Comments on: Part time Entrepreneur, fulltime Employee

By: Tamer Salama

Tamer Salama — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:51:19 +0000

Great article. Reiterating what many people said here: as if I’m reading about myself.

Keep up the good work.

By: Ricardo Soares de Lima

Ricardo Soares de Lima — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:56:09 +0000

So the secret is to no have children and wife. I’m on the right.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:48:33 +0000

Why would you work for a company that imposes that kind of IP nonsense on you??

By: chrisco

chrisco — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:57:21 +0000

“Great Ideas Derive from Well-Rested Minds”: http://bit.ly/dptAB3 93-minute video by DHH — they built Basecamp working on it 10-hours per week).

By: Senthil Nayagam

Senthil Nayagam — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:09:45 +0000

when I started RailsFactory, I had a wife and kid, but no modgages or loans.

Opportunity in most cases is a timeframe during which your idea/product/service is relevant to the marketplace, missing it would make all the effort unrewarding.

Also when you have a safety net you do not try hard. At some point you would need to decide when you want to go fulltime, it is just a question of when.

Based on my personal experience, having a partner/co-founder can take a lot of stress in starting up

By: Vin

Vin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:40:04 +0000

I thought your article was a great read, and its nice to see so many people in the same boat. I too have a full time job while juggling a startup at night+weekends. I think the hardest part for me is to stay focused during the day job and not spending too much time working on the startup (during 9-6). I live in NYC, have a mortgage, a wife, no kids yet. The bills add up and it’s daunting to want to jump ship and go the startup route 100% if you can’t cover your mortgage. I think family comes first, and being able to provide for them overrides any of the allure or ‘take the risk’ aspects of going fulltime.

If i go 100% on my startup and my family life suffers (cant pay mortgage+bills) when/if the startup fizzles out I’m in a much worse position than if it takes 4x as long to launch the startup and get to break-even (including paying my mortgage).

Putting the type of burden on your family and yourself is just not worth the ‘the startup could take off’ type of risk.

My goal is to get to a point where I can safely pay all my bills, mortgage and some decently comfortable lifestyle provided directly from my startup, then switch over full time.

Good luck!

By: Guy At HockeyBias dot com

Guy At HockeyBias dot com — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:46:30 +0000

Your article pretty well articualtes what I am up to with http://hockeybias.com

I enjoyed reading it. Best of luck!

By: Dave Rodenbaugh

Dave Rodenbaugh — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:35:57 +0000

Hi Tom,

Check out http://micropreneur.com. If you’re still in the product dev phase, you’re only in the first 1/3 of your pain as an entrepreneur. You may want some help with the market and marketing, which the Micropreneur Academy can help out with. Good resources, great folks.

Full disclosure: I’m a member, but not the founder. I get nothing if you join or don’t. It’s a good group and worth the time and money to check it out. Totally fits with your situation.

By: David

David — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:16:07 +0000

This is something I have done to get my company up and running. I am not a full time programmer but its something I can offer a client, so I have an idea of what you are going through. You will come to a point when you have to take that jump and it will be very exciting for sure. With software its fairly easy as you can complete the program then do a large scale release and use this to your advantage. You are right though as soon as you decide the go full time thats when the clock ticks and you need to run and not walk. Just make sure the partner is ok with this as they will be hurting also during this time and your child of course.

By: Horia Dragomir

Horia Dragomir — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:32:10 +0000

Inspiring read! And it’s nice to see more people in my own situation.

Good luck with Gridspy!