> My wife and I also wanted to start a family. TinyPilot only occupied about 20% of my time, but it occupied 90% of my stress. I would have done a terrible job juggling founder stress with new parent stress.
I feel this. Being a founder is hard, and raising kids is very hard. I was a little bit sad when I saw this headline show up on HN, because I've been following you for years, ever since the beginning. I always admired your hardware business, and the yearly retros, and I was sad to see it all end. But after reading the post, I do understand. Congrats on the sale, and on the child. I hope you can find some relief from the stress of being a founder, and I hope your new family will bring you as much joy as my 2 kids have (with +1 on the way for me as well).
Would you build another hardware business, or are you going to try for a software business next?
>Would you build another hardware business, or are you going to try for a software business next?
No, I don't think I'd try hardware again.
It's a shame because I learned so much about hardware and selling a physical product, so I do have an edge if I wanted to do something else that involves both hardware and software, but bootstrapping hardware from zero is just so risky. I caught a lot of lucky breaks for it to work out with TinyPilot; but simple one-time events like a manufacturing error or a lost shipments could have sunk the entire company in the first two years.
I'd like to try another educational product. I released a blogging course at the end of 2020. I didn't have time to promote it much because TinyPilot swallowed all my time, but it still has made $10k of profit. I'd like to try something like that again.
But I would also like to build some kind of pure software business if I land on the right idea and the right market for it.
Many people would not count time required to sleep and attend to basic human needs like eating and hygiene as part of available time. It sounds like it took 75-100% of a full-time position.
I feel this. Being a founder is hard, and raising kids is very hard. I was a little bit sad when I saw this headline show up on HN, because I've been following you for years, ever since the beginning. I always admired your hardware business, and the yearly retros, and I was sad to see it all end. But after reading the post, I do understand. Congrats on the sale, and on the child. I hope you can find some relief from the stress of being a founder, and I hope your new family will bring you as much joy as my 2 kids have (with +1 on the way for me as well).
Would you build another hardware business, or are you going to try for a software business next?