3 ms·
Business and engineering styles can both work together. What I do is alternate one week of engineering (coding, writing docs, etc) with one week of business (ma
by cercatrova 4y ago
Business and engineering styles can both work together. What I do is alternate one week of engineering (coding, writing docs, etc) with one week of business (marketing, sales calls, writing blog posts, etc.).
This was recommended to me by Jon Yongfook who got to 10k MRR this way last year and is now at 50k MRR, all by following this pattern [0]. He's also an engineer by trade but found that this alternating business and engineering week approach is extremely effective for solo founders, especially solo engineers who'd usually let their marketing fall by the wayside as they focus on coding then wonder how their startup failed after they got no customers.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25929259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25929259
- Mezzie 4y agoThat is definitely a good way to do it if you're going to go solo, but once you grow enough/depending on the product and market and who your competitors are, you absolutely CANNOT wait a week to respond to people/make sales pitches. If nothing else, a competitor providing the same service with an always on sales department and the ability to respond to important clients in hours rather than days will smoke you. So if you know you want take this approach, make sure to do your market research beforehand and see that it's an economically viable approach. It works great for something like Bannerbear where the clients can just find another way to make images for a week or so. If it's something crucial to client deployment of their own products or if you're B2C, less so.
- cercatrova 4y agoAgreed. I think his company style works very well because it's an API product that's not very tied to sales. You can also hire a customer support person if you're successful enough which is what he did, his first hire I believe as well.