Ask Slashdot: How Should You Launch A Software Startup? (theguardian.com)

Slashdot reader ben-hnb is a developer who loves the idea of running a startup, or being one of the ones who got in early. But how exactly does he get there? I've got no "business" experience. Everyone seems to want to get on the startup incubator train -- the latest U.K. model I've seen, Launchpad, would even train (MA!) and support me financially for a year while developing the initial product. This just one in a long list of different models, from the famous Y-Combinator three-month model to the 500 Startups four-month seed program and simple co-working spaces with a bit of help, like Launch 22.

If you wanted to get a startup going, where would you go to first and why? Or would you just strike out in your bedroom/garage?
Leave your best answers in the comments. How would you launch a software startup?

Comments

Write software after work

[DogDude]

Keep a job. Write software after/before work.

Re: Write software after work

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran a software start up for ten years. Grew from me to over fifty. I now contract for silly money and love it, while i have a nice business generating me passive income

Main lessons:
Expect no life. You work 14 hour days, 365 days a year
Expect to fail two or three times before you make it
Expect no money. You will earn some years, give other years and on the whole make very little
You will worry about cashflow every week
No one will ever pay their bills without chasing. Expect to spend 20% of your time chasing debtors
Follow lean startup. Really follow it. Don't listen to people that say it's just a fad. You haven't got the experience to know when to break the rules and those rules aren't bad.

You will need to be able to sell. Are you any good at selling? If not quite your job and get a job as a used car salesman (or other sales job) for six months while someone else teaches you how to sell. This is far cheaper in money and time than the mistakes you will make if you don't know how to sell

You will need to learn the directors responsibilities for a company. They are real, onerous and you can go to jail if you mess up (you probably won't mind you). Plan on spending some time doing courses on this

Once you go over five people you need a ton of paperwork. Fifty different policies on everything. You'll need to pay a load of money to advisors and lawyers. You will loose key people at this stage

Do you know how to manage people? Do you know is how to take a team of five to a team of fifty without destroying the company doing it? Do you know how to delegate without dumping and destroying people?

Do you like spending your time in resource planning and sales meeting?

Do you like social networks and going to networking meetings twice a week, keeping track of people's names and maintaining email conversations with fifty people every week just to 'keep the network'

My advice: if you can answer yes to most of the above it's good. You will fail two or three times (I've failed three times and am doing well on number four) each failure will make you stronger.

My real advice (which my children are following and doing well l would be to get enough passive income to support you first. Find a mentor. Spend two or three years learning how to get passive income, another two or three years getting to a couple of thousand dollars a month passive and the experience of that will teach you a lot about running a business. You can then quite your job and work on the business without fear of going bankrupt every week

You have to want to do it for the right reason

[El Cubano]

... developer who loves the idea of running a startup, or being one of the ones who got in early. But how exactly does he get there?

Bzzzt! Wrong answer.

Ask yourself this question: could I start a project on SourceForge (or more like GitHub nowadays) and keep it going for 2, 5, 10 years?

The early days are all fun. The company is growing, you are having Nerf gun battles in the conference room, etc. However, after a couple of years the shine starts wear off and it starts to feel more like a job.

Not only that, but if your goal is a "startup" in the Silicon Valley sense of the term (grows quickly and then gets acquired or goes public), you will have deal with most of the following:

• spending lots of time shopping your idea to investors
• fending off competitors
• trying to make payroll
• praying to whomever you pray to that Google, MS, and/or Facebook don't decide to blow you away like the speck you are
• praying that you will make your revenue targets so that your investors don't step in and replace you with someone who will get them the return they are expecting
• the list continues

You will notice that none of those things involve writing software. Don't get me wrong. The core technology that underpins your idea is absolutely critical. However, ideas are a dime a dozen. It is much more difficult to get a working implementation that people are willing to consider investing in is much more difficult. More difficult still is the other 90% of the startup gig that has to happen if you want to be a success.

So, back to my original question. Could you see yourself managing an open source project for the long haul? Open source projects only have to deal with a tiny fraction of the non-programming things that you would have to deal with in a startup environment.

Incidentally my perspective is based on my experience several years ago almost deciding to make a run at it myself. I took some classes at the local Small Business Development Center, talked to some local startup folks, and then promptly decided I don't have what it takes. I stuck with my consulting gig that I've been doing for some years. That suits me much better; someone else gets to deal with all that nonsense and then all I have to do is find companies with problems that match my skill set, which is much easier for me that trying to run a startup.