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Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

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Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#131

Post by desktopapp »

ppsg wrote: post #130
desktopapp wrote: post #28

Running solo doing around $750k/year on a desktop app. The market is so huge and so many niches to filll. Make something you can sell for $50-300 with upgrades once in a while and set up a simple shop. It has never been easier to develop desktop software. If I was going to start this route today I'd 100% make an electron app and try to address and already large market that has stagnated or has shitty entrenched playe…

What are your thoughts on various business models? The traditional "sell once, offer paid upgrades" seems to be better suited for apps with a stable feature set, where you can take a year or two to produce the next major version. However, a more iterative approach to development doesn't work with this model very well. The recently popular switch to subscriptions (Adobe, Office, 1Password, Jetbrains, YNAB, etc), while…

I think it depends on your software and your price point. You're never going to sell a $20 app as SAAS without a service component. 1Password probably didn't have a long term path forward selling a stand-alone $65 password manager. Certainly something worth thinking about from the beginning. If you can have a desktop app that integrates with a service and have SAAS pricing you will be truly living the dream.

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#133

Post by shubhamjain »

Cyph0n wrote: post #68
joshontheweb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word. I started my current SaaS with the goal of working 10hrs a week and making 15k a month. I'm getting close to my monthly revenue goal but if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. I don't regret it. I'm enjoying the challenge now but it wasn't what I had thought I was getting myself into. I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt. Passive inf…

That's pretty impressive actually! Have you considering hiring one or two people (e.g., freelancers) to remotely help with support? Also, a virtual secretary would be immensely helpful I'd imagine. I have a couple of ideas I've been wanting to work on, but time is quite scarce as a grad student. I guess it's partly because I tend to overthink (and over-design) my ideas, and end up getting overwhelmed before even touc…

I am not exactly qualified to gauge the viability of your idea but I believe an Uber-like service is pretty ambitious of a venture, especially given the fact that you'd go for it solo. Consider the fact that you need to fill both the demand-side and supply-side, and match them almost in real time for it to be useful. I feel that it's often underestimated how challenging this task is.

I am not sure if a web-client would do the job. From my knowledge, interacting with maps on a mobile browser can be an aggravating experience. If an app doesn't do the job, isn't immediately useful, people discard it without further consideration which makes B2C things tenfold hard.

The surest way I see for it to work is to start as boring-taxi company that has a phone number and a person at the end. Then, slowly move into automated app-like way. I am guessing that's how OlaCabs, India's Uber, got started. Automation is awesome but there are so many points of failure in Uber-like venture that it's better to be safe by doing manual tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#134

Post by ztianjin »

desktopapp wrote: post #28

Running solo doing around $750k/year on a desktop app. The market is so huge and so many niches to filll. Make something you can sell for $50-300 with upgrades once in a while and set up a simple shop. It has never been easier to develop desktop software. If I was going to start this route today I'd 100% make an electron app and try to address and already large market that has stagnated or has shitty entrenched playe…

this income is very good. compared with worker in Google and facebook.

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#135

Post by zerr »

desktopapp wrote: post #28

Running solo doing around $750k/year on a desktop app. The market is so huge and so many niches to filll. Make something you can sell for $50-300 with upgrades once in a while and set up a simple shop. It has never been easier to develop desktop software. If I was going to start this route today I'd 100% make an electron app and try to address and already large market that has stagnated or has shitty entrenched playe…

> I'd 100% make an electron app

Don't do that... there are quite a lot of cross-platform but native ways to develop fast & slick desktop apps.

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#136

Post by jetti »

zerr wrote: post #135
desktopapp wrote: post #28

Running solo doing around $750k/year on a desktop app. The market is so huge and so many niches to filll. Make something you can sell for $50-300 with upgrades once in a while and set up a simple shop. It has never been easier to develop desktop software. If I was going to start this route today I'd 100% make an electron app and try to address and already large market that has stagnated or has shitty entrenched playe…

> I'd 100% make an electron app Don't do that... there are quite a lot of cross-platform but native ways to develop fast & slick desktop apps.

What are other options that are truly native? Also, speed isn't always a factor and Electron can get you up and running quick, especially if you already know Nodejs and HTML

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#137

Post by joshontheweb »

ovidiup wrote: post #110
joshontheweb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear this exists. Ive had a few whims to build something similar myself over the years but cellular data was missing or spotty in most resorts so i tabled the idea. How do you get around this problem? Or perhaps coverage at resorts is much better than it was now.

Depending on where you are, cell phone coverage could be between great to totally nonexistent. The mobile apps are built to be able to handle intermittent cell phone coverage. You can see yourself on a ski resort's map at all times, as well as see your own statistics. When you get in a cell phone coverage area the app sends the latest information to my servers, and receives information about your friends. You might g…

Very cool. I'll be trying this out this season. Thanks for building it :)

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#138

Post by joshontheweb »

unsquare wrote: post #120
joshontheweb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Word. I started my current SaaS with the goal of working 10hrs a week and making 15k a month. I'm getting close to my monthly revenue goal but if I'm not sleeping, I'm working. I don't regret it. I'm enjoying the challenge now but it wasn't what I had thought I was getting myself into. I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt. Passive inf…

> I truly underestimated the gravity of emails and support requests. As a one man shop, it can grind entire days to a halt. Same boat - You can make the most detailed image based walk through FAQ tutorial documentation what have you and you'll still have days filled with customer support. You'll wake up one morning with multiple emails from billing to product support. The more you grow, the more they come. PS: You're…

Yeah, its a tough problem because it makes it hard to stay solo. I really like being in full control of everything as long as it stays manageable. Perhaps this is a weakness.

Thank You! I'm relying entirely on word of mouth marketing at the moment so that really helps!

BTW - What's your project?

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#139

Post by johnward »

imarg wrote: post #116
jasonswett wrote: post #24

I'll add something I wish I had realized several years ago: build a SaaS is not the only path to a product business, and for a solo founder, it's (in my opinion) probably not a very good path. I spent 5 years trying to get a micro ISV off the ground which made scheduling software for hair salons. It was a terrible idea for a large number of reasons (described in detail here: https://www.jasonswett.net/im-shutting-dow…

Starting with an info product is a common suggestion (Amy Hoy is one advocate as a sibling comment noted). But in order to be able to offer an info product don't you need to be really knowledgeable about something? If you hadn't your experience with your SaaS would you be in the same position to write (and sell!) your tutorial?

I still battle with my inner dialog about "not being an expert" at anything. This is something I get caught up on but all you really need to be is more knowledgeable than your target audience. So sell something you already know to people who want to know it. There are still people out there that are basically beginners in web development. There are people one or more rungs down the ladder from you. You don't have to sell them some complex guide to intricacies of angular. How many non-technical people want to sell things only? People serve them all the time.

One example I heard recently on a podcast was cssanimation.rocks. Basically his thought process was: I want to teach people something regarding CSS. I can't teach people ALL of CSS in a book (too much work). I like making animations. I'm going to focus on practical animations (forms, list boxes, basically things all sites do). He started posting some useful blog posts that taught people some of the basic concepts and captured emails. Now he has paying subscribers to an email course.

Disclaimer: I fail to do everything I'm telling you to do.

Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?

#140

Post by fabiandesimone »

jasonswett wrote: post #24

I'll add something I wish I had realized several years ago: build a SaaS is not the only path to a product business, and for a solo founder, it's (in my opinion) probably not a very good path. I spent 5 years trying to get a micro ISV off the ground which made scheduling software for hair salons. It was a terrible idea for a large number of reasons (described in detail here: https://www.jasonswett.net/im-shutting-dow…

Absolutely. Info-products, even the really cheesy looking ones with the spammy VSL's (Video Sales Letter) work insanely well.

Depending on your niche you can do some pretty big numbers.

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