Slashdot Mirror
Starting a Home-Based Software Company?
deanj asks: "I'd like to start a new software business, as I'm sure many Slashdot readers would. I'd like to be able to run the company out of my home, at least until I can afford to move into an office in commercial area. A major roadblock to starting a home business are zoning restrictions, set by both home-owners associations and by the town you live in. So, I'd like to Ask Slashdot: What were your experiences with getting your company zoned properly and started? What did you have to do? What other tips do you have for someone starting their own home-based software business?"
*ducks*
Don't tell your clients you just learned how to do this on Slashdot forums.
Holy shit, porn really is the answer to anything!
do like everyone else... fuck the zoning restrictions, start up the company and launder the money.
i have this cousin who used to be a crack head, he can help you.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I get bombarded with email from people who want to help me work from home. Perhaps I should forward them to you?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
What other tips do you have for someone starting their own home-based software business?
1. Build time machine.
2. Go back to 1999.
3. Start your company.
4. Profit!
Other than that I have no idea, the economy being what it is. Or perhaps being what it isn't.
PS. Trolls complaining about the lack of a "???" step: you may safely substitute that for the first three if so inclined.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
What about all those pizza deliveries, around the clock?
Next on ask slashdot:
Show us your cool new dwelling modifications...
Like the Type R Toilet!!!
Take pictures and make notes and make a tarball ouf of them and don't forget to include the GPL a few hundred times and start project 'flyingpony' on sourceforge if that name hasn't already been taken by a Qt python XML extension to make emacs compatible with NetBEUI over a covert channel of steganography within ogg vorbis files.
You use a septic tank for your pool!?!
That is all.
There is ALWAYS some idiot conversing on the telephone who is convinced he needs to yell for long distance phone calls.
They preferred to be called "salespeople" rather than "idiots".I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
But what if they refuse to pay?
Advice: on VPS providers
could someone with a putz to english dictionary tell me what this dork said?
... to bulldoze his residential into a industrial. Thanks to SimCity, everyone knows about zoning.
you've slashdotted your baby!
At my uni, not all, but most of the non-math CS exams are open book, the usual reasoning being that in the real world you can look it up. However, the exams are usually written such that if you do have to look it up for more than one or 2 questions, you'll never finish.
Heck, for one of my classes it was even open internet, with the restriction you couldn't chat or email someone who was in the class.
However for the math classes, they were massively rote memorization, which is why I chopped up a TI89 to fit in a "dumb" calculator case.
yes, that's bad, but when all your math profs have double PHDs and can't explain what their research is until you get a masters in math, they tend to write insanely hard tests because it's been so long since they did "simple math". I had one prof who had to reinvent calculus from first principles about every other week because he "forgot how to do it the hard way", read: without a computer. Of course, on the other hand, he could probably used as a replacement 3d card if you shoved some wires in his ears:)
I ran a business out of my house for several months, but decided it had to end when the police were taking a suspicious look at all the people coming and going, shootings taking place outside, etc. I now rent a room at a Motel 6 under an assumed name and make the crystal meth there. Sure, it's an extra $30 onto my overhead, but in retrospect it's much easier than hauling away hundreds of pounds of incredibly toxic by-product.
Also, don't listen to these guys telling you to register your business with the city, etc. That's just asking for trouble.
You've obviously never played Sim City 3000. A software company puts out as much pollution as a sludge factory.
My coworkers already know that I'm not working... so this way they wouldn't have to look at me :)