FYI: on isitketo.org/cream-cheese, the link to "keto dessert recipes" is broken (it's an internal link). Looks like it's being prefixed with the domain and the url ends up having two http segments.
Fixed! Thanks for the heads up.
My Second Year as a Solo Developer
261–270 of 387 posts
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#262God bless you for writing such a good post
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#263Michael - firstly, kudos for sticking to your solo dev plans. Hiccups are part and parcel of the game. I like your Is This Keto app. And second, keep at it!
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#264Two cents offered because this post really strikes a chord with me, and I also spent some time chasing down rabbit holes early in my software business: These products do not appear obviously commercializable and multiple years invested into them without materially improving the businesses does not decrease my confidence in that snap judgment. You could probably talk to business owners with problems, launch an (approp…
Looks like this guy is trying to run a lifestyle business, and his investments pay enough interest that he can coast for a long, long time. To be quite honest: He's spending all day playing . That's a position I envy quite a bit.
I'm not sure I understand this attitude. There is a specific lifestyle he is trying to achieve and the is working towards being successful at reaching it. At what point does it stop being "playing" and become just living? Do you have to be miserable at a 9-5 job to be considered serious by society?
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots and lots of self employed people are not "working" 24h/day.Where does this myth come from? Is it corporate propaganda?
It's coming from inside the house! https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1067175527180513280 "No one ever changed the world at 40 hours a week" "80 hours minimum, with peaks at 100 hours" A 100 hour week would be 16.6 hours for 6 days and 1 day off, or 14.25 hour days with no days off The idea that entrepreneurs need to work more than 40 hours a week to be successful is as old as our industry, and I'd go so far as to s…
It's funny how Musk himself disproves that claim. He runs 3 companies simultaneously, yet clearly he can't dedicate 80hrs/week for each.
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#266Author 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 wanted to say I've really enjoyed following your progress. It's awesome to see the changes over time and I really hope I can follow in your footsteps someday. I used to check your blog weekly hoping for a blog update to help pass the long afternoons that dragged on forever at work.
By chance was it you that released the Rooster app? Apologies if it wasn't but I remember reading a blog post about an app that would text you in the morning or something and I could have sworn it was your blog. The post had a link to the app that I clicked on but little did I know that the app had been shut down and the URL was scooped up by a less appropriate website. I was greeted with a very NSFW web page while at work haha.
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many years of work do you have in the tech industry? It seems in the current market (not even assuming SF salaries), and without kids/other dependents, it's fairly easy to reach that point. Just curious, because a lot of people have this mentality that they need to work forever and ever, but it often is just a mindset. You can easily amass 500k-1M and just coast on 40k/year in expenses for a long time. If it's so…
I wonder if this is a good or bad position to be in to start a life style business. I’m fortunate enough to be in this situation, where if I go somewhere cheap and keep my expenses down I can sustain myself financially for a long time, maybe indefinitely. And I’ve though about leaving my salaried job to do my own thing many times. I do worry though that the lack of financial pressure will just leave me lazy and “play…
I've seen a broad mixture of those scenarios over time, people of various personality types doing it (myself included).
The one thing I'd say, is that it's critical to know whether you have a strong internal drive / self-motivation. If you don't, it can be a dangerous context to put yourself into (dangerous in the financial or time waste sense). If you don't have that internal always-on motivation, it's super important to have a firm plan and object/thing/business idea that you're going to be pursuing before you quit. Start at least drawing up some sort of minimum framework before you quit, laying out what you're going to do, how you'll spend your time, what type of lifestyle businesses you're interested in, plot everything out financially as much as possible and so on. Good advanced planning will save the day and help prevent catastrophy as the road gets challenging. It's a new type of 9 to 5 job, although it's more likely to be a 50-80 hour job getting started. Without financial pressures, you have to either naturally self-motivate strongly so you don't constantly veer off (get lazy, get distracted, get bored, and such), or follow a fairly strict plan that you've laid out for yourself ahead of time to keep yourself sane, productive and making progress.
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#268What Got Done is basically Google's internal Snippets. I wish there was an on-prem setup to do that. The idea is basically every week you write, in free form text, what you've done, and possibly what you're planning to do, and your team mates get to view it, and subscribe to updates conveniently. If you're anything like me, you will find this valuable not only day to day, but also when the review time comes and you need to beat your chest a little. I tend to forget how much I've done.
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#269Two cents offered because this post really strikes a chord with me, and I also spent some time chasing down rabbit holes early in my software business: These products do not appear obviously commercializable and multiple years invested into them without materially improving the businesses does not decrease my confidence in that snap judgment. You could probably talk to business owners with problems, launch an (approp…
Thanks for reading, Patrick! I'm a big fan of your work, and your Indie Hackers interview was one of the big motivators that sent me down the solo developer path. > You could probably talk to business owners with problems, launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of dollars per year) product against those problems, build contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at +/- $100k in 12 to 18 months. Ma…
One thing to consider- you approached everything with the assumption that businesses want a SaaS; the sheet metal post made it sound like you were surprised that the shops didn't want a SaaS. Software Developers like SaaS, because it makes more money and had recurring revenue. However, to a business owner that just sounds like another bill that they don't want. Owners at small to medium companies, in my experience, are very cost-conscious.
For example, I'm currently evaluating warehouse management systems. It appears that everyone in this space runs a SaaS; with ludicrous prices where they want to bill per shipper/ac count. We still plan on being in business in 3 years; and after 3 years we will have paid more than what it would cost to develop this system ourselves. If you are mostly focused on tech it's easy to think that everyone likes the idea of SaaS; but realistically the only people who get excited about that idea are the people cashing the checks every month. I have heard much lamentation and whining about having to 'subscribe' to software instead of just buying it.
Re: My Second Year as a Solo Developer
#270Great read, thanks for writing this. One of the hardest parts of doing a bootstrapped startup is the peer pressure and the perceived opportunity cost. The numbers won't add up for a bootstrapped business for many years (I am talking upwards of 5 years even). The only thing that keeps you going is your ambition ('this is what i want to do', 'nothing else i would rather do').
The best way I have learnt to deal with this is to surround myself with people who think similar.