessarily related to financial tech. I have heard/read that you should usually try something in an area where you know what you are doing. Now I know there are exceptions or outliers. But in general, what do you guys suggest? For example, lets say hypothetically I might have an idea around CRM but no experience whatsoever. Would you ever jump into a startup like that ? Of course, I would commit more than 100% if I do but the question is: should I?

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No. You have to work on a problem you know exists. That usually requires some at least indirect experience in the domain, but it doesn't mean the domain has to be your main area of expertise.

For example, if you work in finance and notice that the company you work for can't find a teleconferencing service that does what they need, it would be fine to start a startup to build that.

Well put. That clears my mind block. Thanks.

start from what you know. You'll find that the deeper you get, the more you learn about other areas too

> You have to work on a problem you know exists.

At the same time, experience can often mislead you into thinking that your problems are everybody's problems. Experience gives you a head start, but you should still do customer research to confirm the "traction potential" of your proposed business model.

In general I think that working in an area you have experience in makes things smoother especially in the beginning. You know the pain points without having to do any research and have some initial "instinct" that points you toward potential solutions.

However, I strongly believe the most important thing for an early-stage start up is passion around the space/solving the pain points. The main reason is that working in a start-up is really hard and, at times, soul-draining. If you hit that depression phase and you aren't 100% committed to solving the problem you'll never pull out of the death spiral.

That being said, if you're passionate, you don't have to be an expert as long as you commit to becoming an expert quickly. Tons of breakthroughs happen when intelligent novices enter a space without the preconceptions of the existing leaders.

good pointers. Thanks

I say no, because you would need to employ someone with the experience and this employee might tell you about existing solutions for the problem you are trying to solve and you might find that the competition in the market is harsh. Though you can always learn and gather experience from the area your problem is at, but this takes more time and money than finding someone else to do the work for you and you might still run into the same problem of existing solutions.

But then again if you know little bit about the field and can do your market research before continuing further to gain experience or to employ someone go ahead and do the market research for your business idea then you know if your idea is worthy of going forward.

Same sort of situation here. Used to study aerospace engineering in college, then transferred to a new school to study music technology. Met a great co-founder and we'd been working on a startup specifically centered around the arts, but it fell apart as the school year came to an end.

Now that summer has started, we've begun work on a different startup (a new type of search engine, sort of...), but it's kind of new territory. We're pretty confident we're aiming at a fairly large target audience, but still scared as this is completely outside our area of expertise.

You get to choose whatever kind of startup you (and your founders) want. At the end of the day, all that really matters is whether or not you can build a business off of your idea, not whether you have relevant experience.

Sometimes it might be good to have no experience. It could make it easier for you to see the status quo from a fresh perspective. It could also mean that you end up reinventing failed solutions, though.

you should do what you have a passion for doing.

do you have a 100% passion for CRM?

CRM was just a hypothetical example I was using. So no. not really CRM. But I am passionate about learning and teaching. Got a few ideas bouncing and even working on a side project related to learning.

there may be other factors in your life, but i think if you have a real passion it's certainly worth exploring!

No. You need to be able to execute in your area of interest.

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