Ask HN: How Do I Start a Startup?
by deathandgravity on Hacker News.
Background: I have a lot of experience in various industries in various capacities, many of them executive leadership or directional, but certainly everything from engineering to leadership. Those include existing large entities as well as being there on “Day One” for startups that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and achieved the vaunted unicorn status. I feel like I may have contacts in the “industry” but maybe not. So I decided to Start My Own Thing. Kind of. I feel like I have good intuition here, maybe not, but much of that was within confines of existing entities and more importantly structures. So, started my own thing. Under my name pitched something under software and got a $100k contract, very easily, based on my personal capability alone. I do not care about $100k, and it is almost not noteworthy. Except I feel like based on my industry knowledge I can turn this small contract into goodwill that can snowball into lots and lots of “small” B2B contracts of similar sizes and maybe be a real thing. I have a lot of talented SWEs in my rolodex I could call. But, assuming maybe I’m right, and I can turn this small thing into a big thing, I really don’t know what to do here. I am used to fast growing things. I am thinking come up with a company name and start a Delaware c corp, and then the for contract #2 and then maybe start pinging outside contacts at various SV firms for some seed capital to expand to similar deals 3-10? I really don’t know. Overall: I feel like I have the skills, have some market fit (?), have the personal history, and could theoretically build a well-heeled team. But I have never actually started a startup myself and am totally lost. Can someone suggest a roadmap to the practical aspects of Starting a Startup?