I did the life-ruining one as my previous startup. Then I did one that only turned out to be a nice business. The good project and the disaster both took about 3 years to build but the good project was always making money since week 1 cause it had to sustain me as I'd overextended myself in every way just trying to sustain the disaster.
After about 3 years trying and failing to make the good project earn a lot more money I wanted to do an exciting new startup. Having almost hit 6 digits that third year meant I couldn't just ignore the good project and let it atrophy but I didn't want to pursue an exciting new startup being anchored to the good project all the time. I decided to sell it.
With that decision all of the remaining work became about transitioning from 'code on my computer' to 'coherent and pleasant part time job for someone else to do well'. I replaced bash scripts and w/e other random crap with a web interface and gutted my code and dependencies so that the person they find on craigslist to add something in 2 years won't drown.
Now I'm completely free to work on my new startup and make something like a good salary while I do, someone else takes care of the nice business in 5 hours a week. Probably half of HN could pull that off with a side project or two. This is where patio11 and someone from feinternational.com described the difference between the good project and the nice business -
After about 3 years trying and failing to make the good project earn a lot more money I wanted to do an exciting new startup. Having almost hit 6 digits that third year meant I couldn't just ignore the good project and let it atrophy but I didn't want to pursue an exciting new startup being anchored to the good project all the time. I decided to sell it.
With that decision all of the remaining work became about transitioning from 'code on my computer' to 'coherent and pleasant part time job for someone else to do well'. I replaced bash scripts and w/e other random crap with a web interface and gutted my code and dependencies so that the person they find on craigslist to add something in 2 years won't drown.
Now I'm completely free to work on my new startup and make something like a good salary while I do, someone else takes care of the nice business in 5 hours a week. Probably half of HN could pull that off with a side project or two. This is where patio11 and someone from feinternational.com described the difference between the good project and the nice business -
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11347541