Are you thinking of starting a solo software product venture to escape from the corporate grind? What resistance are you facing? How do you feel about the points in the video? What else are you worried about? Let's talk about it. ►► Know your options! Access my FREE data hub for the top 25 software industry roles, TechRolepedia → jaymeedwards.com/access-techrolepedia/
the "coolness of the products" that "you think". it all depends. the coolness of cell phone before it exist that coolnest only existed in very few minds. marketing can make a good entry it's important as capitalism its un avoid hable at many times. if your client are not satisfied step back and chalenge your or my own paradigm maybe somthing it deeply wrong etc. all paths leads to "roma" for deep solution finders. iukuk. where is the cripto add values? there is no aparent utility that centrliced services do not give?
I loved the video. I already am experimenting with one product in the "backburner" I launched with paid promotions and all, but did not get that many conversions, so I am in the process of pivoting to something different and see if that works. I totally agree with most points, and I would probably overemphasize that figuring out what the customer wants is the really the most important and first step. Quickly trying out and testing different ideas is the approach that I am taking right now. My main concern is that the market I am targeting might be too small, (constrained to my country of residence), to produce a sufficient revenue to live off of.
This video is huge. Several of my friends are going through this right now, having been laid off or quit and started their own businesses. Developers are often not prepared for the world of business.
who would have thought that programming and creating a business is 2 completely separate worlds... Programmers often make fun of all the roles except of them, cto, product managers, leads.. thruth is all of them have their place. Being able to program doesn't mean you will build a sucesful business... Thruth is no one gives a shit about your "billion" dollar idea
@@jordixboy Guy trying to start a software company here. It's not that I have no respect for those positions I just don't have the capital to fill them. What's different between a person starting a convenience store and myself? You wouldn't say they are arrogant. We don't all have a million dollar bank account for admin staff. I just do my best against companies with infinite money and try and target customers they ignore.
@@jordixboy You have also got to acquire the skill of designing the product, rather than just being told what to program. The subject of design is vast in itself. There are millions of philosophies related to it. I read a large pile of books on it many years ago.
I did this in 2009. I quit and started building my own software. Today I have a company, near 1000 people working for me. I went through a number of iterations, found what the clients needed...
Running a company is not the same as writing code, you deal on constant base with people and the psycology and with finance and if you have 0 luck and time to postpone difficult business decision, programmers not just aware of that, they think creating a good product is 100% gurantee of success ,but here is flash news there is no gurantee as business go up and down, what make sense a strategy and backup plans and taking and receiving favors from anyone who can help.
@@robertmazurowski5974 more over , if you run a company, you basically responsible for profitability and cant slack as some programmers do, sure some owners they have enough cash and capital , but for new startups its like really big challange , they dont know market, they try and fail , then there are govermental and external influences, so go figure start a company and enter a new way of running a job.
100% correct. Good programmers are usually very bright, like working by themselves and are not overdone with people skills. Some business people have no "real" skills at all by which I mean that they can't code, mend a fuse, fix a leak, build a shed, anything "real". What they do have is the power to connect with people and spin them a good line about how good their product is. Think of Musk and Trump. Take Bill Gates, for instance, he bought his first operating system from someone else, made some small mods, then sold it to IBM and made $millions. He will have made more from that software than all the developers that contributed to the code combined. Judging by history, the plan seems to be that you need to team up with more of a people person. Think: Jobs and Wozniak, Hewlett and Packard, Gates and Allen. Don't be confused by people like Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook was originally a government project called Lifelog and when that was implemented as Facebook they made Zuckerberg the figurehead. The original aim of Lifelog was to find out everything about everybody. How is it doing?
You were so right about #5. I personally struggle with this a lot. As a developer, I obsess about every single detail on the product side. On the other hand, I pay very less attention to the business side.
Build an MVP, that will make money and is written as quickly as possible, if it makes money you get investors, and/or other coding cofounders then you can just rebuild proprerly. Don't write high quality code for potentially a throaway MVP.
This is a double-edged sword. I work at a company now that continues to release MVPs like this and it makes maintenance and expanding functionality a nightmare. It's like running through water. No one, except the devs, wants to be the one to say "Hey, I know we have all these features we want to write, but we really should put those aside and rewrite this." So the water remains and continues to get deeper. This is especially true in my company because, in the early days, it was staffed almost entirely by coding bootcamp graduates. There is definitely a balancing act between good architecture and time to market. This is what being agile (not Agile) was meant for in the first place. Getting customer feedback early and often, including putting them in the room while you write the thing, goes a long way to preventing having to throw away the entire project. That gives you way more confidence to actually write the code well. This is something literally every company struggles with. At my company, I've advocated for communication with the customer on every project, but nearly every time there's zero communication until the very end. It's MADDENING! We know who we should be talking to but no one does it.
Something I see in engineering a lot is that engineers will fall back to what they know when things get hard or when they are out of their comfort zone. An engineer moving over to the manager track falling back into code-neglecting their new position, a new cto focusing on engineering tasks rather than leading or processes, or a motivated engineer starting a business yet ends up not able to get out of the engineering thought process and never releasing the product. It's hard but you gotta step back. Once in awhile and ask, are you doing what you need to at this moment to reach the goal?
Some really fantastic advice here! Just launched an early version of my product to customers for testing and its taken me 2 years to get here. I can relate to everything you've said.
Thanks, dude! I'm 54, working corporate, building my app on the side. Been working on it for a couple of years. It's not a simple product, so...strike 2! (Strike 1, I'm 54). Really appreciate your encouragement.
There are only 2 skills you need to be able to survive as a freelance or startup software company 1. Top skill is not coding, but abiility to collect payment 2. See number 1 😅
@@ArneBab Your knowledge of dependency injection or event driven architecture will not matter if you cannot collect from your client. But you don't need to trust a random person in the internet, try it and tell me how you did otherwise.
@@rommellagera8543 I did not contradict that. I said that this is bare survival, not living. It is the condition to survive, but not to enjoy what you do. You obviously won’t enjoy it, if your work does not make ends meet, so if you fail collecting, you won’t be happy for long, but if you only manage to collect, then you risk running into burnout again soon. Did you have "survive" in your post from the start and I misread that? If yes: I’m sorry! I read "to live as startup" so if you had "survive" in this from the start, I commented on my own mind, not on you …
@@ArneBab it is a precursor to enjoy what you do. Unless you have experience having less than $50 for a week or two because you cannot collect, you will never understand. Nothing to enjoy in that situation.
This is a fantastic video ..... what's so interesting is that it's by a serious Software Engineer and not by some get-rich-quick pseudo guru! For me it is perfect as my last day as a back-end (Go) software enginner was on 1st Jan 2024 and I'm now building out a "start-up", but I'm cheating:- 1) I have had the idea for ages and absolutely know that there is a need (the big question is, Is the need urgent enough?) 2) I have had a side-hustle a few years ago as a semi-pro photographer so I am tax registered and have an accounting system etc already These experiences completely reflect everything brought up in the video. The area where I have almost certainly gone wrong is in over-engineering .... I have built an incredibly complex system to solve an incredibly broad and complex problem! One thing I haven't done is built an MVP as several people have commented (The 'V' bit is the tricky one) .. I really would suggest reading Eric Ries' book "The Lean Startup".
@@HealthyDev I was hearing so much about MVPs, I thought I would actually find out what the actual rationale was. He was solving a very tricky problem!
This is very good advice. You really have to come to terms with and accept some of these realities, both those discussed and those not discussed. True agility and the ability to pivot on a dime come from managing a business. This is why everybody says, including the words said at the end of the video, that execution is everything. Indeed it is.
Thank you for all the good tips. I've just finished the paperwork I need to get my sole proprietary business registered last week, and I'm encouraged to keep going. No product in mind yet but I want to hone in on my business strategy first.
Needed this. In this environment as a self taught AI Engineer it's the only way for me to break through the noise. I really don't want to go the whole LEET code grind set. This is a much more sustainable and fun way to prove my skills and make money at the same time
Wow, this hit me right in the heart! I’m so guilty of over engineering and rewriting a certain project over and over. Great for learning, but it’s horrible for business. Thanks for making this. Instant subscriber here!
I'm amazed and thankfull for you. You videos helped me as a software developper in the past and it still is with your latest ones... Always sound advices and always on point (at least for me). Your not only delivering "content" here, definetely not. Meaningfull talks. Thank you.
It's a good tip at ~15m regarding spending time on the business. I ran a technical business and had my nose in a load of electronics, but on regular occasions you have to look at the real numbers on your sales, income, investment, what you need to do to work on the next expansion idea and so on. You have to think that building a business is always a case of constant improvement, better ways of doing things so it all runs faster. You are essentially investing time to save you time and improving quality to the customer.
That advice in the beginning of the video… I swear is one of the most basic advices I’ve heard over and over growing up as a kid. You cater your product to customers, yes you definitely listen to feedback.
@@mike.1 In my experience, customers never know what they want, but they sure as hell know what they don't want. If you get conflicting feedback there's almost always something deeper going on. Maybe one customer wants a completely different product or feature than the one you're trying to build.
Great video. I am currently making 90% of the mistakes you mentioned. I've been working on the software side for about a year now, started working on the business side just recently. Self-doubt is a huge problem, it leads to me just finding problems with the software, tweaking it every day, adding new features, etc. And all that could've been done much later after the deployment. Guess I'll just deploy it within two weeks to test the market and only then add new features or fix issues.
I'm a CS major -> engineer -> solution architect -> head of product at a growing startup. I hope I'm not being too overly confident when I think that I know what it takes to go beyond engineering and talk to customers. Nowadays I barely code "professionally" in favor of all these other startup management tasks. Except, that I have my own ideas and product I'm working on during the evenings/weekends (inter-business project management app - sounds boring right? 😉). I know that if I want to succeed I would need to focus on it full-time. But until I have my MVP and actively make the decision to focus on the business aspect, I am okay knowing what it takes later down the line. For now I'm good building a massive network and getting more startup experience.
It's about as shocking as an MBA trying to build great software and failing. It's almost as if these two skill sets are different from each other or something.
I started my own tech business (services) 4y ago. I still learn how to evolve as an entrepreneur. I don’t know who you are, is the first time I watch your videos but the content is the real deal. Keep up and good luck to all of you out there! 🎉
The best advice I got when I was bitching about a client changing everything after 2 weeks of work: The client is allowed to be in error. Helped me tremendously in my client relationships
Great video. I have seriously started working on my SaaS product for the past month. I started working on this because I am currently on sick leave due to burnout and depression. This project has helped me get back into a routine. I think the easy part so far is to figure out how to build the product, so I try to balance it out with days to work on parts I have more problems with such as learning on how to market my product, finding the correct audience and also building a good landings page. What also has helped me is to set a timeline and write down the main objective and set small goals to get to that main objective.
You're ahead of many folks that haven't realized that yet. It's messy but sounds like you've got your priorities straight. I LOVE building product - it's what I did for a living for 20 years! I find I love the other stuff too, but only when I've fallen over a few times sucking at it, and then start to see how to do it right. Hang in there!
As a Non-Tech Co-Founder, Fractional Product Consultant, and a VC Fund GP, I truly appreciate this video. I have worked across the desk from Engineering (and was one early in my career) my entire career. Please do more of these videos. If you want some input, happy to chat as well.
I think every good project in production started out in producton as a Minimal Viable Product. I know any real project, even the ones I create as side projects, I at least pretend it is a real product and start with a BRD and a SRD. It really opens up the domain and reveals things abou the project I didn't think about initially. The last two points are probably spoke to me the most. I am the only Developer I know, and I have been learning and doing this for at least 5 years. Through my BS and now in my MS, it is hard to build a network either due to faults of my own or circumstance. Due to the fact I don't know any other developers, that lack of experience leaves me in a silent wake, where I don't know how good or bad I am doing. Which leaves me wondering.
Had a similar situation myself. I read Uncle Bob's Clean Code and learnt about UX (took a free Google course which helped me as a mobile app dev. I still read interesting UI/UX topics because it interests me. So find your interest (Ui/UX, code architecture, clean coding, deeper knowledge of a framework, etc) and follow it. But it is also important to learn more about the tools you're using (e.g. git, GitHub). There's more to git than most people do (rebase vs merge, rewriting commit history to clean up those "WIP" commits to something that will help you later on, deleting branches and keeping your repo clean, code deletion over commenting it out).
I like your content more and more. It's honest, thought through and what's more important to me, it's based. There's a lot to be said about the daily struggles coder parents have and this one fits really nice - Landing in my favourites ;) Keep up the good work 👍 Btw. I do like the guitar breaks you give, they somehow make your content even more pleasant.
I agree with most of your points. I quit my job almost 3 years ago and decided to build my version of Point of Sales system. It is a very difficult journey as I have to do it solo. No one else around me understand the pain. I used up all my savings for my commitments such as paying the bank loans, insurance and credit card. I also need to allocate some budget for the product R&D and equipment. Fortunately, I get a freelance job that can give me a little bit of income. I am not giving up and I hope other people like me also be strong.
Well, maybe I can share my story here, I was working as client technical service back in the 90's and I can code. Some customers asked me for favours to integrate the software I am selling to some other software, so I happily did for them. However, as I was doing so, the clients wanted more and more functionality. So I thought, why not I set up a company, I asked a good friend to set up a company and I enhanced my software to do all the functions expected and changed the interface and all that and let my company sell to the clients instead. That's how my company began and eventually sold the company off with a big prize money
Thanks for sharing! Companies need to realize this about developers. You mistreat them or stop giving them opportunities, you could just be letting go of your new competition!
Im starting a web design and digital marketing agency. Im a dad with two kids and have a fulltime web dev job and its challenging but this video was very insightful
I was a marketing manager who had an idea for a product that can help loyalty platforms grow. Have learnt coding and given myself 2 years to launch a product. Loving the journey!
Im in a completely different field: music performance. I can say much of your advice is applicable to any field: 1. You have boss, if in a company or the market is your "boss", 2. you may love your field but it's not a hobby--you need to make money, 3. You may work alone a lot (in my case, practicing my keyboard and learning more music) but you find opportunity through interacting with people and also find new, marketable directions for your own growth, etc.
Excellent video. The skills you use for writing code aren't the same as those for running a business. This should be viewed by those who are considering their own business after getting laid off. Doing this as a side gig works as it's lower risk - if it does well enough to make enough money then great.
so many gems! For anyone reading this, treating your business and yourself seriously, you will succeed. In the past when I built side-project, I was half expecting it will fail, so I put in half effort. When it got difficult, I just gave up. Because in that way, I didn't have to face failure and no embarrassment. But also, nothing will happen. I am forcing myself to face failure now, force myself to talk to stranger(customers), experiment fast, be somewhere your competitor is not. Be like water, my friends
seriously bro, you and your guitar are proper good, can you please do an hour or so of it as it really just helped me focus on my work. you should do focus music, and link it on the next vid :)
I appreciate all your advice! Two things I'd be cautious about: 1) Downplaying the ever-increasing demands of legislation about GDPR, cybersecurity etc. 2) Picking something that's too easy to copy/steal
Programming as a electrical engineer. With out any real software experience appart from attempting C C++ assembly, basic, assembly programming very little . Just putting a program together and suck it and see. I look back at some of the programmes i had written. And its nice to see somthing evolve from nothing. I have almost given up on many occasions. Putting a product together is daunting...imposter syndrome especially when your up againts all the different tools chains and terminology. I think business is like getting a car for the first time you are so apprehensive and its like looking up at a giant. You are now in control of something that has many complexities and you become the imposter. I keep telling my self if you dont learn you dont earn. It drives me forward.
Wow. What a great feature. I feel like the ADA Saved metric could be used programmatically in a "Public Good" smart contract with Catalyst for vested funding
Advice, pick a Product Manager you like and get along and most importantly you trust each other to partner with so you both have a better chance to get to your sweet spot! They can handle business pretty well alongside you for small products and early stage when you’re taking this path.
I think one thing you didn’t touch on that’s very often missed is marketing or lack there of Build it and they will come isn’t something I think you’d want to approach in a commercial venture You’re going to have to sell the software and get people excited for your product(s) or risk insolvency no matter how good the software
I handed in notice at my Data Consultancy job a couple weeks ago - finish Thursday next week. Im going into independent contracting in the same sector I’ve been working at for the last couple years as I build a Data Discovery, Data Quality and Data Migration tool - essentially allowing someone with a bit of data knowledge to tackle an old legacy system that might be mostly unknown, build quality rules and migrate the data to a defined structure.
Just to add to this - fairly confident on the general features at this stage. Hoping to take this advice on board - especially the risk of over-engineering.
As a hustler: starting your business as a side-hustle has it's benefits: You have the comfort of safety learning, your paycheck is going to arrive anyway. You are in no despair to get any money so you can negotiate your contracts. The main downside is extreme time scarcity, you cannot spend 60hrs per week on it if you already spend 40 in the main job. There are weeks when spending any time is a problem. If your product fails you don't know if it is lack of market fit, bad marketing, most likely you blame yourself for not being engaged enough.
Being in so many coding communities, and seeing the owners reply to feedback basically saying no youre wrong in a friendly manner. Like okay man, keep making a product only you like I guess
Good discussion on the realistic expectations of going solo. You are right, execution of any idea is the key. Poor execution of a good idea is a failed project no matter how you slice it. For me the biggest barrier to entry is competing against an army of developers. Maybe its possible with all the AI tools available, but I've found some of these AI tools will hallucinate, and generate code that looks like it will work, but in practice doesn't.
Good point. The advantage I had when I did my tech start up is I already had experience of running nightclubs with dozens of staff. That taught me a lot about business as really a company is a company of people in like the medieval sense so to speak. Just a group of people with a common goal.
Amazing video. My goal is to bootstrap my own company and you touched on many of the things that I'm scared of about myself. I just got a job at a big tech company and stashing up enough savings to be lean FI, and then going for it. What are your favorite resources for learning about starting a small software company (1-10 employees) that creates software products?
I've read and tried so many things over the years, I'm not sure where to begin. The book "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki is a favorite. There are too many to list, but I definitely got value out of that one.
There's a lot to be said for not originating "an idea" on your own. Instead, engage with say 50 professionals-be they doctors, physiotherapists, engineers, or others in the field you're interested in-and inquire about their challenges to inform your concept. At the least, you will be starting in a place where you’re solving valid pain points.
You typically get.....this program does this and I wish it would do such and such as well. Unfortunately you find the only way you're going to get to the desired missing functionality is by building the entire program's functionality again.
Not all programmer are the same, but I know that very few knows the reality of running a company. Let alone the taxes and sales. I still can count on my hands the number of programmers that could talk to a business person with the right approach. The majority thinks that a great idea or great design is sufficient to sell itself...
You are right in so many arguments. But we also need customers who are willing to pay you the price that is worth to work with. Paying me based on a hourly rate is kinda killing myself because I do have the experience to finish the Job in the half of the expected time, so I am charging a specific price for my work which is still legit. Sure it may be expensive at the first look but I do it with a matured stack, probably without the need of debugging or having bugs after the Release. The customer also pays you having the experience over the years and that the product that he gets helps him to be more efficient or solves some use-cases.
Too many companies I’ve joined as a product designer/dev refuse to give me access to users, belittle the value in competitor research and market strategy, then want to meet with me once a week and spew 20 minutes of opinions that are not at all founded in data. I immediately start looking for an off ramp to another project.
Let's not forget that satisfying the person doing the work is a precursor to having something to show a customer. You can grind the boring parts and push through the hacks, but in the end, that motivation is just gone, gone gone.
Hey Healthy, so this video is timely and even though I should know better, I recognize some of issues you mention in myself. I am fulltime on my software development using AI, but coaching people is also tempting. I am concerned it is a distraction, what was your experience? It seems you enjoy talking to people and helping them solve problems and I kind of have similar motivation... Thanks for this video.
Thanks! I'm going to talk about this some in future videos. The fastest way to make money on the side is coaching. But it's also the least scalable. I think it's fine, It's taken me 5 years of coaching to start offering products as well to start having some passive income. During that time I was also doing IT consulting part time. Of course (if you know my story) I was suffering from chronic burnout when I started, so it may go smoother for you.
@@HealthyDev Thank you for quick response. Yes, I am not burned out at all, I am eager to do things. I will check other videos. I have ADHD and thought to do fairly specific coaching to others like me, it would help me as well as them. I will think about it.
@@desirecothat would definitely be helpful. Quite a few of the people I've coached have ADHD in one way or another. I'm not able to help them with that, they see therapists though which is great.
I’ve tried several ideas of the ground and every time unintentionally run into similar situations, like overengineering, not focused enough on business itself, and now subconsciously I destroyed self confidence from falling multiple times. Now took a year just to distance myself and thinking about restarting the journey. But for some reason, now I’m between choices, trying to restart the old idea, since there is so much done already for it, or work on a new idea and build the foundation that previous ideas already have …
One thing i noticed too late, developer tends to be task oriented more than business oriented. So I was using a lot of time developing than finding customers for the existing products.
Are you thinking of starting a solo software product venture to escape from the corporate grind? What resistance are you facing? How do you feel about the points in the video? What else are you worried about? Let's talk about it.
►► Know your options! Access my FREE data hub for the top 25 software industry roles, TechRolepedia → jaymeedwards.com/access-techrolepedia/
the "coolness of the products" that "you think". it all depends. the coolness of cell phone before it exist that coolnest only existed in very few minds. marketing can make a good entry it's important as capitalism its un avoid hable at many times. if your client are not satisfied step back and chalenge your or my own paradigm maybe somthing it deeply wrong etc. all paths leads to "roma" for deep solution finders. iukuk. where is the cripto add values? there is no aparent utility that centrliced services do not give?
I loved the video. I already am experimenting with one product in the "backburner" I launched with paid promotions and all, but did not get that many conversions, so I am in the process of pivoting to something different and see if that works. I totally agree with most points, and I would probably overemphasize that figuring out what the customer wants is the really the most important and first step. Quickly trying out and testing different ideas is the approach that I am taking right now. My main concern is that the market I am targeting might be too small, (constrained to my country of residence), to produce a sufficient revenue to live off of.
@@GalileoSanchezsounds like you're on the right track. What kind of conversion rate were you looking for?
If smart watches so smart? Why no dehydration censor? #BeingSaneInInsanePlaces
Be prepared to fail, and be prepared to give up. Absolutely, be self-confident, but not dellusional.
This video is huge. Several of my friends are going through this right now, having been laid off or quit and started their own businesses. Developers are often not prepared for the world of business.
who would have thought that programming and creating a business is 2 completely separate worlds... Programmers often make fun of all the roles except of them, cto, product managers, leads.. thruth is all of them have their place. Being able to program doesn't mean you will build a sucesful business... Thruth is no one gives a shit about your "billion" dollar idea
@@jordixboy Guy trying to start a software company here. It's not that I have no respect for those positions I just don't have the capital to fill them. What's different between a person starting a convenience store and myself? You wouldn't say they are arrogant.
We don't all have a million dollar bank account for admin staff. I just do my best against companies with infinite money and try and target customers they ignore.
@@jordixboy You have also got to acquire the skill of designing the product, rather than just being told what to program. The subject of design is vast in itself. There are millions of philosophies related to it. I read a large pile of books on it many years ago.
@@Andrew-rc3vh thats still not close to what is needed. You need to know about business, entrepreneurship, product, finance, its a lot
I did this in 2009. I quit and started building my own software. Today I have a company, near 1000 people working for me. I went through a number of iterations, found what the clients needed...
Running a company is not the same as writing code, you deal on constant base with people and the psycology and with finance and if you have 0 luck and time to postpone difficult business decision, programmers not just aware of that, they think creating a good product is 100% gurantee of success ,but here is flash news there is no gurantee as business go up and down, what make sense a strategy and backup plans and taking and receiving favors from anyone who can help.
"Running a company is not the same as writing code. "
This is so obvious yet so hidden
@@robertmazurowski5974 more over , if you run a company, you basically responsible for profitability and cant slack as some programmers do, sure some owners they have enough cash and capital , but for new startups its like really big challange , they dont know market, they try and fail , then there are govermental and external influences, so go figure start a company and enter a new way of running a job.
100% correct. Good programmers are usually very bright, like working by themselves and are not overdone with people skills. Some business people have no "real" skills at all by which I mean that they can't code, mend a fuse, fix a leak, build a shed, anything "real". What they do have is the power to connect with people and spin them a good line about how good their product is. Think of Musk and Trump.
Take Bill Gates, for instance, he bought his first operating system from someone else, made some small mods, then sold it to IBM and made $millions. He will have made more from that software than all the developers that contributed to the code combined.
Judging by history, the plan seems to be that you need to team up with more of a people person. Think: Jobs and Wozniak, Hewlett and Packard, Gates and Allen. Don't be confused by people like Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook was originally a government project called Lifelog and when that was implemented as Facebook they made Zuckerberg the figurehead. The original aim of Lifelog was to find out everything about everybody. How is it doing?
You were so right about #5. I personally struggle with this a lot.
As a developer, I obsess about every single detail on the product side. On the other hand, I pay very less attention to the business side.
You are not alone brother.
Build an MVP, that will make money and is written as quickly as possible, if it makes money you get investors, and/or other coding cofounders then you can just rebuild proprerly.
Don't write high quality code for potentially a throaway MVP.
This is a double-edged sword. I work at a company now that continues to release MVPs like this and it makes maintenance and expanding functionality a nightmare. It's like running through water. No one, except the devs, wants to be the one to say "Hey, I know we have all these features we want to write, but we really should put those aside and rewrite this." So the water remains and continues to get deeper.
This is especially true in my company because, in the early days, it was staffed almost entirely by coding bootcamp graduates.
There is definitely a balancing act between good architecture and time to market. This is what being agile (not Agile) was meant for in the first place. Getting customer feedback early and often, including putting them in the room while you write the thing, goes a long way to preventing having to throw away the entire project. That gives you way more confidence to actually write the code well. This is something literally every company struggles with. At my company, I've advocated for communication with the customer on every project, but nearly every time there's zero communication until the very end. It's MADDENING! We know who we should be talking to but no one does it.
This is some serious wisdom...as someone that's spent 8 months working on my own project now.
you playing guitar as the outro is such a cool touch, it's like a soundtrack to reading the comments :)
Something I see in engineering a lot is that engineers will fall back to what they know when things get hard or when they are out of their comfort zone. An engineer moving over to the manager track falling back into code-neglecting their new position, a new cto focusing on engineering tasks rather than leading or processes, or a motivated engineer starting a business yet ends up not able to get out of the engineering thought process and never releasing the product. It's hard but you gotta step back. Once in awhile and ask, are you doing what you need to at this moment to reach the goal?
Good advise.
Smart advice. Sometimes we go for fun & static ideas. Great businesses are made from solving real-world problems, which can evolve over time.
Some really fantastic advice here! Just launched an early version of my product to customers for testing and its taken me 2 years to get here. I can relate to everything you've said.
Thanks, dude! I'm 54, working corporate, building my app on the side. Been working on it for a couple of years. It's not a simple product, so...strike 2! (Strike 1, I'm 54). Really appreciate your encouragement.
Glad I could help!
There are only 2 skills you need to be able to survive as a freelance or startup software company
1. Top skill is not coding, but abiility to collect payment
2. See number 1 😅
that’s to "survive", right? Not live, but bare survival.
@@ArneBab Your knowledge of dependency injection or event driven architecture will not matter if you cannot collect from your client. But you don't need to trust a random person in the internet, try it and tell me how you did otherwise.
@@rommellagera8543 I did not contradict that. I said that this is bare survival, not living. It is the condition to survive, but not to enjoy what you do.
You obviously won’t enjoy it, if your work does not make ends meet, so if you fail collecting, you won’t be happy for long, but if you only manage to collect, then you risk running into burnout again soon.
Did you have "survive" in your post from the start and I misread that? If yes: I’m sorry! I read "to live as startup" so if you had "survive" in this from the start, I commented on my own mind, not on you …
@@ArneBab it is a precursor to enjoy what you do. Unless you have experience having less than $50 for a week or two because you cannot collect, you will never understand. Nothing to enjoy in that situation.
@@rommellagera8543 I remember losing 50€ every month when I didn’t make enough during the PhD for the family - that was already bad …
Thank you for this, I'm just starting to plan something
What are you planing?
This is a fantastic video ..... what's so interesting is that it's by a serious Software Engineer and not by some get-rich-quick pseudo guru!
For me it is perfect as my last day as a back-end (Go) software enginner was on 1st Jan 2024 and I'm now building out a "start-up", but I'm cheating:-
1) I have had the idea for ages and absolutely know that there is a need (the big question is, Is the need urgent enough?)
2) I have had a side-hustle a few years ago as a semi-pro photographer so I am tax registered and have an accounting system etc already
These experiences completely reflect everything brought up in the video.
The area where I have almost certainly gone wrong is in over-engineering .... I have built an incredibly complex system to solve an incredibly broad and complex problem!
One thing I haven't done is built an MVP as several people have commented (The 'V' bit is the tricky one) .. I really would suggest reading Eric Ries' book "The Lean Startup".
That’s one of my favorite books!
@@HealthyDev I was hearing so much about MVPs, I thought I would actually find out what the actual rationale was. He was solving a very tricky problem!
This is very good advice. You really have to come to terms with and accept some of these realities, both those discussed and those not discussed. True agility and the ability to pivot on a dime come from managing a business. This is why everybody says, including the words said at the end of the video, that execution is everything. Indeed it is.
Thank you for all the good tips. I've just finished the paperwork I need to get my sole proprietary business registered last week, and I'm encouraged to keep going. No product in mind yet but I want to hone in on my business strategy first.
Business strategy depends on what your are planning to sell.
Needed this. In this environment as a self taught AI Engineer it's the only way for me to break through the noise. I really don't want to go the whole LEET code grind set. This is a much more sustainable and fun way to prove my skills and make money at the same time
Thank you for making this video! Very few people are discussing solo software development entrepreneurship. Please keep this discussion going! ❤
More to come!
Wow, this hit me right in the heart! I’m so guilty of over engineering and rewriting a certain project over and over. Great for learning, but it’s horrible for business. Thanks for making this. Instant subscriber here!
I'm amazed and thankfull for you. You videos helped me as a software developper in the past and it still is with your latest ones... Always sound advices and always on point (at least for me). Your not only delivering "content" here, definetely not. Meaningfull talks. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your support. It means more than you know.
MVP : minimum viable product!
Most value player
It's a good tip at ~15m regarding spending time on the business. I ran a technical business and had my nose in a load of electronics, but on regular occasions you have to look at the real numbers on your sales, income, investment, what you need to do to work on the next expansion idea and so on. You have to think that building a business is always a case of constant improvement, better ways of doing things so it all runs faster. You are essentially investing time to save you time and improving quality to the customer.
Thanks for sharing a real testimonial!
That advice in the beginning of the video… I swear is one of the most basic advices I’ve heard over and over growing up as a kid.
You cater your product to customers, yes you definitely listen to feedback.
Good luck when customers tell you opposite things
@@mike.1 Like the budlight fiasco?
@@mike.1 In my experience, customers never know what they want, but they sure as hell know what they don't want. If you get conflicting feedback there's almost always something deeper going on. Maybe one customer wants a completely different product or feature than the one you're trying to build.
Great video. I am currently making 90% of the mistakes you mentioned. I've been working on the software side for about a year now, started working on the business side just recently. Self-doubt is a huge problem, it leads to me just finding problems with the software, tweaking it every day, adding new features, etc. And all that could've been done much later after the deployment. Guess I'll just deploy it within two weeks to test the market and only then add new features or fix issues.
I'm a CS major -> engineer -> solution architect -> head of product at a growing startup. I hope I'm not being too overly confident when I think that I know what it takes to go beyond engineering and talk to customers. Nowadays I barely code "professionally" in favor of all these other startup management tasks. Except, that I have my own ideas and product I'm working on during the evenings/weekends (inter-business project management app - sounds boring right? 😉). I know that if I want to succeed I would need to focus on it full-time. But until I have my MVP and actively make the decision to focus on the business aspect, I am okay knowing what it takes later down the line. For now I'm good building a massive network and getting more startup experience.
Sounds like you’re approaching it pretty reasonably!
It's about as shocking as an MBA trying to build great software and failing. It's almost as if these two skill sets are different from each other or something.
Ha! You may be onto something there ;). Definitely two skillsets that can be learned by one person. It's a matter of just putting the time in.
#9. Poor written (sales) communication skills. Words sell. They’re grossly undervalued.
I started my own tech business (services) 4y ago. I still learn how to evolve as an entrepreneur. I don’t know who you are, is the first time I watch your videos but the content is the real deal. Keep up and good luck to all of you out there! 🎉
Superb video. Thank you 🙏 for posting. Sage advice ….
Btw. Loved the jam in middle of video too….
Glad you enjoyed it! Thank you.
This was a really valuable video. Wow. I can feel the sincerity in the message too.
As an engineer and a saas founder, I can totally relate to all points. Great overview of potential pitfals for all devs starting a business.
Really digging the guitar on the side. No one does that!
It's kind of my thing, just started it a little over a year ago. People either love it, or hate it ;)
The best advice I got when I was bitching about a client changing everything after 2 weeks of work: The client is allowed to be in error. Helped me tremendously in my client relationships
I love your approach to this topic, very realistic, down to earth and practical.
Glad you enjoy it!
Great video. I have seriously started working on my SaaS product for the past month. I started working on this because I am currently on sick leave due to burnout and depression. This project has helped me get back into a routine. I think the easy part so far is to figure out how to build the product, so I try to balance it out with days to work on parts I have more problems with such as learning on how to market my product, finding the correct audience and also building a good landings page. What also has helped me is to set a timeline and write down the main objective and set small goals to get to that main objective.
You're ahead of many folks that haven't realized that yet. It's messy but sounds like you've got your priorities straight. I LOVE building product - it's what I did for a living for 20 years! I find I love the other stuff too, but only when I've fallen over a few times sucking at it, and then start to see how to do it right. Hang in there!
Such valuable insights. Have to save this to watch it a few times over
As a Non-Tech Co-Founder, Fractional Product Consultant, and a VC Fund GP, I truly appreciate this video. I have worked across the desk from Engineering (and was one early in my career) my entire career. Please do more of these videos. If you want some input, happy to chat as well.
I think every good project in production started out in producton as a Minimal Viable Product. I know any real project, even the ones I create as side projects, I at least pretend it is a real product and start with a BRD and a SRD. It really opens up the domain and reveals things abou the project I didn't think about initially. The last two points are probably spoke to me the most. I am the only Developer I know, and I have been learning and doing this for at least 5 years. Through my BS and now in my MS, it is hard to build a network either due to faults of my own or circumstance. Due to the fact I don't know any other developers, that lack of experience leaves me in a silent wake, where I don't know how good or bad I am doing. Which leaves me wondering.
Had a similar situation myself. I read Uncle Bob's Clean Code and learnt about UX (took a free Google course which helped me as a mobile app dev. I still read interesting UI/UX topics because it interests me.
So find your interest (Ui/UX, code architecture, clean coding, deeper knowledge of a framework, etc) and follow it. But it is also important to learn more about the tools you're using (e.g. git, GitHub). There's more to git than most people do (rebase vs merge, rewriting commit history to clean up those "WIP" commits to something that will help you later on, deleting branches and keeping your repo clean, code deletion over commenting it out).
Super useful! Thank you, Jayme. You nailed it!👍
I love it. This is a very balanced take. No bullshit, just facts.
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks.
Keep up the great work! I love your videos
Thank you 🙏
I like your content more and more.
It's honest, thought through and what's more important to me, it's based.
There's a lot to be said about the daily struggles coder parents have and this one fits really nice - Landing in my favourites ;)
Keep up the good work 👍
Btw. I do like the guitar breaks you give, they somehow make your content even more pleasant.
Thanks for all the kind words and the feedback!
I agree with most of your points. I quit my job almost 3 years ago and decided to build my version of Point of Sales system. It is a very difficult journey as I have to do it solo. No one else around me understand the pain. I used up all my savings for my commitments such as paying the bank loans, insurance and credit card. I also need to allocate some budget for the product R&D and equipment. Fortunately, I get a freelance job that can give me a little bit of income. I am not giving up and I hope other people like me also be strong.
Thank you ❤ need every bit of info before i walk into this world
I'm building right now a product, I'm on the part that I know, the dev part. Thanks for your video, I'll probably rewatch when I launch it
Well, maybe I can share my story here, I was working as client technical service back in the 90's and I can code. Some customers asked me for favours to integrate the software I am selling to some other software, so I happily did for them. However, as I was doing so, the clients wanted more and more functionality. So I thought, why not I set up a company, I asked a good friend to set up a company and I enhanced my software to do all the functions expected and changed the interface and all that and let my company sell to the clients instead. That's how my company began and eventually sold the company off with a big prize money
Thanks for sharing! Companies need to realize this about developers. You mistreat them or stop giving them opportunities, you could just be letting go of your new competition!
Im starting a web design and digital marketing agency. Im a dad with two kids and have a fulltime web dev job and its challenging but this video was very insightful
15 years being a solo developer and i still make the 9 mistakes you mention 😂😂😢
Thanks a lot, this video is gold. Subscribing ❤
Welcome to the channel!
I was a marketing manager who had an idea for a product that can help loyalty platforms grow. Have learnt coding and given myself 2 years to launch a product. Loving the journey!
The difference between viral and turning up a profit from the start is kind of what Aral Balkan described as "build a stay up instead of a start up".
I'm really enjoying this recent content. Regards.
Thanks for your support 🙏
Im in a completely different field: music performance. I can say much of your advice is applicable to any field: 1. You have boss, if in a company or the market is your "boss", 2. you may love your field but it's not a hobby--you need to make money, 3. You may work alone a lot (in my case, practicing my keyboard and learning more music) but you find opportunity through interacting with people and also find new, marketable directions for your own growth, etc.
Very valuable information for a programmer that wants to start a business. Thank you!
great video . very practical tips
Excellent video. The skills you use for writing code aren't the same as those for running a business. This should be viewed by those who are considering their own business after getting laid off. Doing this as a side gig works as it's lower risk - if it does well enough to make enough money then great.
You're cool. Good video, thanks :) By the way, I love the color of your Gretsch.
Starting small business without any revenue in sight is the worst possible mistake in general. This video is Gold.
so many gems! For anyone reading this, treating your business and yourself seriously, you will succeed. In the past when I built side-project, I was half expecting it will fail, so I put in half effort. When it got difficult, I just gave up. Because in that way, I didn't have to face failure and no embarrassment. But also, nothing will happen. I am forcing myself to face failure now, force myself to talk to stranger(customers), experiment fast, be somewhere your competitor is not. Be like water, my friends
seriously bro, you and your guitar are proper good, can you please do an hour or so of it as it really just helped me focus on my work. you should do focus music, and link it on the next vid :)
I appreciate all your advice! Two things I'd be cautious about: 1) Downplaying the ever-increasing demands of legislation about GDPR, cybersecurity etc. 2) Picking something that's too easy to copy/steal
Programming as a electrical engineer. With out any real software experience appart from attempting C C++ assembly, basic, assembly programming very little . Just putting a program together and suck it and see. I look back at some of the programmes i had written. And its nice to see somthing evolve from nothing. I have almost given up on many occasions. Putting a product together is daunting...imposter syndrome especially when your up againts all the different tools chains and terminology. I think business is like getting a car for the first time you are so apprehensive and its like looking up at a giant. You are now in control of something that has many complexities and you become the imposter. I keep telling my self if you dont learn you dont earn. It drives me forward.
Fantastic video.
Thank you so much.
Wow. What a great feature. I feel like the ADA Saved metric could be used programmatically in a "Public Good" smart contract with Catalyst for vested funding
Great work dude. Thank you
Love this Video. Super Thanls, i'm trying to build Sign Request application with government certification.
Sounds like it could be really useful!
just subed, very inspiring, will apply this for my saas and future ones!
Welcome to the channel! Happy to have you here. 🙏
I love this video. You talk about the issues we are failing to make things happen😊
Yepp. I wish I knew this things before. This are the exact mistakes I had to go through. Thanks to author by the way!
Great advice, particularly for those of us actually on this path.
Advice, pick a Product Manager you like and get along and most importantly you trust each other to partner with so you both have a better chance to get to your sweet spot!
They can handle business pretty well alongside you for small products and early stage when you’re taking this path.
I think one thing you didn’t touch on that’s very often missed is marketing or lack there of
Build it and they will come isn’t something I think you’d want to approach in a commercial venture
You’re going to have to sell the software and get people excited for your product(s) or risk insolvency no matter how good the software
I handed in notice at my Data Consultancy job a couple weeks ago - finish Thursday next week.
Im going into independent contracting in the same sector I’ve been working at for the last couple years as I build a Data Discovery, Data Quality and Data Migration tool - essentially allowing someone with a bit of data knowledge to tackle an old legacy system that might be mostly unknown, build quality rules and migrate the data to a defined structure.
Just to add to this - fairly confident on the general features at this stage. Hoping to take this advice on board - especially the risk of over-engineering.
Stick to the basic principles of DRY and KISS. With feedback from others in your target niche, changing and adapting becomes a lot much easier.
As a hustler: starting your business as a side-hustle has it's benefits:
You have the comfort of safety learning, your paycheck is going to arrive anyway. You are in no despair to get any money so you can negotiate your contracts.
The main downside is extreme time scarcity, you cannot spend 60hrs per week on it if you already spend 40 in the main job. There are weeks when spending any time is a problem.
If your product fails you don't know if it is lack of market fit, bad marketing, most likely you blame yourself for not being engaged enough.
This was really helpful! Thanks!
You're very welcome!
Dude goes into guitar mode partway hahaha nice one man
Being in so many coding communities, and seeing the owners reply to feedback basically saying no youre wrong in a friendly manner. Like okay man, keep making a product only you like I guess
Humility is kind of rare in engineers. I have some theories on that I'll expand on in a future episode...
Good discussion on the realistic expectations of going solo. You are right, execution of any idea is the key. Poor execution of a good idea is a failed project no matter how you slice it. For me the biggest barrier to entry is competing against an army of developers. Maybe its possible with all the AI tools available, but I've found some of these AI tools will hallucinate, and generate code that looks like it will work, but in practice doesn't.
Dayum, it hurts. But you are spot on.
Good point. The advantage I had when I did my tech start up is I already had experience of running nightclubs with dozens of staff. That taught me a lot about business as really a company is a company of people in like the medieval sense so to speak. Just a group of people with a common goal.
Great advice; well delivered. thanks mate
Love this, I’m actually starting a software in Colombia.
One little addition: if a client wants you to change your product, check with other clients first if that's really something you need
Agree 100%. This is just good product management!
Thank you so much, I'm working a Form creation App, and I really needed to hear that.
PS: love the music
Thanks for stressing how to stay sane in the sea of advice out there in the ether!
Amazing video. My goal is to bootstrap my own company and you touched on many of the things that I'm scared of about myself. I just got a job at a big tech company and stashing up enough savings to be lean FI, and then going for it. What are your favorite resources for learning about starting a small software company (1-10 employees) that creates software products?
I've read and tried so many things over the years, I'm not sure where to begin. The book "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki is a favorite. There are too many to list, but I definitely got value out of that one.
Great video on the truths behind starting a business.
We went through 4 pivots to get it right. You have to be willing to wipe it all down and start again and again. Period.
this week's groove was especially groovy
It’s actually the intro to a song from my band in high school. Wrote that one in 1993!
There's a lot to be said for not originating "an idea" on your own. Instead, engage with say 50 professionals-be they doctors, physiotherapists, engineers, or others in the field you're interested in-and inquire about their challenges to inform your concept. At the least, you will be starting in a place where you’re solving valid pain points.
You typically get.....this program does this and I wish it would do such and such as well. Unfortunately you find the only way you're going to get to the desired missing functionality is by building the entire program's functionality again.
Not all programmer are the same, but I know that very few knows the reality of running a company. Let alone the taxes and sales. I still can count on my hands the number of programmers that could talk to a business person with the right approach. The majority thinks that a great idea or great design is sufficient to sell itself...
Big Bro, fascinating video as usual. It's been over 10 years and I still don't have a start up idea I'm interested in.
You are right in so many arguments. But we also need customers who are willing to pay you the price that is worth to work with. Paying me based on a hourly rate is kinda killing myself because I do have the experience to finish the Job in the half of the expected time, so I am charging a specific price for my work which is still legit. Sure it may be expensive at the first look but I do it with a matured stack, probably without the need of debugging or having bugs after the Release. The customer also pays you having the experience over the years and that the product that he gets helps him to be more efficient or solves some use-cases.
This is great advice. I've been running software startups for years. This is #RealTalk.
Too many companies I’ve joined as a product designer/dev refuse to give me access to users, belittle the value in competitor research and market strategy, then want to meet with me once a week and spew 20 minutes of opinions that are not at all founded in data.
I immediately start looking for an off ramp to another project.
As a PHP developer I don’t have to worry about being tempted by new and trendy frameworks etc
Let's not forget that satisfying the person doing the work is a precursor to having something to show a customer. You can grind the boring parts and push through the hacks, but in the end, that motivation is just gone, gone gone.
The guitar tone was amazing
Thanks!
Hey Healthy, so this video is timely and even though I should know better, I recognize some of issues you mention in myself. I am fulltime on my software development using AI, but coaching people is also tempting. I am concerned it is a distraction, what was your experience? It seems you enjoy talking to people and helping them solve problems and I kind of have similar motivation... Thanks for this video.
Thanks! I'm going to talk about this some in future videos. The fastest way to make money on the side is coaching. But it's also the least scalable. I think it's fine, It's taken me 5 years of coaching to start offering products as well to start having some passive income. During that time I was also doing IT consulting part time. Of course (if you know my story) I was suffering from chronic burnout when I started, so it may go smoother for you.
@@HealthyDev Thank you for quick response. Yes, I am not burned out at all, I am eager to do things. I will check other videos. I have ADHD and thought to do fairly specific coaching to others like me, it would help me as well as them. I will think about it.
@@desirecothat would definitely be helpful. Quite a few of the people I've coached have ADHD in one way or another. I'm not able to help them with that, they see therapists though which is great.
I’ve tried several ideas of the ground and every time unintentionally run into similar situations, like overengineering, not focused enough on business itself, and now subconsciously I destroyed self confidence from falling multiple times. Now took a year just to distance myself and thinking about restarting the journey. But for some reason, now I’m between choices, trying to restart the old idea, since there is so much done already for it, or work on a new idea and build the foundation that previous ideas already have …
One thing i noticed too late, developer tends to be task oriented more than business oriented. So I was using a lot of time developing than finding customers for the existing products.