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by burlesona 2057 days ago
I did startup school's first cohort, and I would say it's equally useful for bootstrappers and VC-minded founders. What it is NOT useful for is side projects.

I think nurturing a side project into a full-time business is a whole different skill that's actually quite difficult and requires even more luck than bootstrapping or VC-startuping.
1 comments
will_pseudonym 2057 days ago
What makes you say that they're different skills? Or, why do you view them differently? I'd love to read more about this distinction.
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burlesona 2057 days ago
A side hustle is just fundamentally different than a full-time job. On the one hand, something else is paying the bills, so you can be patient. But on the other hand, you can't take meetings 9-5, or push nearly as hard on the work as you could if it was full time, so you have to be patient.

It's quite difficult to work on something enough on the side to build momentum and get it rolling, and it's extra hard to maintain that momentum for long enough for it to reach "escape velocity," that is, to become profitable to where you can quit your day job.

So the challenge of managing the two jobs, and specifically transitioning from day job + hobby (at the beginning), to two jobs but one doesn't really pay well, to finally quitting the first job so you can focus on the bootstrapped project...

That's just a whole different beast from somebody who quits their job and starts a business (with or without raising money).

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NetOpWibby 2056 days ago
The momentum part is key. I have several side hustles and sometimes lose steam so I work on something else.

On the plus side, time away from projects allows me to view them with fresh eyes and identify what could be better and/or pivot.

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ngokevin 2057 days ago
I feel side projects is something you do for fun or on a whim. You just start building immediately on your off-time with not much expectations. Maybe to try out a new technology. It's more of a solo engineering activity. You build it first, and maybe down the line, something comes of it and you do a Show HN in six months.

A business is more broad and deliberate. From the get-go, you need to constantly be talking to many people, have a process for validating the problem, track metrics, plan your time, think about opportunity costs of pursuing different paths, have sales funnels, marketing, scope things out, etc.

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