I use a combination of Rescue Time, Asana and Harvest to track things. Probably overkill to use both Rescue Time and Harvest but I find that Rescue Time tracks some of things I don't when using Harvest(which I use for client reporting).
That's the risks of entrepreneurship. I come from an extremely entrepreneurially inclined family and I vividly remember having sheriffs of the court coming to knock on the door when I was growing. Its not all rosy when you are in the inside. I remember the kids at school were impressed by the big house and nice cars, we had 3 but only 2 driver, but there are other things that happen behind the scenes.
Not in the web world it doesn't have to be. It all comes back to the right way and the wrong way to start your business.
The wrong way is by taking out credit, quitting your day job prematurely, spending other people's money, leveraging your family's future, and jeopardizing your mental/emotional well being.
The right way is by creating a system that is robust; a job to pay the bills, allocating some amount of free time to working on the business, focusing on sustainability, refusal to take shortcuts, spending your own money (when it's needed) and not being in such a fricken hurry to get somewhere.
You do it properly by slowly gaining mastery in your business until when the time comes you've EARNED the right to quit your day job and go full time for yourself.
But hell, why would anyone want to do that? It hardly even makes for a good Hacker News story.
You reaply have no way of knowing this is how it happened for this guy. Id even hazard a guess and say he ran out of his savings cushion and then ran out of credit, cause like, thats what he said in the first 6 words.
I dont know what your trying to add to this conversation but its not helping anyone that reads these forums.
I think he's just saying that if you let your cash [commitments] get out in front of your business [income], you set yourself up for catastrophic failure. If you rented an office or bought a company car -- or took out a loan -- before you had good income, you made a risky move with consequences.
If you have a 9-to-5 and build up clients on the side to the point that you can eventually replace the regular salary, you win. You let the cash pull you into the business, not the business pull out all of your cash.
Honestly, I've had to sluff off clients on the side because I'd rather keep the "real" job for now. But if I was happy with $25-30k a year to start, I could've already made the move. Be patient, bide your time, don't let the cash get in front of your business, and wait until your business selects you. That's good advice.
When is this coming to tablets, Chris?