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.
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.