My Second Year as a Solo Developer
mtlynch.io
My Second Year as a Solo Developer
1–10 of 387 posts
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#2Author here. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback about this post.
Discussion from my first annual update last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19054150
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#3Encouraging to see your progress, keep it up!
Reading about your projects, it strikes me that some have different potential than others for perhaps one clear reason: solving a problem vs not. Why not double down on Zestful? There is demand there, and some are willing to pay...
This post I wrote recently may be helpful for you: https://tinyletter.com/garybasin/letters/how-to-know-what-pe...
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#4Author here. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback about this post. Discussion from my first annual update last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19054150
So 2 years and you earned $18,000? Seems rather bad, you think you can exponentially grow that in the next year or two?
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#5I like how you call that home "a modest two-bedroom home" in the linked blog. I guess it's a matter of perspective. Here in Israel, where everything is cramped, this would be something I'd be very content with.
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#6How did you cut down so drastically on expenses in the second year, +50%, or was there a large investment in the first year, sorry I havent read last years update yet!
Also, I'm just coming accross your Zestful service and can't believe that is exactly what i am looking for and actually started to write, but I have other stuff to do so no point re-inventing the wheel!
Consider me a new client sir!
PS: Congratulations !
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#7Author here. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback about this post. Discussion from my first annual update last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19054150
Thanks for sharing. I really enjoy your writing style by the way.
I'm interested how the "raising prices to avoid feature requests from people who wouldn't become a customer anyway" worked.
I have built something for a friend of mine who is now my first customer. The tool solves a niche problem some of his peers struggle with too.
When building it, I tried to make the data models as generic as possible so that other businesses would be able to use the tool with a minimum of effort from my side.
Of course, I still foresee a lot of feature requests. How do/did you know zestful had the right basic functionality and feature-set for it to be useful to customers?
In other words, how did you separate the must-have features from the nice-to-have ones (knowing that a must-have for a particular person could very well be a nice-to-have for the market)?
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#8I read your previous post about Zestful, and this years update, and I just don't understand who would buy this as a hosted API. To me, it sounds like this should be a library, not an API. For every use case that I can think of, having a library would be 100x better than an API.
In my experience, APIs are generally slow, unreliable, and tend to change without notice.
I don't understand what advantage an API has, except making it easier for the developer to charge based on usage.
Do people really buy APIs like this? Am I missing something?
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#9last corner of graphic right bottom is a wrong amount.
I use to be a number guy, ie accountant hacker. Its not 18k positive as far as net revenue increase from the two years.
the percentage is probably right but not the sign before the net rev number.
and note you have to reach profits soon per how you file with the IRS..sorry to burst your bubble.
same sort of errors in the saas net rev numbers.
bone up on your accounting stats as there are books out there on how to do it
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#10Author here. Happy to answer any questions or hear any feedback about this post. Discussion from my first annual update last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19054150
Just starting to have income near the two year mark is what I assume would happen.
Assuming you still need to make income at some point, how long would you go before you decided it was time to go work for someone else? Three years? Four years?
BTW: I'm more interested in how you self-reflect on your entrepreneurial abilities. How do you make decisions around that? How do you prevent yourself from falling in love with your work if it's not going to make money?