Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 325 posts

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#161

Post by Tenhundfeld »

lprubin wrote: post #39

If you choose to run a software development agency: - Shoot for between 3 and 10 clients. Any less and you'll be very stressed about losing a client. Any more and you'll be overwhelmed with juggling too many balls. - Fire bad clients. They aren't worth the stress, frustration, and opportunity cost. - Work on your process. Doing an hour of client works earns you one hour of revenue. Improving your agency processes can…

>Be a solver of a specific business problem for a specific type of business.

Totally agree in principle, but I've found it's very hard to do this in practice.

Unless you have a priori knowledge of an industry, before your first consulting gig in it, it's hard to just step into a business domain and know what specific problems an industry has that can be improved with better software and which of those specific problems are generic enough to be shared by many companies in that industry – while not being served "well enough" by an existing product. And you have to figure out if it's a niche that's big enough to support a company, while balancing other desires, e.g., not spending weeks traveling around the country to sell and work with companies in this sector.

I'm not saying it can't be done. It can, obviously; there are companies doing it. But it's not easy to just go do it. From my limited exposure to consultancies taking this approach, many kind of kept their eyes open and fell sideways into it, i.e., they worked with one client in a sector and realized the client's competitors had similar problems.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#162

Post by taneq »

mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

> Do not be seduced by the technology!

I want to emphasize this, and expand on it: Your cool tech startup is not about the tech.

You exist to solve a problem.

Sure, you might use your Cool Tech(TM) to solve the problem. But the salient point is that the problem gets solved. Your customers don't give a rats ass if you solve it with automatic hyperparameter selection for LSTMs, or if you solve it with an Excel macro. They just want. Their problem. Solved.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#163

Post by slinger »

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…

> 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

Sorry, what did you mean by "in 21 days route"? Also, do you have any MOOC on doing business to recommend?

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#165

Post by yeukhon »

spIrr wrote: post #52
yeukhon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big clients tend to be very slow at signing contracts because their legals would examine every word and will keep asking you to revise the contract. Furtheremore, real big clients tend to be slow at adopting the techology they just bought, so you may not get feedback quick enough to improve your product. Big clients are more likely to argue for discount as they would use "I am big name" as leverage.

This, and sales concentration is a real risk as well. If you have few big customers and even one of them churns, the impact this will have on you is certainly going to be material.

Yes, the strategy for big client is to lock them in for long engagement (like a 3-YR term). Throw in some nice support package, longer trial period, whatever. Since big customers often take months to fully use a product (6-12 months is very common), I wouldn't worry about "oh now I got big name, I need more infrastructure, more money to pay my cloud vendor." It won't for 6-12 months and you probably can keep all the pennies from the big client monthly. If you get a downpayment (say 1-year for a 3-yr term), you get ammunition to grow your team and get more smaller customers.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#166

Post by 20years »

mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

This is excellent advice. There is a local company near me that has been working on their SaaS for almost 2 years now and still yet to launch. They started it on Angular 1 and are now re-factoring it on Angular 2 (or maybe 4 now). During this time they released a small open source Angular library but not even an alpha release of their own product. Keep in mind their product is not gear towards devs. They also hit every Angular conference they can and are always doing dev meetups. That is fine for after you launch and are making $$ but seems like a lot of wasted time and money when you have yet to release a product after 2 years.

During this same period, I launched 2 SaaS products on boring PHP 7 and Python for the backend and HTML, jQuery/intercooler.js for the front-end. Both profitable and growing.

I think sometimes devs don't realize the hardest parts of starting and growing a business have nothing to do with code or the tech stack you choose. Marketing, getting and retaining customers and everything else in between is way harder than writing code.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#167

Post by krystiangw »

horsecaptin wrote: post #146
Kenji wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Remember that the most economical tool for the job is often not the coolest or trendiest - but is some old boring workhorse that other engineers will scoff at. When I read this, a voice in my head yelled PHP.

These days Ruby on Rails is fairly orderly as well.

I would use NodeJS for MVP. I think it is super important that you can have backend + frontend in the same technology.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#168

Post by 20years »

westoque wrote: post #160
mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

I disagree. Technology is actually an advantage. I would look at it this way, if you used N tech, and it actually results in a faster, better app, meaning happier users and therefore more business. TLDR; use technology that gives you an advantage.

Doesn't really give you an advantage if you don't have customers. Even after you have customers, oftentimes the old/boring technology actually results in a faster, better app.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#169

Post by RussianCow »

westoque wrote: post #160
mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

I disagree. Technology is actually an advantage. I would look at it this way, if you used N tech, and it actually results in a faster, better app, meaning happier users and therefore more business. TLDR; use technology that gives you an advantage.

There are always tradeoffs, though. Using technology X instead of technology Y isn't free; maybe there is an additional up front engineering cost, or maybe it's harder to hire devs who know X, or something else. And it's impossible to generalize, of course, but usually the tradeoffs for using superior tech aren't worth it in the short-/medium-term, which is all that matters as a startup.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#170

Post by yks »

mattjaynes wrote: post #112

Since this is an audience of passionate technologists, here's the top piece of advice I have: Do not be seduced by the technology! I killed one of my startups this way. I've seen many many die this way. It can hurt your pride as a passionate technologist to choose non-cool but mature and easy-to-hire-for tools. But it's those tools that are the most economical. Remember, your customers care 0% about the backend techn…

what if the customers are engineers?
Post reply on HN