Ask HN: How many of you built a profitable startup while having a day job?

I have two profitable SaaS products that were built while I was theoretically working full time on something else. I was a bit fortunate that my "something else" was Consulting, which you can ramp down by exactly as many hours per week as you'd like to devote to your side project.<p>The thing is, if you use the term "Startup" here to describe anything other than a zero-profit 80hr/week scramble for VC funding and eventual acquisition, you're going to get people popping up and claiming that what you're doing is not startuppy enough to count. So for the benefit of that crowd, you might want to rephrase your question in terms of building a product that brings in enough revenue to quit your job.<p>If that's what you want to build, then yes. It's absolutely possible, and there are dozens of people here who have done so.

I built review site ten years ago and sold it.<p>It was profitable within 6 months off organic traffic and lead gen. Approximate revenue by year: $10k, 40k, 70k, 100k, 150k, 250k, 500k, 750k, 1.5M, 2.5M.<p>Built entirely while working for another startup (unrelated), first 3 years I was in graduate school, year 4 I was a product manager for another startup. Year 5 I finally took the leap to run it full-time.<p>I was the sole owner, never had more than 7 employees, and I sold it for a bit over $10M (ttm revenue was around $700k at the time).<p>Leading up to launch, I typically worked 10-7 at my day job, then wrote my code from 8p-1a M-F (20 hrs) and all day on the weekends (20 hrs), so 40 hrs per week. During school, my wife handled the sales part-time (16 hrs/wk), and I probably spent 8 hrs a week on it fixing bugs, implementing ad deals etc. In Year 4, I spent ~16 hrs a week on it outside of my day job (misc. tech upkeep, link building, PR, etc.).<p>It's definitely doable, but your SO needs to be on-board because you'll be taking the time away from them. Or do it before you have a SO to worry about.

I started StyleFeeder in January, 2005, built it into a profitable company of 8 people and sold it to Time Inc in January 2010.<p>From January, 2005 through May, 2006, I worked on StyleFeeder on the side - while I had a pretty demanding day job, mind you - as I built up the basic business... until I had invested so much time and effort into it that I was maxed out and needed to find a way to work on it full time with the help of others.<p>I don't see any plausible way that I could have made it into anything significant while at the same time working a day job. I think some people can do it with some businesses, but I think it would have been impossible in my case.<p>But the bootstrapping phase, yes, I think you can do that while working a day job. That's very common.<p>More details here:<p><a href="http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2011/08/05/stylefeeder-history/" rel="nofollow">http://www.whirlycott.com/phil/2011/08/05/stylefeeder-histor...</a>

I found it incredibly difficult to provide the value I'd expect out of an employee at a "day job" while building my business on the side. Ultimately, I took a different route. Note that this plan works best for young, single folks. This is also not a "get rich quick" scheme. Positioning myself took about three years on its own, much less getting going on a start-up. Keep in mind that this was my plan. It is not the only (or best) plan, but it worked for me.<p>* Position yourself for minimum cash outflow. Minimizing your cash needs means you can take bigger risks. I found a decent 500 sq ft apartment and drove a cheap car. Without a family, all my other expenses were dirt cheap.<p>* Save up a three month buffer and strike out on your own gig, but not your start-up yet. I chose consulting because the income potential is so high and it provided a great networking opportunity. I doubled my annual income (from my old salary) within a year, but far more importantly, I was able to accomplish a few transitional steps in getting my start-up going:<p>- I built a relationship with a great developer by feeding him work from consulting clients.<p>- I built relationships with other business owners and took a lot of time to understand their business.<p>- Ultimately, I met the person who would connect me with the greatest team I've ever worked with.<p>By the time I found the right team and opportunity, I had a year's worth of expenses saved up, and a small amount of money to contribute to the operational expenses of the company. Coming to the table with cash in-hand gained me a lot of respect from other team members. Because everyone came to the table with their own income streams, we were able to bootstrap and now, 100% of our equity is founder owned. That's a pretty exciting reality for us.

Yes. For 4 years now...2 hrs in the morning 2-4 hrs at night + bigger chunks on the weekends.<p>When I look at my day job I only ever get 4 hrs of real work done anyway...with wasted time for meetings, bureaucracy, and being blocked by others. So even though I'm at work for 8+ hours, on my free time, I'm able to work on a similar sized project putting in less hours because there is usually no waste in that time. I've also got 2 kids and train 4 times a week at the gym or jiu jitsu. It can be done!<p>After reading a few more comments I want to add something. Work hard at your day job, do your best work, and make them dependent on you. Here is why...if you ever come in late, or leave early because there is a crisis on you side project your employer usually won't care. Your the superstar so that's expected. However, you've got to keep your day job really, really happy to walk this fine line between pursuing your own interests and meeting the needs of your day job. Plus when you have a successful side project (that maybe can't support you just yet) and you're out job hunting people will see you as a golden ticket, a diamond in the rough. Usually when I interview people I often ask what they're working on on the side. That indicates to me this person has drive and determination.

I built Visual Website Optimizer during weekends and during evenings after work (while I was working full time at another day job). Initial prototypes and first beta version took about 6-8 months. Beta remained for about 4 months, had thousands of beta users by then, quit my day job, polished beta for 2 more months and then launched paid plans. Today we are a team of 8 people (and hiring more) and many happy customers.<p>To be honest, I think the time constraints posed by day job (you got only 2-3 hours of working on your startup) really made you focus on important stuff (such as working on user feedback and iterating). Plus, the comfort of having a salary provided let you invest in site design, marketing, AdWords, etc. without having you unnecessarily worry about "funding" or borrowing from parents/friends.

I'm not sure if they are considered startups per say, but I've started two profitable companies while working a day job (to the point where I could quit my day job!) <a href="http://www.AUsedCar.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.AUsedCar.com</a> and <a href="http://www.BudgetSimple.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.BudgetSimple.com</a> . I should say I also created a failed startup during that time. The biggest difference between the successes and the failure were that the successes did not require me to answer phone calls, make sales etc... In other words, completely passive income businesses are the easiest to do with a day job.

I wanted to do this so jumped in and read the comments to this post to try to get some ideas on how to do this. They made me a bit depressed: Most people achieved this while working as a consultant (i.e. flexible hours, etc.), not as a big company employee, like me. Also from what I gather, many data points come from young people, unencumbered with a family life and kid(s).<p>So, my more specific question is: Has anybody done this while picking up your kid from daycare at 5pm, having family business until 8:30pm <i>and</i> working at a day job. Id this impossible?<p>I think the viable alternatives in this case are trying to earn money from blogs and mobile apps.

I started doing affiliate marketing and building websites on the side for about two years before handing my notice. I could have quit after few months where my revenues from the side job exceeded what I had in my day job as a software developer. Nevertheless it took about 2 years because I was scared, I should have quit much sooner. Now 4 years later we are doing 7-figures a year.<p>I think its the best way to start a company because you are only risking sweat-equity. The danger is that your day job holds you from growing your startup more.

In the last couple of years I have built up Deal Drop (<a href="http://www.getdealdrop.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.getdealdrop.com</a>) to be $3,000/month in revenue as an antidote to the abusive relationship with my day job while helping raise my daughter of the same age. I hoped by now that I could quit and work full time on the side project but I settled for a less abusive day job instead.<p>This week I took a trip to the ER in an ambulance because I had a seizure at my new day job after one too many late nights working on the side project.<p>Be careful and know your limits better than I do.

It took me 10 years of working on a few apps on the side, but today they are a $600K/year business and my full time job. Not the shoot-for-the-moon social apps everyone wants to do, but I'm quite happy.

I did. My iPad app was at $19,000 in profit before I quit my job to focus on it. The details are here:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238834" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238834</a>

I started <a href="http://www.justunfollow.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.justunfollow.com</a> as a way to learn Google Appengine. Sent a tip to TechCrunch, @arrington seemed to like it and profiled it. It started making profits but I did not quit. I finally had to quit after about 1 year of this product going live because it started making me more money in 2 months than my day job was paying me for an entire year!<p>I quit my job around 9 months ago. Finding too much of time on hand I subsequently started work on a new app, got my friend to join me and we got into Start-up Chile. It's been a great journey but I'm so glad that I did not quit the moment we were profitable. It has taught me the most important thing you need to learn while starting up, being efficient.<p>I always suggest everyone who has a product to not quit until it is virtually impossible to keep up with a day job. You then become a time management champ and know how to do more with less :)

I built an online payroll service for Canadian families who hire staff like nannies or home care workers, or small businesses that wanted a very simple payroll solution. At the same time I had a day job.<p>I wasn't raking in money but I had customers and my revenues exceeded my small expenses.<p>Over the summer I sold the company and went to work for the acquiring company. In retrospect, this was probably the best move for me (I had considered taking investment to move to it full time.)<p>Like one of the answers above, I don't think I could have grown the business significantly without spending more time on it, and for me (day job, 3 young kids) this was the only way I could have done it.

I have built Pluggio.com that has $3500/month profit on the side. It's been built in approx. 2 hours a day during the past two years.

I've been running side businesses while having dayjobs most of my working life. One of those side projects, my xen vps hosting company, is now my dayjob. Of course, you might not call it a startup; I'm not really looking to sell (I mean, I would if someone wanted to give me a 10x revenue valuation or something silly like that, but I doubt that will happen.) and it's north of six years old, but revenue is doubling every year or so, and it pays my rent and covers another full-time employee (plus contractors)<p>Having a well-paying dayjob changes things. You will want to hire your first employee long before you would if you were working full-time at the startup. You will want to spend money rather than do work more often than you would otherwise. Assuming you have a high paying dayjob and you are willing to live cheap, your runway is now measured only in terms of your motivation.<p>Note, you will not be performing 100% at the dayjob. I got asked to choose between the dayjob and my business only once, though, and that was near the beginning, before I really learned to compartmentalize, and when I was most focused on my business.<p>My style of work is and always has been very burst-y, which works out well. When I wasn't that focused on the business, I'd get a regular dayjob and top off my COBRA and rent money. When I was focused on the business, I'd either focus on the business completely or work contract gigs for extra money. It's interesting; if you contract through a body shop for non-expert work? (e.g. if they rent you out as a normal programmer/sysadmin?) it pays only slightly better than doing the same job as a direct employee (sometimes a little worse if the benefits for the direct employee are good) but the expectations for your work are much lower. I mean, think about it; if they are paying about the same for a contract as for a full-time with benefits job, do you think they are going to get good people? The lowered expectations along with the ability to spend pre-tax dollars on company equipment made that a pretty good deal for me.<p>Especially during the money-losing phase (and this /will/ be longer than it would have been if you were full time.) the taxes are complex and can make a huge difference. get a good accountant, and listen to him or her. Small bullshit changes can make the difference between spending pre tax money buying servers and spending post-tax money on those servers.

My technical blogs, while not technically a startup, do have the habit of making me mid-four figures per month with very few hours per month investment.

I have built, launched, and run Swappa <a href="http://swappa.com" rel="nofollow">http://swappa.com</a> while having a day job. Revenues won't support me quitting yet (or anytime soon), but Swappa is profitable.

I'm doing that right now. My startup is selling you, your kids and the girl next door. Heck, I can even sell your grandmother!<p>Advertising agency's (my day job) can rent them for a fixed price. Royalties included.<p>(I'm not spamming. You're not my targets and only Dutch people can read it anyway). But have a look at the several hundred people that signed up if you're interested: <a href="http://royaltyfreemodels.nl/zoeken/page:11" rel="nofollow">http://royaltyfreemodels.nl/zoeken/page:11</a><p>(It's run on CakePHP for the interested).

I started working on a bug tracker (who hasn't at some point, right? :)) because we were using Bugzilla at work and I absolutely hated it and didn't think it fit with our workflow at all.<p>About a year later I brought it to the team and we decided to switch to it. A few months of light iteration and polish after that and we launched it as it's own product (<a href="https://bugrocket.com" rel="nofollow">https://bugrocket.com</a>) for $20/month.<p>Pretty happy with how it's going, too. It hasn't really interfered with the 'day job' at all besides the occasional email to answer or tweet to reply to. We have really flexible hours here so I shift my day around sometimes to accomodate both projects. Totally do-able.<p><i>edit</i>: Seems there is some interest in the 'family situation' of these success stories. I'm married (with kittens, no kids) and it generally hasn't been too difficult to keep a balance. It's helped me a lot having some people working with me (especially on non-technical bits), and not just alone as a single founder. It's hard to say how much time I actually put in because it's kind of a 'here and there' whenever there's the opportunity kind of thing. I'd probably estimate 3-5 hours during the week and then either a lot (8+ hours) or nothing on the weekends, depending on else is happening.

I do this now.<p>I was doing client work, and to be frank, got tired of working from home and dealing with low-grade clients all day. So instead of worrying about finding better clients, I took a day job to support myself and my family (wife and kids) while I worked on side projects with my co-founder.<p>To date, we've built a fun iOS game, Santa Strike, a crowdfunding plugin for WordPress, IgnitionDeck, and a few yet to be launched iOS apps, among other simple software utilities like Iconswitch.me and GameDesignTemplate.com<p>I drive to and from work an hour a day, which kills me, but we're very close to being profitable enough so I can quit my day job.<p>We're not zillionaires yet, but I do think it's possible to do what you're asking. However, it's very very difficult, especially when you have a spouse and/or kids.<p>I work on my stuff from 7-8 am, drive to work, try to fend off the thought of being an unproductive employee so I don't get fired (I'm actually the only developer they have, and I'm in a very good position because my predecessors set the bar so very low), but do spend some time at work handling side-project stuff, get home at 6:30, hang out, work more, go to bed, rinse, repeat.<p>My wife is stressed because my mind is elsewhere, but she understands. We spend time on the weekends going out and doing family stuff, but not as much as we'd like.<p>When we ship new versions of software, I field customer inquiries and complaints on the go, which isn't ideal, but is what it is.<p>In other words, I have very little personal time, it's very stressful for the entire family, and it's a lot of hard work over a long period of time. It's not for the faint of heart.

I co-founded Submedia in 1999 while finishing my PhD in physics at Columbia. By then the other we worked on the project three years developing the technology, writing patents and business plans, etc.<p>I defended my thesis around that time too.<p>I consider conserving cash fundamental. The stipend for a PhD candidate was under $30k/year for living in Manhattan. I wasn't in subsidized housing and had no savings or other source of income.

I have a start up in the black since 2006. All three partners contribute to the code, help debug, and provide customer support. All of us work at other jobs, or independently.<p>Currently we use profits to pay anyone willing to work on the code and add features. It is self-sustaining, at least.<p>See: <a href="http://www.examprofessor.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.examprofessor.com</a><p>Comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome.

I started InkedPlaymats.com a month ago. I work full time as a purchasing manager, have 3 kids under the age of 5, and take online courses full time. I am way over my head and sleeping 4 hours a night, but I am making it work. I am getting a 4.0 and just after a month open my business is starting to boom. I get up early and make breakfast and get orders ready to ship. I spend my lunch break shipping items and answering emails. I come home from work and spend 2 hours having dinner and playing with the kids. I then spend the next few hours doing schoolwork and printing out mats. My wife supports this knowing I am in a growing period. School ends this week, so I am looking forward to that. Anyways, I think it can be done, but is not ideal. And your family has to support you 100% of you will be lost.

I spent nearly a year building a SaaS application for Oil and Gas companies here in Calgary. My partner had the idea after he got tired of phoning/emailing/talking to every contact in his book in order to find partners/buyers in land deals.<p>So after a year of weekends and evenings, my partner started to pound the pavement. We were profitable in our very first year after launch, and continue to be. Our biggest expense is advertising, which is very targeted. I think about 80-85% of our pre-tax revenue ends up being profit, which is great.<p>I still have my day job, and for the 30 hours/week between us that we still put in, we've been _very_ successful.

There was a similar discussion (on side-projects) on HN a while back - Perhaps it will help the discussion?<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2795760" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2795760</a>

I and 2 cofounders are near to launching our iphone app and we have our daily job.<p>I'm the backend and frontend developer(rest-full api needed for our iphone app), the other two are the creative guys, and I've to admit that it has been hard to think, design, and do a product in a spare time(especially if you have a wife and a child).<p>And there are other aspects of the launching such as the site, the company to found and many things that require a lot of time.<p>I hope the app and the business I want to build around succeded so I will quit my current profitable job.

I built Femtoo.com in my 'spare' time. It was built whilst working at a day job over the course of a year or so.<p>It brings in a small amount of money each month and it pretty much requires no maintenance. However I would not say that it is profitable (yet), there is a fair way to go before it brings in enough money to have justified the time.<p>I would spend more time implementing new features if I thought it would result in a significant increase in paying users.<p>...not sure what to do with it now really!?!? Suggestions welcome!!!

I think this depends entirely on the nature of the startup.<p>If your startup requires consistently high turnover for new features, then it's going to occupy easily 40 hours per week on just that project.<p>However, if what you build doesn't need to be updated for months at a time (like some mobile apps or other software) you can probably get away with doing this. An entire company? I don't think so. A particular type of website, or app? Sure, if all you're doing consistently is maintenance.

Geez, you all inspire me so much. I'm trying to do the same and have switched to smaller and smaller side projects so I could get SOMETHING out there. Currently I've been distracted by time with friends/family/SO/and the current barrage of amazing fall video games all which pushed my project to the point of is it even possible?<p>Apparently I'm the only thing in the way. Thanks for the inspiration everyone! You guys are all amazing.

I built an online news service in 2002/2003 with zero coding knowledge, $100, and a bootleg version of Adobe Illustrator.<p>I put every spare moment I had into it, skipping lunches and dinners and sleep (though I never skipped church) all for the sake of keeping it lean before keeping it lean was cool.<p>5 years later I sold it for a paltry sum, mainly because I didn't add enough people fast enough.

I started a Ruby on Rails consulting business with another dev while at my day job, I was an aerospace engineer. His day job was freelance Rails consulting.<p>After 2.5 months of 80 hour weeks, we quit our day jobs and went full time with the consulting business: Bendyworks. Now, almost 3 years into the biz, we're at 10 people and having a freaking blast.

I have a (barely) profitable SaaS app that I wrote while having a full time job. The advantage I have is that my day job is teaching, which gives me chunks of time off during the summer and winter. I think that if I had a job coding all day, the last thing I'd want to do is come home and do more coding.

I built a service for monitoring SSL certificates (<a href="https://www.certician.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.certician.com/</a>) in my free time, although it's not yet profitable. I'm hoping it will be someday soon.<p>The feeling when a new customer from across the country signs up is a pretty good one!

School and part-time student programming work took up 40-60 hours a week, and I put in another 20 on our business on top of that. Got barely ramen profitable by graduation, which let me keep from getting a job for 8 months while it ramped up enough to start actually supporting me.

I've achieved this in school if that counts. GetDealy which runs flash sales for designers and geeks has 35,000+ users and 2.3 million credits earned, which is our rewards system.<p><a href="http://getdealy.com" rel="nofollow">http://getdealy.com</a>

I'm actually working on a startup while in school (not technically a day job, but similar). I think my idea has a ton of potential in the market I'm aiming for, so I've been working on it for almost a year now.

I started Poker Copilot mostly while doing full-time consulting. I was able to scale down my consulting work gradually as Poker Copilot sales increased, until after 15 months it became my main income source.

I have built Iconfinder into a profitable service while having a day and studying at business school.<p>I still do some work next to the startup, but it is basically paying for servers etc. plus a salary for me.

Doing a startup is 90% waiting, and 10% doing. It's perfectly possible to do one on the weekend.<p>Especially since coding is a tiny iota of actually doing one, most of it boils down to marketing anyways

My partner and I started return7 with $800 (mostly design, Apple dev fee, etc.) in 2008 when the App Store opened up. BillMinder, our main app, is profitable.

i have built a startup on the side while working full time still. due to the fact that we are 3 partners, the money is not enough to quit my day job but it's getting there. we have grown from $0 to $200K in 2 and a half years while all 3 of us do this part time. i did all the development and sysadmin work and the other partners took care of the marketing and business side of things.

I'm curious to know what the typical day of a person in this setting is like? As in, what were ones' day-job hours and hours for project work?

What do you mean by built? I ask because some people have noncompete or other contractual obligations that prevent launching a startup.

I started www.pokertablestats.com while working in day job and now i'm working on 2 other startup's after work hours.

I just put in my two weeks to pursue LayerVault full time. It's all up and to the right from here.

I did this with a collaborator, and intend to do it again soon. The way of the future...

If you are building something on the side in which cases your day job company owns it?

Ask me again in 6-8 months. We haven't launched yet. Both me and my co-founder have day jobs.

I started a couple of profitable small businesses while working a ton of hours management consulting, including a headphone website where I used all my vacation to travel to China to get my products manufactured cheaper. I was hoping to do a few things on the side until it made sense to quit my day job, but I found it never made sense to quit my day job.<p>More incredibly to me is FeeFighters (<a href="http://feefighters.com" rel="nofollow">http://feefighters.com</a>) CEO Sean was<p>1) Raising a VC round<p>2) Having his first kid<p>and 3) Working full-time at BCG<p>All at the same time (May 2010) Any one of those are enough to make you go crazy, but he managed all 3. (note: FeeFighters is not profitable)<p>He also previously started <a href="http://tss-radio.com" rel="nofollow">http://tss-radio.com</a> and bootstrapped it to a spot on the inc 500 list, all on the side while working at a VC firm (Longworth) and then while at BCG (management consulting).

<i>raises hand</i><p>My current company started out as a side project. I decided to make it a fulltime project after about three years. We are quite profitable.<p>Today, we operate a few "premium" domain name businesses, but we started with a rather obscure one, and did well enough to purchase more properties from cash flow.

It can work, but you can easily burn yourself out.<p>Rather than working 8-10 hours on your startup and having some free time. You work 8 hours and spend all of your free time on your startup.<p>I prefer getting some capital saved and then quitting your day job.

What's the point of this question? There are people who did that and that's possible. patio11 is one example and I must say very good one.<p>I am example of person who has not managed to do that in 3 years but I have learned a lot and my trial contributed to my well-being in many positive ways. Some of those are like salary growing faster than planned and some are small but pleasant things like Nokia N950.

You mean "profitable side-project"?<p>"Startup" usually means a <i>company</i> that fulfills a few of the below:<p><pre><code> - something the founders do full-time - less than 3 years old - in a bootstrap phase or burning VC money - in search of a business model (not yet profitable) - has the potential to grow</code></pre>