Paul Graham essays are dangerous. For a few days now i’ve been semi-day-dreaming (or is that day-semi-dreaming?) about next summer trying to start a company. With the money that amazon is so graciously providing, i could support the lifestyle i’ve become accustomed to through the end of 2006, and i could easily extend that indefinitely with the job post that my roommate Austin and friend Dylan are abandoning in the Nati Sci department at UT. Tech support with decent hours and good pay, on campus, sounds pretty ideal.
Of course, i have no real idea what there’s a need for right now in terms of software for small businesses, but somehow that seems like a minor detail from this distance, which is a strange feeling. My dad told me that one of the things that this summer would teach me is whether or not i want to work for a big company or not, and i think that after working on a specification for what is admittedly not a large project for over a week, i think i’d rather be in a situation where the specification is that there’s one or two really smart people working with me and we need to get a product together real quick or in 3 months we all have to go get jobs in order to eat.
When i run through my list of friends, i can already see the various people who would be good candidates for partners. Of course the whole thing would be predicated on getting at least one other person on board, but somehow that doesn’t seem that hard. I guess those are the hallmarks of a good daydream, a lofty end result with a clear lack of middle steps, yet not caring at all.
And of course, if we did do SFP, next summer would again, not be spent in Austin.