Hey,
I was the founder of a startup that shut down after ~3 years of operation, so maybe my experience could help you make a decision (if it's not too late already).
Let me start by saying that building a company with limited cash is, in my experience, unbelievably painful. In my case we were operating in the power industry where everything takes longer so it put a massive amount of pressure on getting everything perfect from the very beginning if we even wanted to have a decent shot at succeeding.
I get that you want to do a startup for the flexibility that it offers and because it's just vastly more interesting than working a corporate job (don't get me wrong, I 100% agree with this), but the level of responsibility that you take on is also on a whole other scale. Basically, the less cash you have the less room for error you have. If you do decide to go down that path, get ready to put the rest of your life on pause for at least a few months (if not years).
In my opinion, and this is what I am doing at the moment, it is better to continue working your primary corporate job up until you have real proof that your startup idea has even a chance of being successful. Supposedly good startup ideas are dime a dozen, what you want is something that can actually sell. The classic example is quitting your job because you get a lot of early users on the platform you're building, all of this to realize a few weeks later that most of them were just curious and not willing to actually pay for your service (if you're in B2B this still applies, just endless discussions but no real deals happening).
Rather than attempting to build out the full, perfect product while working your current job I'd focus on building the "bare minimum" and getting actual proof that there is demand for it. It doesn't mean making $100k/month - even just $100/month (or whatever other metric you choose) is enough to prove yourself (and others) that there's some sort of demand for your product - it becomes a scaling game, not a survival game. This is essentially (one of) the test that VCs apply when picking investments - almost nobody invests on ideas only anymore, because history has shown that this is unbelievably risky.
Now I tend to be pretty risk-averse so there's definitely a bias in what I'm telling you. Some people have successfully launched and scaled companies starting from essentially nothing, so it's definitely possible - though statistically very unlikely.
I was the founder of a startup that shut down after ~3 years of operation, so maybe my experience could help you make a decision (if it's not too late already).
Let me start by saying that building a company with limited cash is, in my experience, unbelievably painful. In my case we were operating in the power industry where everything takes longer so it put a massive amount of pressure on getting everything perfect from the very beginning if we even wanted to have a decent shot at succeeding.
I get that you want to do a startup for the flexibility that it offers and because it's just vastly more interesting than working a corporate job (don't get me wrong, I 100% agree with this), but the level of responsibility that you take on is also on a whole other scale. Basically, the less cash you have the less room for error you have. If you do decide to go down that path, get ready to put the rest of your life on pause for at least a few months (if not years).
In my opinion, and this is what I am doing at the moment, it is better to continue working your primary corporate job up until you have real proof that your startup idea has even a chance of being successful. Supposedly good startup ideas are dime a dozen, what you want is something that can actually sell. The classic example is quitting your job because you get a lot of early users on the platform you're building, all of this to realize a few weeks later that most of them were just curious and not willing to actually pay for your service (if you're in B2B this still applies, just endless discussions but no real deals happening).
Rather than attempting to build out the full, perfect product while working your current job I'd focus on building the "bare minimum" and getting actual proof that there is demand for it. It doesn't mean making $100k/month - even just $100/month (or whatever other metric you choose) is enough to prove yourself (and others) that there's some sort of demand for your product - it becomes a scaling game, not a survival game. This is essentially (one of) the test that VCs apply when picking investments - almost nobody invests on ideas only anymore, because history has shown that this is unbelievably risky.
Now I tend to be pretty risk-averse so there's definitely a bias in what I'm telling you. Some people have successfully launched and scaled companies starting from essentially nothing, so it's definitely possible - though statistically very unlikely.
Statistics: Posted by tdgb — Thu Nov 21, 2024 3:23 am