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Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

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Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#71

Post by andrewjrhill »

8draco8 wrote: post #65
afshinmeh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, but I'm not entirely sure about this one: > * Sleep, exercise & healthy food > late night coding Looks like it's against other points. I have a full-time job and I'd like to create a brand, too. Thus. I have to do late night coding.

No you are wrong. In order to get there (build successful brand) you have to take care of your self. With coding marathons, buckets of coffee and fast food (because "I don't have time to cook") you will end up with heart attack before you achieve what you planned.

Not only that but adequate sleep, regular exercise and healthy eating contribute enormously towards healthier cognition. As a developer, I tend to find myself far more productive and successful in a shorter period of time when I am living on the healthy side of things. Everything that is me just works better when I go for a run three days a week, eat clean foods and get in a solid 8 hours of rest a night.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#72

Post by buro9 »

Sales.

Learn how to do sales end-to-end.

How to listen to a customer and understand their needs, how to market to those needs, how to convert those leads into contracts, how to bill those customers, how to make them feel valued and show value to them, how to upsell when the contract expires (how to get more value from them).

Learn sales. Mostly because it helps you understand the whole of a business, and will guide any prioritisation of your engineering like nothing else.

It turns out, you really don't need to build a great thing, you just need customers who pay.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#73

Post by matthewking »

pavlov wrote: post #14

The best advice I've had (and seen applied in practice) is this: You need to get your company to 10k USD monthly product revenue within three months. If you can't, either the product, target market or team needs to be revised drastically. It's hard advice to follow, but it will save you a lot of time because you can't wait months and years doing unessential tweaks to the product and marketing, hoping that sales mirac…

$10k MRR in 3 months seems like a lofty goal to me. Is that from product launch? or from day 0? with or without investment?

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#75

Post by segmondy »

If you build it, they will not come!

Scream it in a loud voice, IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL NOT COME!

You are going to have to build it, find them, plead with them, fight their refusals and shove it down their throat.

There are many unknown "unicorns" that currently exist as code. The code is done, there's just no users, because the world doesn't even know it's a thing and those that do know have not being convinced that it's needed.

My opinion, my advice. Forget the code, find the customers/market first.

A software developer with complete code and no customers is just a software developer.

A business person with tons of customers and no software/product is in business.

So decide if you want to be in business or to be a software developer. I suspect that most developers just dream about business as a means of escape from their day to day reality, but secretly don't even want to be in business, they love writing code more than being in business.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#76

Post by dboreham »

If you allow it, your customers won't always pay you the money they owe. Always assume that if you don't have the money, it may never come, and arrange your life around that possibility.

Disclaimer: in my experience small privately held companies do pay consistently and on time. Other kinds of customer, not so much..

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#77

Post by danm07 »

There is no clear cut definition of "business." You have a picture in your head of what you want the future to look like, and "business" is all the actions associated with making it come true, and this can vary dramatically by sector.

Best advice I can think of is to not think generally about what is good strategy, or anything of that sort, but about what makes your product valuable in the lives of the people you hope to make it for.

The rest will sort itself out.

Re: Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers

#80

Post by [deleted] »

accountyaccount wrote: post #50
jargnar wrote: post #20

It's a skill that can be learned like every other skill. You can take the "in 21 days" route or the MOOC / University course route, or constantly read business articles, Steve Jobs videos, etc. But some top tips stand out for me over time: * Talking to people, networking > Not talking to people * Bug free > Elegant code * UX > UI * Simple products that do one thing well > Complex products * Understanding entire marke…

I get some of these, but "don't procrastinate" and "understand the entire market" are kind of ridiculous. You might as well throw "know everything" and "work hard" in there.

[deleted]
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