4 ms·

"Already been done" is a quitter's excuse not to enter the market. If you care about the problem, you should be able to compete.

rubicon33 8y ago
Yea, I didn't say anything to the contrary. In fact, I am the owner of a business in an industry which was heavily saturated. There were already companies doing exactly what we do, before we started. I just knew we could do it a lot better. We're making money already and haven't made a single sales call, or put a single advertisement out there. We're on schedule to be profitable this year. I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg with this business, but I recognized there is plenty of opportunity in the software world despite it not being as flashy perhaps, as the last 10 years. I'm just saying that this type of environment is going to be much less "hot" than when the playing field is wide open. The early days of iOS were a gold rush. That's cooled off significantly, yet who knows when the next Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat will appear.
- s2g 8y ago
  > I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg What does that mean? If I'm not getting rich, what the hell is the point? I can work half as hard doing bullshit for some big tech company.
  - rubicon33 8y ago
    "Getting rich" is a relative term. Am I going to significantly increase my earnings by owning this business? Yes. Am I going to be buying a penthouse on 5th Ave. and driving a Ferrari to the office? No. I'll add this additional insight into why I have always wanted to a build a business: A business is a machine. Built correctly, you can step away from this machine and it will continue to run, and create wealth for you. Even if that wealth is modest, it is wealth that can be provided to you at no cost of TIME. This gives you back your TIME, to either work a 9-5 or create another machine. Er, business. (Obviously building the machine can take a lot of time. Not an insignificant point).
    - ryandrake 8y ago
      What do you mean by “no cost of time”. I’ve always thought if you own a business, you need to be dedicating your time to keeping it going or it’s going to fail. Where are these mystical businesses that you just own and collect checks every week? EDIT: I don’t doubt you, but i just can’t think of an example!
      - rubicon33 8y ago
        So to cover the obvious case first - If your business is successful enough, you hire a CEO, employees, etc, and hand off daily operations to them. Of course, you as the owner are involved in the company still, but the majority of your time should be free to tackle other issues. Elon Musk is a good example of someone who has done this. He has multiple companies, working on different issues. Of course each company you start takes a significant up-front cost of your time. But the more successful the company comes, the more likely you are to be able to onboard employees who can give you back your time. Clearly, this is only possible once you have "made it big", and it's not really the type of business I am speaking about. The other type of "autonomous" business is a SAAS business. The idea here is that you build a software service that generates revenue. This revenue should come in the form of monthly subscriptions to your service. If you can keep your costs down (i.e. do the work yourself, and don't hire full time employees), then once your system is stable, it should be able to generate income with relatively minor investments to your time. Obviously again with this case, a significant UPFRONT effort must be made to develop a system that provides enough value to customers, that they will pay for it. I've been working on my business now for over 2 years. It's been a side project that has consumed a healthy majority of my spare time outside of my 9-5. I'm on track to break-even in revenue/costs in 3-4 months. Around that time frame, I also expect to be "feature complete" with version 1.0. This should sustain at least a year, if not longer, of minimal time investment. Sure, I might need to fix a bug here or there, or investigate a connectivity issue or something that I simply can't 100% protect against... But the system has been developed from the ground up for long term stability, and reliability. It's been running now for 2 years, and I've had basically no issues that I've needed to fix. It's been all feature development. By the end of this year I can pretty much guarantee I will be hands free, spending less than 3 hours a week, making more money than I spend. That is the goal. Build something that can run (mostly) by itself, that generates more income than it costs to run. p.s. Knowing myself, because I love what I do, I'll continue to work on it just for fun. But there's immense peace of mind knowing I don't have to.

rubicon33 8y ago

Yea, I didn't say anything to the contrary. In fact, I am the owner of a business in an industry which was heavily saturated. There were already companies doing exactly what we do, before we started. I just knew we could do it a lot better. We're making money already and haven't made a single sales call, or put a single advertisement out there. We're on schedule to be profitable this year. I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg with this business, but I recognized there is plenty of opportunity in the software world despite it not being as flashy perhaps, as the last 10 years. I'm just saying that this type of environment is going to be much less "hot" than when the playing field is wide open. The early days of iOS were a gold rush. That's cooled off significantly, yet who knows when the next Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat will appear.

s2g 8y ago
> I'm not going to be the next Zuckerberg What does that mean? If I'm not getting rich, what the hell is the point? I can work half as hard doing bullshit for some big tech company.
- rubicon33 8y ago
  "Getting rich" is a relative term. Am I going to significantly increase my earnings by owning this business? Yes. Am I going to be buying a penthouse on 5th Ave. and driving a Ferrari to the office? No. I'll add this additional insight into why I have always wanted to a build a business: A business is a machine. Built correctly, you can step away from this machine and it will continue to run, and create wealth for you. Even if that wealth is modest, it is wealth that can be provided to you at no cost of TIME. This gives you back your TIME, to either work a 9-5 or create another machine. Er, business. (Obviously building the machine can take a lot of time. Not an insignificant point).
  - ryandrake 8y ago
    What do you mean by “no cost of time”. I’ve always thought if you own a business, you need to be dedicating your time to keeping it going or it’s going to fail. Where are these mystical businesses that you just own and collect checks every week? EDIT: I don’t doubt you, but i just can’t think of an example!
    - rubicon33 8y ago
      So to cover the obvious case first - If your business is successful enough, you hire a CEO, employees, etc, and hand off daily operations to them. Of course, you as the owner are involved in the company still, but the majority of your time should be free to tackle other issues. Elon Musk is a good example of someone who has done this. He has multiple companies, working on different issues. Of course each company you start takes a significant up-front cost of your time. But the more successful the company comes, the more likely you are to be able to onboard employees who can give you back your time. Clearly, this is only possible once you have "made it big", and it's not really the type of business I am speaking about. The other type of "autonomous" business is a SAAS business. The idea here is that you build a software service that generates revenue. This revenue should come in the form of monthly subscriptions to your service. If you can keep your costs down (i.e. do the work yourself, and don't hire full time employees), then once your system is stable, it should be able to generate income with relatively minor investments to your time. Obviously again with this case, a significant UPFRONT effort must be made to develop a system that provides enough value to customers, that they will pay for it. I've been working on my business now for over 2 years. It's been a side project that has consumed a healthy majority of my spare time outside of my 9-5. I'm on track to break-even in revenue/costs in 3-4 months. Around that time frame, I also expect to be "feature complete" with version 1.0. This should sustain at least a year, if not longer, of minimal time investment. Sure, I might need to fix a bug here or there, or investigate a connectivity issue or something that I simply can't 100% protect against... But the system has been developed from the ground up for long term stability, and reliability. It's been running now for 2 years, and I've had basically no issues that I've needed to fix. It's been all feature development. By the end of this year I can pretty much guarantee I will be hands free, spending less than 3 hours a week, making more money than I spend. That is the goal. Build something that can run (mostly) by itself, that generates more income than it costs to run. p.s. Knowing myself, because I love what I do, I'll continue to work on it just for fun. But there's immense peace of mind knowing I don't have to.