Assuming the majority of HN works in tech, have you started a business that wasn't within the software realm? What did you create?
The two that he did that were quite successful (which I worked at as a teenager) were a plastics manufacturing business and a series of hair salon's. Both were very successful, very lucrative, and very time and physically intensive. I guess most businesses are!
It was short lived (do to the nature of the vampire fad), but a learning experience that put me in touch with the likes of the original inventor of Jelly Belly, who not only gave me advice but was impressed with my sales numbers. Prior to that I had never had any experience in the beverage (or candy/confection as it was labeled) industry nor any real desire pushing me in that direction.
www.vblood.com
It was all about snowballing your bankroll into more and bigger projects. You find ways to turn $10k into $100k and then you get addicted to trying to literally flip that money many times over.
Inspirational. I recommend you find a concept that has reoccurring (high repeat) revenues, just because it's tough to have to keep getting new customers each day.
While many of our participants have software companies, we're really an operations company, kind of like a specialty tour operator. As opposed to working with software or hardware, we spend a lot of time scouting hotels, running events, and facilitating the community.
Happy to answer any questions about that. So far, we've been to Costa Rica, Thailand, and Vietnam, and this summer, we'll be in Estonia, Spain, and Germany.
Later in life, after spending some time doing finish carpentry work (hanging doors, doing door trim, window trim, molding, shit like that), I got interested in hardwood flooring and considered starting a business to specialize in installing that stuff. But after chewing on the idea a while, I decided it would just be a distraction and forgot about it.
My dad, on the other hand, was a serial entrepreneur who ran all sorts of businesses throughout my childhood. Of hand, I can recall:
1. Owning a pulpwood truck and chainsaws, and cutting down trees and hauling logs to the paper mill.
2. Building and selling handmade crab-pots.
3. Building docks and bulkheads.
4. Owning a bulldozer, loader, dump-truck, etc., and doing land grading, lot clearing, driveways, etc.
5. Shrimping and clamming and selling seafood to the local wholesale seafood house.
6. Finishing cement pours - doing foundations, slabs, etc.
I probably missed a few, but he was always doing something. I think I picked up the whole entrepreneurial spirit thing from him, even though I'm not sure he even knows the word "entrepreneur". My dad is more "street smart" than "book smart" but he's done OK for himself.