I'm currently putting my startup together while being full time employed and it is quite hard.
If I would only give one advice to anyone looking to launch his/her idea is to do a market validation survey before anything else. You can do it for free and you'll be amaze to see what kind of result it can yelled if you ask the right people.
I did mine with google form and post the survey with a bit.ly link ( to track sources and geolocation ) in comments on blogs, forums, etc that I knew people that could be interested in my product frequent. in a week I got 100+ good quality answers to my survey. It took me 3 Hours top to create the survey and post it everywhere.
Finally, it can also help you to decide between features you have to cut for the release. In my case, I though a chat in my Web app + mobile wasn't that important and I could release it down the line. Well it seems my market though otherwise. My survey showed me 78% wanted a chat from the get go :)
I liked the post, it actually answered some of the questions I asked you in the email. But I would like to point out one thing about motivation. While I agree that lack of it could easily kill your project, I feel like encouragement from other people may not necessarily help. It depends on who this person is and how much of an impact he can make. Personally, I usually get motivated by two things: 1) the progress I have already made (looking back and realizing how much you've actually accomplished may be powerful) and 2) finding additional evidence (even if it's a direct result of your work) that it will take off.
I'm currently putting my startup together while being full time employed and it is quite hard.
If I would only give one advice to anyone looking to launch his/her idea is to do a market validation survey before anything else. You can do it for free and you'll be amaze to see what kind of result it can yelled if you ask the right people.
I did mine with google form and post the survey with a bit.ly link ( to track sources and geolocation ) in comments on blogs, forums, etc that I knew people that could be interested in my product frequent. in a week I got 100+ good quality answers to my survey. It took me 3 Hours top to create the survey and post it everywhere.
Finally, it can also help you to decide between features you have to cut for the release. In my case, I though a chat in my Web app + mobile wasn't that important and I could release it down the line. Well it seems my market though otherwise. My survey showed me 78% wanted a chat from the get go :)
Cheers,