4) Short answer: make something people want so much that they would rather have your product than their money.

Long answer: Ignore other entrepreneurs and start looking for customers. What you want to do is get face time whenever feasable. Find out how they can possibly get by without your great system and do your best to determine where that solution is letting them down or making them suffer. Adjust your idea accordingly and present it to them. There's usually some politics involved in any significant purchase so try and find out things like which people really stand to gain and lose when your customers adopt your product. Then try and find ways that will turn the losers into winners. Be sure and validate your assumptions about who the decision makers are for the kind of product you're planning by finding out what else those people bought into or vetoed in the past. Stay focused and do your best to really verify the market for your system is there.

1. Network extensively. Not just with fellow tech entrepreneurs -- you should also make friends with the local small business community in general. They've done this the hard way, they've been where you'll be, and they have useful friends.

2. Scratch an itch. If you can build a product yourself, you're in better shape then most of the funded startups out there. If there's something you want to do online, the odds are that you can both a) do it right, and b) find enough people on the the internet who also think that you're doing it right to make some money.

3) Figure out how to cut your expenses to the bone, now. Ideally, and this may be tough in LA, adjust your lifestyle down to the point that you and your family can live on your wife's salary. Sock the money away somewhere you won't touch it, but that there won't be tax consequences if you do.

4) Get laid off. Ok, that's a reach, but trust me, there's nothing quite like walking out the door with your finances already in order, your vacation paid out and severance in the bank, and still qualifying for unemployment to be able to bootstrap a startup.

Advice given to me during my first startup by a very successful entrepreneur: To succeed, you have to be able to kill a puppy. Don't just think "yeah, I can kill a puppy," but imagine yourself holding a puppy underwater until it stops breathing.

The person dispensing this advice was not talking literally, of course. Starting companies that last until they succeed often means making tough decisions. The kinds of decisions that impact people's well being and future -- and not always in a positive way in the short term. It often means saying "No!" more than saying "Yes."

I was never able to imagine myself killing a puppy, but even going through that process and realizing that I couldn't do it taught me something about who I am and the kind of leader I wanted to be, which was the real purpose of the exercise.

Wise advice. Some of the things you have to do to succeed -- firing dud employees, saying no to early acquisition offers, telling girlfriends that work is more important than them -- are at least as hard as drowning a puppy.

Maybe the next round of YC interviews should have a qualifying event requiring a big tub of water and a trip to the humane society.

A better example might be shooting a terminally wounded horse or something. Killing a puppy for no reason is just messed up and drowning it is really messed up.

If you are going to kill a puppy for no good reason, drowning is a relatively humane way to do it. Once you're at the killing a puppy for fun stage in your decisionmaking, most of the fucked up has already happened. Drowning doesn't make it more fucked up.

It's not like someone is gonna say "you killed that puppy for no reason. But you really crossed the line with drowning."

I can think of many cases where drowning would be a preferable alternative to other modalities of needless puppy murder.

Dude, I do not see Larry and Sergey doing this. Don't be evil, right?

Dude Larry and Sergey can totally hire psychopaths to deal with the business end. They don't have to drown puppies themselves. They have a whole hr department to profiling and recruiting the best puppy murders. That way, the google gods can not be evil, and the puppies still get killed.

How does puppy killing have anything to do with making something people want?

Make sure you have at least 6 months expenses set aside.

Find a customer with his hair on fire with a problem you'd like to solve.

Hack away.

Read and re-read and then print out and frame this poster's words, it's solid gold:

"Find a customer with his hair on fire..."

You can't just follow a whimsical idea you "think" might be relevant. You want to find a market where people are hurting. Imagine someone with their credit card out of their wallet tapping it against their screen, frustrated that they can't find someone to give their money to.

Sell stuff to that person. I've been that person about a half-dozen times this week. Your challenge is to figure out how you can determine what I was searching for. (Or what the masses were searching for.)

> "I've been that person about a half-dozen times this week."

Easier still is to just notice when you are that person and then solve that problem. Whenever I find myself frustrated with something, that tends to be the most interesting (and possibly lucrative) idea.

If your own hair is on fire, then chances are someone else on the internet is suffering from the same affliction, and is willing to pay you for solving it.

Solving your own problem is much easier than trying to guess what someone else's problems are, and you are more likely to stick with it since you can be your own user.

I left my job at IBM a year ago to start a company. For several years before that I did many things to prepare: brainstormed ideas with friends, built prototypes, did online and market research...

However, the only things that have since proven useful are: 1) Network: through the network I developed before I left IBM, I secured contract work in lean times and introductions that have now resulted in investment. 2) Save money: has helped hugely in lean times. 3) Hand in my notice. A necessary step!

Having said that, to answer your question well, we would need a better understanding on why you have dreamed of starting your own company for 10 years but this has not yet happened.

Fair question as to why I've been dreaming about a startup for long and not started yet. I was employee #3 at a decently funded startup in bay area from 2000 to 2002. That startup failed and I needed to take care of visa issues before I could do something on my own.

Any tips on networking with entrepeneurs? Los Angeles area is not so hot when it comes to tech meetups.

thanks

I am in a similar boat, and simply have started going to the events I can. Where I live there is not much happening.

Ultimately you reap what you sow, so with this in mind I select the key events and make the time and effort to go there and engage with people.

Definitely 1), but a combo of all three (and others suggested here). You really answered your own question

> "How can I best...start something on my own" ? A - Start something!

but if you want some more encouragement and guidance along the way, you'll find it here.

There were some good suggestions to a similar question made here https://hackernews.hn/item?id=183128 that you should read as well.

Get into a place financially where you can take some risks. One of the biggest things that will stop you from being an entrepreneur is you own bills. Essentially, you'll be able to work on your own projects for as long as you wish as long as your own personal finances don't implode.

After you have some saving built up and some room to roam financially, go ahead and do your own thing.

Go find someone who could be your co-Founder(s). It takes two to sustain a fire and a third to light them.

join someone else's startup that you are passionate about