Ask HN: How do you leave hobby mode and enter business mode, for a side project?
Like many of you, I seek refuge in my programming side-projects by treating them as hobbies. I pursue projects and learn things that have no relevance to my specific day job. I spend weeks exploring rabbit holes because, well, it's fun. I am under no pressures in my hobbies.
One of my programming hobby projects has become a joint venture with a friend, and now we're getting serious about turning it into a business. What started out as a way for me to try out some new frameworks and tools I've wanted to experiment with, is now on the cusp of being the IP for a registered business. We want to start paying contractors to do more coding work (I have barely any time, but will continue to oversee and guide the higher vision while someone does more of the coding). We want to also be able to accept money from people in exchange for licenses.
The thing is...this all seems like a pipe dream still, even though it's becoming very real. I still retain those hobbyist tendencies with this project. I spend hours tweaking things just so, spending times staring at the trees and forgetting about the forest. I know I need to step back and get this project done, but I'm having trouble taking that final step back (likely for good, once we hire someone else).
Does this make sense? Am I overthinking things? Does anyone have words of advice?
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* Put everithing in written. It ensures that everyone understood the same thing and you or your frinend will not post here in 2 years about a big fight. "cuentas claras mantienen la amistad" (clear accounts preserve friendships) I'm not sure the best tranlation https://www.google.com/search?q=cuentas+claras+mantienen+la+amistad+translation+in+english&lr=lang_en (Did you said 50% and 50% or it was proportionel to the time in the office? Did it included the previous years? No salary means more equity? Who paid for the new server? ...)
* 4 years vesting with 1 year cliff: How long have you been working in this? How long has ypur friend been working? Full time? Part time? Only a weekly free Zoom of 40 minutes?
* Who will make the angry calls to the contractors?
You’re making a good observation that there is a very big difference between a project and a product.
Converting a project to a product is incredibly hard.
Especially if you have not first verified if anyone has the problem that the project is solving.
What is the problem you’re solving?
Have strangers confirmed they have this problem badly enough to pay you?
If you are not solving a problem for strangers that they will pay for, it’s not a business.
In such cases releasing less but well done is important to get feedback instead of building a solution looking for a problem.
Get it into the real world, your thinking doesn’t matter, only customers.
This isn't an uncommon scenario. My advice would be that you find a way to get some compensation, preferably in stock, for what you have developed while retaining only an advisory or part-time role so you can continue to tinker and work on what you love without creating pressure upon yourself to now co-run and develop a startup. That way you get some upside if it works out and you can participate and contribute but you're not responsible for its success or failure.
for me, start releasing whatever shitty version you have, get it onto the hands of users, and get real feedback from users, which will let you prioritize correctly relativr to the money coming in, instead of doing unlimited tweaks.
also, startupschool.org covers lots of info about these stuff.
Just think about how to get rich and do things that lead to that