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My solopreneur story

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Re: My solopreneur story

#81

Post by Capricorn2481 »

cellis wrote: post #72
antisthenes wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to receiving an unsatisfactory reply on a support ticket is not "lower your expectations", regardless of how that business may be structured. If we lower our expectations of software, we'll get exactly that, shitty software.

If you don’t like it you can always stop paying, or better yet build your own. That’s how things get better.

I stopped paying for Youtube Premium. Did that make Youtube better?

Maybe I'll find time to build that when I'm not building API integrations with Youtube.

Re: My solopreneur story

#82

Post by ignoramous »

demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

> Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur.

Consider the fact that OP is perhaps an outlier [0]. They probably are super comfortable and super good at selling or marketing their product themselves and building way many number of experiments (bets) than most would / could. Consumer software (and usually product-led b2b2c software) is all about marketing, while b2b is mostly sales. You just can't know those are do-able by every eng on their own.

> An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT.

But really, software has been lucrative, and Internet made it doubly so. Unlike most goods / services in the world, for software the distribution costs are non-existent, and manufacturing costs are subsidized heavily as number of users increase. Building a sustainable software business (as opposed to repeatedly building tools and services for the flavour of the day, which is AI right now) however is not easy. New comers (or call them copy cats) challenge incumbents like no tomorrow since the only investment required in light of new technological advancements is... time (assuming you've got the skill already).

[0] Btw, Pieter Levels makes way more as solopreneur: ~$200k per month / https://levels.io/my-first-million/

Re: My solopreneur story

#83

Post by k__ »

cornholio wrote: post #76
OmarShehata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two ways of approach entrepreneurship, and the conflict between each is why there's some dissonance here: 1) Do it to escape the grind, as one commenter here mentioned. In this way, it doesn't matter what product you make, or how you make it. The goal is self sufficiency, to find a niche that you can fill, etc. 2) Do it because you're trying to effect some specific change in the world. Something doesn't exi…

It's an illusion that 2 can happen without 1. Unless you have financial and entrepreneurial freedom, you will never change anything anywhere. Whatever social structure you imagine you might navigate, be it business, politics, public opinion, a charitable organization, the world of art, literature or academia; you will always find a pre-existing, entrenched power structure of people calling the shots, controlling key…

To be fair, you don't need to "escape the grind" 100% to make 2 happen.

Re: My solopreneur story

#84

Post by debo_ »

Aurornis wrote: post #59
keiferski wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, we don’t know In the first paragraph: At the moment, my total revenue across all products is about $45K/month at ~90% profit.

Right! Did you notice the phrase “at the moment”? A snapshot in time that makes the narrative sound optimal. No mention of how it reached that point. No mention of what advertising routes were tried in the past. Another trick I’ve seen is for solopreneurs to create a “HoldCo” that holds their individual businesses, then to find creative ways to spend marketing dollars out of the parent company so they can keep it off…

He has several other articles about his journey. Perhaps look in his newsletter back issues?

Re: My solopreneur story

#85

Post by Capricorn2481 »

gumballindie wrote: post #62
kubb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate communism? I wonder what’s that, let me check, oh it’s some US conservative talking point. Wait, isn’t a politburo the executive committee of a communist party? How can that be corporate and own the media? Wait how is selling apps capitalist success? What capital is winning here? I guess the corporate capital of the company owning the App Store. Or is it the capital that the app making guy is building up? I…

> I wonder what’s that, let me check, oh it’s some US conservative talking point. I am confused. I thought us conservatives are fixated on corporate. Either way I am far from conservative in the sense you imply. If i do cross boundaries on some concepts thats because i am not fixated on ideology. The politburo is the corporate board. The corporate own the media through money. Selling apps is capitalism because money…

These are all functions of late-stage capitalism. Welcome to unchecked monopolies and corporate lobbying.

> I guess it is confusing because i am reversing roles. In my view pure, proper, capitalism is where money is largely managed by small and medium sized entities, as to allow it to flow freely and to set the mover of capital free in the process.

That's awesome, it's just never been done long-term and never will be.

Re: My solopreneur story

#86

Post by actionfromafar »

cornholio wrote: post #76
OmarShehata wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two ways of approach entrepreneurship, and the conflict between each is why there's some dissonance here: 1) Do it to escape the grind, as one commenter here mentioned. In this way, it doesn't matter what product you make, or how you make it. The goal is self sufficiency, to find a niche that you can fill, etc. 2) Do it because you're trying to effect some specific change in the world. Something doesn't exi…

It's an illusion that 2 can happen without 1. Unless you have financial and entrepreneurial freedom, you will never change anything anywhere. Whatever social structure you imagine you might navigate, be it business, politics, public opinion, a charitable organization, the world of art, literature or academia; you will always find a pre-existing, entrenched power structure of people calling the shots, controlling key…

Largely correct but the margins can have unreasonably large effects, like Linux, the GNU project and so on.

Re: My solopreneur story

#87

Post by croes »

demondemidi wrote: post #10

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

Survivorship bias.

These stories are the few lucky ones, the rest didn't have nearly the same success.

Remember flappy bird?

Re: My solopreneur story

#88

Post by kljkjkjlkju »

hooverd wrote: post #34
gumballindie wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire. Corporate communism is very much alive and kicking. Capital is clogged. The only way to make it move is to allow small to medium sized true capital makers and movers to thrive. Corporations are the new communist apparatus. Roles have been reversed.

TIL communism is when organizations do things.

If capitalism (incidentally, a term coined by Marx) is whatever one feels like it is, and no-one ever would call you out for that in an internet discussion, then it's pretty consistent to apply the same approach to communism.

Re: My solopreneur story

#89

Post by gumballindie »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #66
gumballindie wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are only angry because you too want to escape and are externalising the frustration of not finding a similar path. At least thats what i learned about myself when i had a similar reaction seeing such success stories. Then it struck me - this is it. This is the way for indie success. Build stuff that makes sense to a niche market. To me the product is irrelevant. But the fact that the author escaped is absolute bl…

I don't think the OP doesn't realize that, it just doesn't make it any less frustrating.

But why let it frustrate people when one can start taking notes? Literarily when i started looking into these types of successful independent makers in all industries i discovered there are _loads_ of them and each make a little thing here and there. It’s fascinating, and i cant stop reading about them. And the more i read the more i realise that hey… it’s actually doable! But one need to stop overcomplicating things.

Re: My solopreneur story

#90

Post by Capricorn2481 »

gumballindie wrote: post #73
public_defender wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole analysis reads like the economic version of flat earth theory to me, but I thank you both in advance because I am about to go down a research rabbit hole on "corporate communism."

Yeah so the state always bails corporations out, makes laws disproportionally in their favour, controls the media to whitewash their actions, and most important clogs capital and access to resources. Not to mention the constant suppression of businesses by acquisitions under all sorts of threats and regulatory overburdening. Thats communism. In communist countries communism did exactly that - a handful controlled the…

You're describing money flowing freely between rich people.

Republicans vote for this everyday. It's called taxing the rich. It's not that complicated.

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