speric

The Armed Forces Officer: Edition of 1950 is also excellent in this regard. Covers leadership and also personal career development. Many lessons for tech teams if you pay thoughtful attention. https://www.amazon.com/Armed-Forces-Officer-1950/dp/09883696...

Thanks Steven.

Pretty sure it's a joke.

"Starting Strength" is a great book. You learn a lot about technique, how to properly execute each lift, and common mistakes to watch out for. 5/3/1 from Jim Wendler (http://www.flexcart.com/members/elitefts/default.asp?pid=297...) is also great. I made my best gains on 5/3/1.

Have any good contacts at these "boring consulting businesses"? I am not averse to an unsexy (remote) job.

I feel the same way. Well stated.

FWIW, I also agree with a lot of your points, Matt.

Your point is taken, but it seems to me that if my employer can't trust me to work remotely, then they shouldn't hire me at all. How can you employ (or work for) someone you can't trust?

This essay made me purchase "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". A few pages in and I am glad I bought it.

Fair point.

There's no typical week; I try to be as flexible as possible. Maybe in a future post I can just detail the last week. Great idea.

Friends are certainly not expendable but the reality is, there's just not a lot of time for them during the week. But I don't think this is a "startup on the side" thing; most of my friends who are married with kids don't hang out much anyway. In my particular situation, Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons and evenings are usually when we'll hang out with other families. But again, I think that's more a function of having young kids than of doing a startup.

Everyone's different, but I've been doing this particular startup for 2 1/2 years and don't resent anyone yet. I've had times where I felt like burnout was coming, and when that happens I just take a few days "off" from working on the startup.

While most elders tend to be older men, there's no minimum age requirement. I am young for an elder but there are pastors in my denomination in their early 30's. It's unusual but not unheard of.

In my denomination (http://www.opc.org), an elder is a servant of the congregation, teaching, administering the Lord's Supper, providing counseling to members, and generally overseeing the work of the church, among other things. Elders work alongside pastors. Here's a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterian_polity#The_Elder

I just meant, if you have a spouse, then you need their support. If you don't have a spouse, I think you can still pull it off, but as I have never done a startup under those circumstances, any advice I'd give would be purely speculative. Practically speaking, you'd still have nights and weekends to work on your startup.

Are you doing a startup with a cofounder? I'd be worried, from an emotional standpoint, about doing a startup under those conditions without any moral support (from either a spouse or cofounder). Everyone is different but the dark secret of startup life (especially bootstrapped on the side) is that it's tough, and you can get depressed easily for a number of reasons. Having someone in the trenches with you is a great help, emotionally.

I was on the edge of my seat for the entire 2nd leg vs. Barcelona, and the final was draining. It's "how" they won it that was traumatic.

Growing the startup to the point where I can do it full-time is my ultimate goal. I'll admit, it's not easy to stay focused at my day-job. It's not easy to stay focused anywhere for that matter. But I've had to learn to ignore the voice in my head when it's work/family time. Again, not easy, just one of those things you have to do. Learn to live with the excitement eating away at you. My situation is probably similar to yours; my day job, while not in software development, which I'd prefer, nevertheless gives me a lot of time to work on my startup, since I work close to home and have basically no commute, meaning I get home around 5pm everyday.

>>In a services business, when you give someone $$, you are paying for a person's time.

But if we're talking about what was said in the article, and what others have said in this thread, if you're doing a service company, eventually you want to get the point where your service is automated. In this case, a user is not paying for your time as much as they are paying for the tool you built to encapsulate your service.

I see Amazon as more of a service, then. Everything they currently offer (having your own store, payments processing, order fulfillment, etc.) they are able to offer because they can give to their customers via the web what normally a brick and mortar bookstore would have to do manually, and now their only constraint is scaling.

According to this article, would Amazon be a product or service?

I signed up; looking forward to getting an invite when you launch. Good luck.

>>Really? Almost half your revenue is $99 off 35 customers?

Not sure how you got that. I'm not taking micropayments via Chargify. I don't think you understood me.

They've indicated that alternative arrangements can be made with existing merchants (not free, but not $99 either). We'll wait to see what those are before making a decision.

I am that boat (existing app that uses Chargify, with < 50 customers). Sucks.

We have about 35 customers in Chargify, and growing steadily, but $99/month will eat almost half our monthly revenue. Really disappointed.

That's been my experience. I haven't really seen a good freelance job board with high-quality postings and lack of sketchy characters since 37signals Gig Board.

DHH.

I'm 28, married with 3 kids, house, full-time job, etc., and doing a startup on the side. In my experience, having a supportive wife, not just someone who will "let" me work 2-3 hours a night, but someone who believes in what I'm trying to do, makes all the difference. There are enough stresses in family life as it is. Add to that the stress of a startup, and without someone who is on board and has bought into it, and willingly bears all the crazy stuff that goes along, I promise it will be a disaster.

Also, the sooner you make money off the start-up, the better. Having something tangible to show for the hours you're away from your S.O. helps the situation tremendously.

For me, I try to stay balanced as much as possible. If I need to take a night or two off of hacking a week to watch a movie with my wife, or take my kids out and stay up past their bedtime, or just grab some beers and do nothing, I do it. You're only hurting yourself (and, by extension, your startup) by burning the candle at both ends, so don't feel bad about taking a night off. I also play it by ear on Saturdays and don't do any work on Sundays.

The toughest thing, I have found, is to be mentally and emotionally "present" with my family when I am not working. Doing a startup is all-consuming. If you give 100% of yourself during your family time, it will make it easier for them to deal with you not being around.

Let's disregard TV and radio, since we're talking about web startups.

Of course it's possible to hit a homerun with a site like PlentyOfFish, but what are the chances YOU will be the guy to do it? There are always outliers in every set of statistics.