I'm a Software Engineer turned Marketer, and the gap between the two worlds is pretty big. I recently wrote about the #1 Marketing Mistake I made (which I think many other devs might fall into when thinking about marketing), which I think HN might like: https://www.nicksingh.com/posts/the-1-marketing-mistake-i-ma...
Marketing is scary for a solo developer
101–110 of 280 posts
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#102> But Raz's Chartbrew is making only $137 MRR after working on it for more than 3 years. Great post, but I don't understand what naming and shaming specific low-MRR founders contributes to your core message.
Of course my intent was not to name and shame. I didn't realize that it can feel like that. But what does it contribute to the story? I wanted to show a real life example of what a lot of solo dev founders (including myself) are doing – focusing mostly on coding. Why? Because this is what they like to do the most (I think).
I think a lot of readers can see themselves in that person. It's a hard truth to face and it's a lot easier to put off that realization than to take action in the present moment.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#103I feel like I've been in quicksand for the last year. I've built something that my cofounder and I are using internally for remote collaboration, along with a couple support people, and it's great. But none of us have been able to figure out how to talk about it in a way that generates interest. This is really hard if you're more of a natural builder than a seller.
What makes it better than what’s out there? There are a lot of tools in this space!
It's designed from the ground up for async collaboration and focus (you collaborate on decisions like you might an issue, rather than interruptive chat discussions or worse, meetings.) It's based on how I saw collab work at a unicorn I worked at that was doing remote work well pre-pandemic, and that I've seen replicated elsewhere.
However, it feels very foreign to people who haven't experienced that. What I've seen is you don't really "get" it until you try it, and getting people to try it is really hard.
I suspect there's some correct way I can talk about it that helps people see the value more quickly, but I haven't figured it out yet.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#104I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
> Developers should be asking themselves during the development process: "Is this feature going to excite a group of users, and do we have some statistical mechanism to predict that excitement?" This is such a user-facing mindset. I’d say most of the development work I do isn’t even something the user will know about and definitely not get excited about. Also, I do not care about what happens after a feature gets bui…
> my job is not to make sure the right things are being built, it’s to make sure things are being built right
If you build the right things the wrong way, then you have technical debt. If you build the wrong things the right way, then you have nothing (except maybe an aesthetically pleasant code base that won't get used?). Every developer should try to have some part in making sure the right thing is being built.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#105I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
Many developers don't want to deliver a high-impact product. They want to enjoy the process of creation, earn some reasonable money and make lifes of some people better.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#106I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
> Developers should be asking themselves during the development process: "Is this feature going to excite a group of users, and do we have some statistical mechanism to predict that excitement?" This is such a user-facing mindset. I’d say most of the development work I do isn’t even something the user will know about and definitely not get excited about. Also, I do not care about what happens after a feature gets bui…
You're aware this discussion is in the context of a solo founder microstartup right? There is only one person/a few people doing all the jobs.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#107I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…
I think you may have put yourself at a social disadvantage by using the phrase "high impact product", which is a trigger phrase for several developers I know. It's a trigger phrase because they work at places where hearing that during a meeting means "we are about to throw away a lot of work you've done, because we didn't bother to do any market research before we did the first 6 months of sprint cycles". To them, it just sounds like a lot of low-level manager speak that results in massive technical debt, rushed redesigns, working overtime, and the expectation that "changing software is easy".
I found what you said really interesting, and am sharing it with my SO who is a marketing and business contractor. Thank you for sharing!
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#108I'm a marketing technology consultant. I've built or optimized systems for many tech companies you know and love. I've always wanted to share my knowledge; write a book, do a training series, etc, but I simply can't market myself. The hustle needed to be seen feels too...gross.
Why does it feel gross? You would be helping a lot of people.
Do you think how for example Andrew Chen markets himself and his book is gross?
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#109Jon Yongfook has a brilliant approach - he writes code one week, then does only marketing another week. https://twitter.com/yongfook I plan to follow that as it completely eliminates the habit of "just have to fix a few things on the software side and then I'll get on with blogging/tweeting/...".
One of the other benefits of this kind of approach is that it allows the two sides to inform each other without hindering each other. Each function gets the proper space to "breathe" in a sense.
For example (and this draws entirely from my own anecdotal experience), I find that in the course of marketing, I often get the best feedback/inspiration from users/community members, and this is very helpful in deciding what to implement next. However, I find that this pseudo-research process is only effective if I take enough time to process the information in whole. In other words, if a user has an extremely compelling idea, it can be tempting to implement it right away. If I resist and take my time, considering the idea in the context of the dozen other points of feedback I've collected, I can often distill the jumble of ideas into a stronger, singular feature. If I jump in right away, I'll inevitably end up in a state of feature creep.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#110The comments here are proof enough that marketing is completely foreign and misunderstood by a lot of developers.