I think so too, I would love to have entrepreneur leave. Having quite my job to start a business before, the main thought in my head is that 6 months is not anywhere near long enough for the vast majority of business ideas to get off the ground, let alone succeed. In order to have any chance of success in 6 months, you would need to have launched your product before starting the 6 month period. You’d want to have secured financing, get any partners and/or employees in place, finish all legal paperwork, set up a payment system, build the product and begin marketing, all before you leave your day job. Any one of those things can easily eat more than 6 months. My startup was a 2 person software service -- just about the easiest thing you can do business wise -- and it took a year after quitting my job before we could even take money, and 2 years before we made enough money to pay our operational costs.
> My startup was a 2 person software service -- just about the easiest thing you can do business wise
This gave me a chuckle. To most people who aren't on HN a software service, no matter the size, is a major business undertaking.
I have a friend who started a pilates studio. She loves pilates and the startup costs are minimal - a few thousand dollars total mostly for a small inventory of yoga pants and athleisure gear to sell. She quit her finance job to get it off the ground thinking it would take at least a year. It took her six weeks to have enough membership subscriptions to make her business profitable. She's a brilliant businesswoman and was working the front desk at a pilates studio and teaching a few classes. After three months she was understandably very bored. Her company still hadn't found a replacement for her so she hired a college kid to sit at the front desk and went right back to work.
There are a lot of "analog" small businesses people could get off the ground in 6 months I just think they aren't the sort we're used to hearing about here because HN is so tech focused.
FWIW, the popular alternative to software I had in my mind is starting a restaurant. It's pretty hard to do that in 6 months and usually costs a lot more up front than software.
You have a good point. My wife started teaching piano lessons after I quit my job, and her studio was at full capacity before my business was making any money. She's been at it for a while, but like your friend she's also experiencing a loss of motivation to continue doing it.
You're right that single person & analog face-to-face services are very easy businesses to start. I have to wonder if those are the kind that Sweden is actually encouraging with their leave program. These kinds of businesses don't scale at all, there's a growth wall that most people never get over, even when they're among the few that survive the motivation problem. This is especially true when the business is initially launched as a personal service and needs very little planning or investment.
