$300,000 lost salary to start up - would you do it?

[CobraKai]

So I'm a doctor (not just playing one on TV) with the start-up itch that I gotta scratch. As much as I love my job and my patients, I've had this desire to build something, watch it grow, call it my own, and hopefully retire off it! I have no interest in finding someone to hack for me. I'm in this to challenge myself, learn a ton, and make something great (hopefully).

I majored in EE at a great engineering school, but obviously that was a while back. I can program in C, but don't know the new web-app languages. All of my friends are doctors who majored in biology or some such and have zero programming experience or interest. So I can't talk to anyone I know about this and get a reasonable answer, so I ask you(very smart) people this:

1) A years lost salary is 300k. If you were in my shoes, would you dabble with a start up in your off time and see where it goes, or would you go balls to the wall-take a year off and work full time on it? 2) What language(s) must I master in order to be proficient at web design? What are the best books to start off with? I recently read Getting Real and re-read Knuth's book. I'm reading the SEIA right now, it's a pretty nice easy read. Any other reccs?

Before someone reams me, I didn't just watch the Social Network and develop aspirations of becoming a billionaire at 30! I've been thinking about this for a few months now.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[deathflute]

I would scale down your medical operation bit by bit while spending more time building the skills necessary to launch your start up. Only once you are confident enough of pulling it off, would I work full time on it. Basically, not only you have the risk of your start up being a complete failure but also that you might not be able to pull it off technically. The latter risk can be completely hedged away by my first piece of advice.

[staunch]

Yes. Once you've built a few web apps and are confident you can build the one you want to be for your startup you're ready. At that time you should definitely go full-time if you want to maximize your chances of success.

Just don't go full-time until you're not going to be spending the first 6 months learning.

[jcr]

Live very simply for a few years while working as a doctor, learning in your free time, and building up a bankroll of funds. If you find that you don't have the motivation to learn, fail, and pivot in your free time, then you probably won't have the motivation to do it full time.

Edit: You could replace 'motivation' with 'ambition' if that reads better to you personally, but they are nearly the same.

[jcr]

Also, you could probably learn a lot from Patric (HN user: patio11) about the process of building your own startup while remaining employed. You'll find his blog posts very useful, particularly the way he thinks about identifying problems, and how to solve them.

http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11

http://www.kalzumeus.com

[maxklein]

The chances of you making more money with your startup are pretty low. The chances of you being very stressed out are pretty high.

It makes little sense, what you're planning. You have a steady income now and a good skillset, and you want to throw that away and start something where you have no skills at all? You'll probably fail.

The OBVIOUS choice is simply to spend an hour everyday designing your product. Then hire people to build it for you. You are under no time pressure, as you have already a lot of money.

Think of it like writing a book - would you quit your job to write a book? Just do this in the evenings, if it will work, you will know the right time to quit your job. It will be obvious. But leaving a highly paid job to do something that has a > 90% chance of failing is silly.

Even with > 1 million users a month, it's difficult to make $300.000 a year on the web.

[anthonycerra]

Max, I pretty much disagree with everything you said.

1) If he keeps his high paying job he won't have the motivation to work on his startup. That's more likely to lead to failure than jumping in with both feet.

2) Why does he have >90% chance of failure? Who calculated that statistic?

3) Who cares about 1 million users? He doesn't need that. He needs paying customers. He can do very well with 500 customers or less.

4) Why does he have to make $300,000+ to be considered successful? Clearly he isn't happy and isn't driven by money. What's the exchange rate for taking pleasure in your work?

[curt]

Design it yourself and then outsource the development. You could even hire a full-time developer and keep your job, then give him direction in the evening or on the weekends. Its basic economics problem, do what you're best at and hire out the rest.

With cash you shouldn't have a problem (depending where you are) finding 1 or 2 people with the needed skill set.

I outsourced quite a lot of my development work because I'm better at certain things then others and I wanted to spend my time wisely. Since I've done it before and have a medical background, feel free to email me if you have questions. It's in my profile.

[anthonycerra]

I heard a great quote from someone once that said "I don't care how much you make, tell me how much you saved". That's really the key question here. If I made 300k/yr I'd probably have 270k in the bank after a year(neglecting taxes) because I don't have a wife and kids, a big house, or a fancy car to pay off. I could live off that for a while.

What's your situation like?

[CobraKai]

I'm still paying off my medical school loans (30k remaining). No kids, Corolla (paid off), rental apt (split with girlfriend). I have savings ~100k liquid and available to me now (much more is invested) and my girlfriend would support me. My annual expenditure (outside loan payments) is ~40k. Without vacations 30k.

[alexqgb]

Seems like you've solved the hardest problem up front. If you had a lifestyle close to your income, and close, committed relations to people who were comfortable with that (and only that) then you'd have some serious negotiating and/or losing to do. But since you're already living economically, and have given yourself plenty of room to maneuver, I'd say you've done well.

If your startup were in the medical field (i.e. one you know well, and in which your background gives your insights the halo of serious credibility) then your positioning is even better.

And if you can get to Working Prototype before quitting your current practice entirely, you should be able to make a very solid decision.

[anthonycerra]

In that case, go for it! You have nothing to lose. You'll always be a doctor, but you may never get this opportunity again (low expenses, no kids). If you spend all your time working on Plan B, you'll never get to Plan A.

[andrewtbham]

have you thought about hiring a contractor to mock up your idea before you quit your job?

is the idea for a medical start up?

[sploink]

How old are you? And do you plan to have kids in the near future?

[zafka]

I agree with the others who talk about keeping the day job while developing some ideas.

Are you dead set on a Web startup? I do embedded c in the medical industry. The company I work for now( ~250 Million in sales) was started by a surgeon in 1978.

It might be worth staying in your field, and keeping your eyes open. Then when you find the problem you can fix, leap!

[CobraKai]

Hi. Thanks very much for your input. I have indeed fiddled with the idea of working with medical devices. The main problem with starting a medical device firm is the herculean regulations that you have to overcome. Unless you have someone with deep pockets backing you up, it's hard to become the next MedTronic. At least that's my concern - correct me if I'm wrong. I'm still fiddling with my Arduino and coming up with good device ideas, though!

Either way, I feel like doing a web startup would be a good way to learn firsthand bootstrapping entrepreneurship. And the skill sets (programming, rapid iteration, etc.) would be very beneficial in working on a medical device startup down the line. You're right about one thing - problems that need fixing abound in my field. I have a Moleskine with page after page of things that need fixing in the system!

You're in a good industry. Devices, especially non-invasive things, are the new new thing. I wish you well.

[zafka]

Well, in that case, my own intuition (and about 99.9 % of pundits) says shoot for the handhelds Get an imac and learn how to program for ipads, in your other set of spare time learn android. Set up a linux server with the database of your choice. After you have all that set up and mastered....at least a few weeks :) start spitting out services for your doctor friends.

As an aside, I have friends in the embedded arena who get backed by doctors looking to invest some spare pocket cash. I think once you get hacking, your friends will bug you to let them in on it.

Most important, Have fun!

[Kaizyn]

This really comes down to two things: 1) How much income do you need to cover your yearly living expenses? and 2) How easy would it be for you to go back to earning 300K/year if you were to take the time off for your startup?

I'm sure you've seen all of the figures about compound interest. Were you to invest even $30,000/year for the next 10 years, you could easily retire a multi-millionaire without hardly noticing the reduction in your standard of living.

Retirement aside, I would suggest that you pay off all of the bills you possibly can first. That way, you won't have the same sort of pressure on you to produce from your startup you otherwise would face. Good luck with this venture!

[knowsnothing613]

Scale back your practice, and dabble in web programming. You may realize you don't enjoy it, and would rather hire someone to do it.

Give yourself 6 months of dabbling, then reevaluate market conditions, & lifestyle conditions before jummping in.

Keep in mind that Ben Bernanke is turning off the taps in June, and the markets may drop. And who knows how the global economy will react once its fix of cheap USD is gone.

Web 2.0 is in a bubble. The fact that a doctor wants to get in on it is a signal that the bubble may have reached its apex. So wait 6 months, and see if it pops. If it does, and you still want to proceed, you can hire developers on the cheap.

[Sean_Hayes]

I agree with what most other people have said here about doing it in your spare time and then going in full time when you know what you're doing. Give full time effort when the business requires your full time effort, there's no point in doing it full time when you have no users and no application to support.

Books I recommend: Rework, Lucky or Smart, The Art of the Start

Languages: HTML, CSS, and Javascript are a must (jQuery is a great JS library to use). I recommend Python and Django for the server side, though what ever language you choose you should use an MVC framework (Django, Rails, CakePHP).

[oceanician]

a) how much do you have saved?

b) what knowledge do you have outside C i.e. Database? Can you model an app?

c) How many years are you willing to put aside for this? At least 2 would be typical, before you give up, but quite often it's more - say 4? Doctors often have loans to pay off, but after that I find they live very comfortable lifestyles - are you ready to go back to living on beans on toast, pot noodles, and other crap?

d) have you shown your idea to someone else?

e) have you tried to get a prototype built (think £20k, USD 40K) for 2 devs couple of months in RoR.

f) learn Ruby on Rails....make the prototype yourself.

/end of random thoughts.

[CobraKai]

Thank you all so very much for your comments! You're giving me a lot of insight into the process and the many positive/negative factors I should be thinking about - this is absolutely perfect!

[Mz]

A member states in this post (linked below) that he is a former nephrologist. You might check his posting history. Somewhere here, he talks about how and why he left medicine to be a full-time hacker (or at least run a website and make money from it). And, actually, a reply to a reply to that post has a link to where he talks about it. :-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1925983

Good luck with this.

[gs8]

First you should come up with a good idea, from looking at your initial post it looks like you don't have an actual idea. Than hire programmers or outsource your development work. Without completely quitting your practice.

Just curious, how many years did you spend completing your education? A medical doctor with an electrical engineering degree is quite rare.

[CobraKai]

I'm toying around with a few ideas, but you're intuition is mostly right. The problem is that I don't know which of them are realistic in terms of programmability (hence my desire to really learn web-dev languages). I've only discovered this site 2 days ago, but I've already read a few posts saying you can't find strong programmers who'll just implement your idea and let you take the credit/bacon, which I can understand.

I went through 4 years of college (majoring in EE), worked 1 year as an EE, switched tracks and went to medical school(4 years), then finished 4 years of residency. I've been out practicing for a bit more than 1 year now. Everyone who wants to go to medical school has to have a college degree in something - mine happens to be in EE! Thanks for your input, much appreciated.

[steven_h]

Just start when you feel ready. As for web-app languages, either pick Ruby and use Rails or Python and used Django. There are pros and cons to each, I just happen to use Django because I like Python better. You could also use the Google App Engine with Java or Python and you could eliminate you need for a Sysadmin.

[CobraKai]

Hi. Thanks for your input. I've heard great things about Ruby. It's next on my list, for sure. I'm working my way through SEIA right now and learning Perl (re-learning? It's so similar to C!) I'll look into Python as well. I've heard of more web apps being built on Ruby/rails, but you guys know better than I do. Thanks again.

[jparicka]

I'm looking for just 4,500 Euro to finish / launch this. It's got some impressive technology running underneath.. Any ideas where do I look for the money? These are really just to finish off the prototype and launch. (jparicka(at)gmail.com) Thanks!!

[jparicka]

Of course, the link http://alpha.beepl.com:8889

[booduh]

Only if I have 100x that amount saved. Do doctors have part time status?

[aurem1]

it is very unlikely that you will be able to successfully start something that is outside of your area of expertise and the opportunity cost of failure is quite high for you. Instead, I would recommend thinking about what tools and/or applications would help you a lot in what you are doing now and if you think you came up with a good idea, either try to mock it up yourself or look for a partner/co-founder who can create a working prototype for you, or just hire a contractor to do it. None of this requires quitting your job, just the opposite

[CobraKai]

Hi, thanks for your input. This is definitely one of my fears...there are a lot of very talented programmers who do this for a living, who're ahead of me in every respect. You're correct that I'm outside of my area of expertise - it's one of the things I'll need to address honestly before I do somethign like this.