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Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

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Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#131

Post by nicholas73 »

segmondy wrote: post #75

If you build it, they will not come! Scream it in a loud voice, IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL NOT COME! You are going to have to build it, find them, plead with them, fight their refusals and shove it down their throat. There are many unknown "unicorns" that currently exist as code. The code is done, there's just no users, because the world doesn't even know it's a thing and those that do know have not being convinced t…

I'm doing half and half. I'm building the core functions first, which is easily demo'd. Then once I get enough interest, then I'll build the app that handles user accounts.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#133

Post by matt4077 »

Belphemur wrote: post #37
jargnar wrote: post #20

It's a skill that can be learned like every other skill. You can take the "in 21 days" route or the MOOC / University course route, or constantly read business articles, Steve Jobs videos, etc. But some top tips stand out for me over time: * Talking to people, networking > Not talking to people * Bug free > Elegant code * UX > UI * Simple products that do one thing well > Complex products * Understanding entire marke…

Small clients > one big client Especially at the beginning, you read here how often big clients can put you under at the beginning because you're not ready to deal with them.

Ohhh, yes!

After four years in which I frequently worked in a 6h/1h work/sleep rhythm for weeks at a time, I just left town and decided to never again have any customer that I couldn't fire and forget about on the spot if I wanted.

Big clients and projects were, at least for me, a complete nightmare. Worst were the lawsuits which, even when we ultimately won, would basically ruin whole years at a time.

Now I'm working for a few thousand customers at maybe $50/year average. When some technology or idea seems interesting, I'll spend 48h straight trying to get it working. When the weather starts to get warm, I'll spend the day in the sun with a bottle of white wine and no appointments until November.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#134

Post by cookiecaper »

afshinmeh wrote: post #61
jargnar wrote: post #20

It's a skill that can be learned like every other skill. You can take the "in 21 days" route or the MOOC / University course route, or constantly read business articles, Steve Jobs videos, etc. But some top tips stand out for me over time: * Talking to people, networking > Not talking to people * Bug free > Elegant code * UX > UI * Simple products that do one thing well > Complex products * Understanding entire marke…

Nice, but I'm not entirely sure about this one: > * Sleep, exercise & healthy food > late night coding Looks like it's against other points. I have a full-time job and I'd like to create a brand, too. Thus. I have to do late night coding.

The principle is that you have to maintain health.

I think late-night coding is a near-constant because of our brains automatically optimize us onto what pg describes as "the Maker's Schedule". Context switching is anathema to effective coding, so people automatically go to the time when they'll be least-interrupted, which is when the rest of the world is asleep.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#135

Post by matt4077 »

jargnar wrote: post #20

It's a skill that can be learned like every other skill. You can take the "in 21 days" route or the MOOC / University course route, or constantly read business articles, Steve Jobs videos, etc. But some top tips stand out for me over time: * Talking to people, networking > Not talking to people * Bug free > Elegant code * UX > UI * Simple products that do one thing well > Complex products * Understanding entire marke…

Possibly slightly controversial:

* Doing something you're interested in > all the self-help and motivational quotes in the world

* Doing something potentially meaningful and failing > doing something you don't care about and muddling through

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#136

Post by brightball »

For what it's worth, I wrote in a lot of detail about my experience a few years back. Might save somebody here from learning hard lessons.

http://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to-...

http://www.brightball.com/articles/a-study-of-pricing-and-bi...

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#138

Post by cookiecaper »

the_bear wrote: post #84
pavlov wrote: post #14

The best advice I've had (and seen applied in practice) is this: You need to get your company to 10k USD monthly product revenue within three months. If you can't, either the product, target market or team needs to be revised drastically. It's hard advice to follow, but it will save you a lot of time because you can't wait months and years doing unessential tweaks to the product and marketing, hoping that sales mirac…

This seems really aggressive, especially for bootstrapped companies. My startup took 31 months to hit $10k MRR, and now we're at ~$130k MRR. I'm really glad I didn't quit after three months. I barely even had the product built after three months. I think that for most people, if they abandon anything that's not already a huge success three months in, they'll just end up bouncing from one thing to the next and never s…

Yeah, while this may be good advice for some types of markets/businesses/circumstances, there's no way that it's useful as general advice, especially not for side projects or small companies that only need to support one person. Getting that initial traction is the hardest part. Quitting after 3 months is silly.

I don't know how much Atlassian made in its first three months, but they are one of the only bootstrapped tech companies to go public in the last 2 decades. It took them 15 years. While this is not necessarily the fastest path to success, I 100% believe it deserves immense respect. They're one of the biggest success stories in tech as far as I'm concerned.

(Of note, Atlassian has mainly focused on enterprise markets)

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#140

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

ohstopitu wrote: post #95
segmondy wrote: post #75

If you build it, they will not come! Scream it in a loud voice, IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL NOT COME! You are going to have to build it, find them, plead with them, fight their refusals and shove it down their throat. There are many unknown "unicorns" that currently exist as code. The code is done, there's just no users, because the world doesn't even know it's a thing and those that do know have not being convinced t…

I have seen this advice throughout this thread - "first find customers, and then build it" but I can't seem to understand the following: 1. why will those customers wait for your software? 2. what if you delay launching your software? 3. As a software dev, I've noticed that 90% of the product is built in 10% of the time. However, it's the final 10% that make/break it - how do you account for that (as you have already…

It's also key to know the software can really solve the problem.

Some primitive folks think computers are magic, but it is human sacrifice that makes their religion work at all.

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