[HN Gopher] My Second Year as a Solo Developer
___________________________________________________________________
My Second Year as a Solo Developer
Author : mtlynch
Score : 663 points
Date : 2020-01-31 13:09 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mtlynch.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (mtlynch.io)
| alexellisuk wrote:
| If folks liked this story, check in with Daniel Vassallo who quit
| a job at Amazon on well over 500k / year salary and benefits to
| start out on his own as a solo, small-business founder.
| https://twitter.com/dvassallo
|
| He shares lots of personal stats like his incoming & expenditure
| - quite inspirational and can show that circumstances and luck
| can also play a part.
| gbasin wrote:
| Encouraging to see your progress, keep it up!
|
| Reading about your projects, it strikes me that some have
| different potential than others for perhaps one clear reason:
| solving a problem vs not. Why not double down on Zestful? There
| is demand there, and some are willing to pay...
|
| This post I wrote recently may be helpful for you:
| https://tinyletter.com/garybasin/letters/how-to-know-what-pe...
| edf13 wrote:
| Hate to be harsh - but I wouldn't call this progress... I would
| call this going backwards.
|
| From what I can see he is drastically cutting back his
| lifestyle and all living costs and calling it a profit? The
| business and enterprise of being s solo dev itself is failing
| enterprise.
|
| My advise (From experience) would be to be doing some
| outsourced/freelance work at this stage to help fund your
| projects.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Cutting back on one's cost of living can easily still be
| progress. If he's doing this to get rich, I would agree he is
| failing. However I don't think thats the idea. I think he
| wanted a different lifestyle, and one that was more self-
| directed. Through that lens, an astounding amount of progress
| has been made.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| > _Why not double down on Zestful? There is demand there, and
| some are willing to pay..._
|
| Mainly because I don't know of any action I can take to grow
| Zestful. Large companies have already rolled their own
| solution. Smaller companies who need ingredient parsing have
| figured out some solution and they usually don't see it as
| worthwhile for them to take a chance on a new service if their
| old one is working fine. Customers need to find me at the time
| they're building a product that needs Zestful, but I don't know
| other ways of helping them find me beyond the SEO steps I've
| already taken.
| gbasin wrote:
| Large companies often end up getting hamstrung with homegrown
| solutions as they try to scale, and look for specialized SaaS
| solutions
| bkinnard wrote:
| Reading the post makes me most curious about how you live so
| cheaply? Halfing your burn rate doubles your time to death which
| more than doubles your chances of success
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| > _Reading the post makes me most curious about how you live so
| cheaply?_
|
| 90% of it is just location.
|
| When I was in Manhattan, I was spending ~$7k/month. Part of
| that was higher cost of my apartment and health insurance, but
| another big part is just the culture. In NYC, it wouldn't be
| unusual for me to go out to a $80/person dinner, spend $25 on
| drinks afterwards, another $25 on Ubers, then another $20 on
| brunch in the morning.
|
| In Western Mass, I do make efforts to live cheaply, but so much
| of it is just the ease of not spending money when nobody in
| your social circle spends like that.
| willj wrote:
| Naive question by someone who's never started a business: when
| bootstrapping companies while keeping your day job, how do you
| deal with intellectual property clauses in employment contracts,
| such that your employer owns the "inventions" you create in your
| free time, on your own equipment, unrelated to the business area
| you work in? I know laws vary by state, but I would find it
| especially disheartening if you spent years of effort and
| sacrificed your social life only to have your product snatched
| away from you once it finally became profitable or popular.
|
| My non-lawyer reading of the internet's opinions suggest that you
| need to discuss it with your company, or possibly edit your
| employment contract before signing, but the latter seems a bad
| suggestion if you're afraid of not getting a job. I've also read
| that these kinds of clauses can even apply several months after
| you terminate at your day job, which suggests that you can't even
| _start_ on the product until months after you've left.
|
| All of that makes me unlikely to try to build a business in tech,
| since I would never have the capital to take such a long break
| away from a company, nor to build a product for a long time
| before it's profitable without having a day job to support me.
| par wrote:
| most of the time you just roll the dice. As long as what you're
| doing is not in the same line of business as your employer, and
| you part on good terms, most of the time it's fine.
| jacurtis wrote:
| This is actually a good distinction. If your side project is
| related to your employer's line of work then it is easy for
| your employer to argue that they own that creation, even if
| you used a personal computer and did it at night, etc.
|
| So for example if your employer makes inventory management
| software for coffee shops, and you decide to make an
| inventory management tool for grocery stores... then your
| employer will easily own your creation.
|
| On the other hand if you work for a search engine platform
| (ie Google), and you invent an API tool that parses recipes,
| and you did it all on your personal laptop and personal time,
| then you should be fine.
| jacurtis wrote:
| Generally, when an employer owns your "inventions", this only
| applies to "inventions" created while using the employer's
| resources. Most employement contracts will make it sound like
| they own every waking thought, but in most cases when this has
| been taken to court, the precedent has been set, that it really
| only applies to inventions or ideas that happen in relation to
| and using employer's resources.
|
| So this means that an employer can argue they own software that
| you build:
|
| - On a company-issued computer
|
| - Using contacts you garnered through work
|
| - On company time (this is complicated for salary employees,
| but definitely applies to time in the office, or standard
| business hours when you are expected to be working)
|
| - Work collaborated on with other co-workers
|
| Now I should clarify, I am not a lawyer. None of this is legal
| advice, yada yada...
|
| But generally you can work on side projects and skirt around
| intellectual property clauses as long as you make sure to
| distinguish work time and work resources from your personal
| projects. The biggest thing is to avoid doing it while at work
| (or when expected to be actively working if you are remote),
| and avoid using a company computer or piggybacking off company
| resources (for example making a sub-account in your employer's
| CI/CD tool to run tests for your software).
|
| So make sure you have seperate accounts for everything, avoid
| doing it on company time, and use a personal computer (not a
| work-issued computer) and you should be absolutely fine with
| working on a side project.
| adventured wrote:
| > Most employement contracts will make it sound like they own
| every waking thought, but in most cases when this has been
| taken to court, the precedent has been set, that it really
| only applies to inventions or ideas that happen in relation
| to and using employer's resources.
|
| A simple example of this that I like to point out to people
| in tech to help them understand that an employer doesn't
| inherently own your soul, is picture yourself starting a
| Pizza Hut franchise (convenience store, or anything
| equivalent) strictly on your own time and dime entirely
| outside of work. Does your employer get to own that business,
| get to take it away from you, just because you work for them
| 9 to 5? Nope and it sounds particularly absurd when you frame
| it with something more traditional. Or imagine starting a
| real-estate renovation business, where you renovate houses in
| your own spare time; same thing, does IBM get to own your
| house renovation business just because you pull 9-5 for them?
| Hell no they don't.
|
| The only serious risk difference re starting tech businesses
| (vs other traditional businesses) while working in tech is in
| cases of competitive issues if you start something directly
| in the employer's wheelhouse. Then you better lawyer up well
| ahead of time and navigate it very carefully.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Your intuition is correct, you really should try to make sure
| your employer is aware of your intent to work on your own IP
| and you have some written document acknowledging that fact.
| Many companies have a form you fill out on your first day
| listing such projects. You owe your employer a duty of loyalty
| and so your projects cannot compete with them, and it helps to
| have them review the scope of the project and sign off on that
| fact. If you don't get this agreement from your employer, you
| might still technically be fine to work on your own business
| but you risk a court battle about it.
|
| > I've also read that these kinds of clauses can even apply
| several months after you terminate at your day job, which
| suggests that you can't even start on the product until months
| after you've left.
|
| These would be non-compete clauses, illegal in California but
| legal in many other states. Your employer doesn't own any IP
| you create once they stop paying you, but if you are bound by a
| non-compete you'll need to be more careful.
| roland35 wrote:
| Another important thing to keep in mind is to not use company
| resources in any capacity - your work laptop, work 3d printer,
| work time. This actually came up in the first season of silicon
| valley!
| giarc wrote:
| My employer (not a tech company but a healthcare provider) has
| a system whereby I submit a Potential Conflict of Interest
| document. They review and either give me their blessing to
| continue work (outside work hours obviously) or further review
| is to be conducted.
| pid_0 wrote:
| >how do you deal with intellectual property clauses in
| employment contracts, such that your employer owns the
| "inventions" you create in your free time, on your own
| equipment, unrelated to the business area you work in?
|
| By not signing those things, plain and simple. I have never
| signed an employment contract and I never will.
| icebraining wrote:
| Does that mean you never worked for a company (in an IP-
| related job), or actually managed to find companies who hired
| you without signing a contract? If the latter, what kind of
| companies do that?
| patchworkguilt wrote:
| Agree with what has already been said (dont use company
| resources like a work laptop, dont work on it during typical
| work hours, dont build a product that might in any way compete
| with your employer, etc.) As far as work contract goes, (I am
| NOT a lawyer, just based on experience), it's worth reading
| over and seeing what the language is around IP. Most states
| protect your right to build stuff on your own time (enables
| innovation, also you aren't the property of your company)
| making some more draconian contracts unenforceable. But it is
| always better to be proactive, rather than assuming a court
| battle will be unlikely because 1) who knows and 2) court is
| never cheap. If you want to work on something and you are
| worried about the language in your contract, talk to your
| employer about the project and getting some form of written
| exception for it. Side projects generally make for more
| capable, satisfied employees, so if a company made a massive
| stink about literally owning anything you make anywhere in your
| life, I'd be very very wary, as that mindset is a scary sign.
| microcolonel wrote:
| Side note: when presenting a simple revenue-expense-profit-loss
| chart, it can help to chart the expenses as cutting from the
| bottom of the revenue (tough though, when you are funding the
| expenses externally, in this case you have to put the loss below
| the zero line). Anyway, it makes it clear when your expenses
| intersect your revenue, and you switch to profit rather than
| loss.
| localhost wrote:
| I think it's especially important to make sure that you interview
| customers and find out what their problems are before you even
| think about writing a single line of code. You should strive to
| get a mix of qualitative (because the stories you hear will let
| you empathize with the customer problems) as well as quantitative
| via surveys / small ad experiments. Once you have some signal,
| then proceed to start exploring solutions (and again, this isn't
| about writing code, you can do this entirely with mockups/napkin
| drawings, whatever it takes to get your point across) and _test
| those solutions with the customers you interviewed earlier_. Once
| you have some evidence that a) you have a problem that customers
| will pay to solve, and b) you have a solution that you have
| validated THEN you proceed to start writing the code.
|
| The biggest change at my company is doing product development
| this way: understand the customer problem and the solution before
| writing code.
|
| Hope this helps.
| swalsh wrote:
| Just some honest feedback.
|
| I have a use for Zestful, and the price is good. But playing
| around, it seems good at the easy stuff (but I can do the easy
| stuff myself) it's not so good at the hard stuff.
|
| For example the string "3/4 cup risotto rice, Arborio or
| Carnaroli"
|
| It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it's right
| when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it says
| "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. I can totally see
| WHY it says that. But I'm not sure that's correct.
|
| At your price point though, I might still use it. Ultimatley to
| parse everything I need to parse it would be a lot cheaper than
| spending even an hour writing it myself. But that was my first
| thoughts playing around with it.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading and for testing out Zestful!
|
| > _For example the string "3/4 cup risotto rice, Arborio or
| Carnaroli"_
|
| > _It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it 's
| right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it
| says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. I can
| totally see WHY it says that. But I'm not sure that's correct._
|
| Yeah, I'm constantly improving the model, but there will always
| be cases it gets wrong. For most of my customers, that's a
| mostly fine result, because very few of the clients actually
| use the preparation note field. Most care only about the
| quantity, unit, product, and USDA fields.
|
| I'll fix the bad result on the risotto example, but it's
| definitely a game of whack-a-mole. There are so many variations
| and corner cases that it'll never be 100%.
|
| > _At your price point though, I might still use it. Ultimatley
| to parse everything I need to parse it would be a lot cheaper
| than spending even an hour writing it myself. But that was my
| first thoughts playing around with it._
|
| Haha, maybe I should raise my prices. But seriously, I'd be
| happy to have you as a customer. If you'd like to chat more
| about about your use case, shoot me an email at
| michael@zestfuldata.com.
| jacurtis wrote:
| Aren't you going to make him pre-pay for 3 months and not
| charge him until the feature is implemented???
|
| Just got to call you out on your own article. lol
| mtlynch wrote:
| Haha, minor bugfixes I can do without pre-payment.
| drawkbox wrote:
| > _It identifies the unit and quantity fair enough, and it 's
| right when it says "Risotto rice" is the product. But then it
| says "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. I can
| totally see WHY it says that. But I'm not sure that's
| correct._
|
| Simple solution: for your 'Preparation' just say 'Preparation
| or additional options' and the additional preparation can
| contain swap out products that later you can identify by
| brand name or common marketing name.
|
| So when it says '"Risotto rice" is the product and the
| "Arborio or Carnaroli" is a preparation method. Changing that
| to 'Preparation method and additional options' then later
| parsing potential products helps it a bit.
| hinkley wrote:
| Arborio is a kind, just like Granny Smith, bing, or Key. I
| wonder if it'd be easier just to have a dictionary of kinds
| of ingredient and anything else is a preparation.
| mtlynch wrote:
| It's the kind of thing that _seems_ like it 's solvable
| with rules, but once you get into the weeds, there are too
| many rules and exceptions and exceptions to those
| exceptions.
|
| In addition to prep notes, there's also text that most
| clients consider garbage. For example, "2 cups sugar, I use
| Sweetums brand!" the brand preference is garbage.
|
| And then there are tokens like "pound" that could mean
| different things in different contexts (e.g., "1 pound
| flour", "1 chicken breast - pound till flattened", "2 cups
| pound cake mixture").
| macNchz wrote:
| Years ago I built a recipe app for a client who wanted it
| to have a "smart" shopping list feature that could dedupe
| ingredients from disparate recipes, normalize their
| quantities and sum them up to friendly totals. I fell
| waaaay down the parsing rabbit hole battling those
| exceptions-to-exceptions, what a mess. Reading your
| examples gave me a flashback!
|
| The app only had a couple of hundred recipes so we wound
| up just having someone manually translate every
| ingredient for every recipe into a common structure in a
| spreadsheet.
|
| Anyhow, thanks so much for these posts, I quit my job a
| few months ago to work on a few projects of my own and
| I've really enjoyed reading your updates. Looking forward
| to more in the future.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| Yeah, that's a little like how I fell into Zestful. Very
| early into my adventure, I made a keto recipe search
| engine and wanted to handle ingredients properly. It
| started with regexes then spiraled into machine learning.
| xchaotic wrote:
| Sorry to say but this proves that for someone who actually has to
| work for a living ie earn money, corporate life is absolutely the
| correct choice. Even for Mr Lynch these experiments in charity
| wouldn't be possible without the nest egg from google (which he
| acknowledged). To go from net 100k+ to below zero and still be
| unprofitable after two years is a financial disaster.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| > _Sorry to say but this proves that for someone who actually
| has to work for a living ie earn money, corporate life is
| absolutely the correct choice._
|
| Not really. This just proves that corporate life isn't the most
| profitable option for the OP. You just can't make sweeping
| statements like this based on a single anecdote.
|
| I'll offer this to other "corporate" folk out there. I was
| self-employed since late 2010 until I recently (last month)
| joined a mid-stage startup. During my last year of self-
| employment I took home ~$400k in cash, and lots more in early-
| stage stock, and worked _maybe_ 15-20 hours per week. There are
| very few corporate jobs that would even come close to that
| balance of take-home pay and work-life balance.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| how did you get early stage stock being self employed?
| gk1 wrote:
| Consultants can be granted Non-Qualified Stock Options
| (NSO).
| theli0nheart wrote:
| Most of my consulting work was with early-stage startups. I
| would ofter offer a fixed cash cap (say, $50k) at an hourly
| rate, and any work beyond that would accrue towards a SAFE.
| Less risk for the founder, gave me incentive to finish the
| bulk of the work within the cap, but also didn't punish me
| if I didn't.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| neat
| redisman wrote:
| Very interesting idea. Thanks for sharing.
| dbancajas wrote:
| what was your hourly rate on consulting?
| theli0nheart wrote:
| $300 / hour.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| That's pretty incredible. What made you want to join the mid
| stage startup? Also did most of your income come from
| consulting type work or product revenue?
| theli0nheart wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| TBH, I just got bored. All of the inefficient aspect of my
| work got slowly eliminated over the years due to process
| improvements, which meant that only the most unpleasant,
| manual aspects were left over (read: legal, negotiation,
| business development, etc.).
|
| 80% of my income was consulting related. I tried to branch
| off into making a SaaS and "failed" (which I'm still kind
| of excited about but have no time to pursue), but I did
| succeed in making an App Store portfolio which brings in
| decent profit.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| Ah interesting. Thanks for sharing!
| dbancajas wrote:
| > iled" (which I'm still kind of excited about but have
| no time to pursue), but I did succeed in making an App
| Store portfolio which brings in decent profit.
|
| can you share what you did consult on? To me consulting
| is very mysterious as it's a very generic term but I'm
| always amazed by people earning 250K-500K due to
| "consulting". Is it easy to do or more like being in the
| right place/right time/right skillset?
| theli0nheart wrote:
| > _can you share what you did consult on? To me
| consulting is very mysterious as it 's a very generic
| term but I'm always amazed by people earning 250K-500K
| due to "consulting"_
|
| Totally. I'm a generalist software engineer with a
| specialty in early stage startup tech. In addition to
| actually writing the code, setting up infrastructure (AWS
| and all that), and anything explicitly code or "DevOps"
| related, I also helped clients understand the development
| process, advised them on product, worked with designers,
| etc.
|
| I agree that consulting is kind of a nebulous term, but
| if you ask me, it's essentially shorthand for "solving
| problems that people have that they can't (or don't want
| to) solve themselves". The problems that clients came to
| me with were all related to getting a startup off the
| ground from the technical side.
| dbancajas wrote:
| How did you end up on consulting? Did you have prior
| experience bootstrapping previous startups where you were
| a full-time employee? Then you leveraged that experience?
| Devops is pretty recent so I'm assuming you have <10
| years experience?
| theli0nheart wrote:
| I graduated college in 2009, and right afterwards I
| worked at a startup. Then I joined an agency doing web
| work for the entertainment industry. That got boring
| pretty quickly, so after a year of that, I left and
| started an "incubator" with some friends. At that
| company, we built out MVPs and convinced friends working
| corporate jobs to quit and become operators. It was a
| cool business model but not great for cashflow, so I
| split off.
|
| Slowly but surely, I found a niche in working with smart,
| non-technical founders who want to start startups. Turns
| out that most good programmers willfully ignore that
| market (for good reason, it's really hard to separate the
| wheat from the chaff).
|
| I've been programming in some way or another since the
| mid-90s, not old hat by any measure, but AWS and the
| "cloud" was hardly present when I really started getting
| my hands dirty with web programming during the
| early/mid-2000s.
| biztos wrote:
| > I'm always amazed by people earning 250K-500K due to
| "consulting"
|
| I knew people making that in the mid-1990's in the IT end
| of biotech in California and also Switzerland. I would
| assume that something similar to "computer people" salary
| increases has happened to consulting rates too, on the
| higher end.
|
| Never made anything near that myself consulting, but even
| when I was doing that kind of work (around 2000-ish) I
| knew people who were differently motivated than I was, in
| San Francisco, making more than those numbers and working
| less than I did.
|
| The trick was they worked on the _business_ first,
| whereas I was always working on the _product_ first
| (which wasn 't even my product, of course). So for
| instance I might spend all night coding in order to make
| something shine (hello startups!) and be wiped out from
| it the next day, but these other type of people would see
| that as a massive anti-pattern and route around it
| contractually.
|
| For instance I knew one consultant who only flew business
| class - it was in her contract - and billed every hour
| from taxi pick-up to drop-off if not more whenever she
| had to go to a meeting outside driving distance. She read
| documentation on the flights.
|
| Of course I ended up working for one such person for a
| while, because the sort of heads-down nerdy coder with no
| stomach to fight about money is _ideal_ for farming out
| some of your more time-consuming work. :-)
| SergeAx wrote:
| > During my last year of self-employment I took home ~$400k
| in cash, and lots more in early-stage stock
|
| You've lost me here. Are those ealry-stage stock of yourself,
| giving you were _self_ -employed? Or you made side jobs with
| cash+stock payments?
| bdcravens wrote:
| I believe clients compensated them with stock.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| > _You 've lost me here. Are those ealry-stage stock of
| yourself, giving you were self-employed? Or you made side
| jobs with cash+stock payments?_
|
| Clarified here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22202222
| reflectiv wrote:
| I'll offer a counter example in that the startup I joined
| failed miserably and I ended up losing out on a LOT of
| income.
|
| I am now working for a decent 6-figure income and EXTREMELY
| happy with the stability and 40-50 hour work weeks...in
| comparison to the ABSOLUTE GRIND I went through trying to
| help that startup get off the ground - this is a godsend.
|
| Your scenario is VERY UNLIKELY IMO.
| cambalache wrote:
| Stability until you get canned.
| reflectiv wrote:
| That's anywhere...at least I have a reliable check until
| I don't...and I have reasonable hours.
|
| Didn't have either of those before.
|
| Also, if I get canned, I can find another job...there is
| a LOT of work out there for what I do...
| leadingthenet wrote:
| WHAT is WITH the RANDOM CAPITALISATION?
| reflectiv wrote:
| It's called emphasis.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Hint : it's not random.
| theli0nheart wrote:
| I've seen that happen so many times, and it sucks. I'm
| sorry you went through that experience. :(
|
| My first job was at a startup that crashed and burned, and
| what I took from that experience was that the only
| financially responsible way to work with startups as an
| engineer is to work on a lot of them to spread out the
| risk, or be a founder. There's just no other way unless
| you're comfortable with a ton of risk.
|
| Like I said in my post above, this "success" didn't come
| overnight; I spent many years grinding with the business
| development, upping my development skills, and putting
| myself out there. It was not easy.
| wolco wrote:
| Most people work at startups because they can't get a job
| at google if they do they leave. Those who work at google
| at somepoint feel they need to be closer to the
| product/customer/action many leave and create a startup
| (because they have the google brand and can raise money).
| Those startups hire developers who can't get into google.
|
| You are at a certain point in the cycle. At somepoint you
| may move to creating your own startup (maybe not because
| you had a negative experience earlier).
|
| It's just the circle of life.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Right - the vast majority of people even in tech need to buy
| their children shoes and put food on the family table and those
| things are going to be very hard without a stable corporate
| income.
| steve76 wrote:
| Life's bad!
|
| Bullies win!
|
| People always say yes!
|
| --- --- --- --- --- ---
|
| Friends and family die in poverty!
|
| Help someone only to get left behind!
|
| Pursue knowledge just to study to the job interview!
|
| --- --- --- --- --- ---
|
| Flock to corporate HQ!
|
| Earn $1 just to spend $2!
|
| All from a glorified credit card!
|
| --- --- --- --- --- ---
|
| $10 a gallon gasoline!
|
| $10,000 a month rent!
|
| Bailouts! Bailouts! Bailouts!
|
| --- --- --- --- --- ---
|
| ... ... ... all I got in return was some crummy Pepsi halftime
| show.
|
| You own the problems of other people and if you don't fix it
| now it's only going to get worse. And you have to really fix
| it, not just give it lip service.
|
| Get a security clearance, and you find out the REALLY bad stuff
| that goes on, like everything is a front for the police and a
| lot more people die horribly than you would believe. It's a
| fierce competition up top. The highest stakes imaginable. Death
| everywhere. Stay alive by any means. People you thought were
| friends turn brutal overnight, and I fault no one for
| abstaining.
|
| Carroll Shelby died wanting to make young people enthusiastic
| about cars again. He turned around and asked them to give up
| $40,000.
|
| He, and all of us, would have been better off sourcing parts
| from them. The best thing for business today is to be a job
| maker. Not to spike opioid sales. Not to win at zero sum
| politics. Not to game the courts with people made for the law.
|
| Just bundle work, ie customers, along with the product. Don't
| fire anyone. Really what is it you are evangelizing? Being a
| dick to everyone? :(
|
| Isn't it easier to sell "Life should be fun and people should
| be happy." :)
|
| Not that difficult either. I open up VS Code, I have customers.
| Real earnings. How difficult is that?
| neogodless wrote:
| I think the correct lesson is a little different.
|
| First, if you do rake in corporate money, and don't spend it
| all, you'll have a nest egg which gives you so much more choice
| in how you live the rest of your life.
|
| Second, if you don't have a nest egg - yeah you can't just
| gamble that you'll build software-as-a-service and instantly be
| making enough money to live. As he said, people assumed he'd
| use freelance to make up the difference. He didn't, but it is
| an option. Now freelance/contracting can be nearly as corporate
| as a full-time office job, and it isn't as stable an income,
| but it can pay really well.
|
| For many software engineers three months of full-time
| contracting could pay for a year's worth of expenses. (Assuming
| you make choices that align with that goal.) This would let you
| spend a great deal more time focusing on your business goals,
| and give you some freedom to fail some of the time.
| s_y_n_t_a_x wrote:
| It's not always about the money. It's about the happiness.
|
| If it doesn't work out, it's not like he lost the knowledge, he
| can still easily get a job anywhere. Probably even a bump from
| the startup experience.
| tempsy wrote:
| If you have the savings then why not? There is probably not a
| better time in history than to check out from being a corporate
| drone, assuming you have the savings. The stock index returned
| 30% last year...a $1M nest egg returned $300K in a year. I
| don't know what his savings looks like but I assume most of it
| is invested and wasn't included in these numbers.
| bognition wrote:
| The returns in 2019 were exceptionally good. There's little
| reason to assume 2020 will be as good.
|
| With everything going on this year: Brexit, US elections,
| impeachment, corona virus, etc... it's entirely possible this
| years returns could be negative.
| tempsy wrote:
| Sure, I mean it doesn't sound like his plan was to live off
| his investment income, but it certainly has been possible.
|
| My point is that when you get to the point where your
| savings is high enough your money works for you at a level
| that makes it possible to live off of alone.
|
| If the S&P is looking flat then you could rollover some of
| it to a high dividend REIT that pays 10-15% too.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| > _If the S &P is looking flat then you could rollover
| some of it to a high dividend REIT that pays 10-15% too._
|
| You know the business cycle is peaking when people think
| you can easily throw their money into some investment
| paying 15%...no problem!
|
| Can you explain how a public investment - any public
| investment - can continuously generate those kinds of
| returns without taking on massive amounts of risk?
| tempsy wrote:
| It's called a REIT. The dividend is rental income for
| real estate developers.
|
| Let me guess...you thought 2013 was the top?
| neogodless wrote:
| He talks about that a bit - most of his money was invested in
| a simple S&P 500 index fund, with some dabbling in
| crypocurrencies (which worked out in his case.)
| tempsy wrote:
| Ok - so his investment income last year was potentially as
| a high working full time at Google.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| And yet, losing money for the first 2-3 years is AFAIK typical
| for new companies (especially those with 1-2 employees).
| bdcravens wrote:
| The other choice is to not focus 100% on products, but rather,
| consult and work on your products on the side, and dial back
| the consulting as your products attain viability.
| NKCSS wrote:
| Nah, but it's hard to launch a successfull product; if it
| wasn't, everyone would be doing it.
|
| I'm doing contracting work for multiple different customers,
| long-term project, and I generate 100-200k of revenue on a
| yearly basis from that. That leaves me with slightly higher
| salary than if I'd work for a boss, but I have tonnes, and
| tonnes more freedom and time for my kids. It's just not
| possible to scale that past 300k/yr, because there's only so
| much time you can sell.
|
| Once you have a product, you can scale it through the roof,
| since a digital product, if set up well, has negligible costs,
| will allow you to earn way more, but only if you find something
| that people want bad enough to pay for and a large enough group
| to pay for it. Loads and loads of people have the skills
| required to build a product, but not a lot have the right idea
| and marketing to go along with it to make it a success.
| jlevers wrote:
| While I generally agree with you that products can scale much
| higher than consulting income-wise, when you say it's
| impossible to scale what you're doing past 300k/year due to
| time constraints...why not charge more for your time? If you
| have more people asking you to do work for them than you have
| time for, I'd think that clients would be willing to pay more
| in order to make it onto your schedule.
| dbancajas wrote:
| how many customers per year? and how do you deal with
| insurance?
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Wait, why do you think "it's just not possible to scale that
| past 300k/yr"? I have at least one counter-example ;-)
|
| In general, the way it's worked for me is if I have multiple
| potential new gigs, I ask for more money. When the next gig
| comes along, that's my new baseline. Over the last 6 years
| that's helped moved the hourly rate to a number I wouldn't
| have asked for upfront. I hate to say no to customers too, so
| sometimes end up working 60-70 hour weeks in bursts. It's
| worth it though, because when things get quiet, I can go
| snowboarding for a week without asking a boss for
| permission...
| gk1 wrote:
| It seems OP is perfectly happy creating small sites and
| products. One can earn perfectly good money from consulting or
| contracting, but OP chose not to.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| It's hard starting a business and most people (90%) don't earn
| anymore than an employee.
|
| None the less some of us just aren't cut out for the corporate
| life. I'd pick poverty over the lack of autonomy, petit
| politics and meaningless work any day.
| chasd00 wrote:
| " I'd pick poverty over the lack of autonomy, petit politics
| and meaningless work any day."
|
| Would you also put your kids in poverty? It's not a simple
| when you think beyond yourself.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| I haven't made the choice to have children and so it
| doesn't apply to me. That is your decision and that class
| of problem doesn't apply to everyone.
| thrownblown wrote:
| Well if you do, know that the $3k/mo saas that took 2
| years to build isn't going to put that kid through
| college but will allow you to be a present and engaged
| parent to your child for the precious few years before
| they go to school.
| wolco wrote:
| College can be free. Three 3k/mo saases would.
| thrownblown wrote:
| I wouldn't know... I didn't go...
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| He said he has no kids. It's not the right path for
| everyone.
| chasd00 wrote:
| my mistake, what's the proper etiquette here? edit my
| original comment?
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| No worries :D
| NhanH wrote:
| Keeps thing as-is is okay I think. Don't fret over it
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I have kids although they are grown up now. You might be
| confusing me with the OP.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| Ah was referring to OP
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Yeah the focus on exclusively money baffles me. Like cool you
| get to buy a bigger house and go on some nicer vacations.
| Depending on the big co, they own you. I can't say I'm not
| working as an employee right now but every time I've been
| "broke" and free to do whatever project and take on work as I
| see fit I've been probably 50-70% happier when you factor in
| stress from shakier income.
|
| That said I understand risk tolerances and it not being
| everyone's cup of tea but saying everyone should be a
| corporate employee ignores an entire set of priorities people
| tend to have besides stability and money.
| criley2 wrote:
| On the flip side, working for yourself means the job never
| ends. As an employee you can do 8 hours at work, 16 hours
| for yourself. You can drop a project and pick it up the
| next day. The client is pissed? You're still making your
| salary. It's up to management to staff correctly, not up to
| you to kill yourself overworking for a salary and no
| overtime.
|
| When it's just you, and your entire livelihood depends on
| sucking up to big fish to get that one payday that will
| float you for the next few months while you find another
| big fish, the boundaries between work and home dissolve.
| You feel a constant stress to get projects done and you
| even lay awake at night terrified of what happens if your
| next big fish doesn't materialize. Your performance in any
| one task decreases because you have to wear every hat.
| You're a good programmer, but are you a good businessman?
| Advertiser? Hustler? Lawyer? Can you afford a team? Will do
| you everything yourself?
|
| If you're still a kid, don't have debts, don't own
| property, don't have a family, don't have any roots, the
| risk/reward and excitement of this chaotic and generally
| financially ruinous lifestyle could be good or even make
| you happy.
|
| But for many people, the stress of putting your family,
| your investments, your retirement and ultimately your
| future on the line is one of the most unhappy things
| possible.
|
| I don't think there is anything wrong with doing your 8
| hours to make a living, and then taking the next 8 hours to
| enrich your life -- not for profit, but for health.
| Exercise, learning and growing, cooking and entertaining,
| starting a family, investing in life and happiness outside
| of coding... it's just notoriously difficult to do these
| things as an entrepreneur, and all the "big successes" as a
| rule (with exceptions) are "16 hour workers", as in, 100%
| of useful waking hours spent on the job.
| nightski wrote:
| Honestly that just sounds like someone terrible at
| managing risk and money! As a self employed individual
| coming up on 10 years now the first year or two was
| rough, but if you build up a safety net and properly
| manage money there are no sleepless nights worrying about
| the next big fish.
|
| It also takes a while to realize that working more than
| 8/hrs a day is not sustainable. You'll be less productive
| in the long term. So really even as a self employed
| individual it's better to work less than a full time job
| imho.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I wish this idea would die. It doesn't need to be like
| that. It is possible to take a more relaxed approach to
| your own business just as you might as an employee.
|
| Sure some people overwork but that isn't unique to
| running a business, you will find those people in big
| companies as well.
|
| Also my experience was that having a family, owning a
| property and being rooted in my location gave me the
| support I needed to succeed.
| cambalache wrote:
| Lots and lots of self employed people are not "working"
| 24h/day.Where does this myth come from? Is it corporate
| propaganda?
| criley2 wrote:
| It's coming from inside the house!
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1067175527180513280
|
| "No one ever changed the world at 40 hours a week"
|
| "80 hours minimum, with peaks at 100 hours"
|
| A 100 hour week would be 16.6 hours for 6 days and 1 day
| off, or 14.25 hour days with no days off
|
| The idea that entrepreneurs need to work more than 40
| hours a week to be successful is as old as our industry,
| and I'd go so far as to say that those casually working a
| schedule that looks more like a salaried position are
| probably "consultants" and aren't really entrepreneurs
| trying to build something or change something
| icebraining wrote:
| It's funny how Musk himself disproves that claim. He runs
| 3 companies simultaneously, yet clearly he can't dedicate
| 80hrs/week for each.
| shakestheclown wrote:
| Well that depends on if Elon is a believer in Time Cube
| Theory which says due to 4 corner Earth there are 4
| simultaneous days each rotation.
| wolco wrote:
| People have changed the world over a tweet. If changing
| the world is all you want to do, plant a tree. The world
| will be changed for the better.
| redisman wrote:
| Who said anything about changing the world? I think most
| people would prefer a "lifestyle" business where they can
| set their hours and scale the business based on that.
| cambalache wrote:
| self employed != SV-style entrepreneur
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| That's probably true of a certain sort of startup -
| writing a bushel of code for a web thingy for instance.
|
| But I've worked at many startups and ok 50 hours would be
| common. As they say, one pregnancy takes one person 9
| months. You can't do it in 4.5 with two people (or by
| working harder).
| untog wrote:
| > lack of autonomy, petit politics and meaningless work
|
| This isn't a given. Plenty of (particularly large) companies
| will inflict this on you, but it's also very possible to work
| at a company and have autonomy and do meaningful work.
| sidlls wrote:
| I think the odds of having that sort of autonomy in a
| corporate job are lower than being a successful "lifestyle"
| business owner. It's exceptionally rare to find it in the
| corporate world, where stability, process, and politics are
| the primary focus of work to deliver the company's
| product/service.
| xwdv wrote:
| What if the poverty was really, REALLY bad? As in soul
| crushing, no way out, maybe-kill-yourself, type of poverty? I
| doubt you'd make that switch so easily.
| [deleted]
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| That's really another question, I have a lot of sympathy
| for people in that situation but it isn't what we are
| talking about here.
| xwdv wrote:
| I don't think you understand what poverty _is_ , if you
| are choosing poverty over "lack of autonomy in the
| workplace".
|
| Poverty doesn't liberate you, it restricts you, and not
| just in the workplace, but in your entire _life_. Want to
| go on a trip or eat fancy food? Too bad you can't,
| because you don't have money and you're broke poor. Want
| to get a great career? Too bad, you got to work at fast
| food joint because you can't afford the education. Want
| kids? Nope you can't afford it so keep it in your pants,
| and women don't want to get serious with some broke dude
| anyway.
|
| There is no way you'd choose poverty. There is little
| advantage to being poor in society that punishes being
| poor.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| What sort of question is this? Do you think _anyone_ would
| pick "soul-crushing maybe-kill-yourself poverty" over
| working at Google?
|
| We are talking about programmers here. Unless there are
| unique circumstances that sort of poverty is off the table.
| cycloptic wrote:
| >Do you think anyone would pick "soul-crushing maybe-
| kill-yourself poverty" over working at Google?
|
| I've done this before and I would do it again. I wish I
| had something profound to add but I don't. Working in a
| corporate environment is just incredibly grating.
| xwdv wrote:
| Is being poor also not incredibly grating?
| JacKTrocinskI wrote:
| Totally agree, would never do what OP has done, I like my job
| and what I do plus I get paid well.
| tempsy wrote:
| good for you?
|
| for most of history everyone worked for themselves. one could
| argue the modern day corporate structure is completely
| unnatural and doesn't fit (most) everyone.
| m0zg wrote:
| What Got Done is basically Google's internal Snippets. I wish
| there was an on-prem setup to do that. The idea is basically
| every week you write, in free form text, what you've done, and
| possibly what you're planning to do, and your team mates get to
| view it, and subscribe to updates conveniently. If you're
| anything like me, you will find this valuable not only day to
| day, but also when the review time comes and you need to beat
| your chest a little. I tend to forget how much I've done.
| sealthedeal wrote:
| love it! If my two cents matter to you... I did a similar thing
| for a few years, and it wasnt until I went all in on one
| product/problem did I finally start to see some great returns.
|
| With that said, I have a friends dad who owns like 10 different
| businesses and he has people manage all of them, while he sits
| back and collects. These are not software businesses they are
| more brick and mortar like long term storage, etc, but maybe you
| can build the same model with online businesses! :)
|
| Good luck, and thanks for posting, really enjoy reading the
| content!
| gramakri wrote:
| Great read, thanks for writing this. One of the hardest parts of
| doing a bootstrapped startup is the peer pressure and the
| perceived opportunity cost. The numbers won't add up for a
| bootstrapped business for many years (I am talking upwards of 5
| years even). The only thing that keeps you going is your ambition
| ('this is what i want to do', 'nothing else i would rather do').
|
| The best way I have learnt to deal with this is to surround
| myself with people who think similar.
| ingend88 wrote:
| @mtlynch what tech stack do you use?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Different things for different projects. I'm trying to move
| toward mostly Go + Vue stuff.
|
| * Zestful: Python + Docker + CRF++
|
| * Is It Keto: Flask + AppEngine
|
| * What Got Done: Go + Vue + AppEngine
| (https://github.com/mtlynch/whatgotdone)
|
| * WanderJest: Go + Vue + AppEngine
|
| * mtlynch.io: Hugo (https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io)
| influx wrote:
| Do you use any web frameworks with Go?
| usr42 wrote:
| @mtlynch I've directly recognized the coder theme you use for
| the blog. I like it pretty much. How do you host it? Do you
| use github pages?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Cool, I like it too! I host on Firebase. You can check out
| my deployment script here:
|
| https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io/blob/f35d9cf947a3d2c2
| 3...
| segmondy wrote:
| I admire your being able to quit and start your own biz. I admire
| you staying the course, but I feel very sad at your progress. You
| seem to be more of a builder than a business man.
|
| Everyone one of your project makes me yawn, I'm sure many have
| said it. With that said, you need to find some good ideas. Forget
| originality since you're not doing great on that, just find
| something making money and clone it. Or find a co-founder that
| can sell and come up with good ideas.
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| Are health insurance costs included in your current $2k monthly
| expenses? Did you buy the house outright?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Yep and yep. Health insurance in MA is $250/month for a high
| deductible plan (I was paying $500 in NY). This year, my
| insurance is only $40/month because I qualified for a
| subsidized plan based on my 2019 income (or lack thereof).
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| Interesting. I am in MA as well and it seems health insurance
| would be 500 a month for me(1 person). Maybe thats the higher
| end plans though.
| usr42 wrote:
| Interesting analysis. I especially like your personal goals and
| the "Raise prices, even if nobody's buying". This is a really
| valuable insight. Thanks for sharing that.
|
| I have one question: Do you have a feeling about the market size
| you are in and how does this influence your planning?
| rs23296008n1 wrote:
| Good stuff.
|
| I've seen a bit of negativity about this being a waste of time
| since you're not making equivalent money to old job. For those
| people: This isn't any different from spending time earning a
| degree by returning to full-time study. And your attempts are
| growing. The compound interest from these investments in time and
| effort will help you regardless. Even if you fail on every
| business at first you'll still get so much experience and
| momentum you can't help but do better next time. And I doubt any
| will actually fail: each will have an element that wasn't good
| enough but still capable of being tweaked to fix it. Even if you
| don't fix it, you've still learnt something in the attempt.
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| There's a simpler explanation, and the post actually touches on
| the point when discussing Is It Keto:
|
| > I abandoned the site in April but came back four months later
| after realizing that it had grown by itself without me.
|
| As a salaried employee, you aren't actually building anything
| that accretes value to yourself in that way. You don't show up
| for work for 4 months and you'll likely be fired. Obviously it
| never works out forever, but the value you build when striking
| out on your own has a much longer potency than getting paid in
| cash and stock.
| jldugger wrote:
| I just don't understand how you can set up a business and not
| noticed the increased revenue.
| tempsy wrote:
| OP isn't explicit about it but he's effectively F.I.R.E'd.
| These are projects to keep the mind fresh in what is early
| retirement. If that weren't the case building an actual
| business requires a lot more time, energy, resources even as a
| solo founder than what I'm getting from the blog post.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| Bye bye any hopes of raising a family.
| avl999 wrote:
| Nice of you to impose your outdated values on how to live on
| others. The OP might perfectly be happy to not raise a family
| or just be interested in being with a partner without having
| kids.
|
| If you don't have kids, this kind of lifestyle is perfectly
| sustainable and you can live happily on it. Kids are not a pre-
| requisite for happiness and it annoys me how so many
| discussions here start to equate standard of living and
| happiness to a situation where kids are involved.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| Whoa, what an assumption, this says more about you than
| anything. I said goodbye "any" hopes of having children which
| says that "if" he wanted to have a family there is no way
| that he could do it in this way. What kind of chip do you
| have on your shoulder about children?
| freehunter wrote:
| Not the guy you're responding to but I also have a chip on
| my shoulder about children: people won't shut up about me
| having them. My wife and I made the decision to not have
| children but every conversation it gets brought up. We buy
| a two seater car: there goes any hope of having children.
| We go on a two week vacation: you won't be able to do that
| if you have children. She quits her job: nows the perfect
| time to have children! It gets old REALLY quickly.
|
| Some people don't want children. Ever. But there's a lot of
| people just like you who can't stop talking about children
| in every conversation. Why?
| kohanz wrote:
| A lot of the "expense" of children is entirely discretionary.
| Yes, they do cost extra money to raise, but depending on where
| you live and your lifestyle, it doesn't have to be nearly the
| financial burden that some create an illusion of being a
| necessity. As a father of 3, when I look at most of the
| expenses related to my kids, the biggest ones are absolutely
| discretionary. Children are not born with expectations of a
| standard of living; that's something you define for them as
| your dependents. The idea that people with low-to-no income are
| unable to start families is provably false with examples all
| around us.
| war1025 wrote:
| As also a father of three, the only significant kid-related
| expense we have currently (wife stays home with them) is the
| extra food they eat.
|
| Basically that just means we don't go out to eat that often.
| Kids eating grocery store food is pretty insignificant in the
| grand scheme of things (though I hear this changes once they
| get to their teenage years).
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| ... assuming the author harbors such aspirations in the first
| place, which you and I don't know. And, frankly, nobody needs
| to know.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| And no such assumption was made in the original statement.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Then why did you publicly make that statement in the first
| place?
| nautilus12 wrote:
| I was saying "any" such hopes. IF someone had such an
| aspiration, then this would not be a possible course of
| action.
| mrlala wrote:
| >And, frankly, nobody needs to know.
|
| Well, it's hard to argue that it's not relevant to the
| discussion...
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| No. It's not. The blogpost said that he is able to live
| frugally because he has no dependents such as children.
| That's all there is to know.
|
| You can ask "why?" but nobody is obligated to give you an
| answer. Pushing hard for an answer is considered rude. You
| may be asking someone to tell you really painful
| experiences they went through.
| daxaxelrod wrote:
| If worse comes to worse and he goes to $0 in the account, he
| can probably just get another job. I guarantee employers will
| look upon his self directed work ethic positively.
|
| He can live his life without the regret of not trying to
| venture out on his own.
|
| Edit: typo
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| I like how you call that home "a modest two-bedroom home" in the
| linked blog. I guess it's a matter of perspective. Here in
| Israel, where everything is cramped, this would be something I'd
| be very content with.
| [deleted]
| hopia wrote:
| Probably off topic here but always perplexed me how Israel is
| so dead expensive with just about everything you can find.
| Particularly with locally produced items.
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| Well, yes, because of many factors. Terrible consumers, high
| taxes, little space, etc.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Haha, I moved here from Manhattan, where I lived in a 1 BR that
| was luxurious by Manhattan standards but tiny by real world
| standards.
|
| I'm very happy with my house, but I think it's probably smaller
| than what most software developers in the US would choose if
| they lived in an area this inexpensive.
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| If you don't have children, a larger space would be more
| burden than necessity. Be happy that you moved away from the
| jail cell. I'd move if I could too. ;-)
| tudelo wrote:
| At least the jail cell comes with an amazing variety of
| food and unrivaled convenience
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| Both a blessing and a curse. When you cook your own
| meals, you end up eating much more healthy. Having a yard
| also means you can grow your own vegetables, which is
| also normally much healthier.
| davnicwil wrote:
| Great post Micheal, and awesome to see it hit the top of HN - a
| reminder I guess that the core bootstrapper/hacker community is
| on here and strong as ever!
|
| The numbers and stuff aside (which are looking promising, btw,
| congrats - look forward to see how the trends continue in y3) the
| part I liked best was the _I still love it_ section. It 's
| incredibly important and, I'm sure you know, the real driver
| behind doing what you're doing, not money.
|
| I think there's a tendency, maybe especially for technical
| people, to want to quantify and maximise etc, and money is an
| easy metric for doing that with and therefore to focus on. But on
| reflection, it's pretty obviously not the main reason we do what
| we do.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading, David!
|
| > _It 's incredibly important and, I'm sure you know, the real
| driver behind doing what you're doing, not money._
|
| Yeah, definitely. I ultimately do need to figure out a way to
| make _some_ money, but I 'd be happy to work for myself for
| 1/10th the compensation I'd get at a FAANG.
| snambi wrote:
| Question: why did he leave a job to build these sites? He could
| have built them while continuing a full-time job.
| bilekas wrote:
| How did you cut down so drastically on expenses in the second
| year, +50%, or was there a large investment in the first year,
| sorry I havent read last years update yet!
|
| Also, I'm just coming accross your Zestful service and can't
| believe that is exactly what i am looking for and actually
| started to write, but I have other stuff to do so no point re-
| inventing the wheel!
|
| Consider me a new client sir!
|
| PS: Congratulations !
| tristanperry wrote:
| "in August, I bought a modest two-bedroom home in South Hadley,
| Massachusetts. Population: 17,500."
|
| "My living expenses here are ~$2k per month, which is close
| enough to the rate of return on my personal investments that
| I'm kind of at equilibrium."
|
| - i.e. Michael moved to a much lower cost of living area.
| onion2k wrote:
| If that "I bought a house" is literal then he doesn't have
| rent or a mortgage to pay. That's a _big_ chunk of most
| people 's outgoings.
| redisman wrote:
| Outside of the super-star cities, housing is pretty
| affordable!
| mtlynch wrote:
| Yep, paid in cash, so there's no mortgage or rent.
| mtlynch wrote:
| > _How did you cut down so drastically on expenses in the
| second year, +50%, or was there a large investment in the first
| year, sorry I havent read last years update yet!_
|
| Mainly, I outsourced less.
|
| This was less about cutting costs as much as it was about
| building faster. My first year, I hired developers to do a lot
| of work with me, but I realized after a few months of doing it
| that contractors actually slowed me down overall. Early in a
| product, there are so many course corrections and pivots, but
| contractors make it difficult to follow those because you need
| to give them enough to do because they're not going to just sit
| on unpaid standby for you, but you also don't want to just keep
| interrupting them and throwing away their work.
|
| > _Also, I 'm just coming accross your Zestful service and
| can't believe that is exactly what i am looking for and
| actually started to write, but I have other stuff to do so no
| point re-inventing the wheel!_
|
| > _Consider me a new client sir!_
|
| Fantastic! If you have any questions or run into any issues,
| shoot me an email at michael@zestfuldata.com.
| bilekas wrote:
| That outsourcing less is an interesting point actually,
| usually I will outsource some grunt work to get other
| infastructure in place, hand over interfaces and get to other
| things.
|
| It's a really grat story to hear, I've been there with mixed
| results, financially and mentally but I plan to go back soon.
| Your candor is welcoming and on my previous comment about
| your Zestful service, I definitely will get in touch with you
| about something I would like to achieve.
|
| Thanks again and best of luck in the future!
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| @mtlynch you're brave for sharing your experiences and struggles
| with the world. What kind of help are you searching for?
| rickitan wrote:
| I see a lot of comments criticizing your path and progress.
| Making remarks like "why didn't you stay at Google".
|
| I applaud your decision, effort, and perseverance. I admire your
| risk taking and having skin in the game. Trying to make it out on
| your own.
|
| People forget the journey is not just about the money. It's about
| learning, growing and bringing your ideas to life. Being an
| artist, and expressing yourself through products.
|
| Keep on going my friend. There's no doubt you'll get there.
| qmmmur wrote:
| I don't think I've cringed more than 'expressing yourself
| through products'.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading and the kind words!
|
| I think you and I see it similarly that there's satisfaction in
| growing and learning even if the money part hasn't fallen into
| place.
| iamlily wrote:
| God bless you for writing such a good post
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
| jakobegger wrote:
| I read your previous post about Zestful, and this years update,
| and I just don't understand who would buy this as a hosted API.
| To me, it sounds like this should be a library, not an API. For
| every use case that I can think of, having a library would be
| 100x better than an API.
|
| In my experience, APIs are generally slow, unreliable, and tend
| to change without notice.
|
| I don't understand what advantage an API has, except making it
| easier for the developer to charge based on usage.
|
| Do people really buy APIs like this? Am I missing something?
| fortzi wrote:
| Supporting the business model is a legitimate consideration,
| amiwrong?
| agwa wrote:
| Zestful uses machine learning, so there could be a fair amount
| of storage, CPU, and memory requirements that make using a
| hosted API preferable to a local library. Also, if you read
| Michael's posts on https://whatgotdone.com you'll see that he
| is frequently improving the model. With a hosted API, customers
| benefit from improved accuracy immediately without having to
| update anything.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| "Without having to update anything" seems a bit disingenuous
| - does this software even work offline, without having to ask
| for some data from an online server, just to load the front
| page?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| The big advantages for the customer of a managed API are:
|
| * No costs of installing or upgrading
|
| * It's language independent
|
| I agree that it's lower risk to rely on a library that you have
| locally, but none of my customers have ever requested that. I
| do offer a self-hosted plan, and a few customers have inquired
| about that, but they lose interest when I tell them it costs
| 10% more than a managed plan.
|
| All of Zestful's commercial competitors are managed APIs as
| well, so I don't think customers view a locally-installed
| library as critical.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Software as a service is the solution the market has arrived at
| for making money from software when piracy is mostly trivial
| and commonplace. A rentier pricing model means an entreprenur
| need not negotiate the value of their product up-front; they
| can continuously adjust price to match demand. Recurring
| revenue is easier to budget around than inconsistent lump-sum
| sales.
|
| Finally, an API over a library means the maintainer of said API
| has an opportunity to harvest data about usage. Perhaps they
| use this to motivate new features, or perhaps they can monetize
| this data on the side.
|
| I seriously doubt these decisions have _any_ connection to
| technical requirements; it 's all business.
| untog wrote:
| I agree with you entirely, but how would you build a business
| around a library? It's one of the side effects of the (amazing)
| open source ecosystem we have these days that installing some
| kind of paid-for package isn't really that easy. Nor is
| preventing widespread pirating/reverse engineering of your
| library if it is successful.
|
| Although it's wildly inefficient, a SAAS offering solves those
| problems.
| jakobegger wrote:
| I bought this library a few years ago:
| https://www.libxl.com/purchase.html
|
| I don't know how profitable the business is, but if the
| problem is popular enough it should be possible to make
| money?
|
| Also, when you are selling to businesses, piracy isn't that
| big of an issue.
| fredgrott wrote:
| last corner of graphic right bottom is a wrong amount.
|
| I use to be a number guy, ie accountant hacker. Its not 18k
| positive as far as net revenue increase from the two years.
|
| the percentage is probably right but not the sign before the net
| rev number.
|
| and note you have to reach profits soon per how you file with the
| IRS..sorry to burst your bubble.
|
| same sort of errors in the saas net rev numbers.
|
| bone up on your accounting stats as there are books out there on
| how to do it
| icedchai wrote:
| I noticed that, too.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| > _I use to be a number guy, ie accountant hacker. Its not 18k
| positive as far as net revenue increase from the two years._
|
| Can you clarify what you mean? What is the correct way for me
| to present this information?
|
| > _and note you have to reach profits soon per how you file
| with the IRS..sorry to burst your bubble._
|
| Can you elaborate? Are you assuming that I file as a
| corporation or a sole proprietor?
| nonseobeliever wrote:
| I work at a big tech company and also have my own small firm for
| freelance work. Even though I don't have my own product and
| implement what customers need, ranging from new website to SIEMs
| and stuff, I find it pretty lucrative. And my prices are about
| $20/hr. But yes, I don't know if I can survive without working
| full job.
|
| LE: and revenue is not that small, about 25k per year.
| cambalache wrote:
| $20/h is shockingly low. That is an effective rate of around 10
| bucks an hour, at or below minimum wage level.
| dhruvkar wrote:
| So awesome seeing your posts at the top of HN!
|
| >> I've also noticed that readers are less interested in business
| lessons unless the story involves thousands of dollars -- earning
| or losing large sums both seem to work.
|
| I would love to read more about the mundane, small business
| lessons, because that's where I am. And I'm positive I'm not the
| only one.
|
| Keep writing about the smaller day-to-day struggles, you got
| readers!
| mtlynch wrote:
| Hey Dhruv, thanks for reading! Always fun to hear from you
| again.
| senderista wrote:
| If you're netting at best a few grand a year and need to survive
| on savings anyway, why not just drop the business pretense and
| work for free on stuff you actually find interesting? A popular
| open-source project could yield more long-term value for one's
| career than an unprofitable or barely profitable "lifestyle
| business".
| icebraining wrote:
| > A popular open-source project could yield more long-term
| value for one's career than an unprofitable or barely
| profitable "lifestyle business".
|
| Only as a launchpad for another job or consulting gigs, no?
| What if he wants to work solo?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| The plan is for my income to increase over time. The benefit of
| launching businesses is that each time, I learn skills to
| increase my chances of success in the next attempt.
| morango wrote:
| This proves that the even in the modern creative economy, the
| bourgeoisie still holds the means of production - through
| contacts/venture capital/market manipulation.
|
| EAT THE RICH.
| patio11 wrote:
| Two cents offered because this post really strikes a chord with
| me, and I also spent some time chasing down rabbit holes early in
| my software business:
|
| These products do not appear obviously commercializable and
| multiple years invested into them without materially improving
| the businesses does not decrease my confidence in that snap
| judgment. You could probably talk to business owners with
| problems, launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands
| of dollars per year) product against those problems, build
| contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at +/- $100k in
| 12 to 18 months. Many people with less technical and writing
| ability have done this in e.g. the MicroConf community. If you
| want the best paint-by-numbers approach to it I've seen, c.f.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw&t=2s
|
| (I'll note that What Got Done is probably a viable boutique SaaS
| business if you somehow figured out distribution for it, at price
| points between $50 and $200 per month. My confidence on this
| approaches total. HNers skeptical because it is technically
| trivial should probably reflect for a moment on how much time is
| spent on standups at a company with 20 or 200 engineers, what one
| hour of their time is worth, and how likely that company is to
| put an engineer on this project specifically.)
|
| If you run an API-based business in the future: Usage-based
| billing is a really tricky business model for a solo developer.
| Note that you can say "Usage-based billing but we have a minimum
| commitment", and probably should prior to doing speculative
| integration engineering work. Your minimum commitment should be
| north of $1,000 per month; practically nobody can integrate with
| your API for cheaper than a thousand dollars of engineering time,
| right.
|
| This also counsels aiming at problems amenable to solutions with
| APIs which are trivially worth $1,000++ a month to many
| businesses which can hire engineers. Parsing recipe ingredients
| seems like a very constrained problem space. Consider e.g.
| parsing W-2s or bank statements or similar; many more businesses
| naturally care about intake of those documents, getting accurate
| data from them, and introducing that data into a lucrative
| business process that they have.
|
| I would encourage you, to the maximum extent compatible with your
| sanity, to prioritize "Will this get me more customers?" over
| behind-the-scenes investments like CI/CD which are very
| appropriate to Google but will under no circumstance show up in
| next year's report as One Of The Most Important Things I Did This
| Year.
|
| For similar reasons, I would suggest devoting approximately zero
| cycles to cost control. You don't have a cost problem and no
| amount of cost control will bend the curve of your current
| businesses to sustainability. You have a revenue problem. Your
| desired state in the medium term will make it economically
| irrational for you to think for more than a minute about a $50 a
| month SaaS expense; marketing and sales gets you to that desired
| state, not cost control.
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| He also has a nest egg from working at a big corporation and
| successfully playing the stock/crypto market. That helps give
| him time to play around like this. I don't sense any urgency.
| lsinger wrote:
| > What Got Done
|
| There are several paid SaaS apps and / or Slack bots that do
| this. It's a viable niche, but has gotten somewhat crowded in
| the past few years. Earlyish example: https://iDoneThis.com
| (worked there 2014/2015)
| blackearl wrote:
| Seems like a better thing to integrate into existing apps
| rather than a standalone product
| balfirevic wrote:
| > These products do not appear obviously commercializable
|
| It looks to me like some people have a well-developed intuition
| to distinguish between products in "seems like it would be
| useful to me" category vs. products that have a good chance of
| actually being commercialized.
|
| I certainly don't. When reading various indie hacker stories
| I'll be damned if I can predict with reasonable success which
| ideas have a good chance of taking off and which don't.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| He gives the clue to finding that. Talking to lots of
| businesses about what they need. We don't pop out of the womb
| with that sense.
| balfirevic wrote:
| I know I know, I didn't mean to imply that it is some
| innate ability some are born with and that's the end of it
| (nor are most intuitions).
| TAForObvReasons wrote:
| > I would suggest devoting approximately zero cycles to cost
| control. You don't have a cost problem and no amount of cost
| control will bend the curve of your current businesses to
| sustainability.
|
| I strongly disagree with the perspective here. Cost control
| isn't the core problem for the author, but every dollar matters
| at this stage. The difference between "we're losing money every
| month" and "we're break even" and "we're slightly profitable"
| is huge when talking to parents and other people in the social
| circle.
| zerkten wrote:
| > For similar reasons, I would suggest devoting approximately
| zero cycles to cost control. You don't have a cost problem and
| no amount of cost control will bend the curve of your current
| businesses to sustainability. You have a revenue problem.
|
| I'm curious why you use this wording. It comes of as slightly
| brash, and to many, suggests that you shouldn't worry about
| costs. In my experience have to be "penny wise, pound foolish"
| making reasonable efforts to manage cost.
|
| You can pile on loads of tech debt which matters little at this
| scale (e.g. your CI/CD example), but when you are small the
| costs can bite hard. You quickly limit your choices and end up
| spending time looking for funding, if you don't have some sort
| of reasonable constraint.
| [deleted]
| Reedx wrote:
| > reflect for a moment on how much time is spent on standups at
| a company with 20 or 200 engineers, what one hour of their time
| is worth
|
| > Your minimum commitment should be north of $1,000 per month;
| practically nobody can integrate with your API for cheaper than
| a thousand dollars of engineering time, right.
|
| That's my thinking as well, but haven't had much luck getting
| companies to accept this kind of pricing. Even though it's all
| inbound interest (no advertising or outreach) and they're
| sometimes large companies.
|
| Here are the problems I'm aware of:
|
| 1. People generally don't think about the cost of standups or
| meetings or per hour employee cost. That's just not something
| typically being considered.
|
| 2. They've compared with other APIs or use other APIs/SaaS and
| are used to <$100/mo. So $1k/mo or even $500/mo is a shock and
| they decline or disappear. Apparently deciding they don't
| actually need it that bad or going with their 2nd choice.
|
| How do you overcome these? Do you actually point out that the
| API is cheap compared to employee cost? Help them justify it to
| themselves and/or their manager?
| milesvp wrote:
| To be fair, anything more than ~$250/mo probably requires
| some kind budget approval which will quickly scare away many
| underlings, and means now you're in the realm of enterprise
| sales. Now you should probably be charging closer to $10k/mo
| just to deal with that headache. It's another reason why
| having 3 tiered pricing can really help, with a 4th tier
| being "contact us for enterprise solutions". It can allow you
| to sneak past some of these organizational hurdles, by
| allowing people to select the price that will cause them the
| least headache. Joel Spolsky talks about this a lot, how
| there are holes in the market for pricing due to these
| frictions.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading, Patrick! I'm a big fan of your work, and
| your Indie Hackers interview was one of the big motivators that
| sent me down the solo developer path.
|
| > _You could probably talk to business owners with problems,
| launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of
| dollars per year) product against those problems, build
| contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at + /- $100k
| in 12 to 18 months. Many people with less technical and writing
| ability have done this in e.g. the MicroConf community. If you
| want the best paint-by-numbers approach to it I've seen, c.f.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw&t=2s _
|
| Thanks, I'll check out that video!
|
| I hear that advice a lot from people I respect, and I put a lot
| of effort into that over the past year, but I was never
| successful.
|
| The biggest problem I ran into was that there's this
| "disconnect problem." I know I'm a competent developer and can
| build niche solutions to $10k problems, but I don't know which
| companies have $10k problems. I can guess at it, but they
| sometimes don't even realize their $10k problem has a software
| solution. The companies also don't have incentive to talk to me
| to explore the possibility if I'm just a developer off the
| street.
|
| In 2019, I tried to do this with stone quarries[1], sheet metal
| shops[2], and email copywriters[3], but the first two mostly
| wouldn't talk to me and the latter didn't seem to have enough
| opportunity for a niche business.
|
| > _I would encourage you, to the maximum extent compatible with
| your sanity, to prioritize "Will this get me more customers?"
| over behind-the-scenes investments like CI/CD which are very
| appropriate to Google but will under no circumstance show up in
| next year's report as One Of The Most Important Things I Did
| This Year._
|
| I get a lot of pushback about my love for CI/CD, and it always
| puzzles me. Is CI/CD seen as difficult or time-consuming? For
| me, it's such a net positive on my time and mental energy to
| know that basic functionality works before I push to prod.
| There have been many times where CI has caught breaking changes
| that I'd otherwise have to catch by waiting for customers to
| complain or manually smoke testing my product after every push.
| And I don't have to do much to set it up - just slap in a
| Circle CI config.yml and flip a button.
|
| > _I would suggest devoting approximately zero cycles to cost
| control. You don 't have a cost problem and no amount of cost
| control will bend the curve of your current businesses to
| sustainability. You have a revenue problem. Your desired state
| in the medium term will make it economically irrational for you
| to think for more than a minute about a $50 a month SaaS
| expense; marketing and sales gets you to that desired state,
| not cost control._
|
| Thanks, I agree completely and you succinctly articulated a
| feeling I've long struggled to put into words.
|
| I often get pushback about spending O(hundreds) of dollars on
| non-essential expenses, and it always feels like it's missing
| the forest for the trees.
|
| [1] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/05/#an-app-for-rocks
|
| [2] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2020/01/#sheet-metal-
| resea...
|
| [3] https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/06/#taking-on-
| google-...
| aosaigh wrote:
| Just a friendly passing comment, but I'm not sure you have
| the correct take-aways from speaking with business owners.
|
| With the quarry example, you couldn't get them on the phone.
| How about conferences, meetups, trade shows etc? Furthermore
| you probably need to search for companies that might _want_
| to speak to you: younger owners, companies with less to lose
| etc.
|
| In the sheet metal example, it sounds like you had already
| decided what you wanted to build for them before even meeting
| them (an improved software solution for their shop management
| apps). Maybe trying to just speak more generally about their
| processes and difficulties would tease out problems you might
| not have considered.
|
| I'd return to this approach/phase and give it another go to
| find a market fit for the ideas before you start doing a line
| of code.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestions!
|
| I think that's sound advice. The strategy I had in mind was
| courting industries that were physically close to me. I
| wasn't just calling the businesses, I was showing up at
| their offices to ask for meetings. My hypothesis was that
| there are probably plenty of profitable businesses nearby
| that are disconnected from the tech world, so other
| software companies aren't approaching them.
|
| To clarify with the sheet metal companies, I didn't go in
| pitching a replacement to their existing tools. I always
| opened the conversation by asking them if they had
| processes that frustrated them, cost them money, or if
| their existing software failed to meet their needs. But I
| definitely found it hard sometimes when they asked me what
| I wanted to build for them and my answer was basically, "I
| don't know..."
|
| Maybe it's just a matter of picking the right spot on the
| spectrum. It seems like you want businesses that are niche
| and disconnected enough from mainstream tech that big
| players aren't courting them as well. But they can't be
| _so_ disconnected that they won 't talk to you, either.
| dhruvkar wrote:
| >> wasn't just calling the businesses, I was showing up
| at their offices to ask for meetings.
|
| That's tough stuff. I've done the same, and while it
| feels good when you're able to talk in detail with a
| business owner, I didn't come away with actionable things
| usually. There just isn't a good substitute to being
| embedded in an industry.
|
| Michael, work part-time in a warehouse (as manual labor)
| handling stone for 3-6 months. Guaranteed you'll come
| away with more problems than you can solve.
| twic wrote:
| It's wild how you've done exactly what the priests of
| entrepreneurship preach, and it hasn't worked for you,
| and _people cannot accept that_. You must have done
| something else! You must have done something wrong!
| [deleted]
| zrobotics wrote:
| One thing to consider- you approached everything with the
| assumption that businesses want a SaaS; the sheet metal post
| made it sound like you were surprised that the shops didn't
| want a SaaS. _Software Developers_ like SaaS, because it
| makes more money and had recurring revenue. However, to a
| business owner that just sounds like another bill that they
| don 't want. Owners at small to medium companies, in my
| experience, are very cost-conscious.
|
| For example, I'm currently evaluating warehouse management
| systems. It appears that everyone in this space runs a SaaS;
| with ludicrous prices where they want to bill per shipper/ac
| count. We still plan on being in business in 3 years; and
| after 3 years we will have paid more than what it would cost
| to develop this system ourselves. If you are mostly focused
| on tech it's easy to think that everyone likes the idea of
| SaaS; but realistically the only people who get excited about
| that idea are the people cashing the checks every month. I
| have heard much lamentation and whining about having to
| 'subscribe' to software instead of just buying it.
| cushychicken wrote:
| _In 2019, I tried to do this with stone quarries[1], sheet
| metal shops[2], and email copywriters[3], but the first two
| mostly wouldn 't talk to me and the latter didn't seem to
| have enough opportunity for a niche business._
|
| I don't think any of these businesses would pay for What Got
| Done, but I think there are a zillion businesses very
| geographically close to you that would.
|
| I note in several of your posts that you live in Western MA.
| You're two hours by car (assuming you miss traffic!), or
| three hours by train, from Boston. I can think of ten
| companies off the top of my head that fit the mold Patrick
| mentions as potential customers for What Got Done, that would
| not bat an eye at paying the upper limit of prices mentioned.
| (My current employer being one of them!)
|
| Happy to help you brainstorm potential customers via email -
| I'm at (my_hn_username)@gmail dot com.
| mtlynch wrote:
| _I don 't think any of these businesses would pay for What
| Got Done, but I think there are a zillion businesses very
| geographically close to you that would._
|
| Oh, to clarify, I wasn't trying to sell What Got Done to
| these industries. I was trying to understand their
| businesses to see what new thing I could create for them.
| cushychicken wrote:
| _I was trying to understand their businesses to see what
| new thing I could create for them._
|
| That's legit.
|
| I guess the core of my original point was that there's a
| big regional hub of businesses whose operations you _do_
| understand (i.e. SW businesses) that 's right at your
| doorstep. (I'm assuming from your other blog posts you
| don't know a ton about sheet metal bending, whereas you
| _do_ know enough to be dangerous with software, but I 've
| been wrong before!)
| dhruvkar wrote:
| >>stone quarries
|
| I deal with stone factories/quarries everyday (but mostly in
| Brazil and India)!
|
| Let me know if you're still interested in this space.
| heipei wrote:
| Thanks for the Youtube link to that talk, over the past year
| I've read so many interviews, blog-posts and watched talks
| about bootstrapping businesses, but this was the most concise,
| honest and no-nonsense summary I've seen yet. Now I'd be
| interested in finding someone talk at length about selling to
| Enterprise customers as a bootstrapped one-man show, Jason
| Cohen touches on it briefly in the Q&A.
| tempsy wrote:
| This is appropriate advice for someone who actually wants to be
| a solo founder.
|
| Even if he's not explicit about it, every lifestyle decision
| I'm getting from these blog posts is that OP has effectively
| F.I.R.E'd and these projects are mostly for fun.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Looks like this guy is trying to run a lifestyle business, and
| his investments pay enough interest that he can coast for a
| long, long time.
|
| To be quite honest: He's spending all day _playing_.
|
| That's a position I envy quite a bit.
| tempsy wrote:
| Make $300K a year for 10 years while keeping expenses low and
| investing most of that in a bull market makes it pretty easy
| to do.
| Toast_25 wrote:
| > Make $300K A year
|
| You make it sound easy! How do I do that outside of not
| just SF, but the US?
| tempsy wrote:
| Move to Seattle?
| eugenekolo wrote:
| How many years of work do you have in the tech industry? It
| seems in the current market (not even assuming SF salaries),
| and without kids/other dependents, it's fairly easy to reach
| that point. Just curious, because a lot of people have this
| mentality that they need to work forever and ever, but it
| often is just a mindset.
|
| You can easily amass 500k-1M and just coast on 40k/year in
| expenses for a long time. If it's something you want... a lot
| of people want kids, or to live in high cost areas, or to
| accumulate wealth to pass on, or have dependents such as
| elderly parents, or enjoy money a lot.
| yibg wrote:
| I wonder if this is a good or bad position to be in to
| start a life style business.
|
| I'm fortunate enough to be in this situation, where if I go
| somewhere cheap and keep my expenses down I can sustain
| myself financially for a long time, maybe indefinitely. And
| I've though about leaving my salaried job to do my own
| thing many times. I do worry though that the lack of
| financial pressure will just leave me lazy and "playing
| around" instead of focusing on building a financially
| viable business.
|
| Anyone else have experience with this?
| adventured wrote:
| I've seen a broad mixture of those scenarios over time,
| people of various personality types doing it (myself
| included).
|
| The one thing I'd say, is that it's critical to know
| whether you have a strong internal drive / self-
| motivation. If you don't, it can be a dangerous context
| to put yourself into (dangerous in the financial or time
| waste sense). If you don't have that internal always-on
| motivation, it's super important to have a firm plan and
| object/thing/business idea that you're going to be
| pursuing before you quit. Start at least drawing up some
| sort of minimum framework before you quit, laying out
| what you're going to do, how you'll spend your time, what
| type of lifestyle businesses you're interested in, plot
| everything out financially as much as possible and so on.
| Good advanced planning will save the day and help prevent
| catastrophy as the road gets challenging. It's a new type
| of 9 to 5 job, although it's more likely to be a 50-80
| hour job getting started. Without financial pressures,
| you have to either naturally self-motivate strongly so
| you don't constantly veer off (get lazy, get distracted,
| get bored, and such), or follow a fairly strict plan that
| you've laid out for yourself ahead of time to keep
| yourself sane, productive and making progress.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Or get used to the money and comfort and camaraderie of a
| salaried job
| [deleted]
| twic wrote:
| > You can easily
|
| With the usual caveat, "if you are working for a big tech
| company in the bay area".
|
| In London, starting on 30k and rising to 80k after ten
| years, not so easily.
| tempsy wrote:
| Right...making $40K in dividends from $1M is very easy.
|
| Harder if you're in a higher cost location but you can
| definitely live off $60K even in SF if you're single.
| WD-42 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand this attitude. There is a specific
| lifestyle he is trying to achieve and the is working towards
| being successful at reaching it. At what point does it stop
| being "playing" and become just living? Do you have to be
| miserable at a 9-5 job to be considered serious by society?
| jldugger wrote:
| I think the point is that if you can self-fund by living
| off the investments, you're really effectively retired and
| not particularly motivated to fix profitability gaps in
| your new career.
|
| In a sense, it's cool, cuz like, you're helping people in
| the world out for less than the cost to provide that
| service. But in terms of recommended reading material for
| people hoping to replicate the situation without an
| infinite runway, selection bias is a definite concern.
| cushychicken wrote:
| _I 'll note that What Got Done is probably a viable boutique
| SaaS business if you somehow figured out distribution for it,
| at price points between $50 and $200 per month. My confidence
| on this approaches total. HNers skeptical because it is
| technically trivial should probably reflect for a moment on how
| much time is spent on standups at a company with 20 or 200
| engineers, what one hour of their time is worth, and how likely
| that company is to put an engineer on this project
| specifically._
|
| I perceived an almost audible _crack_ from how hard this
| statement hits it out of the park.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| _You could probably talk to business owners with problems,
| launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of
| dollars per year) product against those problems, build
| contingent on getting 10 commits to buy_
|
| I don't doubt that you're absolutely right, but this bit
| strikes me as _hard_. I 've struggled to find one business
| owner with a problem they perceive, let alone 10 with
| commitments to buying a solution for the same problem.
|
| Ironically, it strikes me that there's a gap here for a
| business to solve; connecting entrepreneurial devs with
| business owners aware of problems.
| rafiki6 wrote:
| I think the approach here is a bit backwards from what the
| rest of the world has always done to a degree. Software
| Development is a specialized skillset, not unlike a trade. If
| we are solving a problem for someone with software, we are
| essentially like a typical contractor you hire to do
| something at home. What you're doing here is trying to
| convert that into a scalable product under the assumption
| that many other might also have the same problem. This might
| be true, but as in construction, the product makers aren't
| selling to the consumer directly but rather the tradesperson.
|
| Every "tech" company is not actually selling tech, but rather
| is selling something tangible, a product of sorts. Software
| developers are selling their labor.
|
| If you want to find out the scalable product or solution in a
| particular business or domain, I think you really need to be
| a part of that industry or have someone who is.
|
| Otherwise, even if you end up developing a SaaS that
| satisfies the needs of 100 customers, you won't really ever
| truly be able to scale. So my suggestion is start talking to
| friends and family in other industries.
| shanecleveland wrote:
| From the post:
|
| "... I outsourced much of the writing. That cost me more than
| it should have because I knew nothing about hiring and
| managing writers, but the experience taught me a lot ..."
|
| "... no love for Xero ..."
|
| As an entrepreneurial dev who is also a business owner, it
| sounds like he may have some problems there to solve!
|
| Not sure if those are viable, just pointing it out. The
| easiest problems to solve are your own or at least ones you
| encounter yourself. Doing some consulting may help to see
| problems in business or industries that are not your own.
| Gepsens wrote:
| That's exactly what I went to solve 6 years ago, didn't work,
| but the space is probably more mature now
| amelius wrote:
| > Ironically, it strikes me that there's a gap here for a
| business to solve; connecting entrepreneurial devs with
| business owners aware of problems.
|
| This. Why hasn't this gap been filled yet?
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| >> Ironically, it strikes me that there's a gap here for a
| business to solve; connecting entrepreneurial devs with
| business owners aware of problems.
|
| >This. Why hasn't this gap been filled yet?
|
| It's called Upwork.
|
| No seriously, hear me out. When a business owner has a
| problem they perceive could be solved with technology, they
| create a job or they go on job posting sites seeking either
| an employee or a contractor to try and solve their problem.
|
| Where they get it wrong is that they frequently have
| unrealistic expectations about what it will cost and how
| long it will take. They have no idea what skills they
| should look for and who to trust.
|
| Is there a market mismatch here? Absolutely, but you'll
| have to find a way above the fray of recruiting sites as
| that's really the state of the market.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah I've tried another similar site and people's
| expectations are a bit loony, usually they want to pay
| the price you would charge a single customer for 1 year
| as a SaaS for you to develop the entire solution! Maybe
| non software folks don't get the difference between say
| paying Atlassian $1000/month or whatever it is for Jira
| and paying a dev $1000 to develop a JIRA clone, because
| it probably seems like the same thing.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Recent client: "I took a fortran class back in college,
| so let me know if you need any help."
|
| Therein lies the problem: They know lawyers, doctors,
| accountants, heck even plumbers are going to be expensive
| because they are educated / trained and/or they get you
| out of an identifiable tight spot (the IRS isn't happy,
| water is coming into the house, I'm having a heart
| attack, I'm getting sued, etc).
|
| Software developers? Outside the FAANGs technical people
| are viewed as fungible. Many, many small businesses are
| grossly undercapitalized such that a business owner might
| very well be paying that technical person a lot more than
| they pay themselves. Likewise, technical roles are
| typically compensated well above many other clerical /
| field / service / business type roles such that a
| business owner might not have ever paid so much to any
| other single employee.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| You're validating the problem, not the value or the
| target market. You need all 3, but it's easier to
| identify problems, then validate whether the defined
| target would be interested at a given price point.
|
| The freelancer sites are just a starting point, they
| answer the question of, "what are some things business
| owners want".
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Because usually when I've tried this, the business owners
| dont-know-what-they-dont-know so it is difficult to even
| articulate the problem they face.
|
| This is why I faced finding solve-able problems much easier
| as a consultant because once you're embedded in an
| organization you see their problems, and perhaps you can
| ask the right questions and tease out a possible sale-able
| solve-able solution.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| Elance? Odesk? There are a fair number of players in the
| "find a dev to solve a one-off business problem" space. The
| issue is that this is a market for lemons[1] on both sides
| - for business owners with problems, it's hard to verify
| that the entrepreneurial devs can actually implement a
| solution, and for the entrepreneurial devs it's hard to
| weed out problem clients.
|
| Someone who solves or even slightly mitigates either of
| these issues will have a viable business. I know that for
| the "ensure the dev is competent" side of things there are
| many consulting companies that live and die by their
| reputations, but generally these don't usually scale up
| beyond a certain size, and when they do their reputation
| deteriorates. I am not aware of any businesses that attempt
| to solve from the flip side and weed out problem clients
| (if anyone is aware of such a service, I would be
| interested).
|
| As if that wasn't enough of a challenge, if you do manage
| to connect quality devs to quality clients, there's the
| issue of sufficiently monetizing that relationship: you can
| charge a finder's fee or similar when you first connect
| them, but once a client finds a dev they like they will
| probably stick with that dev. So in that business you can
| lose business because you match people too poorly (and they
| leave because you can't help them) and you can lose
| business because you match people too well (and they leave
| because they've now found somebody they trust so they don't
| need your services anymore).
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
| bananaeater wrote:
| My theory is that there are actually a number of "filters"
| before this kind of relationship would happen. First, the
| business owner has to recognize the problem, care about it,
| allot time to understand it, have the proper motivation
| (financial and mental), and network with others to solve.
|
| Then on the other side of the scenario, the dev has to be
| logistically available to working on the project, be
| capable in both the tech and soft skills needed, care about
| it, have the proper motivation (financial and mental), and
| network.
|
| The hypothetical business would solve the networking issue,
| but not the rest. But I think these relationships are built
| in a more decentralized way, though chance encounters,
| mutual friends, and cold connections. Sort of like dating.
| (Kind of is because this relationship seems like one of
| cofounders.)
|
| Or I could be completely wrong and there is a stealth
| startup out there ready to shake things up.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| I've had the exact opposite happen, but granted more
| consulting than dev.
|
| 1. Know someone at the company or a key advisor 2. Spend
| time together 3. Hear "we think we need help but we're
| not sure where" 4. Respond relatively insightful with 2
| or 3 things they could do that are valuable and force
| rank them 5. Get feedback 6. Price it. Explain value. 7.
| Deliver
|
| In my eyes if you're helping smaller companies sub say
| 1000 employees the value you bring is in knowing what to
| do. And telling them. They need you to understand the
| universe of options, what you've seen at other places
| (i.e. experience) and to weigh in on what works. They
| largely have no idea how to move the boulder otherwise
| you would not be there.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I don't think anyone on Upwork or whatever other job board
| would complain if they were out there asking for custom work
| and you showed up with a ready-made product.
|
| Beyond that, every business owner kvetching on Twitter.
| Problems are everywhere!
|
| Certainly can be very hard to get 10 business owners with the
| same problem to all line up and pay thousands for your
| software, but problems are easy to come by.
|
| Edit: filtering for problems solvable by any particular solo
| developer's skillset in less than 2 years is another
| challenge.
| dangero wrote:
| I like this idea and would use it if it existed
| exolymph wrote:
| Frankly, if you can't do this part on your own, you're gonna
| fail anyway.
| MiracleUser wrote:
| Yeah, this is why I have been working as a data analyst. I've
| taken on as many vendor management responsibilities as I can
| and help out with COGS and revenue attribution analysis for
| finance. I have been collecting ideas while making steady
| wage, and eventually I'll pull the trigger on something
|
| I have a backlog of like 200+ viable new product / feature
| ideas that help solve some business problem or improve the
| efficiency of activities people do with financial
| transactions involved. Many are too small to be stand alone
| for sure, but I do not believe million dollar ideas are grown
| in a silo
| jb775 wrote:
| Willing to discuss any of your ideas? I feel like everyone
| has hoarded ideas (including myself) that are never acted
| upon because we keep telling ourselves "eventually I'll
| pull the trigger" (including myself)
| agwa wrote:
| Michael published an interesting post about his attempt to
| talk with owners of sheet metal shops:
| https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2020/01/#sheet-metal-
| resea...
| wolco wrote:
| Interesting read. Not sure why the author was surprised
| that no business owner wanted to trade in their product for
| a saas.
|
| No one really wants to deal with a saas when a one time
| purchase is available. Things like free tiers, lockins
| prevent us from moving until something happens (something
| always happens from big price increases to service changes
| or shutdowns changes to terms, etc).
|
| Biggest problems are cost and uncertainity and losing a
| sense of control.
|
| A saas to a customer is run like a fly by store selling
| stolen goods out of the back of a truck. Even though this
| person has been selling at this same spot every friday you
| know this can't go on forever so when he doesn't show up
| you are not surprised. When a saas closes down / changes
| terms / increases prices suddenly you are not surprised.
|
| It works with some industries that have a high rate of
| change but if you plan on having a stable business you want
| to avoid saases
| patio11 wrote:
| Is the problem that you can't identify owners, that you can't
| successfully get in touch with business owners, that you
| can't convince them to talk to you, that you can't get signal
| from those conversations, or that you are accurately getting
| the signal "Actually literally nothing could be better about
| my life."
|
| Draw the funnel diagram, with numbers if necessary. Having
| talked to many devs who believe similar, I think the most
| actionable advice is likely "Organize your next N weeks to
| talk to many, many more business owners than your last N
| weeks."
| chowes wrote:
| Not the OP, but what I have struggled with here is the
| feeling of being a "solution looking for a problem". It's a
| step before where you're at. It's not that I can't identify
| owners, it's that I can't identify _problems_.
|
| I am lacking the domain experience to even have the first
| conversation, and it feels like paying people to ask "so
| tell me everything that is wrong with your business" is the
| wrong way to do it.
|
| I know PG mentions "solve problems you have yourself", but
| I am not a business owner. I'm a software engineer.
|
| That video you linked earlier - Designing the Ideal
| Bootstrapped Business - was incredible and feels like the
| right move once you have that idea. But what about finding
| that idea?
| enraged_camel wrote:
| A good way to think of it is that you aren't looking for
| problems. You're looking for _smells_.
|
| Most business owners tend to be experts in their specific
| domain, where they have already used their knowledge and
| expertise to great advantage. But running a business
| entails more than just handling the problem domain
| itself. There's an entire category of tasks and
| responsibilities under the "business administration"
| umbrella that the business owner will not be an expert
| in, and will probably despise dealing with because it
| takes them away from the fun stuff that is their
| expertise. That's a good area to focus your gaze on.
|
| For instance, the accounting clerk may be spending 4+
| hours every day manually typing invoices into two
| different systems, but to the business owner this is
| probably perceived as a normal and expected course of
| business. The accounting clerk is unlikely to complain
| about it themselves either, since they are getting paid
| to do it (remember that Sinclair quote). But to you as a
| software engineer, double data entry is very obviously a
| red flag, and if you care enough about it you can do a
| deep dive and see if it can be eliminated using
| automation, and present it as a cost-saving solution.
|
| Generally speaking, nobody is going to hand you a written
| list of their problems on a silver platter, and even if
| they do, the problems they have identified will be so
| general and vague (e.g. "we have a lot of inefficiencies
| in our accounting department") that you won't be able to
| simply go home and start hacking away at them. So you
| need to use a methodology to start peeling off the layers
| of the onion, so to speak. And that always entails
| follow-up meetings and learning other software systems
| and familiarizing yourself with various business
| practices.
|
| At some point, you will come to the realization that you
| no longer view yourself as a "software engineer". Rather,
| you are a problem solver, and writing code is simply one
| of the many skills you possess. That's when you'll know
| you're on the right track.
| tropianhs wrote:
| > it's that I can't identify _problems_.
|
| Why don't you start from your own problems? I bet you
| have some of them and you are not alone definitely.
| jdance wrote:
| What solutions would you pay for as a software engineer?
| What would your boss/team lead pay for? You can't really
| do it for someone elses domain, you need a motivated
| partner in that domain for that (my general experience,
| of course there are exceptions)
| wastedhours wrote:
| Plot the day - talk to a business owner and get a sense
| of the hours they spend doing different tasks. If there's
| something they spend X+ hours per day doing - find what
| they want to achieve and optimise from there.
| dhruvkar wrote:
| I hear you.
|
| I was in Software for a couple of years and I only saw
| software/IT problems. But these problems usually had a
| variety of solutions and only some glue was required.
|
| Now I've been in the natural stone industry for 4 years
| and I can't count the number of problems to which the
| solution is "add more people". So much data entry and
| data extraction from PDFs <-> ERP/CRM/Other software.
| 100s of man-hours spent on something that could be done
| with proper data formats and simple automation.
|
| I personally believe that software engineers are SORELY
| lacking on all other industries besides software. We need
| more software engineers venturing out into other
| industries and identifying and solving problems.
| gbasin wrote:
| Totally agree. Software is just starting to scratch the
| surface of other industries.
|
| Out of curiosity, what's your role in the space you're in
| now? Are you solving these data extraction problems?
| enraged_camel wrote:
| The problem is usually at the start of the funnel. Most
| solo developers, especially those who have just quit their
| cushy FAANG jobs, are not positioned to personally know a
| lot of business owners (especially not outside of tech,
| where all the low-hanging fruit exist). So simply saying
| "go meet many business owners" doesn't help, unless you can
| also explain the _how_.
|
| To give a counter-example, I did consulting for a decade
| before going off to do my thing, so I have a lot of
| personal contacts and I'm familiar with a lot of problems,
| both general and specific, that businesses struggle with,
| and turning those into products has been relatively
| straight-forward. But most solo devs don't have this
| background, so they need more specific and actionable
| advice to build their funnel.
| disiplus wrote:
| but how many of those are interesting to work on, i too
| have been freelancimg and know some of problems, but when
| i think about them i dont reality want to work on them
| more them i have to.
| scarface74 wrote:
| This is the problem I see with a lot of developers - not
| just those looking to be entrepreneurs.
|
| They want "interesting problems" instead of just trying
| to create products that someone is willing to pay for.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Boring is good. Makes it a lot less likely that you'll
| have competition. ;)
| mediaman wrote:
| Agreed. If you have to be working on some exciting,
| disruptive project, doing solo development work that
| generates good income by working with run of the mill
| businesses with run of the mill problems is not going to
| be a good fit.
|
| Personally, I find boring to be quite exciting - but
| perhaps not if the only thing you're looking at is the
| technical solution. Building a small business involves
| figuring out how to solve the mundane but important
| thing, but then you get to figure out how to sell it, how
| much to charge, how to do customer outreach, do support,
| turn the business into a repeatable process, etc.
| Building a business out of it is quite challenging and
| fun and the technical solution is frankly a small part of
| it.
|
| Many solo-preneur types with technical backgrounds are
| way over-indexed on the technical aspect and want to
| treat it like their last technical job, but without a
| boss, which leads to a lot of disappointment and
| frustration.
| disiplus wrote:
| To be honest i would not agree. While those challenges
| like all challenges can be exciting, in the end of the
| day it will still lack you full engagement because it's
| something that's boring to you or not interesting.
|
| i'm kinda in that situation now, and got to play all the
| roles, like how we increased our conversation ratio by
| 50% with me thinking like a sales person (hint, don't
| over-complicate your pricing page), and those things can
| get you exited for some time and the money also, i just
| don's see it long term. i would rather playing with
| something that i love to do.
| Toast_25 wrote:
| That's me in my dad's company rn. I know the tech but not
| the business and it's something I'm trying to get out of,
| but don't really know how.
| exolymph wrote:
| > So simply saying "go meet many business owners" doesn't
| help, unless you can also explain the how.
|
| There are like eight zillion guides to doing this online,
| and unless you're willing to spam people, it always boils
| down to: Grind it out. Start making cold pitches, and
| hustle for as many warm intros as possible.
|
| Learn sales y'all.
| avl999 wrote:
| Thanks for writing this. It is good to see a perspective where a
| business is being built up slowly as opposed to the typical "I
| quit my job and now my side project makes $30k a month two months
| in" posts we usually see.
|
| Do you ever feel issues with motivation when you don't see growth
| as quickly as you'd like?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| > _Do you ever feel issues with motivation when you don 't see
| growth as quickly as you'd like?_
|
| Good question. For me, the more dominant feeling is frustration
| when I do something that I expect will bring growth, and then
| there's no measurable effect. That happened over and over again
| with Is It Keto. It was especially tough because the site's
| growth depends so heavily on Google, and there seems to be a
| lag time of weeks or months before Google reacts to certain
| changes or decides certain pages are worth putting at the #1
| slot for related queries. It was tough to make a site change or
| publish a new post and think, "Okay, I guess I'll just wait 6-8
| weeks to see what Google thinks of this."
| nlh wrote:
| All personal stuff aside (and on that note - I'm a huge fan of
| this story Mike and love what you're doing!)
|
| This is a great piece of advice for solo devs out there:
|
| > Great! You can pre-pay for three months of service, and your
| billing cycle won't start until that feature is available.
|
| > I've never been burned on a feature request since.
|
| I imagine it's super easy to fall into the custom feature trap
| when the temptation of a big new customer is right around the
| corner, and this seems like an excellent solution!
| oliv__ wrote:
| FYI: on isitketo.org/cream-cheese, the link to "keto dessert
| recipes" is broken (it's an internal link). Looks like it's being
| prefixed with the domain and the url ends up having two http
| segments.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Fixed! Thanks for the heads up.
| christiansakai wrote:
| I read your original post 2 years ago, and was waiting for the
| conclusion. Thank you for posting this.
| let_var wrote:
| Michael - firstly, kudos for sticking to your solo dev plans.
| Hiccups are part and parcel of the game. I like your Is This Keto
| app. And second, keep at it!
| aty268 wrote:
| These businesses all seem like something that very well could
| make you money, but would never scale into a growth startup. And
| it seems the time it takes to build one of these or a growth
| startup isn't going to be too different. I might even say that
| you similar chances of making a similar amount of money from
| either.
|
| So why not shoot for the larger moon?
| gk1 wrote:
| I think you're underestimating the effort and luck involved in
| building a successful growth startup.
|
| > Why not shoot for the moon?
|
| Some times it's better to throw a few things at the wall and
| see what sticks, before going all-in on one idea.
| m_ke wrote:
| Ingredient line parsing is a really small market and something
| that sounds like a fun project to work on but is probably not a
| business venture that has room to grow. The number of companies
| that have enough recipes to justify automation, profits to
| justify paying for it and nobody inhouse who can implement it
| is really small. There's no viable price point for a product
| like this when you factor in the cost of customer acquisition.
|
| Content based consumer sites are also really hard to get off
| the ground and it's not something that I'd recommend any
| bootstrapper to try unless you can charge for it.
|
| I'm sure it's all a great learning experience though and if
| Michael keeps iterating the way he is now he'll definitely end
| up finding a worthwhile business venture.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Ingredient line parsing
|
| if he can scale his tech to more general cases, it can be
| very strong proposition.
| epicgiga wrote:
| Very illustrative warning to other devs.
|
| Just because you're coding and building things, doesn't mean
| you're doing work, or that you're going to make any money.
|
| Most devs are salarymen because that's the best role they can
| play in society. Their employer plugs them into what the market
| actually wants. 99% of them are inequipped to perform any that
| business aspect themselves. They just want to build stuff. Like
| this devs projects -- a hobby not an enterprise.
|
| The best thing any likeminded dev can do is this: do not write a
| single line of code until you've vigorously screened for market
| demand. If you can't pick up a phone and talk to businesses, this
| isn't for you, or you need to partner with a so called
| "extrovert" or sales type.
|
| Do not even so much as ponder the technical implementation of an
| idea for at least a month, don't touch a terminal, and don't type
| a single char of code.
|
| If you can't restrain yourself from doing so, save yourself the
| wasted time, money, and energy. If you want a hiatus, just have a
| real hiatus and fly to a Thai island for 6 months.
| tempsy wrote:
| OP has effectively F.I.R.E'd even if he doesn't say that
| explicitly.
|
| These projects are fun things to do that keep him fresh more
| than anything.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| OP shares his struggles with the world and this is the best you
| can come up with? The illustrative warning here is for anyone
| in OP's position to not post personal nor professional
| difficulties with randoms on Hacker News.
|
| Share wisdom, not criticism.
| epicgiga wrote:
| I did both. You just have to finish reading before you start
| typing.
|
| See, did both again!
| [deleted]
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Free, accurate feedback isn't always fawning or even
| especially kind. It is certainly better than the
| alternatives, however. Thanks.
| epicgiga wrote:
| You will go far, sir.
| heipei wrote:
| Part of the problem that I have with some of these accounts is
| that they so often focus on tiny and mundane problems that
| individuals have. I don't know if this is a conscious decision
| or just an unintended consequence of the fact that B2C ideas
| are easy to find (you just watch your own daily routines) and
| are more shiny since everyone knows about customer-facing
| products but fewer people know all the gears that power
| corporations large and small.
|
| The "Is it Keto" site is a nice hobby but if I seriously wanted
| to make money with a product/SaaS/platform I'd ring up everyone
| I knew from previous jobs and ask them which problem I should
| solve to save them hours of work every day. If you do that your
| product will become irreplaceable, while a site for helping you
| with your Keto diet is probably the first thing anyone would
| cut out if they wanted to save some money. That's the issue I
| have when founders focus so much on these lifestyle and purely
| optional products.
| redisman wrote:
| Seems like the author didn't have any financial pressure due
| to years at Google so it's hard to judge how serious he was
| about making money. I think if he didn't have money for rent
| this month (my experience as a "solo-dev" back in the day)
| then he would've done consulting/contracting or more profit
| driving ideas. Making $5000 a year is not realistic for most
| of us so this just seems like a long vacation with some
| coding.
|
| But yes B2B is very underrated among younger devs especially.
| They have huge problems in scale and complexity and most of
| the money is in there.
| epicgiga wrote:
| It's worth noting quite how vigorously you have to apply this
| concept.
|
| My first business attempt _did_ factor in market demand, but
| didn't consider the depth or capacity to pay ("nice to have"
| vs "take my money"). So I burned out doing 70 hr weeks for
| something that was never going to make real money vs what I
| could get as a salaryman or contractor.
|
| If you're starting out, you really really shouldn't be aiming
| for a new unique solution to something, unless you're
| planning on the VC route.
|
| It is far wiser to copycat. Aim for a massive crowded market
| (e.g. weight loss), because your chance of missing is
| hundreds of times lower.
|
| Indeed an even more effective tactic is to buy an existing
| business in a space, and develop it. It rips out all the
| market risk. This is how freelancer.com started for instance.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It is far wiser to copycat. Aim for a massive crowded
| market (e.g. weight loss), because your chance of missing
| is hundreds of times lower.
|
| And hence ... the fuckery of the modern economy.
|
| "Too many hands in too many pockets / Not enough hands on
| hearts." - The Housemartins (80s)
| epicgiga wrote:
| Nope, once you have revenue you can maneuver into fresh
| territory. One step at a time.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Or just be a strong competitor in an obviously valuable
| space. Nothing wrong with that.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _If you can 't pick up a phone and talk to businesses..._
|
| This is not required by any means.
|
| It helps if you can communicate well and be generally not
| afraid of or annoyed by people, but being an energetic
| extrovert is absolutely NOT required. Not at all.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Author here. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback
| about this post.
|
| Discussion from my first annual update last year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19054150
| komali2 wrote:
| How's a burger with a bun keto friendly lol. There's a big
| picture of a bunned burger and no mention of "by the way this
| specifically refers to just the patty itself."
| mtlynch wrote:
| The article addresses how to handle buns, but that part of
| the article isn't in the screenshot:
|
| > _Most people eat Beyond Burgers with ketchup and a bun, but
| those are hard to fit into a keto diet, so you might have to
| get creative. Consider crumbling your Beyond Burger over a
| salad with fresh tomatoes and a keto-friendly salad dressing.
| Or try out one of these delicious keto burger recipes._
|
| https://isitketo.org/beyond-burger
| itroot wrote:
| Hey, Michael!
|
| I was following you story since your first post two years ago.
| I just want to say that to succeed you need to sell something.
| As a software developers we can scale something (move from 1 to
| N, in terms of tech), but you need to find initial niche (from
| 0 to 1). I think that main success (as a business person) that
| you have is an audience reach that you had (almost every
| developer feels that things that you are described in your
| initial post). So why don't you try to play with your audience?
| Man, 2 years ago, when you posted you story of quitting, I was
| sitting in Yandex office at Moscow, and a lot of colleagues
| were talking about you and you story. Isn't that cool? I am not
| a real entrepreneur, but I really advice you to use your
| strengths (audience reach, mastery in writing, etc) along with
| you software development skills to find point of growth. Thanks
| for sharing and good luck!
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| > _Man, 2 years ago, when you posted you story of quitting, I
| was sitting in Yandex office at Moscow, and a lot of
| colleagues were talking about you and you story. Isn 't that
| cool?_
|
| Definitely, that is really cool. That was one of the most fun
| parts of publishing that piece. I didn't expect it to be that
| interesting to people outside my circle of tech friends, but
| it was surprising to hear that it resonated with people in
| different countries and different industries.
|
| > _I really advice you to use your strengths (audience reach,
| mastery in writing, etc) along with you software development
| skills to find point of growth._
|
| I've thought about this, especially when I first quit, but I
| could never think of a way to make money from my writing in a
| way that felt exciting to me. I think I just get more excited
| about building a product or service, but I do keep searching
| for ways to use my writing to complement my non-writing
| businesses.
| hopia wrote:
| Pretty cool how you're able to come out in the open with all
| this stuff like this!
|
| Having checked Zestful's page out, I got a suggestion for you.
| How about building a client lib ready for developers for at
| least a few mainstream languages? This should be rather easily
| achievable if you type in the Swagger specs to your API. That
| allows you to generate (Swagger codegen) those libs with
| possibly just minimal tweaking left on your part.
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| >Having checked Zestful's page out, I got a suggestion for
| you. How about building a client lib ready for developers for
| at least a few mainstream languages? This should be rather
| easily achievable if you type in the Swagger specs to your
| API. That allows you to generate (Swagger codegen) those libs
| with possibly just minimal tweaking left on your part.
|
| This is something I've thought about. I'd really like to have
| a PyPI package that you can just pip install and it parses
| ingredients using the free tier, then prompts you to enter a
| license key when you reach the limit.
|
| Zestful's hard for me because I could spend a year pursuing
| all of the ideas I have for it, but historically, feature
| ideas I come up with myself haven't attracted new customers.
| I set a rule for myself to not implement any new features
| until a paying customer requests it, and customers haven't
| mentioned wanting language-specific libraries. I talked a bit
| more about that in my August 2019 retrospective:
|
| https://mtlynch.io/retrospectives/2019/08/#zestful-and-
| resis...
|
| I haven't looked into Swagger much, so I'll check that out
| and see if I can create language bindings more easily than I
| thought.
| larrik wrote:
| As someone who has done quite a bit of shopping for various
| services, having a language-specific library ready to go is
| a major factor. I doubt that someone already paying you
| would still need one, though, so it should probably be
| considered a strictly "customer acquisition" feature.
|
| I understand your rule, but I don't think it should be
| _that_ strict.
| hopia wrote:
| It could also be his competitive advantage over others.
|
| I mean wasn't Stripe known to become so successful
| exactly because of _easiness of use_ , in other words a
| good user experience for developers with simple ready-
| made libraries. Making a new payment gateway is hardly
| innovative by itself after all.
| hopia wrote:
| Right, I don't know if it makes sense business-wise or not.
| Probably not if no one is voicing out requests about it.
|
| However, writing Swagger API specs for your future projects
| while you develop them might make you more productive, plus
| you do get that code generation for free on top of it.
| Depending on what language you work with, it may come
| essentially for free or with non-marginal effort.
| burnt_toast wrote:
| Just wanted to say I've really enjoyed following your progress.
| It's awesome to see the changes over time and I really hope I
| can follow in your footsteps someday. I used to check your blog
| weekly hoping for a blog update to help pass the long
| afternoons that dragged on forever at work.
|
| By chance was it you that released the Rooster app? Apologies
| if it wasn't but I remember reading a blog post about an app
| that would text you in the morning or something and I could
| have sworn it was your blog. The post had a link to the app
| that I clicked on but little did I know that the app had been
| shut down and the URL was scooped up by a less appropriate
| website. I was greeted with a very NSFW web page while at work
| haha.
| JacKTrocinskI wrote:
| So 2 years and you earned $18,000? Seems rather bad, you think
| you can exponentially grow that in the next year or two?
| tudelo wrote:
| You know, I think there might be something to any publicity
| is good publicity in this case. It's controversial to do
| something 99.999 percent of the workforce would not. So, by
| posting even when there is no great success, he is growing
| his exposure and making it easier in the future.
| icedchai wrote:
| The totals on the first chart are wrong. In 2 years he _lost_
| $23k. (Or you could say the "totals" are correct, but
| calling it "net profit" is wrong.)
| JacKTrocinskI wrote:
| Yeah, either way, financially that would never make sense
| to me.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Most companies, especially small ones, lose money in
| their first 2-3 years...
| bdcravens wrote:
| OP has significant savings. They are their own VC. Think
| of it in terms of a startup, most of which don't turn
| profits for years.
| LaundroMat wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I really enjoy your writing style by the
| way.
|
| I'm interested how the "raising prices to avoid feature
| requests from people who wouldn't become a customer anyway"
| worked.
|
| I have built something for a friend of mine who is now my first
| customer. The tool solves a niche problem some of his peers
| struggle with too.
|
| When building it, I tried to make the data models as generic as
| possible so that other businesses would be able to use the tool
| with a minimum of effort from my side.
|
| Of course, I still foresee a lot of feature requests. How
| do/did you know zestful had the right basic functionality and
| feature-set for it to be useful to customers?
|
| In other words, how did you separate the must-have features
| from the nice-to-have ones (knowing that a must-have for a
| particular person could very well be a nice-to-have for the
| market)?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading and for the kind words.
|
| To preface, I'm definitely not an expert at this problem,
| because Zestful still only has a handful of customers, but I
| can tell you what was helpful for me.
|
| It is really hard to separate the nice-to-haves from the
| must-haves. Some customers will present their nice-to-haves
| as if they're must haves because they suspect that if they
| don't make it sound like a condition of buying, you'll never
| implement it, but they might buy anyway. Or they'd never buy
| regardless.
|
| One of the features that I think I correctly took on this
| year was linking Zestful's ingredients to USDA entries. A lot
| of customers either explicitly asked for that feature or for
| something similar. Later large customers cited that feature
| as something that made them choose Zestful, so I'm glad I
| added it. I think the signal there was the high proportion of
| customers asking for it.
|
| I think it is powerful to offer to implement that feature
| based on pre-payment of X months of service. It might drive
| away customers who don't feel comfortable letting you hold
| their money, but if your time continues getting burned by
| customers who request features and don't follow through, it's
| a good technique to keep in your back pocket.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Just starting to have income near the two year mark is what I
| assume would happen.
|
| Assuming you still need to make income at some point, how long
| would you go before you decided it was time to go work for
| someone else? Three years? Four years?
|
| BTW: I'm more interested in how you self-reflect on your
| entrepreneurial abilities. How do you make decisions around
| that? How do you prevent yourself from falling in love with
| your work if it's not going to make money?
| mtlynch wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| > _Just starting to have income near the two year mark is
| what I assume would happen._
|
| Yeah, I'm encouraged by Cory Zue's progress. He's a couple
| years ahead of me, but I'm sort of matching up with his first
| few years of income:
|
| http://www.coryzue.com/writing/master-plan/#the-master-plan
|
| > _Assuming you still need to make income at some point, how
| long would you go before you decided it was time to go work
| for someone else? Three years? Four years?_
|
| Good question. At this point, I feel like I could do this
| indefinitely, even if I roughly broke even. The things that
| would change are if my life circumstances change and I need
| the money (e.g., having children, a catastrophic health event
| for me or someone in my family).
|
| > _BTW: I 'm more interested in how you self-reflect on your
| entrepreneurial abilities. How do you make decisions around
| that? How do you prevent yourself from falling in love with
| your work if it's not going to make money?_
|
| I've found it helpful to set goals and hold myself
| accountable for achieving them. I do enjoy writing software
| for software's sake, but a lot of my satisfaction in being a
| solo dev comes from improving my skills on the business side.
| Given that, I'm probably not in danger of reaching
| complacency - failing to earn money would mean I'm not
| growing in the way that I want, so I wouldn't be satisfied
| with that.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Great read with the logical analysis and openness lends well to
| success and navigating this adventure.
|
| Doing your own products is definitely the way to go for
| sustainability. Just one big one or a few have to work.
| Focusing on products is nice as you don't have to work for
| clients but instead customers more which can be more rewarding
| and freeing. Having only a big client or a few end up dictating
| direction and freedom to pursue ideas.
|
| Overall the experience on the business, marketing and
| promotions side is very helpful in all aspects of life.
|
| I have been freelancing/contracting/product developing for 8
| years full-time off of trying it for a year or two and have had
| to take clients/contracts here and there. This helps while you
| are building up products where needed. Though it isn't all bad
| doing contracts it can take time away but also help you,
| sometimes you learn about new problems and thus solutions that
| can become products when dealing with clients and unique
| industry problems. These problems can be hard to find if you
| aren't going through some of the pain points related to them.
|
| I will say most products do take multiple years to make it so
| fail quickly and press the gas on momentum and projects that
| you lean towards or are more interesting. Pay attention mostly
| to external product user experience and presentation at this
| stage.
|
| Good luck on your adventure and may your travels be rewarding
| personally and financially fruitful.
| discordance wrote:
| Are you targeting to gain revenue from your SaaS and blog
| alone?
|
| Have you considered consulting or remote dev for 2-3 months a
| year? - that could easily enable you to hit your targets.
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