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by commonsense 5966 days ago
> getting enough consulting work to pay the bills

"Consulting" does not just pay the bills. You're thinking of freelancing for dipshit entrepreneurs who think $10k will buy them the next facebook.

1 comments

$10k might very well buy the next facebook, in the startup stages. It wasn't always this big. All it takes is the right idea and some money to pay the bills.
> $10k might very well buy the next facebook

Get the fuck out of here. The amount of engineering the founders put into facebook far outpaces $10k. You're living in a fantasy land.

My point is that those founders didn't draw a salary until well after they had a value proposition for investors.

Or to put it another way, Stephen and I have put > $400,000 of hours into Gridspy, but our costs are limited to board prototyping, outsourced layout and web hosting. For most internet startups, costs are perhaps $10,000 per founder for 3 months + hosting (perhaps $100/mo until there is enough traffic to drive ads).

It only gets expensive when you need to bring in contracting help. That is why it pays to be a switched on hacker in this game.

Remember, the giants weren't always giants. As they transitioned to giants, there were doing it with VC money - not founder's cash.

Don't look at the destination and get put off. Take it one step at a time. You can probably get to traction with $10k.

One further point. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that facebook is burning through $1m per day now.

http://www.google.co.nz/#hl=en&q=facebook+burn+rate would seem to agree with me ($200m per year perhaps).