[well size=”small”]
TL;DR: If you can learn to let go and be patient, part-time entrepreneurship might be a good avenue for executing your ideas. It has been for me.
[/well]
I love my ‘day job’. I mean it—I love it. It’s exciting and meaningful and fulfilling. Knowing everything I can possibly know right now, I fully intend to grow and execute in my current role and allow my responsibilities to evolve as it might best suit the company. I’m in a good place, and I’m grateful.
I do, however, own two companies and have one new product whose launch is imminent. All of them are profitable—the first two substantially so; I expect the new product to be as well.
I love those projects.
I don’t feel overworked or exhausted.
I don’t cheat and secretly use company time and resources from my ‘day job’ to support my projects.
I have zero plans to leave my existing job even if something goes viral or becomes too successful for me to handle in my spare time.
April, my wife, supports these ventures fully.
I almost never work at night, because that time belongs to April.
I work on these projects early in the mornings and the first part of Saturdays, usually.
This is not a cheesy, wow-how-do-you-do-it-all post. The way I handle things isn’t a boilerplate. Instead, I want to give some support to part-time entrepreneurship by encouraging those who are attempting it and suggesting that it’s worth considering to everyone else with a decent full-time job.
Bootstrapping and Seriousness
The VC-funded startup is just one of a variety of options for starting a business, but it’s definitely the one with the best marketing team.
More open dialogue is needed about part-time entrepreneurs as the most common response is that you aren’t serious if you aren’t full-time
Admittedly, the storyline of a VC-backed startup is far more interesting than one of slowly developing an idea over years. Why shouldn’t it be? It’s far riskier. It doesn’t matter whose risk it is—there’s so much at stake. As that risk grows into millions and billions of dollars and large teams of people, no one can blame the ‘tech media’ for covering a great story. I’m betting you read a bunch of those stories just like I do.
The thing is: I don’t find that attractive at all at this point in my life. And there seems to be a shortage of people actually saying, “I have nothing against going 100% in on a startup, I just don’t want to do things that way.” I don’t know exactly why there’s less discussion, but I’m not afraid to say it and you don’t have to be either. As Cameron points out, funding is often fuel for an experiment to test the potential market size of an idea as opposed to testing the potential of the idea itself.
I’ve used funding from one successful company (5+ years of consulting and WordPress development) to get the other projects started. When the time is right, I’ll ‘reimburse’ myself. You really don’t need a massive cash infusion if you temper your expectations and plans with patience.
My other profitable company is being worked on with a few other volunteers, essentially, who love the vision and want to give their time to it. How’ve we handled the money so far? Full transparency. The revenue stays in a central place and no one gets profit until the group agrees it’s a good time, and then we’ll discuss how that will work. We could never do that if we relied on it for income.
The Long Game
Speaking of things we could never do if we relied on income: part-time, bootstrapped entrepreneurship affords you the unique opportunity to be completely unyielding on vision. I’m not talking about being too prideful to take advice. I’m talking about moving confidently in the direction you want to go without compromising because you have to meet payroll this month or your child needs money to sign up for baseball. You’re able to avoid working with people just because they have money or influence—and, instead, choose based on vision alignment.
The trade-off is needing to have your wits about you, because you’ll likely be making lots of tiny ‘pivots’. They’re far less dramatic than they are when you’re funded, but your uncompromising vision can sometimes blind you to the need to change. You have to keep your finger on the pulse of the market/community you plan to serve. Otherwise, you can look up two years into your project and see someone already did it way better than you.
To give an example, one of my companies (a social community of music lovers) was covered in Mashable one month before Spotify was even available in the US. Spotify isn’t a competitor, but we now integrate them into our products. Things change quickly.
You also have to hold your idea with open hands. Having the patience to work on it over time also means it’s possible that someone could execute your idea before you can.
In this context, I believe the ideas are more important than the people who execute them, and I always have. If someone else executes on a great vision and solves pain points, good on ’em. I’ll reconsider what the best use of my time might be.
Value Partnerships and People
One of the best decisions we made with MusicGrid.me was partnering with Criminal Records. We spent a significant amount of cash (from one of my other companies) on getting a proper contract drawn up for a year-long partnership with no concrete solutions in mind. Why? Because we wanted to work together, but weren’t sure what it looked like, and we wanted to know our time together would be valuable and protected.
It’s like getting to work on product/market fit with your ideal customer with no competition.
It led to lots of conversation and a few proof-of-concepts. By being in the right relationship, we were able to discover a component of their business that we could quickly take on—without sacrificing any existing product vision—in a way that worked out for both parties. They’re saving a bunch of money, and we’re getting fairly compensated for it. We’d have never known about that opportunity had we not been in that partnership.
Beyond those types of relationships, it’s also important to to know yourself and how tied you are to “your” idea. If these companies or products were to grow to the point that people would need to be hired, one of two things would happen:
- I’d hire self-starting people who didn’t need much oversight, and pay them fairly, and hope revenue continues to grow.
- I’d hand the entire project over to a more capable person to grow the company.
In either case, I’d have to prioritize other peoples’ money over my own. You can’t ask people to take off with something and pay them poorly.
I think there’s a common idea that, since I thought of the idea, I should always get the lion’s share of the money. I think that’s a great way to cripple your idea. If you find great people, give them ownership, trust them, and be transparent. Protect yourself with a fair contract, negotiate fair compensation for your work, vision, and guidance, and then let it go.
Part-time entrepreneurship is a valid path for executing your ideas if you can be disciplined, patient, and open to involving others. You can’t be worried about people “stealing your ideas”. Share them, talk about them, work on them, and find like-minded people who identify with them.