Ask the audience

Does anyone out there know of an entrepreneur / startup business which commenced as a ‘side project’ – but ultimately grew and thrived into a large successful business?

(successful defined as – financial enough for the founder to leave employment to run it – without a dip in income. Excluding sole traders)

Just curious.

4 thoughts on “Ask the audience

  1. Basecamp by 37signals was a sideproject. They had a web design and consulting business and built Basecamp on the side so that they could use it to manage their own business – as it got more popular they slowly scaled back their client work and they now work on Basecamp and other projects full time (4 days per week, 3 day weekend!).

    I think a lot of developer groups are trying that model these days.

    Many people who have popular blogs started them on the side, before quitting their job to work on the blog full-time. Most of those are sole traders, but quite a few team together and run a blog network with a group of people.

  2. ProveAPoint.co.nz is a startup developed while working fulltime. I dont have the full status of this site as yet, but it is making a headlines in NZ just after 3 weeks of lauch. Potential investors have also shown interest in it.

  3. Similar to the 37signals story: Coudal Partners’ transition from a service to products business – http://tinyurl.com/5jwtsf

    This may not be the kind of startup you’re thinking but what’s interesting is the notion of bootstrapping from within an easily started churn-and-burn business, with the goal to transition to a clicks-while-you-sleep business without the idealism of making ‘one’ idea work or the cash flow, time pressure.

  4. There was a story in BRW in the last month on the Aussie guys who cereated a neat app for adding cpations, speech-bubbles etc to digital photos. This was not their core product but rather something they developed to make their work-life easier. It is now packaged with Apple computers… I’ll chase up teha rticle for you…

Leave a Reply