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Ask HN: How much runway did you have when you started your startup?

by HD134606c on 8/15/17, 5:03 PM with 19 comments

• by joshontheweb on 8/15/17, 5:50 PM

  Infinite. I did contract work part-time while I worked on the business. This was a blessing and a curse. It made sure that I didn't fail due to lack of money but also probably made things take longer than they should have.

• by jboggan on 8/15/17, 6:15 PM

  First time: 3 months

  Second time: 5 months

  I am coming up to the end of my personal runway on this current venture but I raised some money from friends and family and I'm able to pay myself a little bit now! Meanwhile I know people who are sitting on 4,5,6 years of runway and are still just talking about doing it. Whatever it is, if it excites you and you can convince others of that, go do it today!

  I'd suggest about 6 months of runway to be safe, but we aren't doing this to be safe are we?

• by muzani on 8/16/17, 5:03 AM

  First time: 6 months.

  Market validation in 1 month, very strong traction with no marketing. Spent 6 months trying to find investors.

  Started borrowing lots of money to keep it afloat. It had good revenue but not a profit (e-commerce profit margins were around 6%). Couldn't get investors despite two accelerators, so we sold off the company after 14 months. But we made a good profit even after paying off debts.

  Second time: years(?)

  Ended up trying to do too many features. Still "wasn't ready for launch" 9 months in, ended up building features with no market validation. I ended up quitting the company because no progress was being made.

  First and second startups were essentially the same, except the second one had a much bigger team, more ambitious.

  I'd say keep your runway as short as possible and try to launch something by 3 months.

• by Wellacopia on 8/17/17, 9:20 PM

  Do you mean from an individual standpoint? Both our founders have full-time jobs so they can make a living and the startup has been a year in development. We don't have much in the way of expenses as of yet. Since we are not paying anything for marketing (just social media, growth hacking), and our "product" is a service/software, we don't have any manufacturing costs. No office space needed either. I guess technically our runway is infinite but as we are trying to grow, that will change. And it seems, once an investor says he/she is going to invest, it usually takes 3 months to close.

• by jamesmishra on 8/16/17, 1:56 AM

  About 12 months, but it's easy to spend much faster than you expect.

  Although if I were giving advice to someone else doing a startup where it's difficult to get immediate traction (e.g. hard tech, enterprise SaaS, hardware, etc.), I'd remind them of the Jason Lemkin rule that it typically takes 24 months to get anywhere[1].

  [1]: https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-...

• by tonyedgecombe on 8/19/17, 7:48 AM

  None, I just dipped in and out in the downtime between contracts. This went on for a couple of years until I had enough revenue from the startup to cover my living expenses.

• by timavr on 8/15/17, 7:25 PM

  -2 months

• by toptalkedbooks on 8/16/17, 7:32 AM

  Two weeks ago, i began to collect data and write website (it spent one week), and now i have a little profit.

  i am proud of it, but i don't think it is startup, maybe just a side project.

• by mtmail on 8/17/17, 12:03 PM

  cofounder was struggling paying rent. Not the best start and my advice is to have a honest talk with all cofounders about their finances from the beginning.

• by nickfogle on 8/15/17, 5:49 PM

  3 months and whatever I could drum up contracting part/time

• by AndrewKemendo on 8/15/17, 6:06 PM

  About three months of savings between myself and my co-founder.

• by jwilliams on 8/16/17, 1:51 AM

  Twice so far and it was 12-months each.

  Btw, that was personal runway - i.e. didn't get paid for that period. Rather than raising 12-months of getting paid.

• by contingencies on 8/15/17, 5:58 PM

  Years.