What finally got you to start your business?

I imagined the worst case scenario and what would I do if I failed completely. Turns out it wouldn't be the end of the world. I could just get back to the job/contracting/consulting market (or, if necessary, stay in my parents house for some time).

It's actually hundreds of small things that compounds to this decision. A few other:

• I realized I'll be 30 after the next world cup (time flies! I'm 25 now)

• I'm inspired by other indie makers making money

• I'm pretty confident I can build a successful product

• I've been saving money with this purpose and now I have at least 2 years of runaway

• The last two startups I worked on (as a contractor) made 5 or 6 digits per month and I was basically the only dev, so I got some experience and motivation

• I want my revenue to scale, growing independently of the number of hours I put on it

This is all too recent to me, this is my last week as a contractor and starting next week I'll focus full time on being a solo maker. It took me years to feel ready to make this decision.

I'll post updates on https://twitter.com/brunolemos

1. Realizing the Consultant Lifestyle (living in Hotels and Airports) is not for me.

2. Having 100% support from my wife / girlfriend at the time

3. Having an idea which excited me while I was trying to sleep

I started my business because I reached the "Local Maximum" of being an employee at a startup. Great team, fun product, six figures salary, member of the executive committee. Respecting my colleagues also meant knowing when to leave them, slacking on the job wouldn't have been nice.

On a scale from 0 (initial idea) to a 100 (huge company), working at a startup means taking a company from, say, 5 and take it to 10.

I feel happier building something from scratch, going from 0 to 1, and beyond!

Few years ago, 90% of my income came from my employer, 10% came from consulting.

I started my business nights & weekend to try and make 50% of that income independently. Financial independence was a huge driver!

For now, I make a lot less than before, yet I've been enjoyed tons of perks

• I have 0 recurring weekly/monthly meetings - wooza!

• I make my own schedule, I'm a morning person.

• I can have uninterrupted focus sessions, building my own thing.

For me I spent twelve years commuting on a train and had the constant itch to get out. Everyday I would sit on my hour and a half commute sending myself emails with new ideas for startup businesses. I then had two kids which was the kickstart I needed to want to see them more and be at all the events my dad couldn’t be at when I was growing up. I started a business with my brother after brainstorming a bunch of ideas that I had put together from the commute. We coded in the evenings until we earned enough for one of us to go full time then a year later I quit and joined. We had six months runway but were (ramen) profitable from month two. For anyone faltering ... for me it was the best decision I ever made and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Take the risk, what’s the worst that could happen !

I think for me the biggest motivation has always been thinking about couple years ahead and regaining my freedom back. I want to work on things that I enjoy most whenever I want.

I don't want to be dependant on my paycheck and want to be financially free. It was probably the main reason I started https://cronhub.io to have a side-income which would eventually become a business that I can work on full-time.

I was curious what it means to start a business from scratch. I wanted to learn all the business skills that otherwise I'd not learn in my daily engineering job.

Having a severe problem with authority and realizing that if I wasn't working on my own thing, I'd slowly whittle away into my old age. Perhaps a bit dramatic but a heck of a motivator :p

I went from being content with my 8am-7pm travel-heavy job to waking up every weekday dreading the workday. At that point I knew it was time to make a change.

The desire to travel the world.

Honestly Courtland, I'm 32 and I just scared to be trapped to the 9-to-5 days and 500$ weekly mortgage repayment as all my peers for the next 30 years. So entrepreneurship is a no-brainer for me. IMHO, Rob Walling from your first podcast's episode explained that better than anyone.

I was too young to get a job. So I made one.

Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. That book completely changed my life. ❤

I just waited for the right moment.

I have just finished sabbatical leave of 5 years that was forced on me for some personal reasons and I have just waited for the time when I will feel really good about starting a business.

I started a few times, but I quit before finishing as I felt it is not time yet.

So for me, it was 100% myself being ready to take all the stress and spend time on building something ground up.

I was learning web design and development in the evenings and working as an engineer during the day. I wasn't super happy with my job but really enjoyed building web projects. I slowly started getting attention for my web work and even landed a small gig without marketing or having a promotional website.

It is really tough to leave a steady paycheck. I would say to myself, "as soon as I save $20K I'll leave my job and start my own business."

Months go by and I was at the breaking point with my job. I basically had $0 saved but I gave notice at my engineering job anyway. I was shaking as I handed in my resignation. Today I believe the "$20K" figure was just an unreal goal to avoid the reality that I would just have to make the leap no matter what.

I quickly started my company and never looked back. So glad I made the leap.

I inherited the family business from my dad when he passed away. I just couldn't make it work. Every year numbers were getting lower.

I did the maths and realised we only had a couple of years runway (which may sound like a lot, but I couldn't make the business work no matter what I tried), so I had to start something new and make it work within that timeframe.

I started https://withjack.co.uk and I'm pleased that it's growing every week. Last week I signed up my 300th customer.

'Driving' factors:

— Feeling stifled throughout employment

— Feeling frustrated with income

'Encouraging' factors:

— Listening to those (entrepreneurs) who knew these experiences well

— Knowing I could help others (people + brands) much more

It took me 2+ years to finally make the leap. I believe you just KNOW when you're ready, inside! 🚀

The biggest risk (for me) was losing 'guaranteed' salary, so I ensured I had a 2+ year cushion to fall back on — if needed. It took time to save, but entirely worth it for the reassurance it provided.

(I also doubled+ my total projected biz / personal expenses to calculate the above). 📈

The biggest 'starting factor' (for me) was building a personal brand on Social Media, which I did whilst in employment. This truly injected confidence as I've never advertised, to this day. All biz is inbound.

How about you, @csallen? #INTRIGUED 😍

1. Finished School

2. Finished mandatory military service (worked in a kindergarten instead)

Now it’s time for my business

At the time I was a junior in college and I got to listen two alumnis talk about how they founded their own tech companies. Something about how they expressed the quality of their lives and their new found freedome stuck with me.

Btw, those guys were the founders of Constant Contacts.

For me, it was realizing that there are a lot of amazing startups out there that fail due to a lack of good marketing.

I started FullService (https://fullservice.co/) together with @Arneh to help bootstrappers turn their great ideas into reality.

10 years ago in my college Intro to AI class I read Paul Graham's Lisp book. Through that I discovered Hacker News and Paul Graham's story of starting ViaWeb. I have never been able to get a 9-5 since. Just knowing that I could control my own destiny and do it writing code (and also a healthy dose of sales and marketing I now see) was incredibly exciting to me, and I've always been a fiercely independent person.

I always wanted to start my own software business. I think about it for quite some time, and as many of you I have a huge list of ideas I want to try. But for a couple reasons, which are all my fault, I never built any of them.

So the time has passed. I'm not that younger now. I have more to lose, more bills to pay. But I'm not closer to my goal of living from my own business than I was 5 years ago. So if I really want to do it, I have to do it now. Otherwise it will be even harder one or two years in the future. And I really don't want to look back and realize I didn't even tried.

The company I was at, and loyal to, went bust overnight a few days before Christmas leaving me with no pay and no redundancy.

Decided there and then to remove myself from the shackles of The Man.

I got a new (better) job within 24hrs but I also started working on SongBox that night.

Funnily enough, I was forced into starting my own business.

My last employer left me high and dry, my wife had just quit her job and I had to earn money FAST.

Looking back now I can smile but it was a VERY stressful time in my life - a fight or flight moment in my life.

self-awareness that I wasn't working on getting remotely close to where my ego thought I should be.

1. There was no solution to the problem I was facing - There was nowhere I could get songs from the genre I love which led me to create www.kambamusic.com

2. Working in an African digital agency, getting authentic African photos that could tell an African story pretty well has been a challenge. Now a technical co-founder at http://golloimages.com

NB: We just started

Getting bored at day job.

What got me to start my first business was hype, stupidity and an underestimation of how difficult/painful it would be.

Honestly, I am at this point in my life right now as we speak and I am stuck, unsure of where to go.

I gave my notice at my consulting job last week because I hate it and it's not how I want to be spending my time. I have 2 offers from other companies that I could go join, but I just can't click apply.

Not to hijack this thread, but I suspect the people in this thread are the best people to ask. So I'm going to ask, how do I finally convince myself now is the time?

Some background:

• I have 6-12 months of runway saved up.

• My wife is on-board with the idea of me taking the time to finally scratch this itch of building my own thing full time.

• I have been indie hacking for about 3 years now with 3 projects launched, 1 making $500/month, 1 making $100/month, and 1 making $1-2k a year.

• I have a backlog of ideas that need validation, POC, and initial MVPs.

• I have a backlog of features/ideas to build out for my existing projects.

I read all of that background and say "yeah now is the time to do it, go for it". Yet, I'm almost paralyzed by this decision. Has anybody ever faced something similar, what was your approach?