We took 5 years of little to no income to realise we were in the business of business, not the business of software.
The years we spent writing software were more-or-less wasted, once we realized that -marketing- and sales were the drivers the we spent time on that, and less time dreaming up new things to write.
In other words when evaluating new ideas the primary questions become "Who is the market? How will I reach them? Can I afford that? Can they afford this? Will they care enough to pay cold hard cash?"
Before that we evaluated ideas on merit "is this cool? Does it have utility? Is it better than what already exists?" All of which are meaningless if there's no market share left, if you can't reach the customer, if they're not in enough pain to care, or if they can't afford you.
Once this truth that our focus is business not software, THEN we started making enough money to get paid salaries. But nothing like FAANG level salaries.
Similar story: I was working in software, and over the years I literally felt pain to think about working for someone else for the rest of my life. After lots of side projects alone and with friends, with VC—backable and bootstrapped ambitions, I could just feel it in my bones that solo-bootstrapped B2C-software-entrepreneurship was the best fit for my skill strengths and weaknesses, temperament, and desired lifestyle.
1. I left corporate at $3K monthly (not recurring).
2. 0 pivots on the idea that ended up “working”, but countless other side projects before AND after that idea.
3. $0 for many years. Then decided to monetize (one time purchase) a project that had decent usage and traffic. Then a few thousand a month for a year. Moved to subscription pricing and improved it a ton based on my vision and customer feedback. Now a little under $10K/m recurring after a few years from the previous milestone and growing steadily.
4. I never want to go back to working for someone else again.
5. Solo
6. See above. Two critical aspects IMO.
1. I did a lot of side projects. I had a lot of “at bats”. And each time I learned more. I developed more skills sure, but also arguably more importantly learned more about myself: what I wanted and what I could do. And you only need one hit. Doesn’t even have to be a home run.
2. Product and marketing/sales intuition are critical. I wasn’t even a software engineer, but was a technical product person. You can’t just build an impressive technical system. You have to build a product that users love (product vision/sense) and get it in front of them (marketing/sales), with extremely limited time and money (ruthless prioritization).
---
1. Services business, had a few clients that I knew would say yes. 2. None. But trying to pivot away from services to products -- dozens, none successful. 3. When you have a good pipeline of clients, it's great. Then it can all come crashing down to zero in a matter of weeks. 4. I want to, but now I'm essentially unemployable. 5. Solo. 6. Found myself back in academia of all places, and simultaneously advising large corporates on how to make use of language models.
1. Quit and returned to home country before starting up. I did try the evenings and weekend startup approach, but got close to burn out. For me at least, starting up meant working on something full time.
2. Took 4 pivots and as many years to get our first dollar. In year 2, we did earn some money but was cost of goods sold (travel tickets, building materials, do can't really count that as dollar earned).
3. It was a series of plateaus. Took a long time for the first $10, then about a year to first $1000, then an year to $3000 and then another year to $10K. This is just one data point. Smarter/Luckier people may do it faster/better.
4. I love software engineering. I am still doing it at my startup. I'm doing it my way, learning and experimenting with stuff. Actually my core motivation is to keep doing software (and someday even build a programming language) supported by a team and company creating value for others and getting paid for it.
5. With a co-founder.
6. An article on the initial journey, I wrote down a while back. https://medium.com/messengermarketing/from-quitting-silicon-...
Btw, the idea mentioned at the end of the article also failed. But that final pivot is what we are still working on (in-cart campaign software for Shopify stores). This second half of the journey is still ongoing. Will try to write it down someday.
1. Start making the first dollar 2. Pretty straightforward. Offering some APIs for web scraping. 0 pivots 3. Right now, 40USD/month, 1 client 4. Still a full-time worker 5. Solo 6. There are many web scraping websites which are very expensive or slow. I try to focus on fast and reliable with reasonable prices.
I graduated from university in 2007 and started my first job as a programmer. I began full-time entrepreneurship in 2010.
I am in China, working in the internet industry. The company I work for is listed on NASDAQ and is comparable to the level of the FANG companies.
Over the past 14 years, I have undergone two entrepreneurial ventures, both of which have been successful. One of the companies is relatively large, with hundreds of employees, while the other one is quite small, with around 20 people, both running stably.
Here are my answers to the questions:
1. No, and I had no income after resigning, this is a fact.
2. Countless pivots, extremely tormenting.
3. The income curve was zero for a long time, even during the stable operation periods of the businesses, the income and profit fluctuated from time to time due to the global situation and economic conditions being very unstable in recent years.
4. I have always maintained the habit of coding and might fully return to software engineering in my next venture, possibly by starting a game software company.
5. The first one was with friends, and the second one I completed independently.
6. Entrepreneurship is very difficult, and earning an income is hard. I think the key point of my personal story is that my financial situation was very dire for a long time. Since programmer salaries are very high, my colleagues who didn't venture into entrepreneurship had a very comfortable life, while I was tormented every day. After 14 years of entrepreneurial life, my personal financial situation improved around the 7th or 8th year. Of course, I am now a standard affluent class (currently 40 years old), but I am not intoxicated by wealth. My mental state also experienced significant ups and downs, and there was a period when I had to rely on medication. During this process, I gained some religious beliefs, which have enriched my perspective on the world.