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Ask HN: Critique My Business Plan

3 points by prakhar897 3y ago

Inspired by the other Open Source contributors on this platform, I'm also trying to take the same path. Currently, I'm working on creating a 100% free VSCode extension which can autocomplete your code using Local LLMs. There are other players which already do this but they are all paid tools. Often, they offer a reduced capability one for free. I know a lot of devs (including me) who use the free version but don't buy the paid one. So, I think people will be willing to setup a local server which will increase their productivity. I'm thinking of giving office hours/feature prioritisation as paid offering so that I can keep the lights on. For early users, I have no way to advertise except post it on HN, Reddit and hope it gains traction. Can anyone with a successful Open Source project chime in on how this can be done? What are your thoughts on this? Any feedback is appreciated :)

houseatrielah 3y ago
You need a plan where getting paid is not directly correlated to your working hours. The classic example is software on a CD. Takes 1000 hours to write, but then you can sell 100 or 1 million of them; that income is not correlated to the 1000 hours.
mcherm 3y ago
What is your estimate of the amount of work needed to create a minimum usable version of this extension? If the answer is "a month's worth of Sunday afternoons to make it work, plus about double that to make it polished", then it is definitely worth pursuing, even if the only benefit you would get would be some name recognition on your resume. If the answer is "a year of development by a mid-size team of highly skilled developers" then it seems very unlikely to me that you will be able to bring such a project to completion, much less make it profitable.
- prakhar897 3y ago
  Can definitely roll out MVP in a weekend. I'm more concerned about getting users as I've failed on this step a lot.
ezekg 3y ago
I don't think office hours/feature prioritization is a good and sustainable business plan, no. I wouldn't even call it a business plan. You need to find a value-add that will entice more than a handful of people to pay you.
ac2u 3y ago
This approach is much more likely to help you gain consulting work or be headhunted for an engineering role require LLM experience rather than be a direct source of revenue.
simne 3y ago
It's extremely hard, to convert free users to paid, when you have not attached them tightly to needle of your service. My friend tried to do similar thing in his startup (very much like Disqus), but he have not success in converting small sites to paid services, so concentrated on totally different market - large corporations, like FT, Washington Post, etc.

3 points by prakhar897 3y ago

houseatrielah 3y ago

You need a plan where getting paid is not directly correlated to your working hours. The classic example is software on a CD. Takes 1000 hours to write, but then you can sell 100 or 1 million of them; that income is not correlated to the 1000 hours.

mcherm 3y ago

What is your estimate of the amount of work needed to create a minimum usable version of this extension? If the answer is "a month's worth of Sunday afternoons to make it work, plus about double that to make it polished", then it is definitely worth pursuing, even if the only benefit you would get would be some name recognition on your resume. If the answer is "a year of development by a mid-size team of highly skilled developers" then it seems very unlikely to me that you will be able to bring such a project to completion, much less make it profitable.

prakhar897 3y ago
Can definitely roll out MVP in a weekend. I'm more concerned about getting users as I've failed on this step a lot.

ezekg 3y ago

I don't think office hours/feature prioritization is a good and sustainable business plan, no. I wouldn't even call it a business plan. You need to find a value-add that will entice more than a handful of people to pay you.

ac2u 3y ago

This approach is much more likely to help you gain consulting work or be headhunted for an engineering role require LLM experience rather than be a direct source of revenue.

simne 3y ago

It's extremely hard, to convert free users to paid, when you have not attached them tightly to needle of your service. My friend tried to do similar thing in his startup (very much like Disqus), but he have not success in converting small sites to paid services, so concentrated on totally different market - large corporations, like FT, Washington Post, etc.