How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up

Doing a startup was a long journey and I was putting myself under so much pressure by giving such a f*ck about what other people think.

Day by day, I was getting lonelier and more depressive as I avoided social occasions. My startup progress was not as fast as my social circle imagined it to be and I was fed up with telling people it took years for startups like Facebook and Twitter to arrive at where they are now.

…

There are five things I wish I had asked myself before starting this painful journey. Five questions I believe every future entrepreneur should ask himself before taking the first step to entrepreneurship

It’s not all candy an puppies in startup-land.

How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up →

Flexible Hours • Inside GitHub

Don’t agree wholeheartedly with the flexible hours (you need some time where the whole team is together), but do agree with the unlimited paid time off policy. I for one have a job with flexible/concentrated hours which result in a 1.5 days “not behind the desk” where I can plan my time in a manner that suits my needs: I can go to city hall at a regular hour, and do my work at a later time. One nasty side effect though is that in the end you’ll lose track of time and grow accustomed to working evenings and weekends.

Getting to your minimum hourly rate

So how do you calculate your hourly rate? That’s easy, it’s the salary you want to make, divided by 52 weeks a year, divided by 40 hours a week. Simple!

Right, right?! It’s a tad more complex than you might thing at first:

monthly-expenses

Next to showing one how to calculate the minimum rate, it also holds some golden advice:

If you go below your minimum rate, even for a friend or charity, you are hurting yourself and your business. There is no shame in passing on work, if you are putting yourself in financial trouble.

Getting to your minimum hourly rate →

Starting + Sustaining

starting+sustaining

Starting + Sustaining will help you plan, launch, and run your own web application with less pain and fewer mistakes.

By Garret Dimon of Sifter. If you like the aforementioned Bootstrapping a Software Product presentation you’ll love the book.

Starting + Sustaining: A book and spreadsheet to help you launch and maintain a web application by Garrett Dimon →

Your Startup is Doomed

Sometimes, after I speak at a tech conference, someone will come up to me and say: “Hey! You should check out my new startup.”

They give me the elevator pitch, then they ask: “What do you think?”

They’re beaming. They’re enthusiastic. And there is no polite way to say: “Statistically speaking, you’d be doomed to failure even if your idea wasn’t dumb as a sack of hammers.”

A little quiz to help prevent time being wasted (and smashing dreams).

Your Startup is Doomed →