How did your start up survive during its infancy?

2 points by mjdecour 14 years ago | 2 comments

I am curious to know how typical founders survived while in the initial development period of their site/startup?

Currently, my partner and I are looking at developing our idea and we are still trying to determine how to dedicate the time needed to build a beta version while also trying to earn enough money to live. We would like to put forth full effort towards the idea right now, but in order to do that we will need to quit our jobs which poses a serious issue given we still have debt and other bills to pay.

How did you pay for your basic living (food, shelter, etc.) and startup expenses (server space, cell phone, internet, electricity, etc.)?

Did you work two/three jobs? Did you do freelandce work? Did you spend all of your life savings? Did you get funded before writing 1-line of code? Were you on the unemployment teet? Did you do a kickstarter?

I understand we need to bootstrap, but you still need money to live.

jccodez 14 years ago |

I encourage you go to the boot-strap route and keep working as well. I started out on a used laptop bought off ebay for less than 200 and a tracfone for a business number.

mjdecour 14 years ago | |

How much did it slow you down working a job and working full time?

How difficult was it to transition to working your idea full time? Letting go of the income supporting you?

Thanks for the reply!