Ask HN: How do scrappy start-up founders get money fast?
For those of you like me that boot-strap your start-up, how do you come up with cash in a hurry? Is it craigslist? The local pawn shop? What?
I supplement my lack of income from passive income from the 20 or so Flash games I've produced, donations from my users, and occasionally making more games that I sell the licensing to / that further increase my passive income.
1. Selling random stuff on Craigslist and Ebay. Say, that bike trainer is really cool, but I haven't used it in awhile, and I should go ride outside anyway. Ditto for every other non-essential item I own.
2. Setting up a few minor content-type sites. I wrote a bunch of articles awhile ago and never did anything with them. I'm spending this weekend setting up a simple wordpress site to host them. Not going to make me rich, obviously, but anything helps.
3. Start a minor side business. If you can figure out a way to spend an equal amount of time (say, 20 hours/week) and make more money than a comparable random job, do it. You'll learn more and it'll look awesome on a resume. (I'm doing this too).
4. I've looked into using AirBnb to host. Not sure if I will end up using it, but if you've got the space (and the comfort level) you can definitely pay the rent with it.
On a side note though consultancy seems a good way to raise that initial money, i have seen some friends who just get stuck in the consultancy mode and cant make time to work on products. If you do go that route set a hard date and stick to it.
Our startup did the same thing until recently: do web design consultancy. In the past 3 months (and next 1) we've saved up (two of us) over $60,000 which is more than enough for at least a 6month full time run on our web startup. This on top of building our web startup's prototype and going to Ugrad (and doing decently I might add). If you have any further questions on how to get your web design co going in a hurry... pm me.