Ask HN: BigCo vs Freelancing.. and then Startup | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: BigCo vs Freelancing.. and then Startup

6 pointsjpd75015 comments

I'm in a bit of a pickle - I'm trying to build a startup, solo, to start - I'm burning the late night oil at nights and weekends.

I currently have a well paying job in IT at a top 10 online retailer.

I've been trying to build my product nights and weekends with some progress, but nowhere near the progress I desire. I attribute it to a diverged focus of working full-time for someone else (40 hr+), and overall exhaustion. Don't get me wrong, I have done probably 3-5% of the project in about 2 months moonlighting on nights/weekends while still being on-call 24/7, but haven't reached the full meat/potatoes of the application (yet!).

One thing I've recently begin considering and reading about is starting a small freelance business to begin (to pay the bills) - max 20 hours per week and then quitting my job to do that, while investing the rest of my time in my startup until it flourishes enough to quit freelance and go full-time on the startup I'm trying to create.

I've read countless articles of people having a full-time job (in bigco) and then just: 1) quitting cold turkey and focusing full-time on startup 2) quitting when startup product is built, then quitting cold turkey from bigco. 3) quitting when startup product is built and has paying clients = bigco income 4) When startup product is built, has paying clients > big co income.

Resulting in an understanding of : there is no black/white answer.

I project this first version, with a full-time focus, will take 6-9 months to develop.

I guess I'm just at a crossroads on what to do, I've talked to others, researched myself, tried doing some moonlight, but I'm not seeing the progress I hope for and I'm a bit confused on how to approach the situation now.

I'd love to quit right now and go full-time, but that isn't realistic due to apartment bills and daily living expenses of about $1k per month

I have quit a lot of skills in open-source development (ideal for freelance).

Thoughts? Suggestions? Stories? Fire em' at me :) .

Thank you!

Have you talked to anyone about your product? Have you gotten any feedback about it? Do you believe it stands a reasonable chance of success if you devoted your full(er) attention to it? Getting feedback and product/market fit validation is relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, dropping everything to work on an unvalidated product can be quite costly.

I would recommend seeking out as much feedback as possible -- not just from friends & family, but from people on the street, people in your hypothetical target market, Show/Ask HN posts, meetups, etc. Look before you leap. While you can never fully mitigate the risk of starting your own business, you can certainly get your ducks in a row before jumping completely into it.

Maybe the product you want to build will never get built unless you devote 50%, 60%, or even 100% of your time to it. That's fair. But before you do that, prove the concept. Nothing is more heartbreaking that dropping a secure, comfortable job to leap into a project you haven't rigorously vetted and tested. Trust me; I've done that before. It didn't end well, and it set me back at least a couple of years.

One should never have to make a "cold turkey" move. Nothing about it should be cold. If you're giving up a good job to pursue something else, you owe it to yourself to make sure that something else might be viable. Instead of spending your 3-5% nights-and-weekends time building small chunks of the product, use that time to test the concept and the market.

I've tested quite a bit, I've gotten market feedback from potential clients - I did a survey as well that suggested that 80%/100% were willing to pay $X/mo for it.

I've talked to random individuals I meet at meetup groups as well. It isn't a totally earth-shattering new idea, but one with an already existing and ever increasingly new platforms and market expansion.

Short answer: Its already a proven market. I know my competitors and their offerings, and history.

What are your thoughts on doing 10-20 hours of part-time freelance as kinda a segway into this?

"What are your thoughts on doing 10-20 hours of part-time freelance as kinda a segway into this?"

If you can line it up easily, and if you think it'll actually cover your living expenses, I see nothing inherently wrong with it. Just realize that freelancing is not always the time saver people imagine it to be. You'll be dealing with invoicing, chasing payments, lining up steady and consistent work to keep the cash flow on track, etc. Freelancing is a full-time job in its own right.

I would recommend building out a freelancing runway -- for example, and if possible, carving out a steady freelancing gig for 18 months from your current employer, if that's possible. And get a contract in place. You don't want to jump into freelancing cold turkey and find yourself scrambling for gigs.

Be careful. "Saying" they'll pay and them actually paying CAN be a different thing believe it or not. Consider yourself testing the market till you ACTUALLY take money from a few customers. (caps for emphasis: I've been burned before)

Yes, I do realize what you are saying here and its a valid point.

I think I would have to have a MVP before getting any early adopters cash though, right?

Not necessarily. If your solution is solving a real pain point or is creating something really valuable for your potential customers, you can ask them to pay upfront even before the MVP is ready. Treat them as your extended team taking their inputs while you build the product. Easier said than done but its the best validation you can get. You may have to grandfather them on pricing though.

Have a look at this mixergy interview for some ideas/inspiration - http://mixergy.com/sam-ovens-snapinspect-interview/

No. You can presell at a lower price though. The objective is to take cash even if smaller than what you would charge if the product was already built. If people can pay and wait for the product, it means it really solves a problem for them and your chances of succeeding are much higher.

I did this for my product as well. It's paying the bills for me despite not even being done yet.

Think of it as a form of freelancing where the customer just wants some end result but doesn't care about the code itself.

I feel your pain. I'm also dayjobbing while working on creating a startup. The conclusion I've found is that working this way makes it much slower, but not impossible. The hard parts are a: not giving up (actually, that hasn't been hard), and b: using the time you have efficiently.

There are a number of paths available to you: 1. Give up. 2. Quit dayjobbing, go full-time on your savings in hopes it will succeed (part-time freelancing is a partial version of this). 3. Get funded and work off the funding. 4. Get a revenue-generating product out the door so it starts paying for you to work full-time.

I don't believe in #1. I can't do #2 because my marriage is more important than my startup. I looked into #3, but fundraising is a full-time job that takes your eye off the ball with no guarantee of success. This leaves #4.

So consider a way to build a subset of your product you can sell, or otherwise shorten your takeoff trajectory. That will get you going faster.

As for the freelancing idea... unless you think you can immediately get half-time freelance work and keep a steady flow of it, it's not a good path. It will start intruding on your startup time.

I think you will just end up at the same place you started after getting comments on here. I think that you need to decide if you really love the product you are building and if you do love it quit and do it full time. Do as much as you need to to pay your bills to allow you the time to do it full time. You could work like a busy bee for say 5 months save up as much as you can leave bigco and you will have about 1-4 months left to developer and finish what you have. Or finally if it is a product build a mvp and try and get your first order to cover you for a few months

When you say:"Do as much as you need to to pay your bills"

Are you alluding to freelancing part-time? Please further explain.

Well said.

I would try outsourcing technical tasks.

I've been thinking about doing this. What's a good way to find / select people? I used rentacoder.com a few years ago, but I'm not sure that's around anymore / the best way.

Send some emails to blog authors. I would never go for rentacode.com like websites, because freelancer is not the type of relationship the author is looking for.

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