How to quit your job and build a startup | Hacker News Reader

How to quit your job and build a startup

shelfmade.wordpress.com

25 pointsmikesabat23 comments

Also? Arguing for a raise, and then quitting 3 months later after mentally checking out of your job for 3 months? Bit of a dick move.

Yes, it is a dick move. I wrote this post in response to a YCr asking about quitting their job to work on a startup in the face of this possible recession.

Not to be a jaded asshole, but there are many companies that don't really care about their employees and cutback etc to increase profits. Sure 2 wrongs don't make a right, but this raise will fund your company which can care about employees. Also, asking for a raise is empowering and a boost to your self confidence. In my example this comes at a time when you are overworked and a bit uncertain about your future.

It's funny that everyone thinks of "the evil company" when they make decisions like this, but never talk about what they're doing to their coworkers.

I don't understand. Surely you aren't arguing that you shouldn't ever quit a job because of the way that it will effect your coworkers, are you?

You're correct. Surely I'm not arguing that. That would be a stupid argument. What I am arguing is that deliberately stiffing your employer for a raise while spending all your real cycles building your own company can fuck over your teammates.

Look, you just said you agreed it was a dick move. Great! Do you agree with what you yourself said, or not?

Yes of course. I would guess that you check out YC News or Reddit throughout the workday. Most people take care of personal business or watch funny videos on company time. Nobody works 8 hours straight.

We are describing 2 different employment situations. You are picturing a team environment where everyone has to carry the load to reach a common goal that you feel is meaningful, I'm not. The job I'm thinking of is more like Fight Club or Office Space.

People that have truly team oriented employment where coworkers are working towards a worthwhile goal are less likely to be jumping ship for a startup.

It can be a dick move to the company, but I've seen companies treat people a lot worse.

I'm not trying to prolong this, or be petulant or pedantic, but you don't have to be working for Greenpeace to have dependencies and shared goals. Your project slips 6 months because you were dead wood during dev and QA while you learned Rails, and you just fucked over everyone else whose bonus and raise depended on the project.

We don't have to argue about this because I think we agree.

The more important point is, if you need to come up with an elaborate plan to figure out to engage your new company, you haven't figured out what your new company is. There's a YC meme going around here, along the lines of "is now a good time to start my company?" or "what's the best way to smoothly transition into my new startup?". None of that means shit. 2 months into your startup you are going to face some problem that is going to be an existential threat to your project, and it's all going to go badly, and you're going to have to figure out how to work through it anyways, and all this talk about how to "start the startup" and "milk your last job" is going to sound pretty silly.

Cheers, we agree. I'm not a programmer so I don't have that perspective (probably added to the confusion). As I said on your previous comment, I wrote the post in response to someone asking about quitting their job.

I definitely agree that people asking for random advice on YC about tiptoeing in may be in trouble when problems occur, and they will occur early in the startup.

I'm having the 2 month problems now. If I would have quit my job when I was overly excited earlier in the journey I would be facing some seriously hard times.

Goodluck :)

Perhaps they know that "Is this a good startup idea?" and "Is it a good time to start a startup?" are two different questions that should be asked in two different discussions.

Hmm, and I think I'm gonna cheat on my girlfriend before she has the chance to cheat on me. That sounds like a perfectly healthy relationship. Right?

Not so surprisingly, maintaining a positive work relationship and a positive romantic relationship requires the same skill set. Not so surprisingly, poor performance in the first facet seems to correlate with poor performance in the other facet.

By the way, I tendered my resignation last Tuesday. I am starting my own business because I am holding myself to a higher standard. Making money is easy. Being congruent with what you value in life is the hard part.

I read this article for literally all of 5 seconds before getting pissed off. The answer to this "question" is simple, but you can get 1500 word blog posts voted up for it because nobody wants to hear the answer, which is (1) build a viable startup, and then (2) quit your job. Or! If you're daring and an extremely excellent salesperson, you can try (1) quitting your job and then (2) starting a company.

If you need to think past either of these two strategies before "deciding" whether to start a company, you're not going to start a company.

Start-ups are a cut-throat business where very few succeed. The less serious you are about it, the greater the chance that you will fail. And to be frank, working on your startup in weekends probably won't get you ahead of the pack.

If you want to do a successful startup I think that you it needs all your attention.

Does this guy have any credibility? He sure doesn't speak as if his rant is mere conjecture, yet doesn't have any supporting data or even anecdotes. As far as I can tell from the about page, he's a guy with a flaming turd of a startup telling other people how to be successful.

This article seems to be mainly about how to not succeed.

Hey Matt, Good to meet you as well.

Some perspective: I'm not a coder, yet I am starting a web business. I previously founded and grew a non-tech startup to 2 million in revenue in our first 18 months. I fucked it up and made a horrible exit with very little cash.

Currently, I'm on step 5 of the blog post, with a new raise working both a full-time job and a startup company.

I do worry about market risk, so I'm researching several customers for the technology besides the obvious B2C. My biggest concern is a roadblock with google also focusing on the concept for ShelfMade. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/11/19/google-magazine/

Not to start a fight, but I will be kicking your ass in fantasy football next year. And if ShelfMade has revenue or funding, we'll be doing it on Yahoo fantasy sports, agreed?

Ha, sorry to hear about the bad exit. And if we qualify the revenue with some dollar figure then I'll even agree to the yahoo thing.

"...I will be kicking your ass in fantasy football..."

The nerdosterone is getting a little heavy here.

You know, even with an anonymous account, I don't think I would use the phrase "flaming turd of a startup" unprovoked.

Don't you give people advice on your blog as well? Since when YC-accpetance counts as "creds"? None of us is Bill Gates here, chill out.

The blog post does indeed sound childish. It assumes that "beta" (what a stupid beaten up word that lost its original meaning) can be accomplished by just one person working "nights and weekends". Outside of web-based to-do lists, not a whole lot can be built into even a prototype this way.

how do you qualify that? wasn't del.icio.us built while joshua was moonlighting?

Del.icio.us is exactly the kind I referred to when I said "web-based to-do lists". Those are companies that discovered a market need for something technically trivial and filled the niche. While this does sound attractive and "let's all get rich this way!", the reality is that the percentage of businesses that had been started this way is very very very small, while number of people who is trying is very very very big and growing because of the media coverage.

Media plays a big role here, as always, because it loves such incredible success stories. Publishing an article about boring and typical long way up isn't going to help selling your magazine. When I look at small-to-medium sized companies I personally know someone working for, I do not see a single "del.icio.us" - they all took lots of work to get going: coding hours, equipment, office space, etc.

One of the reasons young founders succed more often that has not been talked about, is that fact that they DO NOT HAVE full time jobs, mortgages, wives and kids with high medical bills and "family time" they need. Young guys have more time and since time == money, they kind of already have "funding" when they're starting.

Therefore I do not see an answer to the dilemma the author is talking about. If your job pays $7K/month (after taxes) plus about a thousand more in benefits, and your startup needs 12 man-months to develop a prototype, plus 3-6 months of fundraising after that, you're essentially looking at the need to find $110-130K somewhere just to let yourself work full time on your idea. If you have that kind of savings - great. If not, quitting your job won't help since you'll starve to death. Short and simple, not even enough for a good blog post.

Just my $0.2

so, you're saying that a "real small-to-medium sized" company cannot begin to be built while working a day job? get a beta out and see if it picks up steam?

the author faced that dilemma and gave us his take, and you gave us yours. why all the 'this is childish' hate? :)

Hate? Wooo, that's a strong word :) I appreciated author's post, if anything, I was pissed by Matt's suppressing comments, especially since he's not too shy giving advice himself, which I also find useful on a regular basis.

ah -- the misinterpretation of text. sorry.

PS. I think PikLuk is a good idea for a great market - best of luck!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com