[HN Gopher] Being a Solo Software Entrepreneur at 40
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Being a Solo Software Entrepreneur at 40
Author : alex_suzuki
Score : 152 points
Date : 2022-11-08 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I'm 50 and starting something new as the sole developer.
| 55555 wrote:
| Awesome! What are you making?
| BirAdam wrote:
| Well, this just rips my excuses and tosses them out a window.
| Thanks for the motivation today!
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| > After all the doom and gloom, I sometimes need to remind myself
| that all is not lost after 40.
|
| Oh good grief. 40 is young.
| saulpw wrote:
| "40 is the old age of youth; 50 is the youth of old age."
| phlipski wrote:
| "I'm a man, I'm 40!" - Mike Gundy
| nsxwolf wrote:
| What is 45 then
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I hope these articles and the number they say is something for
| you to cherish and prepare for your upcoming years of successes;
|
| - The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45.
| https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
|
| - 45 is the median age of billion dollar start-up founders.
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/super-founders-median-age-of...
|
| - Entrepreneurs have successful exits have an average founding
| age of 47. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/average-age-successful-
| entrep...
|
| - Research Shows Average Age Of Successful Founders Is Older Than
| You Think. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhall/2018/10/16/age-
| of-succ...
| dima_vm wrote:
| I believe that in large it can be attributed to a large number
| of experienced invited/appointed executives who make an exit.
| Not necessarily being a founder.
| dheera wrote:
| I tried to do a startup in my early 30s. I'm in my late 30s
| now, and all I can say is having personal money and savings is
| HUGELY underrated. I had a LOT of stress from trying to live
| off a founder salary in my early 30s (AND with $8K+ of medical
| expenses every year), and I imagine that if I go at a startup
| again in my 40s it will be when I have a decent chunk of
| savings in the bank.
| alberth wrote:
| > We found that the average age of entrepreneurs at the time
| they founded their companies is 42. _But the vast majority of
| these new businesses are likely small businesses with no
| intentions to grow large_ (for example, dry cleaners and
| restaurants)
|
| From your first link, this is the key passage.
|
| People are conflating two data points (startup founder and
| average age of a business owner when they founded their
| company). The later is a bigger population than the former.
|
| "Startup Founder" is synonymous with growing a business to be
| huge, so you should _exclude_ founders from the calculation who
| are NOT attempting to grow a business to be huge.
|
| I imagine when you exclude said individuals, the average age of
| a "startup" founder to be much younger.
|
| https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
| marcusverus wrote:
| The article also says:
|
| > The average age of people who founded the highest growth
| startups (i.e. the startups in the top 1% by growth) is 45.
|
| So contrary to your intuition (and mine!), the average high
| growth startup founder, at 45, is _older_ , not younger, than
| the average "startup" founder, at 42.
| cinntaile wrote:
| This is not that surprising when you think about it. These
| are usually serial enterpreneurs so they learned from their
| previous companies and can somewhat evade the mistakes that
| were made there. In the startup world this usually comes
| with bigger check sizes too, which can help you grow
| faster.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > _" Startup Founder" is synonymous with growing a business
| to be huge, so you should exclude founders from the
| calculation who are NOT attempting to grow a business to be
| huge._
|
| By the YC and VC definition. But we can also go by the indie
| hacker or bootstrapped definition, making enough money to
| replace your job and if it's even more, then great, but it's
| not expected to make billions.
| ww-picard-do wrote:
| Most people, not just VC's, would define a startup as a
| business which is geared for growth. How is a business that
| just pays the bills a startup? Isn't that just a small
| business?
| steve1977 wrote:
| I'm very interested in starting my own business, I'm not
| interested at all in making it huge, at least in terms of
| staff.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Same to both
| debuggerpk wrote:
| same boat ... it is a completely different ride.
| riskable wrote:
| I disagree with this sentiment:
|
| > It is harder to build something today than it used to be.
|
| It's SO MUCH EASIER! Are you kidding me!? 10 years ago it was
| _much_ more expensive to stand up some service on the Internet
| and the de facto frameworks of the time did not scale very well.
| Now it 's so cheap (and easy) to serve something up to millions
| of users it's practically free.
|
| Not only that but if you're building something that uses hardware
| we're sooooo much better off today than 10 years ago it's like
| night and day. Getting a PCB prototype made 10 years ago was
| _expensive_ (~$500-1500) and it took a lot longer. Today you can
| get bare PCBs for less than $10 (within 100x100mm) and get them
| _fully assembled_ for less than $50 (depending on the components,
| of course). Not only that but you 'll have it in your hands
| _within a week_! It 's astounding.
|
| The software available for doing hardware design 10 years ago was
| expensive and the open source stuff wasn't that great. Today we
| have Kicad 6 which is _awesome_. We also have embedded Rust which
| makes adapting your existing firmware to new hardware a bazillion
| times easier than with C (which is what we were stuck with for
| the most part forever and ever).
|
| There _are_ some things that are much harder today than before:
| * Chip (and hardware) availability. * Real estate is
| *much* more expensive. Though there's great deals on office
| space! * Gas/energy is MUCH more expensive... But that
| shouldn't matter much to a software developer.
| synergy20 wrote:
| Are these hardware cheaper than before mainly due to
| outsourcing, where are you making PCB? if it's from China it
| might not last due to the tension these days.
|
| Another huge factor is how many kids do you have and how old
| are they? Age-45-or-50 might also mean that the kids are easier
| to handle so the parents finally can pursue something. For
| people that are very successful without kids, they live in a
| different world most of the time.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| > if it's from China it might not last due to the tension
| these days.
|
| Sure, but that's the future. Don't create imaginary problems
| to worry about: you'll find plenty that already exist that
| need to be dealt with right now.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I agree with the article sentiment. The threshold for what
| could be considered a viable business was much lower 20 years
| ago. My first tech job doesn't even exist anymore because
| Squarespace et al have consumed the lower end of web
| development.
|
| Granted, certain things like game development are a lot easier
| now.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The tools and operational bits are better and more available
| but the bar for what constitutes a viable product is _much_
| higher today. The cost and complexity of engineering done today
| would have been beyond the realm of practicality not that many
| years ago.
|
| Engineering complexity grows to consume the capabilities of our
| tools. Incremental improvements in operations and tools doesn't
| offset the large changes in engineering sophistication required
| to build software that isn't a mediocre re-hash of something
| that already exists. The definition of "state-of-the-art" in
| database engines, for example, has moved so much in the last 15
| years that the level of technical know-how required has become
| a prohibitive barrier to new products.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Author here, thanks for the perspective.
|
| I'm absolutely on board with it being easier to build
| _something_ today than ever before. SaaS, public cloud
| providers, billing platforms etc. all exist and are awesome.
|
| My viewpoint is that it's harder to build something original or
| financially viable. Sometimes it feels that all the low-hanging
| fruit has been picked hundreds of times, and anything truly
| significant is out of reach.
|
| I've had dozens of ideas I didn't pursue further after asking
| myself ,,if this is such a great idea, why hasn't somebody else
| already done it?".
|
| Maybe that's a loser's mindset ;-)
| holler wrote:
| I think you have to just pick an idea you're passionate about
| and build it.
|
| I've had the same thought before yet even here on HN I've
| seen many startups shared that feel like rehashes of past
| ones. But those past ones got acquired...
|
| Now I believe in just build a solid product and attract
| customers/users.
| meowtastic wrote:
| I think they're valid points. A lot of people argue that it's
| easier than ever before just because the costs are lower,
| without factoring in many other crucial aspects like timing,
| competition, and so on.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| > _build something original or financially viable_
|
| > _I've had dozens of ideas I didn't pursue further after
| asking myself ,,if this is such a great idea, why hasn't
| somebody else already done it?"._
|
| You're conflating the two ("original" and "financially
| viable"). In my opinion, your mindset is fundamentally
| flawed. I'm not saying this in a negative way, I just mean
| that I've seen it before in others, and I myself used to
| think like you, so I can understand what you mean.
|
| The truth is, clones make money. You don't need an original
| idea to be financially successful, at the 4 to 8 figure
| range. Indeed, if you simply want to quit your job rather
| than make billions, you _should_ be in a market with many
| competitors so you can carve out a small slice of it. If you
| instead are building a whole new market, like Airbnb or Uber,
| you can carve out a much larger slice but that requires a
| fundamentally different way of working, ie raising lots of
| money, teaching your audience (before Uber, who 'd get in an
| unlicensed stranger's car?), and marketing the hell out of
| your startup.
|
| Instead, find a nice, large market with lots of competitors,
| and start building something. As you build, you will
| naturally find competitive advantages that differentiate you
| from your competitors. I also thought I needed to find
| something totally unique and original, ie an all new market,
| but I realized that was not the way to have success. Instead,
| I use an already successful market but then build something
| in those spaces.
|
| See https://indiehackers.com for more info.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| The product I'm building right now, which I'm referring to
| at the end, indeed also exists in an existing, competitive
| space.
|
| You've given me something to think about, thanks.
| meowtastic wrote:
| > It is harder to build something today than it used to be.
|
| Interesting viewpoint. I really want to a bootstrapped software
| business, but I find it so hard to come up with a financially-
| viable opportunity.
| acegopher wrote:
| It is. So my advice is to build something that is interesting,
| and might have some value, and don't worry about it being
| financially viable. Then get it out there, iterate, pivot,
| learn and eventually you may find viability.
|
| My point is, more often than not, there isn't a eureka moment
| when a fully fleshed out idea with financial viability just
| pops in your head. Oftentimes the best ideas start out small
| and boring. Use your day job as the de facto funder of your
| quest for viability.
| meowtastic wrote:
| Makes sense. I just can't find something that interests me so
| much that I'd want to work on it in the evenings/weekends.
| Maybe with time...
| erikerikson wrote:
| Do you mean finding product-market-fit? Job 1 of a startup?
| synergy20 wrote:
| I'm over 50 and still coding. I do feel I'm much easier to get
| tired and sleepy and less productive these days even though I
| jogging daily. Still having kids in the house did not help
| either.
|
| I tried startup, working at a startup now, and plan to re-try
| startup later, but feeling tired really lowers my productivity
| these days, I do think age(50+) plays a role there at least to
| me.
|
| Then the heavy stock loss this year made my finance situation
| shaky, that also impacts my efficiency of work though I don't
| think about it all the time.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| > It is harder to build something today than it used to be.
|
| I've build things in the 80s -> no distribution (games)
|
| I've build things in the 90s -> no SaaS invented/accepted (wiki
| startup)
|
| Today is easier than ever to build, distribute and get customers.
| swissdevgirl wrote:
| "Frontier technologies such as AI or ML are hard to get into if
| you're not already sitting on a pile of data and cash. End users
| are accustomed to everything being free or cheap, sustained by a
| decade of advertising-based business models." Alex Suzuki
| mlboss wrote:
| Building general AI model requires lot of capital but building
| niche models is less resource/data intensive.
|
| But yeah, you need to understand the fundamentals.
| iamgopal wrote:
| I always wanted to be Internet entrepreneur, that is, start my
| own thing. I do run business and earn money, but it's family
| business and highly un-scalable. I agree with most of the point
| present. I wish I could use the knowledge acquired till now that
| may somehow converted to a software that will benefit me and
| others. But If nothing, I guess, I'll be happy if in the end, I
| can summarise everything with a good blog post.
| gjvc wrote:
| Better later in life than earlier. (The right) experience is a
| secret weapon.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Currently a bit over 40.
|
| Give exercise fitness and physical activities as much attention
| as absolutely possible from as early as possible. Same with good
| eating.
|
| Your 20s will catch up to you.
| sshine wrote:
| Currently 37, and am soon reaching my 31 yo crossfit max. No
| 'roids. :-)
|
| Only difference is: I build slowly, I wanna keep fit until 70+.
|
| And yes, for the 20 year olds: Exercise every day!
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| 6 seems a bit young to have a child.
|
| But seriously, I turned 40 earlier this year and a) am in the
| best shape of my life, and b) need to be because my body
| can't deal with dozens of hours of desk work every week
| without it.
|
| I can't speak for CrossFit, but doing group workout
| activities like yoga is a great way to meet folks from
| different walks of life, and I was very pleasantly surprised
| when I first started yoga by how welcoming it was. I had some
| anxiety around being terrible at it in front of a bunch of
| experienced strangers, but I found my fears were quickly
| allayed.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Am 24 and literally everything hurts. I try to work out but i
| feel it's just destroying myself. Also there is not even time
| since work and studying takes up so much. It's a privilege that
| people can do all that and work out.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If it's important you'll find the time. I used to exercise
| during WFH meetings. If I don't need to talk then I can do
| squats or burpees or something while listening.
| monknomo wrote:
| A lot of people, when they hear exercise and physical
| fitness, imagine something like getting up at 5am and hitting
| the gym for an hour.
|
| For folks in your situation, I typically advise looking at
| the overall structure of your life and figuring out what you
| can change so that you are inherently more active. Try a
| lunch time walk. Or, one of my favorites, is an after dinner
| walk to settle the stomach and get a fresh look at the
| neighborhood. Bike to work. Study less. You got options, you
| just need to think about what balance you personally want to
| strike
| treeman79 wrote:
| I was like that for many years. A workout would take me two
| weeks to recover.
|
| As is common for mystery symptoms. Turned out to be an
| autoimmune condition.
| winstonprivacy wrote:
| In contrast to the author, I find software development at 50 to
| be an amazing experience. I am more patient and have the mental
| flexibility to learn things which were much harder for me 10-20
| years ago.
|
| That was about the last time I developed in C++ and I found it
| excruciating then. Today, I find it exhilarating and intuitive.
| Also unexpected is I find there is a sense of more immediate
| gratification. Perhaps it is because I'm not dealing with layers
| of modern libraries or spending 80% of my time trying to sort
| through build errors caused by someone updating a dependency I
| didn't know I had. I can see visible progress every day. It
| reminds me very much of developing in the 90s and 2000s.
|
| Being financially secure also plays a role. I don't have to work
| (and in fact, I took much of Covid off), but I do because I enjoy
| it so much. Consequently, I have zero stress over day-to-day
| matters. I have found that work, decoupled from finances, can be
| incredibly rewarding.
| sshine wrote:
| Thank you for this positive story from the other side of 50.
|
| I was always worried that I'd lose my edge the older I got.
|
| But with age comes financial independence, emotional stability,
| experience with the cost of a decision, and the authority to
| make them instead of always be subject to the decisions of
| others.
|
| I'm 37 and have never worked harder. I look forward to having
| more time to do spare-time projects and go back to teaching,
| but there's just so much I'd rather do for other people right
| now. I can't imagine it changes the next 20 years, only that my
| role gets more organizational.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > In contrast to the author, I find software development at 50
| to be an amazing experience. I am more patient and have the
| mental flexibility to learn things which were much harder for
| me 10-20 years ago.
|
| I feel the same, but at 40 now.
|
| During the pandemic, I left a position that I was in for almost
| a decade on a tech stack that I was using for almost a decade.
|
| The first few months felt bewildering; yarn, NPM, Vite, React,
| Vue, Svelte, AWS, GCP, Azure, Functions, Containers, Docker,
| Kubernetes, on and on! But as I let go of any dogmatism, I
| quickly adapted to new tooling, new techniques, new languages,
| and new platforms. I went from building on-prem enterprise
| solutions deployed to VMWare to building cloud solutions in
| AWS, Azure, and GCP (yes, all of them) at various VC-backed
| startups (including a YC company).
|
| I came out of the experience completely renewed with an
| incredible drive to just create software now.
|
| Rather than seeing the complexity that the author sees in the
| current environment, I see options and there are definitely
| some options which, IMO, make it even easier and better than
| ever to be a developer [0]. If code is magic, we have more
| spells, ingredients, and tomes of magic at our disposal than
| ever. A hard part is navigating that landscape, but it has been
| so rewarding.
|
| I've been writing prolifically over the last year as a side
| effect of that aggressive learning.
|
| I feel more empowered now to create great software than I ever
| have.
|
| [0] Google Cloud Run API from 0 to cloud in < 7 minutes:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlnEm7JyvyY
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| I really enjoyed watching the Handmade Hero
| (https://handmadehero.org/) series about creating a game from
| scratch without all of the external libraries and dependencies.
| There is something refreshing about having both the
| understanding and control of all the parts of your project. I
| feel your pain on constant library and dependency updates.
| xtracto wrote:
| I strongly relate with this article. Being also in my 40s (but
| married with no kids) I am at a point in life where I am almost
| financially independent. I've got a bunch of equity from good
| startups (which will likely exit in the next year or two at about
| $500m to $1B mark, giving me a bit of cash) in my pocket and a
| job that gives me huge freedoms doing fun stuff (first time I do
| Machine Learning, Graph databases and neural networks for a
| straightforward application that is making people happy!).
|
| But... I want to build my own startup. I don't really care about
| being solo, and actually I subscribe to Jack Ma's [1] ages'
| principles: I want to empower young people with my skills. So I
| joined a pair of young(er) guys building a startup, asked for
| some equity and cash comp, and next January will start building
| it. What I really wanted to do is get into Health Tech, but I've
| got a "curse" of having a strong background in FinTech. Although
| it pays very good, I am in a privileged position of not _needing_
| the money, and I 'm in this age where "making a positive impact
| in the world" has way more weight (granted, I have this luxury
| given my current financial status). It also helps that I live in
| a cheap country with acceptable socialized health, so I don't
| have to worry about that (too much).
|
| No point in my rambling sorry, I guess I just wanted to put it
| out there.
|
| [1] https://www.knowol.com/knowledge/jack-mas-success-advice-
| all...
| treeman79 wrote:
| Healthcare money seems to be mostly around billing. Ways to
| increase billing mostly.
|
| I've found that you need to get as much done as possible early
| on. Once you get to certain point HIPPA will drive all business
| decisions. Mostly by making people terrified of making changes
| and causing a violation.
|
| Source. Been in industry off and on.
|
| Would love to find a way to help regular people diagnosis
| problems better. If you go into any chronic illness forum. You
| see tons of people asking questions on symptoms, test results,
| doctors etc.
|
| I constantly see people that have textbook perfect cases of
| some condition. But doctors routinely dismiss it. Or won't
| order tests or ignore tests or don't use correct tests.
| xtracto wrote:
| > I've found that you need to get as much done as possible
| early on. Once you get to certain point HIPPA will drive all
| business decisions. Mostly by making people terrified of
| making changes and causing a violation.
|
| Sounds pretty similar to my FinTech experience: PCI, SOC2 and
| ISO27001 or ISO37001 will drive companies into inaction.
| dima_vm wrote:
| Another idea you may find interesting: InfoSec. Some of my
| friends who were looking beyond engineering said "Your Machine
| Learning is boring. But InfoSec is a very diverse landscape,
| hard to get bored".
| mmastrac wrote:
| I did InfoSec after my post-exit sabbatical and I found it
| too lonely. I was good at it (hobbyist decompiler my whole
| life), but the loneliness was a killer and I'm looking for
| team dynamics as my #1 factor for the next thing I do.
| meowtastic wrote:
| What kind of InfoSec role were you doing? I sometimes find
| team dynamics too draining :)
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I agree with your friends: machine learning is boring. At the
| ground level it is basically fancy ETL. I think it would be a
| gross mistake for schools to encourage undergrads to make a
| career out of ML (masters and PhD level stuff is hopefully
| better). InfoSec on the other hand is dynamic, even in the
| trenches, and is something that should continue to be in high
| demand for the coming decades.
| meowtastic wrote:
| Is it a good time to get into it now though? I would've
| thought InfoSec roles are first on the chopping block when
| budgets get squeezed in a tech downturn.
| motohagiography wrote:
| If you think you are old, I'd say you are already default dead
| and all the sympathy and palliative experiences in the world
| aren't going to change that. If you want to live, _live_ , and
| any invitation to a pity party over being "40" won't make it even
| to the bottom of my stack.
|
| The idea of 40 as old is a ridiculous artifact of early to
| mid-20th century life expectancies and an economy based on manual
| labour. Given today you are socially useless until at least about
| 20, after which most of that decade is spent either in school or
| in journeyman roles, and then your 30s are spent either raising
| children or cultivating taste and other affectations on the
| hedonic treadmill - it's very unlikely you will make something
| someone else wants. 40 is where one is finally capable of the
| skill and insight necessary to make something new and provide
| honest value to others. You get another two decades of prime
| momentum with an understanding of how the cycles rhyme, until the
| wisdom makes you too distant from validating the anxieties of
| younger people, whose struggles don't register for you anymore.
| Then at 60, give or take, you get another couple or so decades to
| really appreciate it, ideally with grandchildren, but more likely
| small dogs and other emotional support animals these days, and
| then you decide what you want to leave behind. Worry about being
| 40 is giving up way too early.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Author here. I'm sorry that my article came over as a ,,pity
| party" to you. It is actually quite the opposite. 40 was just
| incidentally a round number coinciding with some changes
| happening in my life. Actually, I sincerely hope that you are
| right. :-)
| motohagiography wrote:
| And I've been backhandedly encouraging by admonishing you to
| challenge a percieved constraint by rejecting its legitimacy.
| I think we're aligned, and one hopes iron still sharpens
| iron. :)
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| cheers to that!
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