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One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

datastation.multiprocess.io

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Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#11

Post by ushakov »

eatonphil wrote: post #5

Hey this is my story! It's been a genuinely fun year. Looking forward to doing better next time. Datastation/dsq are in a great spot and I'm looking forward to them continuing to grow. Happy for your suggestions and flames.

DataStation looks very promising!

i'd like to suggest you to also build a business

else, you'll end up like countless of other startups and open-source projects that existed for a brief moment but failed due to not making any money

try working on both your business offer and your software offer in tandem

your software product should serve your business, not the other way around

this is the approach i'm using right now for Typosaur (.com)

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#12

Post by jasfi »

jensneuse wrote: post #9

Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph ( https://wundergraph.com/ ) as a solo-dev for multiple years until I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to h…

Where did you find your co-founders?

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#13

Post by jensneuse »

jasfi wrote: post #12
jensneuse wrote: post #9

Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph ( https://wundergraph.com/ ) as a solo-dev for multiple years until I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to h…

Where did you find your co-founders?

The marketing guy, I found on YC Startup School Co-Founder Match (https://www.startupschool.org/), the Developer was creating GraphQL Open Source projects that were related to what I was building, so I've got in touch with them.

I can definitely recommend Startup School, it helped me build a lot of useful connections.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#14

Post by ushakov »

jensneuse wrote: post #9

Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph ( https://wundergraph.com/ ) as a solo-dev for multiple years until I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to h…

> working a full time job and building WunderGraph at night and on the weekends

this is actually a terrible advice, although i'm glad it worked out for you!

this type of side-hustling can quickly turn into losing your startup or your job (or both)

better approach is to save some money, leave for a year and become profitable from day 1

profitability will decrease your chances of failure dramatically

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#15

Post by eatonphil »

cube2222 wrote: post #7

Hey, congrats on the journey! Especially on the community building aspect, it's really impressive that you've been able to spark so many communities on various platforms (Reddit, GitHub, Discord, etc.)! On a more technical note, since dsq is based on the "load it into SQLite and query it from there" architecture, have you considered integrating with the plugin ecosystems of other existing projects based on that same…

Hey Kuba!

> Especially on the community building aspect, it's really impressive that you've been able to spark so many communities on various platforms (Reddit, GitHub, Discord, etc.)!

Yeah it's been so cool to see so many people come together, hobbyists and professionals.

> On a more technical note, since dsq is based on the "load it into SQLite and query it from there" architecture, have you considered integrating with the plugin ecosystems of other existing projects based on that same architecture, like Datasette[0]? It seems like a way to add a lot of value to your tools without much work.

Interesting idea! I haven't looked into Datasette too much. And I haven't thought about plugins too much either. The most I've done is extend the SQLite standard library [0] and I hope to continue growing that. I'd be curious to hear what specifically people like from Datasette they'd like to see in dsq.

> On a more commercial note, overall I think tools like this are very hard to monetize, because right now they're just a fairly niche use case, between - as you mentioned - full blown data analytics platforms and observability query systems, as well as standard unix tools. Especially since if you need the analytics a lot, you'll probably have time to integrate it into your preferred analytics solution (like BigQuery). Do you have any thoughts on that?

My idea was always to focus on smaller and less mature organizations, probably ones that have been around for 10+ years. They aren't using BigQuery, they prefer to host everything themselves, and they don't yet realize there are tools like DataStation that they can easily run to make analytics easier.

I've worked at a bunch of companies like this so I know the market exists. Actually I have been surprised how many people outside of this market showed up in the DataStation community. I've seen Googlers, MS-ers, modern startups, data science teams show up interested in DataStation compared to what they're already using.

For me it's just been a matter of time (and funding) to build out the product to serve these communities commercially as a SaaS or enterprise product.

[0] https://github.com/multiprocessio/go-sqlite3-stdlib

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#17

Post by jensneuse »

ushakov wrote: post #14
jensneuse wrote: post #9

Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph ( https://wundergraph.com/ ) as a solo-dev for multiple years until I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to h…

> working a full time job and building WunderGraph at night and on the weekends this is actually a terrible advice, although i'm glad it worked out for you! this type of side-hustling can quickly turn into losing your startup or your job (or both) better approach is to save some money, leave for a year and become profitable from day 1 profitability will decrease your chances of failure dramatically

I actually lost my job. I'd also advise against replicating what I did, but it was my only option really. I'm not born rich, single income dad, paying off the house. I wasn't able to afford to "leave for a year". It's also a timing thing. The right time to do WunderGraph is now, not in two years. So I had to decide to give up a dream or work through this and risk my job. Luckily, I've found the right people to help me and first customers at exactly the right time. But trust me, WunderGraph was at tables-takes for a long time.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#19

Post by Aeolun »

ushakov wrote: post #14
jensneuse wrote: post #9

Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph ( https://wundergraph.com/ ) as a solo-dev for multiple years until I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to h…

> working a full time job and building WunderGraph at night and on the weekends this is actually a terrible advice, although i'm glad it worked out for you! this type of side-hustling can quickly turn into losing your startup or your job (or both) better approach is to save some money, leave for a year and become profitable from day 1 profitability will decrease your chances of failure dramatically

> profitability will decrease your chances of failure dramatically

This kinda feels like saying a small loan of a million dollars increases your chances dramatically.

The challenge is in getting to that point.

Re: One year as a solo dev building open-source data tools without funding

#20

Post by krageon »

ushakov wrote: post #14
jensneuse wrote: post #9

Thanks for this writeup, I can relate 100%, especially the part on the supportive spouse. I've built WunderGraph ( https://wundergraph.com/ ) as a solo-dev for multiple years until I reached a similar point like you. It's weird to say, but my wife kind of accepted that I'd work on weekends between 1-3 pm when the kids sleep. What helped me get out of this "solo-time-drain-thing" was to find the right Co-Founders to h…

> working a full time job and building WunderGraph at night and on the weekends this is actually a terrible advice, although i'm glad it worked out for you! this type of side-hustling can quickly turn into losing your startup or your job (or both) better approach is to save some money, leave for a year and become profitable from day 1 profitability will decrease your chances of failure dramatically

> become profitable from day 1

"just make some money" is not good advice. It trivialises the entire problem and even worse, it's the core problem of everyone in this space. This reasoning is dismissive of their struggle and doesn't help them move towards where they need to be. There is absolutely no good reason to treat other people like that.

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