Ask HN: I want to create a successful software company. What is my roadmap?

YC playbook covers most of it:http://playbook.samaltman.com/

Read The Four Steps to the Epiphany by @sgblank.

There is no one size fits all answer to this question. What’s your definition of success? Owning your own business that pays you an above market salary and allows you to live comfortably and independently? Or do you see success as growing to being a huge global corporation? Do you want to start a company that targets consumers, small to medium businesses or large enterprises? There’s a ton of other factors that have a huge impact on a potential roadmap for success.

One bit of advice I’d offer is to know going in that software development is likely to be the least of your problems when running a software company - especially for a software engineer. Your real challenges lie in sales, marketing and customer relations. If you’re not successful at these aspects of the business, it doesn’t matter how good or bad your product or code is.

You can try to apply the YC's slogan to your neighboorhood ("Make what people want").

It depends on how you define "successful". Lot of definitions:

1. Building a six figure revenue for solo bootstrapped founder. Work from anywhere, no team and make enough to live comfortably and travel the world.

2. Build a small company with 1-10 million in revenue. Need a small team for that. Possibly some Angel funding.

3. Build a 10+ million revenue company. Need bigger teams and possibly VC funding for quick growth.

4. Build a 100+ million revenue company. 1000s of employees. Almost definitely need VC funding.

5. Build the idea behind a company, create a product that shows tremendous traction and then SELL to another company. Profit for founders even though no real value created over a long time.

Take your pick. Each option may have a different path. I would love to be in the 4th one and still working on how to get there :)