Paypal was already a mature product back then. Literally every major bank already offered custom-branded payment pages and an API to process credit card payments. Why would you bother to build Chargify to offer custom-branded payment pages and an API to process credit card payments?
Well, because Chargify is miles better than Paypal and banks. Maybe that guy next to me has a face-tweet-o-base idea that's miles better, too.
I find it hard to believe that everyone starting a side project is unhappy at work, I don't think the 2 are related. If you are unhappy at work you should leave.
I am all for doing stuff on the side so as not to get bored, to learn and 50 other things but then let's not call it a startup and a business. An entrepreneur takes calibrated risks and makes things happen when others can't or won't.
Not everyone has the option to leave. Very few actually have the luxury of leaving their jobs because they "don't like it". From the way you're talking, it seems like you either have a pile of money behind you, or a family with a pile of money as a safety net in case everything else fails.
People with real families and real responsibilities normally can't quit. Doesn't matter how much they want to.
Being unhappy at work can be one of the motivation. For certain there are many others (wish to learn something else, wish to become the next big entrepreneur, wish to go solo). Many people can't just leave what they have, and they have a skillset that may get them to create a business, but not the required resources / contacts. A side project may be one of the way to start.
Agree on your second point - it should be called a side project. It's a startup / business from the day it actually _does become_ a business.
An entrepreneur takes calibrated risks and makes things happen when others can't or won't.
Sounds exactly like the person who plows every cent of otherwise disposable income into a startup, while risking their employment by reserving a portion of their mental/creative energy for their own thing, instead of whatever shitty product their employer is churning out.
I find the converse hard to believe, why would someone who is happy at work create a side project (unless they are just a tinkerer or are scratching a personal itch)?
You just listed two reasons that arguably apply to most hackers. 90% of my career I have been happy at work, but I have always had multiple side projects going on as well.
You are missing the point, I am not saying you should raise money. I bootstrapped my company and am very proud of it.
It is hard to argue that spending 40+ hours in a week on something other than you startup shows you are committed to your startup. You are committed to making money and then working on your startup.
I have personally invested in many employee's startups but that does not change the fact that trying to do both is a distraction that does not serve you or your job.
I don't think "commitment" means what you think it does. I could not possibly be more committed to the startup I'm working on now... it's basically my life. If I were married, I'd be less committed to my wife than to this startup (which may be a reason I'm not married, now that I think about it).
But, realistically, I don't have the capital reserves to just quit, and work on it full-time, so that simply is not an option. No amount of philosophizing, or Monday morning quarterbacking or commentary from the peanut gallery can change that. But if anybody thinks I'm not committed to this, I have two words for them...
I am not saying you should raise money. I bootstrapped my company and am very proud of it.
And if you aren't sitting on a big pile of capital already, you have two choices: Go out and raise a round, or fund via your salary. And going out and raising money has a lot of disadvantages, not the least of which is that every minute you spend chasing investors is a minute you're not working on the product, talking to customers, doing market research, writing marketing content, looking for partners and affiliates, or any of a zillion other things you could be doing to advance your cause.
It is hard to argue that spending 40+ hours in a week on something other than you startup shows you are committed to your startup. You are committed to making money and then working on your startup.
First of all, I don't need to "show" anybody that I'm committed to my startup. All this back and forth banter is amusing, but in the end, the only opinions that matter are those of myself and my cofounder, and the people we are selling to.
And who are you to tell somebody else what they are committed to? Fuck that... I'm committed to paying my rent, and putting food on the table, just because those are prerequisites to everything else. Beyond that, my dayjob salary is just seed funding for the startup.
I do not see my side project as a distraction from my day job (it only distracts me from my other, non-commercial side projects).
Stuff I learn at work is often applicable in my side project as well - and vice versa. I can re-use the code (as most of the work-code is open source) and use the project as a testing / learning opportunity for things I may use at work.
The things which do reduce my motivation is the projects legal side (having signed a disadvantageous contract...) and not knowing if there really is a market for the kind of application I write ("$megaCorp can do this probably sooo much better.").
"spending 40+ hours in a week on something other than you startup"
What does this mean, exactly? Yes I know in context it means your capital raising strategy primarily involves going to work on a regular basis, which possibly is a local maxima for at least some unusual situations, but it reads just as well for "sleep", "personal grooming", "recreation and relaxation", "social relationships", "raising children", "elder care", "athletic / exercise activities".
I'm just saying if you want to guilt trip people for raising capital by having a job, you need to do that very specifically, a extremely generic guilt trip about spending time being modern civilized humans in a generic sense with having a job being a tiny subset of the possibilities of being a modern civilized human, is likely to be relatively ineffective.
Kauffman foundation is a conservative group (certainly not as much as, say, Chamber of Commerce, but it's right-leaning), so they will cherry-pick the data points that advance their policy recommendations
You might be right, but critique like "does not match actual real life experience" is cheap and might as well be "doesn't conform to my selection bias". From doing my own comparison it seems clear that in companies with big exits, a high level of education is very common. This doesn't necessarily mean that a high level of education is better for making large companies, but does challenge the picture of the entrepreneur as a dandelion child.
Sounds like a nice idea but just not impressed with the site. Also there are not examples of work. If I am going to pay someone to make my presentation pretty I want some examples of past work.
I am involved in Deck Foundry (http://deckfoundry.com) and we make amazing investor decks. The site looks nice and we have examples of work.
http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-best-inv...
https://www.betterment.com/
https://www.adviceperiod.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street-ebook/dp/...
http://www.transparentinvesting.com/uploads/wholestory.pdf