Ask HN: Would you build it in house or quit your job first?

3 points by wilhow 4 years ago | 6 comments

If you have an opportunity to build a product that extends your employer's platform into a new target market, would you build it in house while employed to make it part of your employer's portfolio or would you quit your job build it outside?

bodangly 4 years ago |

Naive question in my opinion. A business is a lot more than just tech or software. It’s marketing, it’s customer lists, domain knowledge, accounting, connections, trust in the marketplace, etc. “If you build it they will come” is not a realistic outlook.

wilhow 4 years ago | |

Never said I subscribed to “If you build it they will come” thinking and it's not the question asked. I have no illusion on what it takes to build a product, then a company around it, and the amount of work it takes to make both successful.

sharemywin 4 years ago |

Do you have a customer?

sethammons 4 years ago | |

They could attempt to sell it back to the organization. I was never happy with my work's solution for url shortening at scale (we wrote more links than bit.ly by a wiiiide margin, and each link would likely only be clicked a few times at most). Talking with the cofounder, he said, "you know, if someone (cough, you, cough) was really smart, they would solve this and then work to be bought out by us." I didn't have the risk tolerance at the time.

bodangly 4 years ago | | |

This is quite risky though. It’s very possible they would be in violation of their employment contract, or run afoul of the law in some way. Questions like did they steal the idea, did they use any company resources or time, etc.

wilhow 4 years ago | |

None yet that I've talked to directly, except of maybe 2. This isn't a brand new market, it is just one that my employer isn't focusing on because the ROI is too low for them.