You could probably talk to business owners with problems, launch an (appropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of dollars per year) product against those problems, build contingent on getting 10 commits to buy
I don't doubt that you're absolutely right, but this bit strikes me as hard. I've struggled to find one business owner with a problem they perceive, let alone 10 with commitments to buying a solution for the same problem.
Ironically, it strikes me that there's a gap here for a business to solve; connecting entrepreneurial devs with business owners aware of problems.
Is the problem that you can’t identify owners, that you can’t successfully get in touch with business owners, that you can’t convince them to talk to you, that you can’t get signal from those conversations, or that you are accurately getting the signal “Actually literally nothing could be better about my life.”
Draw the funnel diagram, with numbers if necessary. Having talked to many devs who believe similar, I think the most actionable advice is likely “Organize your next N weeks to talk to many, many more business owners than your last N weeks.”
The problem is usually at the start of the funnel. Most solo developers, especially those who have just quit their cushy FAANG jobs, are not positioned to personally know a lot of business owners (especially not outside of tech, where all the low-hanging fruit exist). So simply saying "go meet many business owners" doesn't help, unless you can also explain the how.
To give a counter-example, I did consulting for a decade before going off to do my thing, so I have a lot of personal contacts and I'm familiar with a lot of problems, both general and specific, that businesses struggle with, and turning those into products has been relatively straight-forward. But most solo devs don't have this background, so they need more specific and actionable advice to build their funnel.
> So simply saying "go meet many business owners" doesn't help, unless you can also explain the how.
There are like eight zillion guides to doing this online, and unless you're willing to spam people, it always boils down to: Grind it out. Start making cold pitches, and hustle for as many warm intros as possible.
but how many of those are interesting to work on, i too have been freelancimg and know some of problems, but when i think about them i dont reality want to work on them more them i have to.
This is the realization that has led me to prefer working for a big software company over entrepreneurship in the past few years. Unless you find the problem of entrepreneurship interesting in and of itself, it is very unlikely the projects you will be working on as an entrepreneur will be nearly as technically interesting as the kinds of work you'll be doing at a company working on a large scale product. It's unfortunate, entrepreneurship sounds more interesting than being a cog in a big machine, but in practice I think it usually isn't for technically minded people.
Isn’t that the same problem endemic at Google? How many failed messaging platforms for instance has Google had because everyone wanted to work on a new problem instead of iterating on the existing one?
After over two decades, despite all of its attempts, Google has yet to do anything successful that wasn’t advertising based.
No Android doesn’t count. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google had only made $24 billion in profit on Android from its inception until the beginning of the trial. I’m the meantime they pay Apple $8 billion a year to be the default search engine on iOS devices. Apple has madd more in mobile from Google than Google has made from Android.
Hmm, your reply went in a direction I very much didn't expect, though I can see where you're coming from if I squint.
What I called technically interesting is "working on a large scale product", which for you seems to have implied "work on a new problem", but for me it's exactly the opposite. The kinds of large scale projects I find the most technically interesting are long into their growth curve.
While it may not be reasonable as a business owner, I don't think wanting to enjoy your work is nuts. Seems totally reasonable to consider if you have enough options.
Agreed. If you have to be working on some exciting, disruptive project, doing solo development work that generates good income by working with run of the mill businesses with run of the mill problems is not going to be a good fit.
Personally, I find boring to be quite exciting - but perhaps not if the only thing you're looking at is the technical solution. Building a small business involves figuring out how to solve the mundane but important thing, but then you get to figure out how to sell it, how much to charge, how to do customer outreach, do support, turn the business into a repeatable process, etc. Building a business out of it is quite challenging and fun and the technical solution is frankly a small part of it.
Many solo-preneur types with technical backgrounds are way over-indexed on the technical aspect and want to treat it like their last technical job, but without a boss, which leads to a lot of disappointment and frustration.
To be honest i would not agree.
While those challenges like all challenges can be exciting, in the end of the day it will still lack you full engagement because it's something that's boring to you or not interesting.
i'm kinda in that situation now, and got to play all the roles, like how we increased our conversation ratio by 50% with me thinking like a sales person (hint, don't over-complicate your pricing page), and those things can get you exited for some time and the money also, i just don's see it long term. i would rather playing with something that i love to do.
Not the OP, but what I have struggled with here is the feeling of being a "solution looking for a problem". It's a step before where you're at. It's not that I can't identify owners, it's that I can't identify _problems_.
I am lacking the domain experience to even have the first conversation, and it feels like paying people to ask "so tell me everything that is wrong with your business" is the wrong way to do it.
I know PG mentions "solve problems you have yourself", but I am not a business owner. I'm a software engineer.
That video you linked earlier - Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business - was incredible and feels like the right move once you have that idea. But what about finding that idea?
A good way to think of it is that you aren't looking for problems. You're looking for smells.
Most business owners tend to be experts in their specific domain, where they have already used their knowledge and expertise to great advantage. But running a business entails more than just handling the problem domain itself. There's an entire category of tasks and responsibilities under the "business administration" umbrella that the business owner will not be an expert in, and will probably despise dealing with because it takes them away from the fun stuff that is their expertise. That's a good area to focus your gaze on.
For instance, the accounting clerk may be spending 4+ hours every day manually typing invoices into two different systems, but to the business owner this is probably perceived as a normal and expected course of business. The accounting clerk is unlikely to complain about it themselves either, since they are getting paid to do it (remember that Sinclair quote). But to you as a software engineer, double data entry is very obviously a red flag, and if you care enough about it you can do a deep dive and see if it can be eliminated using automation, and present it as a cost-saving solution.
Generally speaking, nobody is going to hand you a written list of their problems on a silver platter, and even if they do, the problems they have identified will be so general and vague (e.g. "we have a lot of inefficiencies in our accounting department") that you won't be able to simply go home and start hacking away at them. So you need to use a methodology to start peeling off the layers of the onion, so to speak. And that always entails follow-up meetings and learning other software systems and familiarizing yourself with various business practices.
At some point, you will come to the realization that you no longer view yourself as a "software engineer". Rather, you are a problem solver, and writing code is simply one of the many skills you possess. That's when you'll know you're on the right track.
I was in Software for a couple of years and I only saw software/IT problems. But these problems usually had a variety of solutions and only some glue was required.
Now I've been in the natural stone industry for 4 years and I can't count the number of problems to which the solution is "add more people". So much data entry and data extraction from PDFs <-> ERP/CRM/Other software. 100s of man-hours spent on something that could be done with proper data formats and simple automation.
I personally believe that software engineers are SORELY lacking on all other industries besides software. We need more software engineers venturing out into other industries and identifying and solving problems.
> We need more software engineers venturing out into other industries and identifying and solving problems.
this seems to line up with my experience well. But I don't have a good line of sight for me to actually experience those businesses outside of taking a non-SWE job and going from a well-compensated expert to barely-paid newb. Spending years learning a specific industry in the hopes that I can turn my former skills into a viable business seems like the wrong approach in several axes. I know VC groups (sometimes) have entire departments whose purpose is to understand other industries... it seems counterproductive for individuals to try to and go this route. Thoughts?
Agreed, that's not a pragmatic path. But if starting a business is your goal, and finding a viable idea is your obstacle, I'd argue this is a sure-shot way of FINDING said idea.
Some potential paths can be:
1. SWE @ SW company -> "BA" @ non SW company or whatever term is used for generic-problem-solver in that industry.
2. Part-time hourly work in another industry. This is fairly easy through temp agencies.
3. Apprenticeship in another industry (perhaps in more hands-on industries).
Some are hard to get, others don't pay as well. But to find gold, I'd say some level of hardship is required, and this, in my view, is a bulletproof way of finding that gold.
Whether you're able to dig it out and then able to sell it at a profit, is totally another question.
Hey Gary, I'm solving them using 3rd party tools (docparser and evolution.ai) at the moment to offload these types of tasks.
I don't have a fully working solution, just started testing with specific documents (steamship lines notifications) to see if it's a fit.
I think it'll be slow road for each department I want to tackle - logistics, accounting, purchasing, etc. Every department has this issue, and I'm sure products could be built to serve those niches.
Plot the day - talk to a business owner and get a sense of the hours they spend doing different tasks. If there's something they spend X+ hours per day doing - find what they want to achieve and optimise from there.
What solutions would you pay for as a software engineer? What would your boss/team lead pay for? You can't really do it for someone elses domain, you need a motivated partner in that domain for that (my general experience, of course there are exceptions)
I believe that people tend to forget always one thing: the business owners don't know their problems _worth solving_. This fact is most of the time overlooked.
In my experience business owners tend to talk about problems that are impossible to solve, or problems that are trivial.
Typically, when you actually find problem worth solving, it is not merely a software. You are looking at whole processes that need to be changed. You will change how people work. And when you actually try to present the new solution to the organisation, you will face resistance. People don't like change.
Some could say that it is the business owners responsibility to push the change. But when they give up, they stop paying you.
Anyways, the advice "just find a problem" feels to come from people who either read too many books and never tried, or from people who got lucky the first try.
> when you actually try to present the new solution to the organisation, you will face resistance. People don't like change.
This struggle is real. People also don't understand that software development is a process of continuous optimisation, learning and improvement. They won't accept a good solution only a perfect one.
Interesting read. Not sure why the author was surprised that no business owner wanted to trade in their product for a saas.
No one really wants to deal with a saas when a one time purchase is available. Things like free tiers, lockins prevent us from moving until something happens (something always happens from big price increases to service changes or shutdowns changes to terms, etc).
Biggest problems are cost and uncertainity and losing a sense of control.
A saas to a customer is run like a fly by store selling stolen goods out of the back of a truck. Even though this person has been selling at this same spot every friday you know this can't go on forever so when he doesn't show up you are not surprised. When a saas closes down / changes terms / increases prices suddenly you are not surprised.
It works with some industries that have a high rate of change but if you plan on having a stable business you want to avoid saases
I think the approach here is a bit backwards from what the rest of the world has always done to a degree. Software Development is a specialized skillset, not unlike a trade. If we are solving a problem for someone with software, we are essentially like a typical contractor you hire to do something at home. What you're doing here is trying to convert that into a scalable product under the assumption that many other might also have the same problem. This might be true, but as in construction, the product makers aren't selling to the consumer directly but rather the tradesperson.
Every "tech" company is not actually selling tech, but rather is selling something tangible, a product of sorts. Software developers are selling their labor.
If you want to find out the scalable product or solution in a particular business or domain, I think you really need to be a part of that industry or have someone who is.
Otherwise, even if you end up developing a SaaS that satisfies the needs of 100 customers, you won't really ever truly be able to scale. So my suggestion is start talking to friends and family in other industries.
I don't think anyone on Upwork or whatever other job board would complain if they were out there asking for custom work and you showed up with a ready-made product.
Beyond that, every business owner kvetching on Twitter. Problems are everywhere!
Certainly can be very hard to get 10 business owners with the same problem to all line up and pay thousands for your software, but problems are easy to come by.
Edit: filtering for problems solvable by any particular solo developer's skillset in less than 2 years is another challenge.
Yeah, this is why I have been working as a data analyst. I've taken on as many vendor management responsibilities as I can and help out with COGS and revenue attribution analysis for finance. I have been collecting ideas while making steady wage, and eventually I'll pull the trigger on something
I have a backlog of like 200+ viable new product / feature ideas that help solve some business problem or improve the efficiency of activities people do with financial transactions involved. Many are too small to be stand alone for sure, but I do not believe million dollar ideas are grown in a silo
Willing to discuss any of your ideas? I feel like everyone has hoarded ideas (including myself) that are never acted upon because we keep telling ourselves "eventually I'll pull the trigger" (including myself)
Not the good ones ;) Most will not make sense without context of private company work anyway
But as an example I also get a lot of fluff ideas for video game mechanics. For multiplayer games, the ability to tag another player for tracking. So you can pull up a menu and see players you've tagged and their recent performance and such or create your own 'achievements' and see what players have accomplished them (with necessary privacy options included of course). The primary use-cases being clan recruitment and pro-player analysis.
Random product idea example: A renting service for size-adjustable tables. So you can test out what table size fits best in your space. counter-height vs standard, square vs skinny, size A in room 1 or size B in room 2, etc. probably too small a market on this idea though since itd only be worth it before expensive table purchases
My experience is that even if you find a business owner with a problem there's a steep climb to build a product and sell it. I'm a developer & my brother is a mortgage broker - I even worked for a few months in his office during the sub-prime bubble :-) I saw first hand many processes that could be improved , even coded a few hack "solutions." In my case, it was just too easy to get a high paying dev job than take on the risks and costs of starting a business. Coincidentally, a recent indiehackers podcast with Dave Sims of Floify (a mortgage broker product) validated what was needed. I recommend listening to this episode - very good info developing a successful product for a domain you don't know:
>> Ironically, it strikes me that there's a gap here for a business to solve; connecting entrepreneurial devs with business owners aware of problems.
>This. Why hasn't this gap been filled yet?
It's called Upwork.
No seriously, hear me out. When a business owner has a problem they perceive could be solved with technology, they create a job or they go on job posting sites seeking either an employee or a contractor to try and solve their problem.
Where they get it wrong is that they frequently have unrealistic expectations about what it will cost and how long it will take. They have no idea what skills they should look for and who to trust.
Is there a market mismatch here? Absolutely, but you'll have to find a way above the fray of recruiting sites as that's really the state of the market.
Yeah I’ve tried another similar site and people’s expectations are a bit loony, usually they want to pay the price you would charge a single customer for 1 year as a SaaS for you to develop the entire solution! Maybe non software folks don’t get the difference between say paying Atlassian $1000/month or whatever it is for Jira and paying a dev $1000 to develop a JIRA clone, because it probably seems like the same thing.
You're validating the problem, not the value or the target market. You need all 3, but it's easier to identify problems, then validate whether the defined target would be interested at a given price point.
The freelancer sites are just a starting point, they answer the question of, "what are some things business owners want".
Recent client: "I took a fortran class back in college, so let me know if you need any help."
Therein lies the problem: They know lawyers, doctors, accountants, heck even plumbers are going to be expensive because they are educated / trained and/or they get you out of an identifiable tight spot (the IRS isn't happy, water is coming into the house, I'm having a heart attack, I'm getting sued, etc).
Software developers? Outside the FAANGs technical people are viewed as fungible. Many, many small businesses are grossly undercapitalized such that a business owner might very well be paying that technical person a lot more than they pay themselves. Likewise, technical roles are typically compensated well above many other clerical / field / service / business type roles such that a business owner might not have ever paid so much to any other single employee.
Man, this is such a genius idea. Spend a good amount of time manually looking through job requests, then learn how to search for these, then cluster them and quantify the market which leads to total addressable market, then compare competition and figure out a premium offering, then sell at enterprise level with product + services, then gain efficiencies and go wider market, much like HubSpot.
I used to have an Upwork account, to try and swing some cash on the side. Most of those jobs are paid far out of proportion to what they are asking people to do. "Facebook but for XYZ", is something I'm pretty sure I've seen there, several times.
I suspect that you can get a lot more leverage visiting your local business organization watering holes...
Elance? Odesk? There are a fair number of players in the "find a dev to solve a one-off business problem" space. The issue is that this is a market for lemons[1] on both sides - for business owners with problems, it's hard to verify that the entrepreneurial devs can actually implement a solution, and for the entrepreneurial devs it's hard to weed out problem clients.
Someone who solves or even slightly mitigates either of these issues will have a viable business. I know that for the "ensure the dev is competent" side of things there are many consulting companies that live and die by their reputations, but generally these don't usually scale up beyond a certain size, and when they do their reputation deteriorates. I am not aware of any businesses that attempt to solve from the flip side and weed out problem clients (if anyone is aware of such a service, I would be interested).
As if that wasn't enough of a challenge, if you do manage to connect quality devs to quality clients, there's the issue of sufficiently monetizing that relationship: you can charge a finder's fee or similar when you first connect them, but once a client finds a dev they like they will probably stick with that dev. So in that business you can lose business because you match people too poorly (and they leave because you can't help them) and you can lose business because you match people too well (and they leave because they've now found somebody they trust so they don't need your services anymore).
I think managed and vetted marketplaces are the way to go. A marketplace where the owner has some level of expertise in order to vet the suppliers, much like Codeable for WordPress or SuperSide for design.
My theory is that there are actually a number of "filters" before this kind of relationship would happen. First, the business owner has to recognize the problem, care about it, allot time to understand it, have the proper motivation (financial and mental), and network with others to solve.
Then on the other side of the scenario, the dev has to be logistically available to working on the project, be capable in both the tech and soft skills needed, care about it, have the proper motivation (financial and mental), and network.
The hypothetical business would solve the networking issue, but not the rest. But I think these relationships are built in a more decentralized way, though chance encounters, mutual friends, and cold connections. Sort of like dating. (Kind of is because this relationship seems like one of cofounders.)
Or I could be completely wrong and there is a stealth startup out there ready to shake things up.
I've had the exact opposite happen, but granted more consulting than dev.
1. Know someone at the company or a key advisor
2. Spend time together
3. Hear "we think we need help but we're not sure where"
4. Respond relatively insightful with 2 or 3 things they could do that are valuable and force rank them
5. Get feedback
6. Price it. Explain value.
7. Deliver
In my eyes if you're helping smaller companies sub say 1000 employees the value you bring is in knowing what to do. And telling them. They need you to understand the universe of options, what you've seen at other places (i.e. experience) and to weigh in on what works. They largely have no idea how to move the boulder otherwise you would not be there.
Because usually when I've tried this, the business owners dont-know-what-they-dont-know so it is difficult to even articulate the problem they face.
This is why I faced finding solve-able problems much easier as a consultant because once you're embedded in an organization you see their problems, and perhaps you can ask the right questions and tease out a possible sale-able solve-able solution.
"... I outsourced much of the writing. That cost me more than it should have because I knew nothing about hiring and managing writers, but the experience taught me a lot ..."
"... no love for Xero ..."
As an entrepreneurial dev who is also a business owner, it sounds like he may have some problems there to solve!
Not sure if those are viable, just pointing it out. The easiest problems to solve are your own or at least ones you encounter yourself. Doing some consulting may help to see problems in business or industries that are not your own.
Yeah, you are right here. It sounds nice to talk with business owners, but you'd be doing it for months to get any valuable insight. Better to build something that you can probably sell and talk with people in the course of selling it, not upfront. You can always pivot a bit once you're in a market.
I don't doubt that you're absolutely right, but this bit strikes me as hard. I've struggled to find one business owner with a problem they perceive, let alone 10 with commitments to buying a solution for the same problem.
Ironically, it strikes me that there's a gap here for a business to solve; connecting entrepreneurial devs with business owners aware of problems.