Ask HN: Are you an entrepreneur or just like to build things?
During the last years I've been developing web sites as a hobby, I really enjoy doing the development, improving performance, and always looking for new ideas to build. But I don't feel like an entrepreneur, I'm still working for a company and basically don't want to leave as I prefer to build sites as a hobby without the pressure to making them profitable.
Is any of you in the same situation?
Comments
Respectfully, I think this is a false choice. A rephrasing:
"Are you a developer or just like to write code? During the last few years I've been making functions. I really like writing the code and choosing good sets of functions but I don't really feel like a developer. I don't want to make the jump because I like writing code without the pressure of making those functions into an actual application."
To explain:
If you're doing side projects, you are an entrepreneur. You might not be a very good one (yet), but an entrepreneur is just someone who takes risks for an uncertain payoff. The risk in this case is your time, and the uncertainty is that a project might take off.
It is worth realising that the difference between "someone who builds things" and an entrepreneur is largely about focus. Why are you making these things? If you're building them in the hope that people will use them, then you should think about users. How might they find your thing and what would they like about it? If you're making things in the hope that they might make money, then you owe it to yourself to learn a bit about why people pay for things and keep it in mind. If you hope to work with others, then any effort you put into meeting people and figuring out if you should work with them is well spent.
I don't want to discount here the possibility that you genuinely don't want your projects to get users or make money. If you're building things just to learn and would be mortified if they got into the hands of real people, this probably doesn't apply to you, but I suspect that's not the case.
Otherwise, it's merely a question of how much are you doing to make your hope (project takes off) into a reality?
It doesn't have to be scary. Admitting that you're an entrepreneur doesn't mean you have to quit your job tomorrow. Many entrepreneurs wait before jumping ship, because they want to take a calculated risk. Nothing wrong with that. The point is that if you're starting side projects and you hope they succeed, you're doing entrepreneurial things. There's no harm in accepting that and learning how to do it better.
> If you're doing side projects, you are an entrepreneur.
I disagree. If you rely on your day job for income, you're not an entrepreneur.
But, that's not all. You could quit your job and do your own business, and still be quite different from what an entrepreneur is.
I'm personally not in it for the "getting rich" stuff. I'd rather take the 37signal approach than PG's approach. Meaning, I'd rather not take any venture or angel investment. I don't plan to sell (aka exit). In fact I'm quite scared by the prospect of taking large sums of outside investments (like twitter and facebook).
So, I'm not an entrepreneur and I don't want to be one.
> The point is that if you're starting side projects and you hope they succeed, you're doing entrepreneurial things.
This, I agree with. It's somewhat entrepreneurial to quit your job and try to pursue your own projects.
I think the difference comes down to why you'd do it. My impression of entrepreneur types is that they get a kick of taking risks.
I agree with everything here. Another rephrasing could have been: "Are you a founder or non-founder?" It depends on the original context of OP's question.
I'm a hacker who has a small hope that maybe something I do will help others and make me a little money on the side.
Short Answer: Yes.
I am in a similar situation.
I started working full time after completing undergrad a year ago, and am working on side projects more to learn than for entrepreneurship. They have been a great low cost way to continue my undergraduate math + cs education.
I certainly wouldn't mind if a project really took off and allowed me to work on it full time, but I understand that I would have to make a significant commitment (time + money) to really have any of them gain traction. Just look at http://signal.am . It is absolutely begging for someone with more UI/UX skill than I personally have -- but it has been priceless in advancing my personal skill set (outside UI/UX).
I don't have any UX training (Econ major, myself), but I recommend making bigger stories take up more space, like TechMeme does. I do like how you de-emphasized related stories, because they make TechMeme kind of noisy. I also miss the pictures TechMeme puts next to most stories. In general, it is a little bland, as you seem to realize. Then again, HN is bland and I don't have a problem with it.
The story ranking and discovery is good, though. Seems on par with TechMeme, which is impressive.
I found it with a Facebook ad. Are you advertising it a little just to see if it takes off, or what?
Anyways, good job and good luck.
In the past I've simply built fun things. A few have even been pretty popular (front page of digg for one (back when that meant something), and one of my OSS projects was used by mozilla and apple, which was neat). Others, like steganography in PHP[1], were simply random ideas I built for a laugh.
Now I'm trying to move into building things that have a market, and keeping the 'cool but useless' or 'cool but not profitable' stuff to a minimum, or for blog-fodder.
[1] - http://www.puremango.co.uk/2005/03/steganography_112/
At the moment I just like to build things. If I'm lucky and keep it up, hopefully there might be some opportunities in the future to do more with it.
carlos interested in talking on side jobs? I'm into the business side of things, maybe we should talk?