[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Should I give up and get a job?
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Ask HN: Should I give up and get a job?
I'm pretty discouraged, I'm 37 and I've tried numerous attempts
over the last 20 years to start a software business as a solo
founder and none have worked. I've been working part-time to cover
the bills while I work on creating the software I hoped to turn
into business. My wife and I plan to start a family in the next two
years, and I need to start getting serious here for my family's
future. The industry is really hot right now, and I can make great
money if I just get a full-time job. I'm building a programmable
PostgreSQL proxy in Rust. The idea is to make it easy to consume
the replication stream so it can do query caching with automatic
invalidation, and so that people can build custom partitioning,
caching, or real-time features on top of PostgreSQL. The proxy part
is implemented, but there's still a lot of work to add the
replication and caching features, and to test and polish everything
to production standards - databases are serious business. The
project is on github here: https://github.com/riverdb/riverdb I
don't even know if this is something people would want or pay for
if I completed it. And then there's the task of marketing/selling
it, which is way outside of my skillset. Should I just give up
(grow up?) and get a job? Is it worth pressing on here? I'm not
consuming my savings, but neither am I making financial progress,
and I'm not getting any younger.
Author : eloff
Score : 141 points
Date : 2022-03-03 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| > And then there's the task of marketing/selling it, which is way
| outside of my skillset
|
| This is the single most important part of the "solo founder" job
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it.
|
| Yes you should get a job. Dunno if you should give up but if even
| you don't have a sales pitch for it you'll never sell it.
|
| Edit - to add to this, yours isn't even the only programmable
| Postgres proxy _in Rust_...
|
| Amazon and Google also have Postgres proxies, there's PgBouncer,
| etc...
|
| You need to tell prospective clients why to choose yours instead
| of the options already available...
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Sorry to be blunt, but have you been trying to start a software
| business or have you been writing code hoping a business
| materializes?
|
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it
|
| This tells me it's probably the latter. Building a software
| business is understanding business problems, validating the
| pricing, verifying there is a market, coming up with a marketing
| strategy, selling the software, running a support organization,
| making sure your expenses and profits are categorized correctly.
| Writing code is just a small piece of that.
|
| It's ok to just be interested in the software part of a software
| business, but just because you like to cook doesn't mean that you
| want to own and run a restaurant. If coding is your passion, get
| a job coding and stop pretending to yourself that you want to run
| a business.
| d883kd8 wrote:
| > just because you like to cook doesn't mean that you want to
| own and run a restaurant.
|
| This is valid but many cooks do aspire to own and operate
| restaurants because it pays so much better
| almet wrote:
| Does it really pays better? I thought that cooks aspired to
| own/operate a restaurant because they think they'll be able
| to do the stuff they want the way they want.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| I would suggest reading The E-myth Revisited. I could relate to
| it when I was in your position. And as NikolaNovak suggested,
| you're the technical type that wants to build technical things
| (as was I).
|
| Honestly, building a business sucks and you really need that
| drive to see it through. In the face of stupidly large paychecks
| tech companies are paying at the moment, it almost doesn't make
| sense. Perhaps working for a few years, building a nest egg and
| then taking some time off to work on projects you like would be
| the better approach.
|
| Whilst everyone "has the drive it takes" because no one wants to
| admit they're insufficient, do you have the drive to do things
| you never wanted to do? Things that you might not even relate to
| success.
|
| My first business venture failed because I was insufficient at
| marketing, juggling and playing to my audience. I also built the
| technology before I built the business.
| tyronehed wrote:
| eric_b wrote:
| Yes, get a job. You can always work on your programmable proxy
| nights and weekends.
|
| Marketing/selling something like what you're building is going to
| be at least 3x harder than building it - so prepare for that. If
| you don't have a single person willing to pay you money for it
| now, or at least a promise of it someday, you might want to
| switch gears to ensuring there's even a market for what you're
| building. Getting some firm commitments from potential customers
| before continuing down the path would be a good idea imo.
| chadash wrote:
| I think you are probably spending too much of your time on
| software and too little time on marketing.
|
| When I look at an open-source project, I ask myself three things:
|
| 1) What does it do exactly?
|
| 2) Is this easy to get started with?
|
| 3) Does it have any documentation?
|
| For example, I have a use case for wanting to use graphql to
| communicate with elasticsearch. I google "graphql +
| elasticsearch" and somewhere a link to https://www.searchkit.co/
| comes up. I look at it and I find my answers within 60 seconds:
|
| 1) Top of the page I see "Searchkit is an open source library
| which helps you build a great search experience with
| Elasticsearch. Powered by Apollo GraphQL." This makes me think
| that yeah, it's probably looking to solve a similar problem to
| me. In case I had any doubts, there's a demo.
|
| 2) Yes, easy to get started. There's a big "get started" button
| at the top of the page. And a get-started-video link at the
| bottom of the homepage.
|
| 3) At a glance, yes, it has decent documentation.
|
| Given that I quickly got answers to these 3 questions, yes, I
| might consider using this project, or at least trying it out.
|
| When I go to your page, I see:
|
| 1) River DB is a Rust connection pool and middleware proxy...
| ok... why do i need that? What problem is this solving? There's a
| long paragraph I can read after that, but when i'm browsing the
| web i don't usually read long paragraphs, so you've lost me
| already.
|
| 2) I have no idea how to get started
|
| 3) Doesn't look like there's any docs
|
| Given the above, why would I use your software?
|
| Note that the above has nothing to do with your software quality.
| But people only care about your code if things are breaking.
| Marketing material is what gets them in the door. For example, I
| use React all the time. I have NO IDEA if the underlying code is
| any good. And I don't really care. What I care about is that it's
| easy to use.
|
| Anyway, long story short... if you want to build a software
| business, coding is maybe 30-40% of the job. Marketing, sales,
| documentation and all that jazz is probably the majority of the
| work. If you don't want to do that and you just want to code,
| then great, get a job. People will pay you good money for that.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Starting a business is alot harder than what it may seem like.
| Given all the publicity startup get, it seems like all you have
| to do is come up with an idea, program it and boom it's a
| success. A business is so much more. Ironically the product is a
| minor reason for the success. It's mostly about the people that
| are part of the organization and the organization that is created
| around the product. But ultimately it's about the founder's
| leadership. I gather from your post that you are focusing too
| much on the product and not as much around the organization.
|
| I advice that you start to focus on figuring out how to create a
| winning organization.
|
| Also, get a job in a relatively small organization where you can
| have a direct impact on its success. At the very least you will
| get to understand how the startup world works.
|
| Given your future family situation you need to get your career
| going and put your startup dream on hold while you get more
| experience.
|
| After a few years you can reevaluate and decide what's best for
| you and your family.
| yroc92 wrote:
| My advice is to never actually build anything for a business
| unless you have paying customers beforehand. I made a simple
| landing page with Webflow that described a product idea I had and
| got mid-five figures from a company to essentially build the MVP
| for them.
|
| You need to validate your ideas before you invest your time.
| Otherwise you're building in a vacuum and you will continue to
| fail.
| gspencley wrote:
| It sounds like the problem you're grappling with is what to do
| with your life.
|
| You stated you tried to start numerous "software businesses" over
| the last 20 years and you're currently implementing a
| programmable PostgreSQL proxy. Do you want to be an entrepreneur
| or an engineer? What is it about business that draws you to it?
| Is it the freedom and independence and not wanting to work for
| someone else? Or are you passionate about producing something
| that will improve the world and solve a problem that could
| benefit many other people?
|
| As for "I'm 37 and we're looking to start a family" ... what do
| you value more, starting that family or whatever "not getting a
| job" represents.
|
| The issue I think you're facing is that the value of "not getting
| a job" is undefined.
|
| Keep in mind that "becoming entrepreneur" is not the only
| alternative to "not getting a job." If you're passionate about
| engineering but you want more flexibility and freedom than a 9-5
| then maybe consider becoming an independent contractor? I haven't
| heard anything in your question that implies that you're
| passionate about business and being an entrepreneur or that there
| is any specific vision that you have for something that will
| improve the world that you can't wait to get to market.
| qxmat wrote:
| Is your enterprise a product or solutions startup? Products only
| scale if resold - the magical 90% pure profit margin only exists
| on theory. In practice client demands will almost always turn
| small fry into a services business because you can't afford to
| lose a client, especially an anchor tenant. Why services? Because
| you can't say "no" so you end up doing what you promised you
| wouldn't and incorporate ungeneralised per tenant/client features
| into to the product.
|
| Perhaps you should advertise your skills as a service?
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| You definitely should, maybe try to find a job which is chill
| enough so you can still build your side project when you want.
|
| Once you have some time for side hustles, you should iterate on
| your methodology to run side businesses and maybe have the long
| term goal of depending less and less on your daily job and more
| on your side projects.
|
| If you want to start a business focus on a problem people are
| happy to pay for - and then build the technical part. In order to
| do that, you need to talk to people early and try to convert them
| into paying customers, even if you don't have a product.
| Sometimes this means cultivating an audience and launching a
| tweet (or an email) to your audience, sometimes this means cold
| mailing people, sometimes this means going somewhere and talking
| to people.
|
| You should also limit the work you're doing until you validated
| the idea. You have no idea how many business I started which
| turned out to be unsellable. If I had to build a full fledged
| technical solution for each of them, I would have wasted so much
| time.
|
| Even when you do your homework, there will still be a lot of
| attempts where it seems like everything should work out and you
| should get customers - but you just don't for whatever reason.
| Some incredibly lucky times you build the product and people
| come. I noticed this is true especially if you can leverage some
| huge marketing channel (like a marketplace opening up: iOS apps
| when the first iPhone came out, the shopify marketplace) which
| allow any software (no matter whether it's good or not) to become
| popular and make money.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Do you want to build stuff or do you want to run a business? Or
| do you want to be rich? Or do you just want to work for yourself
| doing anything? What is your dream and what do you really want to
| be doing? Figure that out, and then be realistic about achieving
| that particular goal. Make sure not to set your sights so
| incredibly wide that your task is gargantuan. Consult other
| people who have achieved your goal to find out what is realistic
| and what common problems to avoid.
| chad_strategic wrote:
| 1. Get a job, this will reduce your stress and anxiety. It's hard
| to think under such circumstances.
|
| 2. Jobs aren't great (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't)
|
| 3. Starting a family is far greater a life event than building a
| software company
|
| 4. Working at a job you might hate the job so much that you can
| can really hone in on your start up.
|
| 5. Start ups aren't single person operations as much as the
| internet/TV/Media might portray as such. The only reason I'm not
| a millionaire is because I haven't found the right sales person.
|
| 6. I have gone thru all these painful experiences, successfully
| and unsuccessfully painfully learning from them.
|
| 7. Cheers
| acegopher wrote:
| All true, and I would add to #5 is the only reason I'm not a
| millionaire is that I haven't found the right product/market
| fit, nor a market of a size that would support a business where
| I would be a millionaire. It's more than just finding the right
| salesperson, it's also finding the right market and the right
| product for the salesperson (and the marketer and the
| developer) to succeed in.
| irvingprime wrote:
| "Should I give up and get a job?"
|
| Yes.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| give up on being a solo founder.
|
| What you need is a cofounder who knows how to SELL!
|
| I know because I was in the same boat. After running into my
| cofounders, we've had a lot of success. I can sit and focus on
| making the tech stack shine while they pound on doors and get
| customers to sign up while also getting me feedback to inform
| what to prioritize for future features.
|
| I'm sure there are some who'd disagree with me and tell you to to
| spend time learning sales. As someone who's tried that, I can say
| some people just aren't cut out for it, ymmv. given your
| technical skills, I'd wager your time is better spent building
| tech. what you need is someone who does teh work of finding out
| if what you're building is something people want.
|
| FYI: your product sounds crazy useful. We built out startup with
| postgres as the backend and its a pendulum over my head as far as
| how we'll scale writes once one database isn't enough. I'm hoping
| by then we'll have enough money to make it someone else's
| problem.
|
| TLDR: find someone who's moderately tech savvy and is more
| interested in selling. have Him/Her approach tech companies that
| would find your product useful and see if they are interested. at
| the very least, you'll find out you're wasting your time and
| pivot to something more lucrative.
| dpweb wrote:
| You could get the job to pay the bills and open source the
| project. Take just a little time each week to publicize it and
| find people willing to contribute. If it catches on widely you
| will be able to live off working it full time. If not, you still
| get to explore the problem and have fun with it as a hobby.
|
| I can't totally reconcile everyone's advice to "just forget about
| the bs techie problem you're solving" with the fact there are all
| these companies worth hundreds of millions, which if not well
| known, would seem like "techie tools with no market". Postman,
| for instance.
| teodorlu wrote:
| Problem 1: what are problem are people willing to pay me to solve
| for them?
|
| Problem 2: can that problem be solved with a product?
|
| Problem 3: can that product be built?
|
| Reading up on product management has helped me a lot here.
| Empowered (Marty Cagan) is good.
| batmaniam wrote:
| Hey OP, I understand your dilemma. The good news is you don't
| have to give up on your dreams completely, but the rate at which
| you work to achieve them will have to slow down a lot.
|
| You're thinking of starting a family. Unless you are financially
| well off already, it's best to get a job with a steady paycheck.
| You have to start saving for the baby, the health insurance for
| your family, the children's college fund, and many other random
| and spontaneous expenses that come with raising children. You
| might need to move to a larger house, or to a better neighborhood
| to get into a better school for your kids. Don't forget that
| insurance might not even cover your medical expenses from having
| a baby because of how hospitals does billing (ie, if you need a
| doctor right now, in-network vs out-of-network reasoning goes out
| the window, among other billing issues).
|
| Having a steady and beefy paycheck will help you tone down
| stresses by a lot. Plus, if your company offers long paternity
| leave (and you can scope this out during interviews), you can
| take that time off to support your baby and also work on your
| personal project.
|
| Don't give up on your dreams, but we are also the working class,
| and have to be realistic about finances down the road. There's
| always opportunity to work on your projects on the side, it just
| occurs less frequently than you'll be used to initially. But you
| won't regret it, having a supportive family and having kids is
| the best thing in the world.
| mdolon wrote:
| The question I always ask myself in these situations is: _what am
| I optimizing for?_ Based on what you 've shared, it sounds like
| you'd like to optimize for starting a family in the next 2 years.
| If that is true, you probably already know the answer to the
| question in your title.
|
| One other thing: taking a break is not the same as giving up.
| I've tried and failed at multiple startups, taking jobs in
| between to rebuild my savings. There is always opportunity cost
| and risk involved in all that we do, you just have to learn to be
| comfortable with whatever decision you make.
| eloff wrote:
| This is excellent advice. Yes, I think you're right - I know
| what I have to do. It just hurts to shelve my dreams and play
| grown-up again. I think it's what's called for right now. Maybe
| in the future one day I find a co-founder and/or a great
| startup idea and things change again.
| idrios wrote:
| It's not shelving your dreams, it's training for them. Learn
| business practices from the company you join, get exposed to
| new technologies and new sets of problems, learn from the
| senior and junior devs around you, and meet like-minded
| people who can help you start your company when you try
| again.
| eloff wrote:
| I like your glass half-full mindset. You're right, of
| course, I could frame it that way and specifically seek out
| roles that will help me gain knowledge and experience in
| the areas that I need them. Also I may meet people,
| encounter opportunities, etc during the journey.
| jrumbut wrote:
| The other glass half full aspect here is that you'll be
| able to establish a network of people who are or will be
| CIOs when it's time to launch.
|
| Then you'll have the explaining problem partially solved.
| "I don't understand it either but I know to listen when
| ol' @eloff talks about Postgres performance."
| coryrc wrote:
| I have dreams. Actually following some of them makes me
| unhappy.
| ianai wrote:
| Is there a minimally viable version of it that you could
| start selling?
|
| From what I read, it sounds way too "in the weeds" to really
| be a marketable good/service.
|
| Otherwise, kids are rough. I'm not much older than you. I
| realize probably every day past 30 (give or take) I'm moving
| slower, and kids can be outright chaos demons. There's also
| the fact of wanting to be established with a corporation to
| some extent before you ask for time off to have a kid.
| There's a HUGE amount of corporate knowledge and wisdom to
| know, but the minimal is you may be outright unable to take
| time off during any probationary period at a new job. The
| probation period could be anywhere from 0 days (unlikely), 90
| days (common), to a year (not unheard of). If your "have a
| kid" deadline is 2 years from now and you probably need to
| have a decent professional relationship with an employer for
| a year before having the kid, the time to get hired is in the
| next year. I think that means it's time to get serious with
| applying for work as a search can take considerable time.
| Probably time to get "desperate" about finding work around 9
| months from now, as a guestimate?
| pabe wrote:
| Please read
|
| * Running Lean by Ash Maurya
|
| * Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
|
| When it comes to polishing your product, the growth.design course
| is excellent.
|
| Sell before you build a full fledged product. Create traction.
| eloff wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendations
| lazide wrote:
| If you didn't start with the business idea, or can't figure out
| the business idea?
|
| Get the job.
| version_five wrote:
| There are two unrelated questions: 1. Should you give up (either
| your current project or your plans or founding a software
| business) and 2. Should you get a job.
|
| Lots of people are telling you about 1. I don't know that 2.
| necessarily follows automatically. Is the only reason you're not
| working because you want to build this particular software? Or do
| you just not like the idea of a "job" job and all the baggage
| that comes with it? My point is don't assume that one choice is
| tied to the other, especially if you're not pressed for money.
| You could give up the project and do nothing, raise your
| children, do some other thing...
| sandbags wrote:
| If you have passion, age is just a number. I'm turning 50 this
| year and bootstrapping a startup alongside my consultancy
| business. Whether to take the "safe" option of a job I can't help
| you with.
|
| You've struggled to make things work on your own and the good
| news is it's incredibly hard to do so, it's not you.
|
| I think it's worth either broadening your skill set beyond
| development or looking for partners who complement you.
|
| I'd also recommend exercises in strategic positioning and value
| proposition design to help target viable markets with a desirable
| product. Pointers available on request.
| richardlblair wrote:
| I really admire your ambition. It sounds like you are deeply
| technical person who understands issues of scale in a way most
| others don't. You likely also understand the business aspect of
| it deeply, even though you didn't articulate it here.
|
| I think joining a company in the space is a good idea. I had a
| friend join https://aiven.io/ and they seem like they are a
| pretty great place to work. I believe they offer stock option
| compensation.
|
| Having the context, technical capacity, and business context
| would be invaluable to a company like that. With your skills you
| may find it possible to grow into a higher leadership role which
| may equip you with the skills and insight you need for your own
| journey.
|
| Once you've done time there you can set yourself up to circle
| back in 5 years and try again yourself.
| rswskg wrote:
| Yes
| superasn wrote:
| Most points are already covered by other commenters, esp the one
| about not doing market research first.
|
| Anyway I just wanted to add one more thing from my own
| experience. Don't build and sell technical products that you
| aren't willing to commit to for a long time. What happens is you
| will probably find 5 customers who will invest their time in
| money understanding your highly technical project but as you
| don't get orders (or if you have clinical adhd like me) you'll
| want to move on to a new shiny object while those 5 people are
| left holding the bag. It's not fair to the people who trusted you
| and migrated their infrastructure to get the benefits you're
| offering only to later realise that the project is dead and no
| updates or bug fixes are coming. Just something to think about.
| jen729w wrote:
| Suggestion: when you do get a job, become a contractor if
| possible. I'm talking from an Australian/British perspective so
| YMMV but I've been a contractor my entire life mostly because I
| don't want to get involved in all the company bullshit.
|
| Performance reviews, town halls, pretending to love and be loved
| by this giant corporation, all that shit: I don't care. I turn
| up, I do a good job, I get paid.
|
| I dunno, it just makes me feel better about the fact that I don't
| really _want_ to be working for someone else, but the current
| reality is that it's fruitful and relatively stress-free. So this
| somehow leaves my brain with a happy balance.
|
| Good luck.
| didip wrote:
| The best way to make money in software at the moment is to sell
| subscription for what most considered a "valuable value-add" at
| the top end of the stack.
|
| Examples of value-add:
|
| * Much better UI or API experience.
|
| * Much better installation or maintenance process.
|
| * Much better scalability story when data becomes huge.
|
| So unfortunately, it is usually hard for low-level tools to make
| money (except databases. They have a clear path to make money).
|
| But there's a prior art to your effort: Aerospike is a legit
| company now but it started from a proxy & SQL layer OSS project
| on top of Redis. See:
|
| * https://code.google.com/archive/p/redisql/wikis/CommandRefer...
|
| * https://code.google.com/archive/p/alchemydatabase/
|
| But... what does giving up mean here?
|
| * The opportunity to make lots of money in a hot market?
|
| * The opportunity to get a great health insurance? Which you will
| need when you have a kid.
|
| * The peace of mind knowing that paycheck will always come in
| every 2 weeks?
| jf22 wrote:
| I've been trying for just as long too. I lack some key skills
| that I don't care to get better at.
|
| I learned so much along the way that it helped me get better
| jobs.
| iamben wrote:
| Hey, I absolutely feel this and it caused me multiple burnouts.
| It's hard to explain how compoundingly demoralising multiple
| 'failed' attempts at doing something are when you feel like
| you're putting in so much effort.
|
| It's only my experience, but when I look back a lot of my effort
| was misdirected. It's very easy to feel like you're at 120% when
| you're focusing on what you know, but sometimes you need to shift
| the focus. I can't tell you whether the project you're working is
| worth continuing or whether there's money there, or whether you
| should continue it alone. I can tell you that I'm now working
| with 2 other founders and it's made me considerably happier than
| my solo efforts. There's always someone to talk to and whilst we
| still wear a lot of hats, we primarily concentrate on the bits
| we're good at and encourage each other to keep going.
|
| I guess I'm saying - take a step back, maybe see if you can pull
| in help. You don't need to be happy all the time, but you do need
| to be _content_ in your day to day (it 's always going to be a
| struggle if you don't want to get up in the morning). If you're
| not there step back further and maybe see how a 'career' job
| works for you. Nothing is permanent, you can always step
| sideways, leave, or try something else until you figure out what
| works for you. Good luck!
| dlevine wrote:
| I feel you, because my story is somewhat similar to yours. I was
| an engineer for like 20 years, but always wanted to make my own
| business work. Started a couple of companies, but nothing panned
| out long-term, and ended up back in jobs after a year or two.
| Eventually transitioned into product management to focus more on
| understanding customers and figuring out how to build what they
| want.
|
| A bit over a year ago, I quit my job and made another stab at
| starting a company. A friend and I built a prototype for a new
| product, but when we tried to get people to use it and did
| customer research, there just wasn't enough validation. Tried
| some other things, but couldn't land on anything that felt
| compelling enough. I even did consulting for a while, hoping that
| I could identify a strong enough market need through that path.
|
| I got married last year, and we want to start a family fairly
| soon. So, at the end of the day, I realized that this isn't my
| time to build a startup from scratch. The job market is pretty
| hot, and I recently accepted a full-time role. I chose a startup
| that's late stage enough that I get a reasonable salary but early
| enough that there is still the opportunity for some upside.
| exolymph wrote:
| Just wanna say, getting a job and continuing your entrepreneurial
| journey don't have to be mutually exclusive options!
| digitcatphd wrote:
| Keep your job and work on as side project until you demonstrate
| product-market fit and can raise seed funding.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| It sounds like you've started building a solution before you've
| verified a problem exists. Other people in the comments thread
| have said as much, so I won't belabor the point. I do, however,
| want to recommend two books on the topic of customer development
| (the skill set that would benefit you most right now). One book
| is "Four Steps To The Epiphany" by Steve Blank ("The Startup
| Owner's Manual" is also great), and the other is "Marketing For
| Developers" by Justin Jackson.
|
| TL;DR- my understanding of the customer development process is:
|
| 1. Talk to people who live and breathe the market you're
| targeting.
|
| 2. Get to know their pain points.
|
| 3. Zero in on a pain that they're a) willing to solve using
| software, and b) willing to pay to alleviate, and then
|
| 4. Iterate on a potential solution (starting from a very low-res
| mockup), getting feedback all along the way.
|
| There are other resources out there on this same topic (Steve
| Blank is another amazing author in this domain).
| stevepotter wrote:
| I was in your situation a few years ago and took a job. I've
| saved more in the past couple years than all my other time
| combined. I will be financially independent by the time I'm 50,
| at which time I can do pretty much whatever I want. I tried
| multiple times to make it on my own but it was extremely
| stressful, especially once I had kids. You can always go back to
| it later.
| iambateman wrote:
| I don't know what you should do but I'm rooting for you.
|
| Also, don't underestimate the number of people with money who are
| just trying to make an excel spreadsheet work for their time
| forecasting, budget, team vacation time, building depreciation
| schedule, etc.
|
| They are really struggling to make sense of a digital world and
| you can help. Whatever you do, it won't be giving up.
| santa_boy wrote:
| I can understand and relate quite a bit to your problem. Your
| skills are pretty valued when applied to create business value.
| In fact, you may be technically advanced for many profitable
| software business opportunities.
|
| I wish there was a way for sales/marketing guys could team up
| with talented technical guys like you.
|
| The usual advice here, although somewhat cliched, is get a
| cofounder, find a business partner or figure out a way to hire
| one.
| DeusExMachina wrote:
| In the past, I tried many time to start businesses and many times
| I failed (although I always had a job and tried only in my free
| time).
|
| Now, I have been running a business for the past 7 years, and it
| keeps growing.
|
| Is it because I just kept trying? No. I might still be trying if
| I followed that approach. Instead, I took many courses on
| starting and growing businesses. That's what made the difference.
|
| My problem, which is your problem, was that I just kept writing
| code for ideas I had. That's a recipe for failure.
|
| You admit that you don't know if anybody would pay for the thing
| you are building. Stop. That's going to end in the same way as
| before.
|
| You have to start from finding customers even before you decide
| what product you will build. You need to know who they are, how
| to reach them, what they need. You have to learn their pains and
| dreams. Only then you create a product that solves their real
| problems.
|
| I recommend studying the stuff of:
|
| - Jay Abraham: https://www.abraham.com - Ramit Sethi:
| https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com
|
| But there are also many others. The important thing is that you
| learn how to start a business and stop throwing spaghetti at the
| wall.
|
| If I were you, I would get a well-paying job to support your
| family. Then you can try something new with the safety of a
| salary. That's what I did in the past. Your time will decrease
| with a family, but I am helping friends with two small children
| to start a business, so it's possible.
| baskethead wrote:
| You need to be honest with yourself. It's not going to work at
| this moment. HN is filled with bias for the success stories, but
| you never hear about those that don't make it. I have a friend
| who is brilliant, Berkeley grad and Stanford PhD, who wasted 11
| years trying to start his own startup. He gave up a job at Google
| and beats himself up every day for literally giving up millions,
| probably well over $10M had he just stayed.
|
| Go get a well paying job, and start a family. Stop chasing the
| startup dream, luck has a lot to do with it, and you didn't get
| lucky. But it's okay, there's no shame in that. You gave it your
| best shot, but there's more to life than making a startup. You
| can be extremely happy having a well paying job in tech and
| raising a wonderful family.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > HN is filled with bias for the success stories
|
| This is true.
|
| > He gave up a job at Google and beats himself up every day for
| literally giving up millions, probably well over $10M had he
| just stayed.
|
| This is also a biased success story. Very few people will
| experience Google-like returns.
| mproud wrote:
| You're starting a family. Unless your spouse has a nice,
| dependable job, then you need to be the reliable one.
| molyss wrote:
| As others have said, you seem to be focused on the deep technical
| aspect of your projects, with no clear customer or market.
|
| What is the driving force behind your attempts to start a
| software business ? IMO, that is the most important question that
| you need to answer before thinking of "what now". I'm not clear
| if you want to be your own boss, if you want fame and glory, if
| you want to be filthy rich or any other reasons. None of them are
| worth feeling bad about, really, but it's important that you're
| honest about it. Only then will you be able to forge a path that
| fits that goal.
| warent wrote:
| > _I don 't even know if this is something people would want or
| pay for if I completed it. And then there's the task of
| marketing/selling it, which is way outside of my skillset._
|
| This is why you're spending years and years spinning your wheels
| getting nowhere. It's a classic mistake pretty much everyone
| makes.
|
| Very fundamental rule number one: Only build something AFTER you
| sell it FIRST.
|
| The only time that rule doesn't apply is if you're doing a hobby
| project / labor of love and you're okay never making money off
| it.
|
| EDIT: BTW as far as marketing and selling being outside your
| skillset, it's outside everyone's skillset at some point far
| enough back in their careers. i.e. nobody is simply born with it.
| The point is you develop those skills through pain, trial and
| error. That, or you find a business partner to handle it for you.
| rektide wrote:
| I don't agree fully, I feel operating on conviction & purpose &
| intelligence has a place, is how many of the best things get
| built.
|
| But absolutely some deep questions about who you are building
| for are essential. There was a good post yesterday[1]
| ostensibly about open source, & closed source, but the
| conclusion was really about assessing not just purpose but
| audience.
|
| [1] https://writing.kemitchell.com/2022/02/12/Devs-Use-Closed-
| So... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30536825 (2 points,
| 14 hours, 1 comments)
| louiskottmann wrote:
| It is statistically significantly harder to have a successful
| company as a solo founder. Having someone with a stake to
| bounce ideas and solutions off of makes a big difference. My
| associate and I regularly thank each other for catastrophes we
| avoided by our weekly night of talking over beer (and other
| daily exchanges).
|
| I'm not too sure about _absolutely_ selling before making, but
| definitely do a market research and check if you can find
| people who would, at least theoretically, buy the product you
| intend to make.
|
| If you make before you sell, you're saying that you are a
| visionary and people cannot understand your genius. Those are
| not odds to my liking, but if you like them you do you.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| >Very fundamental rule number one: Only build something AFTER
| you sell it FIRST.
|
| This isn't fundamental. It's a single effective strategy out of
| many possible strategies. Think about it. Only certain people
| will buy something before you can show it to them and there's
| also a whole class of people who will only buy after they've
| seen the product.
| Dig1t wrote:
| Right, I totally agree with you. The quoted advice sort of
| flouts the saying "people don't know what they want until you
| show it to them".
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > Very fundamental rule number one: Only build something AFTER
| you sell it FIRST.
|
| This usually applies to random apps but it does not generalize
| to every class of software, for a few different reasons.
| Strategies need to be appropriate for the specific market.
|
| You'll always need to sell, but selling first is a poor move
| for some products.
| verelo wrote:
| Also, solo founder. Consider working on your relationship
| skills. A cofounder can be a pain in the ass but also the best
| way to find sucesss.
| eloff wrote:
| > Very fundamental rule number one: Only build something AFTER
| you sell it FIRST.
|
| I've come to understand this reluctantly over the past couple
| months of soul searching. I would not try to start coding again
| (with creating a business in mind) without having first found
| 5-10 customers.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Important to point out that the best validation is customers
| who actually pay real money for the idea in advance.
|
| Someone telling OP "interesting, I would buy it" might even
| be worse than not trying selling it at all, as it might fool
| OP into working even harder for nothing in the end.
| jonfw wrote:
| Validating an idea isn't just getting a yes or no. You need
| to understand what the person's problem is, how much that
| problem costs them, what solutions they have tried before,
| what problems did they have with those solutions, etc.
|
| And then you have to size the market. How many other people
| have that problem? How do you reach those people?
| exdsq wrote:
| And this is where those Lean Startup books come into play
| because some of their case studies, even if they're fluffy,
| show how you can prototype your product with a lot of manual
| intervention to onboard those 5-10 customers before building
| anything. I remember reading about an AI Assistant that
| launched and, to check the market, it was just the founder
| responding to people lol.
| keithwhor wrote:
| You can totally build first. Developers always do. The problem
| is you have to sell _at some point_ , if it's not customers to
| begin with then it has to be investors, but invariably you will
| be selling to customers. Products _do not_ sell or market
| themselves.
| lolinder wrote:
| I think OP's point is that if you build something and _then_
| try to sell it, what you have might not be something anyone
| needs. If you sell something and _then_ build it, you 've
| already got customers so you know you've got something.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| "Sell" is an exaggeration if this is the case. You can
| achieve the same result just by talking to people to
| validate the idea. Literally, selling then building is an
| entirely different thing that sets a hard deadline on what
| you build.
| lolinder wrote:
| > You can achieve the same result just by talking to
| people to validate the idea.
|
| Not quite: saying you'd buy something and actually
| forking over the cash are two very different things. I've
| expressed interest in many a project that--when actually
| made available--I decided I didn't really need after all.
|
| Is it always practical to actually sell a not-yet-
| existing product? No. But do you get the same data from
| just talking to people? Not at all.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Well depends on how you frame the question right? To
| validate your idea you have to ask the right questions
| and penetrate all the bias and politeness.
|
| So for example you can ask them this:
|
| "Give me your honest answer. Let's say I had the product
| ready and finished and perfected right now... would you
| or would you not buy it from me?"
|
| You really need to drive at this, you don't need to
| actually "sell" it. Validating an idea isn't a casual
| thing, but you don't have to go as far as actually
| selling it.
| cercatrova wrote:
| People will still say they'd buy it and then not actually
| buy. The only way to actually verify that they'd pay is
| to, well, make them pay for it. Collect their money first
| and then if it doesn't work out, offer a refund, like
| Kickstarter does.
| meetups323 wrote:
| Importantly, those people you talk to to validate the
| idea should ideally be _continuously_ consulted. So
| rather than:
|
| "hey I'm thinking of making this project, do you think
| you'd use it?" // "Yeah sure, seems helpful I guess"
|
| you have:
|
| "hey, person who told me they'd use this, here's the
| latest update where I've implemented X feature you and
| some others requested, I also am trialing Y feature that
| I think might be cool, and I polished Z item that I saw
| some others were getting hung up on, do you mind trying
| the latest version out and letting me know what you
| think?"
|
| If you're unable/unwilling to maintain those kinds of
| relationships/conversations over the long term, consider
| a PM.
| lazide wrote:
| It's very high risk, because you don't know what you're
| aiming at.
|
| The odds your product will hit a target that you have no idea
| if it even exists or not (or what it looks like, or what it's
| shape is), is often lower than if you do.
|
| Definitely not impossible of course!
|
| But the odds are long enough already, it's silly to not
| shorten them if you can.
| teh_klev wrote:
| I'd go get a job, you can always work on your dev tool in the
| evenings. I was in a similar situation, trying to build a
| freelance business because the last place I worked had soured me
| of working for anyone else again. Eventually after a couple of
| years I decided it wasn't working out and got a permanent role as
| a developer. Turns out not all companies are toxic or work you to
| the bone for a pittance. I work remotely, average a 37.5 hour
| week and there's flexitime. Also don't consider making a change
| such as this as giving up or as a failure, along the way you'll
| have learned some valuable insights one way or another.
| allisdust wrote:
| You definitely should give it up doing it full time. I'm in same
| boat as you. 7 out of last 9 projects have been failures. I quit
| my job only for the first startup. After assessing the
| opportunity costs from quitting the job, I have come to the
| conclusion that getting your idea implemented with others with
| you paying the money is much simpler than taking the full hit to
| the salary. Also, please never do these solo. My 8th attempt has
| been partially successful (still running with growing business)
| purely because I partnered with non tech founders. The way they
| took this small idea and pivoted on it and thought business cases
| for it was amazing. More importantly they aren't afraid to just
| go talk to large customers and getting rejected. My current
| startup I'm doing with another non tech founder and the
| confidence he has about the use cases and business reception is
| amazing.
|
| Good luck!
| jayski wrote:
| I had success building a SaaS company, the secret (and it was
| pure luck) was from the very beginning I had a great business
| partner, who is passionate about sales, operations, business
| strategy etc. Its not a billion dollar unicorn by any stretch of
| the imagination, but we employ over 70 people.
|
| In the beginning I did all the coding and he took care of
| everything else. Nowadays, I have to get somewhat involved in the
| business aspect but its more to give my opinion or help come up
| with solutions.
|
| The product you described sounds amazing as an Open Source
| project, but I think it will be hard to get a non technical
| person excited about it enough to go into business with you.
|
| Also, not trying to dissuade you, but when I started my company I
| was 25 with no wife or kids, not sure I could find the time to
| build a business now that I have a family.
|
| Thats my 2 cents, I wish you the very best of luck and success in
| whatever you decide
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it.
|
| That's a problem. Was that also the case in your previous
| ventures?
|
| Yes, get a job.
| ishjoh wrote:
| I was in a similar situation to you, I made my part time
| contracting into full time contracting and haven't looked back.
|
| Now that's not always the right choice for everyone, and there
| have been ups and downs, periods with too much work and not
| enough work, but overall it's been a good approach for me. One
| big thing is that since my finances are volatile I was very
| conservative in my purchases so that I could sleep at night
| knowing that I could cover all my debt and have a decent runway
| if the worst did happen and I had a hard time finding work for a
| long period of time.
|
| If I would do it again I would be very tempted to just grind leet
| code as hard as possible and apply to a FANG company as it's
| going to be really hard to beat the total compensation from one
| of those companies even as a contractor and there is a huge
| amount of stability.
|
| I can't predict the future but we're obviously in a turbulent
| time right now, if you're looking to start a family I would
| probably weigh stability pretty heavily right now.
| encoderer wrote:
| Take a full time job, make a good living, but keep hacking, do
| not give up on your dreams, but rather use your engineering mind
| to pursue them differently.
|
| I worked in SV tech for 10 years, saved a nice sum, and then left
| to build my own software business. You're younger than me, you
| can still take that route.
| tomdekan wrote:
| How much time have you spent validating that people want your
| products and marketing your products to them?
|
| You sound like a skilled engineer. But engineering will not be
| enough to make people buy your product.
| devwastaken wrote:
| If you're planning a family, do that asap. If you're 37, any
| child born now would mean you're going to be 60 when they're 23.
| Assuming you live that long. Not having parents in your 20s and
| 30s is a setup for societal failure. Nobody is prepared for a
| baby, but if you have money, a place to live, you're better off
| than most.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Terrible advice. OP needs a life raft before an anchor.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| That may be good advise for a 17 year old, but at 37 you
| really shouldn't waste time if you want kids.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| People put off making babies too long now. Especially at OP's
| age, every year greatly increases the chances of things like
| autism. A pregnancy carried by a woman 35 or older is
| considered a geriatric pregnancy for a reason.
|
| Plus everyone expects to pull the goalie and you'll have
| instant luck. My wife and are were both healthy and in our
| late twenties when we started trying. 3+ years of that and a
| round of IVF later and I finally have my first baby at 33.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Better to not have kids you can't afford than have kids you
| can't afford and be stuck in a poor, drawn out outcome just
| for the sake of having kids. If you can afford them, by all
| means, have them. But if not, think hard about the
| suffering you'll suffer for a long time. You should
| absolutely put off having babies (or not have them) if your
| life situation doesn't accommodate taking on that burden
| and cost.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Is this really a serious concern in today's job market
| for software developers?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I was unaware we were scoping advice solely to high
| earning not yet wealthy ("HENRYs") employees. I give this
| same advice to everyone. Kids are a luxury good, not a
| necessity.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Everyone has the right to have children, we don't need
| gatekeepers telling other people whether they're rich
| enough to have kids.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It sounds to me like you're motivated by deep technical
| challenges. This is opposite of what you want when building a
| sustainable business. Running a business means creating value for
| other people. It means potentially hiring and managing people. It
| means worrying about finances. It means doing marketing.
|
| Let me put this in perspective: the NYTimes bought Wordle for
| >$1m.
|
| As for your specific case, you're talking about databases. The
| startup world is littered with the corpses of database startups
| so it's already a tough situation. On top of that you're talking
| about replication and query caching so of all the people who care
| deeply about databases (where those databases are generally free)
| you're talking about a small selection of them where something
| like this actually would matter.
|
| Now you can make a business out of serving a small number of
| customers by providing something that is of incredible value to
| them but you will have to identify those customers and sell to
| them. Often such companies start because someone identifies such
| a problem, leaves one of those companies and starts a business to
| do just that. They already have the contacts to sell back to
| them.
|
| The other side of this is that in the US as a senior engineer
| making $400k+ every year completely risk free with good work life
| balance and good benefits is relatiely easy.
|
| You say you want to start a family. Assuming you're in the US
| then things like health insurance and paying for education are
| going to matter. But here's a big one: you will want to (or
| should want to) spend time with your children, not sweating over
| the possibility that you can't pay the mortgage this month.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> The other side of this is that in the US as a senior
| engineer making $400k+ every year completely risk free with
| good work life balance and good benefits is relatiely easy.
|
| Please don't say "in the US" as that's more of a California
| thing, and probably only certain cities and companies at that.
| telomero22 wrote:
| Here is what I would tell you.
|
| Only build things that only take 1 month to build. If it takes
| longer, you're doing it wrong. An MVP should only take 1 month to
| build, if it's longer, it's not an MVP, but a convoluted,
| unrefined idea of what you had in mind.
|
| For example, if you have been building something very complex for
| 2 years on your own, you've done something very wrong. No
| successful entrepreneur builds something for 2 years alone, they
| have a team and even those that have a team launch it after a
| couple of months. It's very rare that an experienced entrepreneur
| builds something for years before they launch.
|
| It's also not expensive. Any software engineer in the Western
| world can pay a competent team of 3 overseas developers, but for
| some they want to prove themselves that they are successful on
| their own. That's the wrong way to go about it.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I work a full-time job and I still have time for my side
| projects.
|
| If it's not making any money yet, it's a side project. I plan to
| take at least a couple of months off and work on these full time,
| but they're still just side projects .
|
| Otherwise, you're basically gambling. The odds of being able to
| develop software solo that turns into something profitable, are
| not in your favor.
|
| The idea is solid, but say you're the CTO of a tech startup.
| Would you trust this software with handling your data. Even if
| your intentions are good, I strongly doubt you have the money to
| hire a QA team to make sure you're not accidentally dropping data
| all over the place.
|
| Even if you give it out for free, it poses an unacceptable level
| of risk. My side projects are almost entirely video games, the
| worst that happens is it crashes and you have to restart the
| game. I download random games from Itch.io all the time, as an
| individual I can take the risk on a strange binary breaking my
| Windows install.
|
| I would never do this in a corporate environment.
|
| I hope I wasn't too harsh, but this is an extremely difficult
| field to break into since the barrier to entry is so high.
| Realistically, you would need a small team.
|
| Alternatively, let's just say you create another product. If you
| can prove your solution as a component of that, then maybe you'll
| be able to convince others to take the risk.
| NotAWorkNick wrote:
| How does this sound?
|
| Get a job and switch to making it your hobby/side-hussle/itch-to-
| scratch project while $company pays your mortgage etc. Doing it
| that way would take a lot of the 'do I / Don't I' pressure off
| you.
|
| If, after polishing it up a bit in your evenings/weeks-ends it
| still looks promising then yeah, that is the time to decide.
|
| If you get good PR submitters, use them to help out and build up
| a relationship with them... you never know when you might need a
| good person like that as either a first-hire or a co-investor.
|
| I read somewhere that the retention rate for SV IT techies tanks
| after about 3 years.... think about that and view the option of
| "taking a day job" not as a defeat but rather in the way of "hey,
| I've just got my own personal seed-funder for the next three
| years or so".
|
| Best case - You get to hand your notice in after 6 months. Worst
| case? You polished your project and nurtured it for 3 years ....
| is it viable or not?
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I don 't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it._
|
| If you just want to build some awesome tech, then that's fine. If
| you want to build a business and make money, that's a very bad
| place to be starting from.
|
| Generally speaking, you want to know _as early as possible_ about
| the viability of your project from a financial perspective. And
| there are specific steps you can - and should - take to ascertain
| that in most cases. The exceptions would be the times when you
| 're building something where there is ZERO doubt about the
| potential market, eg if you're creating a "cure for cancer."
|
| My advice would be to read Stephen Blank's _The Four Steps to the
| Epiphany_ and think hard about whether or not you (want to | are
| willing to | have time to) run through the Customer Development
| process with your idea(s). If the answer is "no" then I would
| say that giving up and taking a "day job" might well be the right
| answer. OTOH, you may find that @sgblank's approach can help you
| get something going with some better understanding of your
| prospects for success.
| czbond wrote:
| Go get a job at elastic or mongo or another growing database team
| company. You'll make craploads of money if you can use this
| background as a leverage point to a senior position.
|
| Or sell it to them if they need it
| sudhirj wrote:
| > creating the software I hoped to turn into business
|
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it.
|
| These two statements are incompatible. If they're true, this
| isn't a business, it's a hobby. That's not to say it's bad thing
| -- I personally rewrote Redis on DynamoDB in Go over the course
| of the pandemic, and I learned a ton. But not a single person
| will ever pay for it.
|
| I also wrote a scheduling system for the folks who run my gym as
| well, and they take me to lunch every chance they get to ask for
| new features and beg me to take more of their money.
|
| The difference is classic YC startup lore, you make something
| people want. Not hope that people will want what you make. The
| former is a business, the latter is a hobby. Both are equally
| valid based on your life situation, but it doesn't work to
| confuse the two.
| disqard wrote:
| Thank you for that succinct statement "make something people
| want" vs. "hope that people will want what you make" -- pithy,
| and actionably useful.
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| yes. market is too hot right now for jobs.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it.
|
| You seem to be creating solutions and looking for a problem.
| After 20 years you ought to know where the painpoints are in
| software, build something to fix those. That's what people will
| pay for.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It sounds to be like you could be a great technical co founder.
| You don't seem to have the business skills needed to grow a start
| up or the interesting in developing them. Someone else is the
| reverse of you.
|
| It's not a guarantee to work out but at least you will have
| someone focused on doing all the things you don't want to/don't
| know how to do.
|
| That or just get a 9-5 and keep doing this on the side.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mrkramer wrote:
| >I've tried numerous attempts over the last 20 years to start a
| software business as a solo founder
|
| Get a co-founder or co-founders, things should get easier that
| way and 20 years is a lot of time so I think you must be doing
| something fundamentally wrong maybe solo funding :/
|
| >I'm building a programmable PostgreSQL proxy in Rust.
|
| I would suggest you to shift your focus to consumer software
| because it's really hard to get into SaaS industry although I see
| lots of SaaS companies getting millions of dollars of funding but
| without having a clue how to build recurring(steady) revenue.
| causi wrote:
| Founder stuff is for the birds, in my opinion. I get more done as
| a hobby on top of a regular job than I ever did as an independent
| because of the sheer mental weight removed by having a steady,
| reliable income and stable hours.
| vmception wrote:
| Giving up and getting a job isn't "growing up", _thinking_ that
| way does mean you have to grow up, or listen to the spouse around
| you saying that. You do have a very naive take on things, good on
| you for being vulnerable enough to admit it.
|
| Your attempt to build a "software business" by "building software
| that you hope turn into business" is laughable and the example
| you give is the punchline. You can't just identify problems, you
| have to identify the _size_ of the problem, the market size and
| sales cycle.
|
| It is very likely you will find building stuff for other people
| to be very fulfilling.
| vernie wrote:
| Yes, it rocks.
| thecleaner wrote:
| Find a sales co-founder maybe but if it's tough to go on I am
| sure someone like you will be able to land some really cushy
| senior dev positions.
|
| Please realise that the infra business is all about managed
| services. Imo nobody cares about Postgres replication
| specifically but if you could offer distributed sql with high
| availability then you might be in the game. Check out Scylla,
| their founder is also a software guy and pretty technicaly but
| they also have a sales team. Try to answer why would someone not
| use Aurora or RDS and what use-cases does your service have. Good
| luck.
| fswd wrote:
| As an engineer, I would say this problem is already solved with
| connection pooling, but that's not why I'm reaching out.
|
| I'm still at an early stage, but I made the same mistake of
| assuming I could overcome product fit, marketing, sales with
| technology. I made the assumption I could overwhelmingly overcome
| these things with great tech. This isn't the reality of the
| situation.
|
| What you need to do is engage your potential customers and get
| feedback, then simplify or specialize, and pivot your idea or
| solution. Getting feedback is critical. After doing this my ideas
| went from highly specialized and hard to explain to flexible and
| easy to understand. Eventually I was able to find a fit, but I'm
| still operating under this feedback loop.
|
| I would get a job just for a break and then double back.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Go get a job. Worst case scenario you can come back to this in 6
| months.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| It's unlikely he'd have the steam to handle a new baby, a full-
| time job, _and_ building a product, so picking one or the other
| seems reasonable. Once the kid isn 't waking up in the middle
| of the night and he can sleep more than 3 hours at a time, a
| side project is more manageable.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Yup, i'm suggesting get a job, and drop the project for 6
| months. It won't go anywhere.
| hogrider wrote:
| Evrrytime someone asks this questions it's always the same,
| people thinking "build it and they'll come". I don't know how
| anyone can embark on projects like this without being sure
| there's a market for it. I guess that's what it means taking a
| risk, but still, you can be throwning years of your life at
| something that no one wanted.
| eloff wrote:
| It feels a little obvious in hindsight, but I agree with this.
| I wish I'd done things differently. I'm not too old to learn
| the lessons and try again one day, but I think it's time to
| regroup and do the responsible thing for a while to get things
| setup financially for my future family.
| victorbojica wrote:
| If you don't check the market, it's not a risk. It's just a
| poor decision.
| Azsy wrote:
| I would counter that some of the best software was built to
| simply fix a problem the dev had.
|
| Although you could argue the market had at least one
| interested party.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I'm good at slowly building a product I understand. I'm
| horrible at iterating quickly and I'm not super great at
| whipping out a front end. I might try random business ideas
| when I have money to risk on such things, but for now I
| make a better employee than entrepreneur. I had a modestly
| successful recruiting business with a Rails app about 10
| years ago, but I'm glad to be free of it. I had a chance to
| sell for like 2x my annual income and transitioned to
| software development. It was a great decision and I make
| more money as a developer than I ever did as a recruiter.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Yes, but checking the market isn't as easy as people make it
| sound. The only true validation is people giving you cash.
| pictur wrote:
| If you want to progress in the open source ecosystem, the golden
| rule is not to be humble. With 20 lines of code, you can follow
| the path of npm package authors who have earned thousands of
| stars.
| Barrera wrote:
| > And then there's the task of marketing/selling it, which is way
| outside of my skillset.
|
| This may be more within your skillset than you realize. If you
| haven't tried - really tried, you'll never know.
|
| I don't know what your runway looks like, but if you haven't
| dropped everything and tried to make a sale, now is the time.
| Find something over the last 20 years that you've done that seems
| sellable. Look through your past contacts to find people likely
| to be interested. Then contact them. If the customer pipeline is
| too thin, try to make one through cold calling. Even if it
| doesn't work, you'll learn a lot.
|
| Bottom line, you must start thinking about customers. You don't
| need to be a marketing pro, but you do need to have a very
| specific idea of who your customer is, what problems they have,
| and whether or not they can actually pay you.
|
| If this sounds impossible, or if you've tried it and it will
| never sit right with you, then you should realize it's not going
| to be any easier after riverdb is done.
| eloff wrote:
| I'm blown away by the quantity and quality of responses here.
| Thank you guys so much for the plethora of heartfelt and honest
| advice. I can't respond to everyone, but I read every single
| comment here.
|
| You're right that I made the typical engineers mistake of
| building before validating the market and the customer's
| problems. As I developer I feel confident there is a market
| there, but I have no idea how large it is, how difficult it would
| be to make sales, etc. I probably should have started there. Also
| I think I chose something a little too difficult to pull off as a
| single founder - I have a track record of doing that. Next time
| it had better be stupidly easy to get an MVP out the door.
|
| I think I probably knew this in my heart before I posted here,
| but I'm going to get a full-time job and focus on getting some
| more savings in-place for my future family. I'm also going to try
| picking up some of the business, marketing, and sales skills I
| lack in the process. I'll keep my eyes open, and maybe in the
| process I'll encounter a good problem to solve, or meet like-
| minded individuals I could collaborate with.
|
| Thank you all for your helpful and frank advice! I really needed
| that today to feel more comfortable with taking this decision.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| If you were in your early 20's, maybe it would be reasonable to
| suggest that you recalibrate your plans and give it another
| crack?
|
| But at 37, after 2 decades' worth of attempts, with a proposal
| that (at least from where I'm sitting) sounds like a pet "basket-
| weaving" project rather than an actual commercial product, I
| think it's time to admit that maybe you just don't "get it".
|
| There's no shame in this. Plenty of people just don't "get"
| plenty of things and still live fulfilling lives. I'm sure you'd
| be great employee and provider working for somebody else.
|
| Don't deny your wife a family because you want to chase some
| bullshit dream of being an entrepreneur.
| iamzamek wrote:
| I'd say - get a job and run your things after hours.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > I've been working part-time to cover the bills while I work on
| creating the software I hoped to turn into business.
|
| I would flip it around: get a full time job to secure your income
| and savings and work on your project part time. It might take a
| bit longer but with a lot less stress.
| serverlessmom wrote:
| The thing about funded startups is that their founders have a lot
| of access to capital. Whether that's through their educational or
| family connections, (almost) every startup you see starts with
| someone who can make a few phone calls, have a few meetings, and
| raise $200k.
|
| Making interesting/important tech isn't usually the way that
| people get funding. It's more about finding a strong business
| need and working up a product to meet that need. Here again
| access matters: if you're not able to call on half a dozen CTO's
| to tell you about their challenges, you're gonna struggle to meet
| a need.
| stets wrote:
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it.
|
| I'm mostly re-iterating what others have said but this is
| essential and IMO should be something you do before you are
| building your product/service. Sounds like you are good at
| operating and launching, but marketing and product dev need some
| work.
|
| I'm not you but If I were I would get a job and utilize this as a
| stepping stone for it. Go back and build again with an audience
| in mind and try again if you're up to it.
| linsomniac wrote:
| What is it you like about the idea of having a software business,
| and can you find a job that gives you that satisfaction?
|
| I started a Linux consultancy because I was working at a large
| company where many of my peers were just reading the paper and
| taking smoke and coffee breaks, waiting for retirement. So I
| started a small company where my contributions mattered.
|
| I struggled with that for 20 years, having some modest success,
| enjoying a lot of freedom and stretching my skills (including in
| things like management, marketing and sales, interpersonal,
| general business).
|
| ~7 years ago I got a job at a small local company that gets rid
| of a lot of the business stress, while still retaining a lot of
| the freedom.
| SwSwinger wrote:
| I work at YugaByteDB as a software engineer, and I encounter
| people in your situation regularly. You are asking HN for
| product-market fit basics on something that is more like a tool
| or innovation than an end-to-end company. If you join a growing
| startup (Series C+) related to the product area you like, then
| you'll be able to understand how that market works from the
| default company culture. You'll also be able to pitch your own
| product ideas of similar scope - if the company isn't too
| established - after the first year or so when you understand
| their focus more deeply.
| cbreynoldson wrote:
| Go through the MyFirstMillion podcasts for indiehacker-like ideas
| that could make you fairly wealthy. There are a ton, and like
| others have pointed out, it seems what you are working on is very
| specific, very technical, and very context dependent (Rust,
| PostgreSQL, etc.).
|
| It doesn't take brilliance (in the realm of ideas) to be
| financially successful. If you listen to this podcast enough,
| you'll realize how rich people have gotten doing some of the most
| low-hanging ideas.
| iamzamek wrote:
| Get a job and run your things after hour. What was your projects?
| Did you try to sell them? Did you try to get a cofounder? Maybe
| that was a case.
| frans wrote:
| A book recommendation that deals with exactly this topic: Pat
| Flynn's Will it fly? https://patflynn.com/book/will-it-fly/
| [deleted]
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Trying to launch a startup and a family with young kids? Big big
| yikes. Do not recommend! You'll have two reasons to never get any
| sleep. And that's _before_ your marriage starts to fall apart!
| ugh123 wrote:
| TBH- that sounds like a great open source project and would look
| great on a resume. Probably not a "business"
| sotu wrote:
| Hey eloff - I'm a founder who's spent a great deal of time in the
| trenches and is now scaling a startup so maybe I can share my
| sliver of experience.
|
| Firstly, in order to be successful you need these two things: 1.
| Your must believe it is inevitable, if you don't build it someone
| else will 2. You must fall in love with the outcome
|
| I will never tell another founder to quit because I remember when
| I was told discouraging advice along my journey and how hard it
| was to hear it and keep trudging. Starting a company is a lesson
| in mental health and managing your happiness.
|
| If you are discouraged it is not because of your startup - it is
| because of the anxiety you are feeling around your future
| family's situation. What does your future family need to be OK?
| What does it mean to be serious? What do you need to feel like
| you are a good parent and father?
|
| Do you need more money? Are you anxious about buying a home? Do
| you believe you can not raise a family well if you rent? These
| are all questions that me and my friends who are startup founders
| (or trying to be anyway) talk about with each other constantly.
|
| Even if you know that people want your product the hurdle of
| taking it to market is equally hard and cumbersome. When you
| start a startup its because you are on a journey.. just like
| running on a treadmill sucks if you watch the distance with every
| step, startups are the same way - try to forget about "the end"
| and fall in love with the path.
|
| I'd venture a guess that you are an intellectually curious
| person.. probably curiosity is a value of yours, maybe your
| startup is just a manifestation of your curiosity? That's a
| beautiful thing. It is you being you to your fullest.. think
| about the wisdom and knowledge you have gained and can pass off
| to your kids now that you tried your hardest to follow your
| values and heart. Would a house and yard teach them that?
|
| Give up? Grow up? Get a job? There's no right or wrong answer.
| The only thing to do is ask yourself why you are worried and
| address those things independently.
|
| What does getting serious about your family mean? What are the
| exact things that it means to you and your wife? Quantify it.. if
| it means make more money.. ask why? if its because you want to
| own a house, ask why again? If its because you believe you can
| not raise a family because of a house, ask why again - try to get
| to the root of your concerns. Perhaps it is not logical.. or
| perhaps it is and you will emerge with conviction.
|
| I think the question you are asking is healthy but no one can
| answer it for you on hacker news, only you can answer it (in
| partnership with your life partner)
|
| Good luck and keep believing in yourself!!
| tomdekan wrote:
| Great response.
| eloff wrote:
| You answered my question with a dozen more questions :) Thank
| you, these are important things to think about and discuss with
| my wife. I appreciate the time and effort you took to respond
| to me. Good luck in your endeavours as well!
| hamza__nouali wrote:
| I was the same as you until I started learning marketing and
| business instead of trying to build products no one wants to use
| or buy.
|
| I recommend you to start reading "The one-page marketing plan"
| book, it's really good for absolute beginners.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Personally I am skeptical of the market for developer's tools. If
| you are VC-backed in San Francisco it is like selling picks to
| miners in 1849 (except you don't need to actually sell the picks
| because funding flows like water) but then half the target market
| thinks "we don't buy software here" (we only use open source) and
| the other half of the target market is married to Microsoft,
| Oracle, etc. or expects a very high touch sales process.
| ghaff wrote:
| The developer tools market was tough _before_ there were a ton
| of open source options. Microsoft probably did as well as
| anyone (MSDN subscriptions and the like) and, while it
| supported other parts of its business, was still a (relatively)
| modest revenue stream on its own.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think of the roaring 80's when Microsoft's developer tools
| (BASIC) were baked into ROM on most micros and when Microsoft
| sold premium compilers for FORTRAN, BASIC, C, etc. but you
| had Borland coming in with innovative high performance
| products at bargain prices (Turbo Pascal, Turbo Assembler.)
| and also a market for cheap compilers like Tom Mix C.
|
| When GCC came out the market disappeared for the cheap C
| compilers and even Microsoft got pulled into the discount
| market such as the MSDN subscription which entitles you to a
| lot of software and is an astonishingly good deal if you
| really use it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the MSDN subscription which entitles you to a lot of
| software and is an astonishingly good deal if you really
| use it.
|
| It's, I think, Visual Studio Subscription now (though the
| name has changed several times), but the licenses are for
| _quite_ limited purposes, and designed to prevent the very
| high prices Microsoft charges end users for their software
| from being a barrier for vendors developing and supporting
| solutions that force end users to buy the software.
| darksaints wrote:
| I'm surprised there is a market at all. Selling dev tools to
| developers can only succeed with massive investment into making
| an absolutely superior product. I can count on 1 finger the
| number of dev tools I pay for: Jetbrains. For everything else,
| open source tools are either the superior option or good
| enough.
|
| There is a huge untapped potential for selling software and
| services to businesses...but for some reason most developers
| never bother to even learn anything about the businesses they
| work in, let alone the businesses they don't.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I've made a living from selling developer tools for the last
| 10 years. It's not hard to sell to developers at all. Sure,
| there are a lot of people who only use free tools, but the
| 10% of devs who pay for their tools are still a huge market.
|
| I've bought a lot of licenses for developer tools - text
| editors, version control GUIs, a decompiler, multiple
| database clients, a client for SFTP, another one for testing
| HTTP APIs, multiple graphic editors, various ssh/shell tools
| for the phone... There's a lot of commercial dev tools out
| there and if you don't mind the fact that you will be dealing
| almost exclusively with tech dudes all the time it's a great
| opportunity.
| lazide wrote:
| It's ugly and uncomfortable for most developers.
|
| It's easier to target the equivalent of 'spherical cows'
| which don't have pesky, irritating, problems like interop
| with 3 different major versions of windows (all old) or the
| equivalent.
| ipython wrote:
| This is all imo. It sounds like you're passionate about building
| infrastructure. It's hard to sell pure infrastructure as a solo
| founder. Your best bet would be to either find a way to open
| source the code and support yourself with commercial support
| contracts, or find a job doing exactly this sort of work inside a
| larger organization.
| craigching wrote:
| That idea sounds a lot like https://materialize.com/
|
| It's a cool idea though.
| claytonjy wrote:
| That was my first thought as well, and I think some of those
| folks hang out here on HN.
|
| I love Postgres, and if I knew rust I'd be begging them to hire
| me.
| benwerd wrote:
| You need to validate your business as quickly as possible. Here's
| one way to do that:
|
| Consider your top 3 assumptions relating to the following risks:
| users (do people want this?), business (can you sell it will it
| be profitable for you?), technical (can you complete the project
| in a way that will be useful for others?). These are the things
| that, if they're wrong, will mean you'll fail.
|
| Then give yourself two days and find out the answers to those
| questions.
|
| The only way to find that out in that time is to go out and talk
| to people. Give them a call; email them; reach out on Twitter -
| just get that feedback however you can. Be open to learning and
| being wrong, even though you've worked on this for a long time.
|
| Some suggestions:
|
| Users - find some people you think would want this and talk to
| them about it.
|
| Business - find someone who's sold something similar successfully
| and talk through what they did with them.
|
| Technical - speak with people who have written similar projects
| at the database layer.
|
| Engineers don't typically like picking up the phone, but there's
| no alternative to asking questions and knocking down those risks
| as quickly as you can.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| My very brief, hopefully not too harsh 2 cents:
|
| The description of what you are building sounds like a deeply
| technical, profoundly specific thingie for deeply technical
| people (with unknown market, and unknown business proposition at
| best). The fact you have not started with or outlined the problem
| it solves, the business need, or who is the customer in non-
| technical terms feels like a massive red flag to my naive mind.
| Bluntly, at best it sounds like a "tinkering hobby" - NOTHING
| wrong with that, unless you need to pay the bills :).
|
| I would suggest getting a job in a place / position where you can
| observe the business flow, verbiage, get some mentorship, and not
| only pay the bills, but set yourself up for long term success
| should you desire to build something of your own again. I have no
| idea what your technical prowess is, but it sounds like you may
| have spent your years building stuff rather than building
| business, and that's where your growth opportunity lies. To put
| it another way "Selling and marketing are not my skillset" is
| almost a token of pride for us techies, but it is empathically
| not a successful mindset for a potential business owner. If
| marketing and selling are of no interest to you, and you just
| want to do the technical part, than accept your own preferences
| and priorities and go work with/for somebody who does prioritize
| and excel at sales and marketing :)
|
| (all this of course based on reading three paragraphs you've
| shared and therefore as likely completely misread and wrong as
| not :).
|
| Best of luck!
|
| P.S. For what it's worth: nothing prepares and nobody can explain
| to you the MASSIVE transformation and upheaval of your life that
| having children will be:). If money is in any way a stressor, to
| you or relationship, or if this brings you anxiety, that's
| another good reason to settle that down _before_ kids come along
| : >
| kbuchanan wrote:
| As a founder myself, I echo this sentiment, that building and
| selling are indeed not the same thing. They are both important,
| but having a mindset for marketing, selling, finding an
| audience, either yourself, or in a co-founder, is essential.
|
| And it never stops being important.
| eloff wrote:
| Thank you for being honest. I feel you've described me and my
| situation pretty accurately. I appreciate the advice and you're
| right - I need to learn the non-technical skills where I'm weak
| before doing this again. Or at least meet a co-founder who's
| strengths overlap with my weaknesses - probably a
| marketing/sales person.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Someone who is a strong marketing/sales person has loads of
| opportunities. Why would they want to spend their time
| working with you when you don't even seem to have a product
| or know what problem you are solving? I would suggest getting
| a full-time job. Maybe try again in a few year with more
| savings, a stronger idea of what problem you are solving and
| more business experience. [Context: Running my own 1 man
| software product company since 2005].
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| If you want to develop marketing skills here's some things to
| research: Start with something called "product marketing" the
| job titles are typically "product marketing manager" and
| these folks are typically a group that sits in "marketing"
| and does things like "messaging & positioning" figures out
| "pricing & packaging" and comes up with all the info about
| the product. Basically, works with Eng + PM teams and
| packages up all their work and makes something you can
| actually sell. Just spelling this out since you can google it
| on your own. Look for something called "totally addressable
| market" (also know as TAM) too and that'll give you the size
| of the market you're selling into. Some of this is sort of
| art and science since there is nothing really exact and you
| will need to test it via trail and error. But, it'll get you
| pointed in the general direction of what's correct.
|
| FWIW, I agree with OP here. Kids are a game changer and
| having a stable paycheck coming in gives you time to dedicate
| to your family without stress. This is highly underrated in
| the first 3-6 months when you're trying to figure out what
| this new life looks like (living on 2 hour chunks of sleep).
| Speaking from experience trying to start a company, having a
| kid, then quickly realising I need a job asap.
| mstipetic wrote:
| What other things did you try to build?
| diminish wrote:
| Hey Eloff, after 4 failed startups from 2012-2018 - I've
| joined another late-stage high growth startup. Thanks to
| stock options I ended up having 7 digit wealth in 2 years
|
| Now I will go back to startuping.....
| eloff wrote:
| Congratulations, that worked out well for you!
| NiagaraThistle wrote:
| This is probably the best advice for the OP I've read here.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| This expresses pretty much what I was going to say. To
| contextualize it a bit, I always mentor people to _start_ by
| getting a job in a company that is doing something in their
| skill set. Instead of looking at it as "just a paycheck until
| I can start my own thing." try to actively learn about how that
| company works, really works, from marketing to sales to
| manufacturing to legal to operations. Most people are willing
| to mentor if you tell them that you are hoping to start your
| own company one day and want to know what you don't know.
|
| Ask questions of people like product managers of the form, "How
| do you validate your ideas for products before you commit to
| invest building them?" or "What product did you think would be
| a hit and was a total flop? What caused it to flop?" Ask people
| in release engineering or manufacturing, "What takes the most
| time in getting a product out? How about a feature to a
| product?"
|
| If you are a software developer, imagine that a functioning,
| growing company is a large legacy code base that you want to
| learn how it works. How the pieces work together, what the
| roles of the parts are. If you're a hardware engineer imagine
| the company is a big circuit you're analyzing, same thing, what
| do the parts do and how do they contribute to the overall
| functioning.
|
| You will get to know a lot of people in the company and you
| will get a much better understanding of what it takes to bring
| a product to market.
|
| What ever you do, and this applies to people anywhere in their
| career, do NOT consider any job "just a paycheck." Use a job to
| learn more about why people are willing to give this company
| money so that the company can pay you to work there.
|
| The secret, such as it is for entrepreneurs, is "For what
| reason would people give me money?" And you can also ask "What
| would I pay for this idea?" and then subtract from that what
| you've learned from your work experiences would be the costs of
| producing it.
|
| PS> Even the best university education does not train you to
| build a successful company from the ground up. Nobody teaches
| that, you have to learn it from people who have done it or even
| better are doing it.
| WestCoastJustin wrote:
| > you have to learn it from people who have done it or even
| better are doing it.
|
| I have often wondered how to distil this point down. It's
| like these people know the patterns/systems that work to
| generate the results they want. They can replicate them at
| any company and generally know what needs to be implemented
| or what's missing. Tune from there. I think the key is
| somewhere in the patterns/systems but still that's too vague
| to implement. Basically, you need to join somewhere
| successful, get to a level were you can see across the org,
| and learn what patterns/systems they use and replicate them.
| Mix in competent people too.
| smrtinsert wrote:
| A million times this. A cofounder I used to work once told me
| the only thing you should be looking at is market need. Tech
| demos don't pay bills.
| [deleted]
| sharkweek wrote:
| Big second vote here for get a job at LargeCo (doesn't even
| have to be at a tech company and you might even be better off
| finding business opportunities working in tech at like some big
| consumer goods co, insurance, etc...) and observe workflows.
|
| People do some bizarre things to get their jobs done each day
| and if you see enough similar bizarre things from lots of
| people, you ask questions then present potential solutions to
| see if there's a product hidden in there.
|
| Wishing you luck!
| waterfish wrote:
| Perfectly described and I went thru similar "existential
| crisis". I would build off of this and add that taking a job is
| NOT an admission of failure or defeat in accomplishing your
| life dreams and goals. You can take a job, and still work on
| your business on the side. You might be surprised at how well
| the company you work for can teach you about business and
| operations and marketing to augment your endeavors. Good luck!
| acegopher wrote:
| Your employer is the best source of seed funding for a solo
| founder venture. In other words, use your steady income from a
| job and turn your software business ideas into hobbies. If one
| takes off, great, if not, you have a hobby.
|
| As others have stated, being a solo founder is almost the LEAST
| about programming cool things and more about marketing, sales,
| invoicing, payroll, etc. And especially if you are successful,
| you won't be programming for long.
| pengaru wrote:
| Either give up or make it your top priority to immediately go
| find your first ten paying customers. Then prioritize developing
| the minimum set of stuff absent to meet those customers'
| requirements. You may even be able to turn those customers into
| paid feature development contracts to demonstrate a willingness
| to give you money for what you can deliver, while helping you pay
| the bills in the interim.
|
| If you can't make any of that happen now, there's no reason to
| believe it'll happen after you've spent another year (or more)
| implementing things you think are important. At that point I'd
| say just give up or bring on a partner who can help network and
| find (and bill!) paying customers.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it.
|
| Here is your problem. People give you money if you solve a
| problem for them (this is called a "value proposition"). You need
| to get into talks with people who need this enough to whip out
| the credit card. And you need many of those...
|
| I do like your idea - but honestly, that is a very specific
| problem that few people have, and those who do are not
| necessarily the one to make buying decisions. And then there's
| the "why not just put all of this onto AWS, yolo" folks. Not to
| mention that your venture right now has a bus number of one: Even
| if I decided to put cash down on your product, what happens to
| the code should you get hit by a bus? (This is why it will be
| hard for you to get business customers)
|
| You need either
|
| - someone who can do the marketing - someone to shadow you -
| several high-profile customers who are willing to partly finance
| the development
|
| or you need to understand this as a hobby project.
| [deleted]
| NatTheBat wrote:
| The fact that the idea isn't validated was also the red flag to
| me. I read the lean startup recently, I would recommend that to
| learn about validating product ideas as you build as to not get
| to a finished product that no one will pay for.
| piyh wrote:
| How do you validate those product ideas? Are you posting
| about it and fishing for engagement, or building some real
| quick and dirty prototypes?
| NatTheBat wrote:
| Definitely both but likely starting by talking to your
| target demographic and then building an MVP if it seems
| like people would pay money for it.
| michaelmarkell wrote:
| The general advice is "do things that don't scale" so
| rather than trying to post about it and get some analytical
| data, just go talk to 20 people in your target market for
| an hour each and see what resonates with them, what
| problems they have etc -- all before building anything
| (except maybe a simple mockup if you feel it will get your
| point across better.)
| Dowwie wrote:
| I think it's a valuable addition to open source but not a
| marketable product. If it hasn't caught your attention yet, I
| recommend looking at what the team at Materialize is building.
| They're beta testing postgresql support now.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| You're coming at it from the wrong angle. You're creating a
| solution in search of a problem. You don't even know if someone
| NEEDS this thing you're working on. A lucky few are successful in
| this manner, but most aren't, and for the ones that are... it's
| usually not their first rodeo.
|
| Successful business make money because they create solutions for
| problems that customers can understand AND can agree are better
| off handled by someone else.
|
| Get a full time job, learn about the businesses that your
| employer interacts with, and then learn to identify areas where
| you could solve problems for either company. Then try again.
| chrismcb wrote:
| | I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it
|
| If you want to start a business and sell a product, you need to
| understand this part first. Maybe what you are doing is cool and
| useful. But figure it how it can be useful first. Otherwise you
| can spend years building it then discover it isn't really useful.
| dejv wrote:
| We are same age and we were on similar trajectories, I just made
| the jump few years ago and got the job, quickly took a tech lead
| role and currently flirting with being mid level manager.
|
| Well, the jump was easy. If you were able to survive two decades
| being indie you are going to survive having job and maybe even
| thrive in that environment.
|
| Should you do it, or maybe even should I did it? I don't know. I
| do miss old days, but there is something in being paid each month
| without chasing next gig.
|
| But you know what? You can try it for few months and see by
| yourself. I dit that and, hey, old punk is now climbing career
| ladder.
| pranavpiyush wrote:
| I can help. Reach out at pranav [at] pranavpiyush [dot] com if
| you want to talk through your current product and I might be able
| to help you think through how to find a market for it (or not).
| hmurraydavis wrote:
| If you're not doing sales and marketing, it's a hobby not a
| business. It's fine to have a hobby! As I see it, you a choice:
| stop thinking of your hobby as a business or make your hobby a
| business by either learning to do sales and marketing or hiring
| someone who can do them for you.
| mywittyname wrote:
| There's some good recommendations here, which seem to identify
| your issue, so I'll offer a solution.
|
| Get a job, work there for at least a year to get a good idea of
| what they are doing. Keep an eye out for problems the company has
| that you think can be solved by software, and that a company
| would be willing to buy. Once you have that problem space really
| well understood, start building a product around solving that
| issue.
|
| The next step comes marketing and selling your product. How to do
| that is kind of dependent upon the nature of what you build. Once
| you have something that can make money, you can quit your job and
| spend a few months trying to find a customer. If that doesn't
| work, get another job.
|
| I've had tons of great "company ideas" in my career that I've
| seen other people build into successful businesses. If your
| company has the problem, it's likely a million others do as well.
|
| What you're building sounds amazing. But it honestly sounds like
| an open source product and not something a company would
| purchase.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > I've tried numerous attempts over the last 20 years to start a
| software business as a solo founder and none have worked
|
| You tried. It's time to double-down on what you're good at and
| get a job.
|
| I also tried. I realized that I do best when I'm not trying to
| define what the business and product are and how to sell them;
| but instead I do best when I'm just concentrating on the
| software.
|
| So much of being a solo founder involves non-programming tasks
| that it's extremely difficult to be a solo founder writing
| complicated software.
| lesbianbezos wrote:
| I'm also SWE. I failed for the first 2 years. I took some time
| to fill in the gaps --business and product skills. Now I have
| $6k MRR. How serious are you about building a company and are
| you willing to fill in your gaps?
| jrib wrote:
| what worked for you to fill the gaps?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Not at all. I enjoy programming too much.
|
| I'd rather be a technical co-founder working with a small
| team then via solo founder.
| Beldin wrote:
| My advice, as someone who has never started a business and has no
| intention of doing so in the near future:
|
| Make a list of _everything_ that goes with running a business.
| Think through the whole process. Who are your clients? How do
| they know of your product/service? Why do they care? What are
| they willing to pay? How will you get their money? What if
| they're unhappy after spending money? How will you find new
| clients? Where? How do you pay taxes? Are updates included? Etc
| etc etc.
|
| Write this down, figure out which parts you like, which parts
| you're okay with, and which parts you absolutely hate.
|
| Now start spending most of your time doing the parts you hate.
| Those are the major obstacles to success; the other tasks are
| more fun and therefore far easier on the spirit.
|
| If your list of tasks is sufficiently complete and you are
| successful at the tasks you hate, you stand a shot!
| NiagaraThistle wrote:
| "I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it."
|
| This is the problem. As I was reading your situation, before I
| got to this point, I was asking myself "Is there a market for
| this?". I have no idea if there actually is, but I just can't
| imagine there being a market easy enough to crack into for what
| you're building. This would lead me to believe that it would be
| more prudent to go work for someone else, even if for a "short"
| time, so you can build up stability and savings for yourself and
| future family.
|
| There is nothing stopping you from continuing to work on your
| project AND work for someone else AND be a father - many of us do
| this, albeit with varying success in each area.
|
| Courtland Allen of Indie Hackers has a great talk about this and
| explains that so many wannabe founders make the mistake of
| thinking they have to focus 100% of time and effort on building
| their start up and there is no other way. He calls this the
| "runway of certain death" where your savings is the runway and
| your project is a plane needing to take off before the runway
| runs out.
|
| Long story short: get a helicopter so you don't need to worry
| about the runway. What he means by this is don't put yourself up
| against impending failure when you could stretch your timeline to
| launch by earning an income and just working on your project less
| hours per day but for many more days.
|
| The talk is much better and informative :)
|
| I have a young family. I am an agency Web Developer. I quit my
| job in May 2021 to "focus" on my side project. My focus has not
| been great and I am not finished with my project yet. At the
| beginning of February I started looking for a FT job again
| because I'm burning through my savings and it's no longer fair to
| watch my wife work FT while I continue to code an unprofitable
| project. I secured a new job today and will be able to relieve
| some stress from myself and more from my wife. And I will go back
| to working on my project as a side project outside of work and
| family hours for a couple hours each day.
|
| Also, I'd recommend taking a break on BUILDING the thing, and
| spending some time MARKETING the thing to try to get at least one
| person that doesn't know you to tell you that's thing is the
| thing they need to save their business and will pay you any
| amount so they can use it to save their business. If you can't
| find one person to honestly tell you this, you might have a
| failed project on your hands. If you find someone, ask them for
| money right then and commit to a launch date for an MVP for their
| own use. Now you have a customer, proved you concept, have $$,
| and a beta user.
|
| If you can't find others who will pay you for your project, cut
| losses, work for someone else and start a new side project that
| DOES have a profitable niche.
|
| Don't ever let people who "don't get it" tell you what you're
| doing is a failure and that you need to "grow up". Handle your
| responsibilities, of course, but keep your dream alive - it's the
| only way ANYTHING great was ever brought to the public.
|
| Good luck.
| eloff wrote:
| You basically just went through this same dilemma as me. I
| think you're completely right, I'm going to do the same thing
| and get a full-time job and experiment in my free time with
| first selling various ideas and see what sticks. Hopefully I
| can learn about the process and improve myself in that area
| where I'm very weak.
|
| Thanks for the encouragement, good luck to you as well!
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| Sounds like marketing and selling are not only outside your
| skillset, but outside your interest. You could have easily
| learned how to do it in the past 20 years if you had the
| aptitude. You'll never make it solo if you can't find a passion
| for selling your product.
|
| Yes, you should give up and get a full-time job. I'm a developer
| and I've founded 3 startups over the past 10 years. None made it
| to unicorn status, but they all passed the $2M in annual revenue
| mark.
|
| Get a full-time job and make real money as an engineer. While you
| are doing that you can work on meeting the right co-founder and
| finding the right thing to build. The right product and market
| will pull you away from your job, you won't have to try and force
| it like you have been.
| eloff wrote:
| Thank you, this is good, frank advice coming from a place of
| experience. I really appreciate it.
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Ok, let's talk brass tacks here then, because I'm very curious.
|
| Your recent venture in profile is hard to put into the 'sell
| first, then build' bin. That wasn't your exact suggestion
| though - as I understand you, you say to have a passion for
| selling your product.
|
| This said, I feel like you could map out the 'how I knew I
| could sell this at a price point viable for me and my
| customers.' Mind digging into that a bit?
|
| Background: I'm getting better at my products/companies, but
| I've been burned recently taking on entirely too much (doing
| things that will actually never scale) because I was paid low
| thousands per setup and $500/month (I thought was huge for a
| SaaS), but that setup never got under 1-2 months like I wanted.
| rsweeney21 wrote:
| For my most recent venture I went into an existing market
| with hundreds of competitors (technical recruiting). I knew
| there was demand, though I did have to learn specific tactics
| for selling this service. I stumbled on the idea by
| experiencing a problem with the shady/spammy nature of the
| technical recruiting industry and feeling like I had a better
| way.
|
| I've killed 5+ startups in the first few months though by
| prioritizing talking to potential customers over building
| software. Hard to do as an introvert that loves building
| things.
|
| My recommendation to get a full-time job comes from the
| belief that if you are so focused on coming up with a winning
| idea, it becomes more illusive. (See:
| http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)
| Spaced-Oddity wrote:
| "I don't even know if this is something people would want or pay
| for if I completed it."
|
| This is the definition of finding product market fit. If you are
| building something you aren't sure people would buy, you're just
| gambling with your time.
|
| Watch this video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEvKo90qBns
| george_ciobanu wrote:
| Many people get startup ideas came by working at a company and
| noticing a gap in tooling, a super manual process or an error
| prone one or something that is hard to use effectively. Taking a
| job can be a path to your dream, be it by finding ideas or by
| funding your future build time, or by growing your list of
| connections etc. You can come back to the same idea later or come
| up with better ones. Some dreams take a while to accomplish, you
| have to try hard and not give up. The steps to get there are not
| the same for everyone. Some start early others learn a lot from
| their corporate experience.
|
| And yes, if you want to be a founder and don't think your own
| ideas are commercialisable, either partner with someone who has
| them (and find the ones you both like) or get really good at
| understanding what the job of each product around us is -
| practice the methods in https://www.fullstory.com/blog/clayton-
| christensen-jobs-to-b... on a daily basis and soon you will see
| lots of gaps in the market. Some of them might be narrow but very
| valuable, few will be wide enough to make a small business of,
| and very very few will yield multi-million dollar companies. Why
| do you have your own software company? Is it because you love
| independence or you think you'll enjoy being a founder or just a
| technical founder? No bad answers here it's just important to
| understand what drives this dream of yours. Then it gets easier
| to find the right path to your ultimate goal.
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