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Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

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Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#11

Post by driven20 »

jf22 wrote: post #4

With your runway, #2 sounds great, but try and find a different idea. Productivity apps and yelp like services are a dime a dozen. You'll probably waste 1-2 years, and expect to waste 3-5 more before you can replace your main source of income. Entrepreneurship is risky and developing software is the easy part.

Yea, I'm not sure they are great ideas. My reasoning for the productivity app is because I want to build something I personally need and I haven't found a good solution. The yelp-like app is because I know I want to work with small businesses. I just don't know exactly how yet.

So, you're right. I need to spend more time on my ideas. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#12

Post by x0x0 »

re: #2

>[...] I feel like I could make these ideas work, but it's also super risky. I don't want to spend 1-2 years working on these ideas only to look up and realized I wasted my time and money.

If you can't get comfortable with that risk, you're going to have a very hard time being an entrepreneur.

There's always people who luck into an amazing business and business model, but realistically, you're going to have to put some resources in before you figure out if there's value. Even if it's just mocks and time spent talking to folks (do both those before coding anything though!)

Oh, and yelp is a terrible business -- the coding is straightforward. Your problem there is entirely how do you seed a site with reviews and businesses. Typically, two-sided marketplaces are some of the hardest businesses to create.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#13

Post by driven20 »

takanori wrote: post #5

Before you write a line of code for #2, have a clear strategy for app distribution, user acquisition, free to paid conversion. It won’t just happen because you have a great product. Just remember to make a million a year, you need 10,000 people paying you $10 a month.

I think this is good advice. I should think things through more...

Also, I am willing to take a pay cut if I can work on my idea, instead of working for something else. I don't need a million dollars haha.

Right now, I would be happy if I got something that pays me half as much as I used to make. Heck, if it only brought in $1,000/mo for a while I would be happy with that.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#14

Post by kjgkjhfkjf »

Pick an idea and try to make it work. There's useful advice to be found here and elsewhere on the web, but your own experience trumps all that. You'll learn a lot, and if/when you decide to return to the corporate world you'll be in an advantaged position to do so.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#15

Post by driven20 »

cageface wrote: post #9
takanori wrote: post #5

Before you write a line of code for #2, have a clear strategy for app distribution, user acquisition, free to paid conversion. It won’t just happen because you have a great product. Just remember to make a million a year, you need 10,000 people paying you $10 a month.

Yeah. I spent the better part of two years building something I really wanted to build that I thought people would really want to buy. Turned out I was wrong. If you're burning through your own savings you need to find out as early as possible if there actually is any real demand for your product.

This is exactly what I'm afraid of. Sorry it didn't work out for you.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#16

Post by driven20 »

ronilan wrote: post #8

> “Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.” From “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” by Mary Schmich

Haha, I ran across this quote before. I like it. Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#17

Post by nikanj »

rognjen wrote: post #6
takanori wrote: post #5

Before you write a line of code for #2, have a clear strategy for app distribution, user acquisition, free to paid conversion. It won’t just happen because you have a great product. Just remember to make a million a year, you need 10,000 people paying you $10 a month.

I don't entirely agree with this. I think it's useful to build a proof of concept even without any follow-up plans or objectives. Besides the fact that it'll be easier to visualize and present the idea to people, the act of building a proof of concept or a real MVP would be learning experiences themselves. In fact thinking about what's to be included as part of the MVP and prioritizing to fit within a pre-set deadlin…

Let's be honest here too, it's FUN to build a proof of concept.

This is a very, very common failure mode of new entrepreneurs. As long as you don't have any customers, any promises, or any deadlines, you can focus on the best part of being a programmer: programming. Thus people often end up postponing the customer acquisition farther and farther into the future, until they run out of savings, or just abandon the project because the bright flame of new creation has dwindled.

Running a software business sucks. You have to mete out your attention extremely carefully, and without well-vetted potential customers to build things for, building things should be very low on your priority scale.

You can achieve most of your stated MVP goals with a sketch made in Adobe XD, with a fraction of the time spent.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#18

Post by nathan11 »

driven20 wrote: post #11
jf22 wrote: post #4

With your runway, #2 sounds great, but try and find a different idea. Productivity apps and yelp like services are a dime a dozen. You'll probably waste 1-2 years, and expect to waste 3-5 more before you can replace your main source of income. Entrepreneurship is risky and developing software is the easy part.

Yea, I'm not sure they are great ideas. My reasoning for the productivity app is because I want to build something I personally need and I haven't found a good solution. The yelp-like app is because I know I want to work with small businesses. I just don't know exactly how yet. So, you're right. I need to spend more time on my ideas. Thanks!

Be careful with the "build X for small businesses". It's deceptive to look around at small businesses, see them using bad tools and think there's opportunity there. The truth is there's usually a reason--the small businesses aren't willing to pay for better.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#19

Post by driven20 »

x0x0 wrote: post #12

re: #2 > [...] I feel like I could make these ideas work, but it's also super risky. I don't want to spend 1-2 years working on these ideas only to look up and realized I wasted my time and money. If you can't get comfortable with that risk, you're going to have a very hard time being an entrepreneur. There's always people who luck into an amazing business and business model, but realistically, you're going to have t…

I totally agree with the risk comment.

Also, my idea is to onboard small businesses slowly. Maybe, adopting and building out features/tools for one business at a time. Until the project is more completed and I can focus on scaling the onboarding.

Re: Ask HN: Should I find a job or try to build a profitable project?

#20

Post by mntmoss »

I think the main factor in my response is in how much you feel you're in control of your executive functions and emotions.

If you can easily re-prioritize your tasks because abstract feedback mechanisms tell you so, and you can steel yourself to strategize and make competitive choices under pressure, even when it means you may make a tradeoff that hurts someone personally, you're in a pretty good position to operate a business around any promising opportunity, and to scale it up if needed. That doesn't mean "businesspeople should be immoral," but rather "they are able to make genuinely tough decisions in an impersonal and fair manner, and are numbed to the painful parts where the livelihood of the business depends on it." (Acid test: how ruthless are you when playing board games?)

But if your mindset is more prone to meandering and getting fixated on specific problems and you get propelled by events and emotional energy around you - whether or not that adds up to a diagnosable condition, don't kid yourself. You can have a business, but it should match your personality and complement your strengths and weaknesses, and you might need a co-founder to keep you grounded. Otherwise you'll shut down or divert yourself into solving the wrong problem as soon as it gets hard.

And to some extent, controlling those thoughts and feelings is something you can train up, and finding an appropriate co-founder is something you can achieve by sheer peristence, but it really sits near the top of the heap in terms of whether a commercial project with paying customers and possibly employees will be the sound thing to pursue, because there are all sorts of ways to rationalize yourself into a bad plan.

If you don't think you can do it that way, you can instead pursue a side project with the intent of turning it into your next gig - something that will at least market your skills and dreams and keep you employable even if you do not have a clue of how it would operate at scale or over the long run. And that might be preferable to grinding LeetCode.

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