Ask HN: founders, how much you had in the bank when you started your business?

This depends totally on your needs, ability to make money going forward, comfort with risk, etc. My bare minimum personal burn rate is about 1.5k per month, 2k at my usual standard of living. I quit the day job with about 5k in liquid savings, a retirement account rather larger that I haven't touched, and some consulting work lined up to cover the summer months. It was all but certain that sales from September on would cover all my expenses.

3 months rent + unemployment

I had about $300, plus thousands in student debt, a couple of weeks before I took a flight up to Cambridge for the YC interview that sparked my first real entre into starting up. Starting up was a mad, year long scramble of part time jobs, slum apartments, long train commutes, various trial cofounders and ideas, writing, and, finally, one idea that stuck.

It's only something I can recommend to a certain kind of person, but the experience of crawling out of that does give a person a certain kind of strength.

OP, you have given us only one piece of information (how much you have saved) out of a necessary 20 data points or so and you expect quality advice? Impossible. @nolite said "3 months rent + unemployment" but is that really valid? No, it isn't. His/her advice is predicated on the idea that you will start making enough money within 3 months to cover your expenses. We have no clue what your business is, how much you expect to make, what your model is, etc. There is no way any of us can offer help without knowing that information as well.

Your question is a fine question to ask but, unless you provide more context, there is no way that nearly anyone with experience will want to spend the time working through all the possible data points.

When I started development on scribophile.com I was in college and working part-time. I had maybe $5000 in the bank. My big financial risk was paying a freelance graphic designer $100 for a few FB-like gift illustrations and laying down $500 in Adwords spend for the first month after launch. After a few months it was paying for itself and had returned my small investment, and it's been growing ever since then. Nowadays I have significantly more in the bank, but developing and launching the site was practically free (besides sunk time costs).

If you want to do your own project full-time, make an estimate as to how much it costs for you to live in your area per month. $1000? $2000? It's hard to say because it will depend on where you live. Set aside 12 months worth of cash (6 months for dev time and 6 months to give yourself some time to make money after launch) and maybe a little extra for emergencies, and get to work!

Of course this is assuming you think you can become ramen-profitable in 6 months. Many people haven't become ramen-profitable in years, or ever. It depends on what your living expenses are and how you are monetizing your project.

It totally depends on where you are living and what your general lifestyle costs are. I'd have at least a year worth of savings put aside before thinking to start of a startup. This will act as a security nest, which will help you survive while you are searching for a job in case your startup doesn't work out. Oh, and definitely take health insurance first before you dive into startup world.

20k USD and living costs of 400 USD per month. Also, very marketable skills:

Teaching English in China can get you that 400 USD rather quickly. Also, if you can do basic web development, you're pretty marketable (this pays relatively better than English, but English jobs are possibly easier to find than software consulting).

Unlike a lot of people starting a business, I had almost no fear of starving on the streets. When it comes to ensuring that I both have food and own as much of my time as possible, I try to eradicate risk as thoroughly as possible. Having a minimal financial footprint and redundant contingency plans allows me to do that.

Thankfully, these days, I don't need the side-jobs, I mostly just focus on growing my business's profit. When I want something unusual (new monitor, new advertising campaign), I just sleep a little less and pull in the extra money with some software consulting.

You can call it the lazy loading approach to finance.

What you have in the bank is irrelevant, it's how far down the development road that money will take you that counts.

That's a calculation only you can do with your current living costs in addition to estimated cost of equipment, services, software, office space, and probably lots of other things you would never imagine (legal costs, accounting costs, cost of incorporating for example?)

If you're asking the question then I guess you haven't done these calculations yet - but putting them all down on paper (or spreadsheet more appropriately) as well as a realistic development timeline will tell you what you need to know.

Good luck! If you never try you'll never know.

It's going back a bit but when I co-founded a company my wife and I effectively had no money that wasn't already committed to paying for other things (she was at law school which we were paying for using our own savings).

However, what we did have was a contract from a client giving my co-founder and I a years guaranteed work. In that year we found enough additional work to raise the headcount to four people and be fairly profitable - which we used to support the work required to eventually get VC investment and switch to product development. We got our first round about 2 years after we actually started trading.

As long as $5000 is enough for you to survive 3-4 months, go for it. As others pointed out, calculate your burn rate and make sure you won't call it quit after a month. You need enough time to put a MVP out there!

As a side not you will probably lose the money, but the learning experience will be invaluable :) From what I understand sounds like your burning rate should be pretty low. $5k could be enough. The risk seems minimal. You are just out of school, not leaving any kind of high paying job (anyways, you can always find one if you fail). The worst case scenario is losing that 5k.

You can do it!

I would say, If you have money to pay your rent and bills for the time you need to get first version of your product out, go for it.

Also, have a good cofounder. You might have heard this many times but this is true. A good cofounder will take away some burden from your shoulders and you will keep you motivated.

If your idea works out, its good. If it doesn't, not a big deal. You will have learned alot along the period of time which will help you get better job than you would have got when you graduated.

$0 in the bank, but enough sidejobs here/there to keep my cheap lifestyle going. Now, the company is returning enough to pull a tiny $1k a month in salary, which is getting me by.

I've bootstrapped two startups. For both, I and my partners invested a few $10's of thousand in the business and had enough funds in the bank to cover at least 6 months of normal living expenses.

Two lessons I learned: we should have invested more money in the company and had more money in reserve. If I was doing it again, I would not be comfortable without at least 1 year of living expenses.

A really basic rule of thumb is the following formula: 6 months of living expenses, startup expenses, and 6 months of business operating expenses. Do a simple spreadsheet to test if the numbers work. If you have that amount, go for it.

Get a job and continue to earn money while working on your project on the side at first. You have more energy than money right now, so use that to your advantage.

About £15,000 living in London. More would have been nicer but didn't want to make things too comfy.

$75 + hopes & dreams.

$80,000

negative $25 000