If you are solo, any time you spend doing anything else than coding and improving product is a complete waste of time. A well done product will raise interest in a given market or segment. There’s a joke in there somewhere about a well done AI based product will literally market itself. Marketing is raising interest. Nothing more.
Marketing is scary for a solo developer
161–170 of 280 posts
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> lies are unsustainable. All sorts of things are "unsustainable". It only has to be sustainable long enough to cash out.
Scams, frauds, all leverage false advertising. But just because they use marketing tools to achieve that objective, it doesn't make marketing "evil" or "all about lies" - hell they're surely also using some tech stack to have the whole operation going. Does that make tech evil, or a vehicle to spread lies, scams, frauds? No. It's just what people do with it.
Any examples of marketeers in commercial companies refusing sales as a bad fit?
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#163I 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…
Where is that community supposed to form though? I would think those relationships tend to get made in the office, but the environment seems to he going more towards remote.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> my default view is that I don't want to lie or over-promise This is the greatest prejudice around marketing in the tech community. A simple exercise you can do that debunks that frame of thought: lies are unsustainable. Unless you're a government or a monopoly that has their predictable flow of revenue, lies aren't affordable. You can lie and scam people, but that's not a long term strategy, because you'll burn off…
I see Tesla's promises on self-driving cars over many years as lies. It doesn't see to have done them any harm so far.
I'm not sure I'd call their promises lies. I think there's a subtle difference between a lie and an over-promise.
I think FSD will eventually happen, but Elon is very mistaken on the time frame. He always thinks we're 6 months away from it. I think we're closer to 6 years.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#165I'm a developer. I haven't done marketing at all, just posted my product in a few communities and took off. Why? Because if was a big need for what I built and worked really well.
If your product is super needed by the market, you don't have to do much marketing, but a great marketing person will get such product to the moon
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.) This doesn’t really tell me anything. Can you provide a real-world example of how it would work on a project? Is there a ~10 second video or gif of it in action? Or even more basic, what specifically made you angry enough with existi…
The app has a list of topics that anyone can add to. Each topic has a due date so you know when it is wrapping up, and they also have an explicit context and outcome; the topic creator sets the context, and the outcome is the bit that everyone collaborates on by editing together/using the discussion thread. Once the topic is done and a decision made, you lock the topic, saving the context, decision, and the discussio…
Ok cool. So if I had to sum it up elevator pitch style based on what you’ve provided so far, I would call it a collaborative project management tool that uses threaded discussions for deliverables and decision making.
Is your target and experience to replace existing PM tools like kanban boards or work alongside them?
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#167I 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…
How might an experienced solo developer work with an experienced marketer? My network has ended up being very thin in that regard. Would you partner on some developer's zany project? Or are you folks available to consult?
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> don't want to deliver a high-impact product > earn some reasonable money These two are in opposition
You've forgotten about the effect of investment. Work on a team doing contract early-stage development for funded (that's important) startups and greenfield "experimental" projects for larger corporations and you can work on four projects in one year, zero of which ever see enough ROI to pay back just your personal pay. And then do it again the next year.
The end result is that you feel like a tiny part of some weird, random, extremely expensive process to (rarely) create successful new businesses. Like part of a living pachinko machine that burns cash. But you can get paid plenty for it!
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#169I 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.
> earn some reasonable money and make lifes of some people better.
This requires delivering a high-impact product.
Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer
#170I 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 strongly agree with the heart of what you are saying. One of the worst bugs you can have in a product is to have built the wrong product. A good channel of communication between people who understand the customer and people who are building and designing the product is not just valuable: it's critical.
There can be communication challenges between our disciplines though.
Frequent changes in direction can leave software in a bit of a shambles. This is probably the thing that creates the feeling that development is "a sacred space for creation". It takes time to both make the change, and end up with code that is pleasant to work with. On teams I've been on, this has sometimes led resistance to the marketing perspective.
I, personally, am often uncomfortable with the language of marketing (both on the analysis side, and on the promotion side). On the promotion side, marketing teams like to make claims that are aspirational or appeal to emotional needs, rather than actually true from a technologists perspective. On the analysis side, marketing often looks like it's working from incomplete information, and extrapolating trends that I don't feel confident exist. It feels like guessing, and I don't like to gamble.
These can be difficult gaps to bridge, but ultimately, I feel like we have the same goal: building the right thing for the right audience.