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Setting the right pace as an indie hacker

This is one of the toughest decisions I've had to make. I've been working on 1Brand full time for 8 months and funding development, without much income. I'm also the sole source of income for my family.

I planned for years to be able to do this: Reduced my cost of living, and stuck with a crappy company because they had a good chance of going public. Saved money, waited for my exit (which wasn't that big), and have been happily building and talking to customers since. We'll be in beta next week and I couldn't be more excited!!

But, I'm also starting my FT job next week. I love my product, but I also have to take care of my family. I have two great co-founders who will be working on this full time, and I'll still be spending 20-30 hours a week on 1Brand. My hope is this is only for a year.

As an indie hackers, I think about pace a lot: Am I going as fast as I can in a sustainable way? If I had funding, I could go a lot faster and wouldn't worry as much about sustainability. But, I want to build a self-sustaining company, so I would rather go slow now to go fast later. It's about pace, priorities, and customers.

Has anybody else had to make hard trade-offs to build the indie business you want? What were they?

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    I started my company 5 years ago with some friends off the side of our desks . 2 and a half years ago we had enough traction for one of us to go full-time. Only in the last 18 months was I and another cofounder able to go full-time as well. Since then we've expanded to 4x our original size.

    My point is, sometimes you need to go slow to go fast. You'll develop the good habits and austerity you'll need when the funding comes.

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      So glad to hear that you've seen this work well. I anticipated this from the start, so prioritized choices that would let us operate lean. I think these constraints will make us stronger in the long-term.

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    Oh definitely! I worked on my business for 5 months before going part time. Part time was great! I would recommend it if you can convince your employer. I only worked 20 hours a week on my day job. This payed the bills and allowed me to spend more time on my business. after 8 months of that I took a big leap and went full time on my business. This was definitely hard because it meant I would be living on my savings through out that whole time.
    If I were to do it again though I wouldn't go full time unless my side business was paying about all of the bills. It was definitely stressful during this period. And it didn't end out what I was hoping. I eventually had to go get a full time job again.

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      I'm sorry to hear it worked out that way for you - hopefully you'll be able to get back to FT on your product again.

      I won't be able to do PT on my outside job, but I did get a FT gig that I think will be easy enough (workload, responsibility, commute) that I can be about 3/4 time on my business. I'm still looking for contracting gigs in case I need to spend more time on my project but it's not ready to support me yet. My goal is for it to be able to support my partners FT. They don't have dependents. I won't move FT to my project until it can support me completely + a comfortable margin of safety.

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        sounds like a good plan!

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