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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

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.”

enraged_camel 7y ago
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.
- disiplus 7y ago
  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.
  - enraged_camel 7y ago
    Boring is good. Makes it a lot less likely that you’ll have competition. ;)
    - mediaman 7y ago
      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.
      - Toast_25 7y ago
        That's me in my dad's company rn. I know the tech but not the business and it's something I'm trying to get out of, but don't really know how.
      - disiplus 7y ago
        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.
        emodendroket 7y ago
        I think maybe owning your own business isn't for you then. Which is fine. Me neither.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    This is the problem I see with a lot of developers - not just those looking to be entrepreneurs. They want “interesting problems” instead of just trying to create products that someone is willing to pay for.
    - emodendroket 7y ago
      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.
    - sanderjd 7y ago
      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.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        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.
        sanderjd 7y ago
        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.
- exolymph 7y ago
  > 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. Learn sales y'all.
chowes 7y ago
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?
- wastedhours 7y ago
  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.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  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.
tappio 7y ago
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.
- rorykoehler 7y ago
  > 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.

enraged_camel 7y ago

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.

disiplus 7y ago
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.
- enraged_camel 7y ago
  Boring is good. Makes it a lot less likely that you’ll have competition. ;)
  - mediaman 7y ago
    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.
    - Toast_25 7y ago
      That's me in my dad's company rn. I know the tech but not the business and it's something I'm trying to get out of, but don't really know how.
    - disiplus 7y ago
      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.
      - emodendroket 7y ago
        I think maybe owning your own business isn't for you then. Which is fine. Me neither.
- scarface74 7y ago
  This is the problem I see with a lot of developers - not just those looking to be entrepreneurs. They want “interesting problems” instead of just trying to create products that someone is willing to pay for.
  - emodendroket 7y ago
    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.
  - sanderjd 7y ago
    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.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      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.
      - sanderjd 7y ago
        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.
exolymph 7y ago
> 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. Learn sales y'all.

chowes 7y ago

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?

wastedhours 7y ago
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.
enraged_camel 7y ago
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.

tappio 7y ago

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.

rorykoehler 7y ago
> 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.