It's about a year ago since I started to work for tech companies. I'm having the best time ever: doing what I love and being paid for it. I'm also learning tons of things I just didn't know yet about tech, sales, HR, coding and so on. I know of course that at some point, I'll have to quit my job to do a startup. I deeply want to and have the idea already. I'm just waiting for this... something.
Clearly, I do not want to quit my job today. I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I can still add a lot of value to the company I'm working for and I want to do this first. Thus, this raises the following question:
When will the right time be?
There are a few things I'll need in order to start my startup:
- A team
- Money
- Interested users
Team
The last time I wanted to startup, being a non-technical person (yeah that sucks), I outsourced the team. This was a huge mistake which I won't do again.
That's why, since about half a year, I'm constantly looking for other young people who have the same vision than myself and every time I find someone, I reach out to him and we have a chat. They are all great people and until now, the timing has never been right. I'm making sure to stay connected with them and regularly check in to see how they are doing.
Hiring people who want to work for the money before the vision won't make it for a startup that does not have any... money.
Money
Clearly, my startup will be bootstrapped because the Saas product I want to build won't change the world. It won't be a unicorn like Stripe or Airbnb and it's not meant to be. This reduces the chances of investors wanting a slice of that cake and means that we'll have to do it with our own money. I actually believe that this will increase our likelihood of success.
Whatever money I'll have, I'll never be able to afford the team I was speaking about. Young smart people are in high demand and there is no way I can offer them more than the big tech company that would do anything to hire them.
Personally, I'd like to have enough cash to work on my startup for a full year. That would be around $20k in my case and that's about it, cash-wise.
Interested users
That's the one that annoys me because I should do it right now. There is nothing stopping me from creating a waiting list and publishing some content. In fact, I've done it.
If you are curious about my project and it's history, click here - a chatbot will tell you the whole story (it's also a waiting list)
But how do you know that you have enough people following you? Are 300 enough? And will these users pay for the MVP?
The reality is:
You'll never know if you don't try.
For me, this means the following:
Once:
- My learning curve is slowing down and I'm not adding any value anymore at my job
- I have 20k in my bank account
- At least one other person with a shared vision is free
- I have 1k people in my waiting list
Then I'll have no excuse at all and will just do it.
What about you? What's stopping you from doing a startup?