8 ms·

Moving from programmer to entrepreneur

84 points by craigkerstiens 14y ago

zengr 14y ago
"Code is 5% of your business" Really? Of the business yes, but for the product too (beautiful code is reflected in a beautiful product)?
- edwinnathaniel 14y ago
  Please name a few products that adhere to that principal :)
- malandrew 14y ago
  Stating how much of your business is code, design and hustle is extremely relative. The relative proportions of each are a lot like fertilizer numbers. Some plants require one ratio of nitrogen, potash and phosphate and others require a completely different ratio of each. The ratios are a function of things like audience (awareness, inertia), competition and the status quo of your market.
nodemaker 14y ago
As a single founder I am sort of confused about these things too.Here is what my plan is -> Basically become a code monkey for a first four-five months and do minimal promotion marketing.Once MVP is ready then do full time marketing pitching and fix bugs once in a while.If you get funded hire more people and more coding. Anyone see a problem with that approach?
- eLobato 14y ago
  I feel like if you cut off time programming and spend that time working on building hype you might be able to earn a bunch more of customers earlier, which might turn out to be the difference between not needing external funds and needing them. Or the difference between being able to getting them and not getting them, if that's what you want. Anyway best of luck!
  - nodemaker 14y ago
    Thanks for the advice.Can you please point me towards where I can find some knowledge about building hype.I have seen some companies do this (Recent Example - LightTable). In my case my product is really different and I dont know how I can get people to understand what it is without actually getting them to play with it.My belief is that my MVP will be the best tool for building hype.
    - chmike 14y ago
      Check the story of dropbox. This is one approach to test your idea. If it succeed, things get much easier.
      - chmike 14y ago
        Unfortunately, I can't find the initial promo of dropbox : " throw away your USB drive". It is also not accessible on the wikipedia page. This is a good example off startup project testing. They did so many things right. EDIT: check this http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Is-the-original-Dropbox-private-beta-video-still-available-online-somewhere http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Is-the-original-Dropbox-private...
- SatvikBeri 14y ago
  My approach (if you haven't already) would be to essentially get pre-sales. Cold call potential customers, or talk to people, with your 30-second elevator pitch. Get to the point where people tell you they want to buy your product as soon as it's available-then build, iterate, etc.
  - philip1209 14y ago
    Build a really cool marketing website, an awesome promo video, then buy google ads to test how many people click the 'sign up' button that says 'Coming soon - give us your email here so we can let you know when we launch.' Divide amount spent on ads by number of emails and you have a cost of acquisition. See how this compares to potential ad income / user monthly cost. If the latter is higher than the former, you have a quantitatively-substantiated profitable business model, and you should then talk to an investor/angel.
    - citizens 14y ago
      The real cost of acquisition would be much higher. Newsletter Subscriber != Customer
- getsat 14y ago
  Bro, you need to read this book: http://www.startupbook.net http://www.startupbook.net – http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-ebook/dp/B003YH9MMI/ http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-ebook/dp/B... That mentioned 4-5 months will, statistically, be for nought if you don't do the important marketing/prep work ahead of time.
  - benblodgett 14y ago
    I would say this is a more appropriate recommendation - http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful/dp/0976470705 http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful/dp/....
- jakejake 14y ago
  As hard as it is to admit as a programmer, I think it can be smarter sometimes to flesh out the idea and get a feel for the market before spending much, if any time coding. Building wireframes and screenshots can be enough to show investors if you're going that route. Of course if it's just you and you're committed to launching your product regardless of whether you get investment or not, then you might as well code it up and see what happens!
- chmike 14y ago
  I would say you put yourself at risk to have wasted the 5 to 6 months of programming. For some applications the risk is low or the possible loss acceptable. A preferable approach is if you can test the business/app soundness before investing 5 to 6 months in programming effort. If you can test two or three app ideas in that same period you significantly increase your chances to hit gold.
- rmATinnovafy 14y ago
  I do. You are wasting your time by building the product first. You have to do the inverse. Become a marketing money for the first four to five months and do minimal coding (that is why its called an MVP). Once you have people buying your product, then you focus on improving it (or refactoring to rails, for example). If you do get funding, then use the money to grow the business and software at the same time/ratio. Reason why this may seem a bit alien to you is because it requires you to go into marketing mode from day #1. Something you may not be comfortable doing. Plus, marketing a product is just not about adwords, blog posts, and link on hacker news. It requires you to actually talk to other people directly. This is where a lot of introvert hackers ( like me ) quit.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Also requires you to market the thing that programmers hate, vapor-ware.
    - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
      I disagree. You would have an MVP. Something tangible to sell. Vapor-ware is software/hardware that is sold before it is built. The purpose of the MVP is to get something good enough out of the door so you can focus on testing. Testing sales, marketing, user experience, etc. Once the initial testing is done, and the product has proven itself to be profitable if not then iterate/pivot), then you go and refactor the software if, and only if, the costs of doing so are worthwile. I know of products out there that are complete and total bowls of spaghetti that make a lot of money and would be re-written by most of us. But they are profitable, and that is the ultimate test for a product. Does it sell?
      - wpietri 14y ago
        Not to nit-pick to much, because I agree with your basic point, but I think the ultimate test for a product is does it profitably deliver value. Every scam artist in the world is profitable, and I see too many people go wrong by pursuing pure profitability. Coughzyngacough.
- j45 14y ago
  It's a little backwards. What you're proposing is a little like building a house to see if a customer likes enough to buy it, without letting them pick a layout/blueprint they like, or the conversation that goes into the blueprint of ensuring the customer would want the house. First, find a target customer. Learn what their painpoints are. See if they're willing to pay for that painpoint. Then, build something to sell to them. This allows you to explore multiple hypotheses, instead of going to them with your idea that ends in a yes or no. By involving customers from the get go, they are more engaged, invested and committed, especially if it could make their life easier. You will find that this path will reveal to you a completely different set of priorities and pain points that would be small to do, but have a huge impact, which is a great basis for an MVP. By doing it doing it in reverse, you're hoping you take a stab at it and it pans out, at the expense of not doing the idea development upfront before writing a single line of code. The best way to "market" is to do it as you explore what to do and build a mailing list. Share your journey through a blog focussing on the life and business problem you're solving (not your code or tech breakthroughs). Learn about your customer instead of guessing your way through what someone might want. Having domain knowledge in a field that you build something for could be helpful but you still have to validate, first, if anyone will pay for it. That's the scary, and what makes it a real business (self sustainable and makes money for you).
- wpietri 14y ago
  Yes! Like others, I see a problem. You have a big assumption: Product X will be valuable enough that people in group Y will pay for it. Your way of testing that assumption is to spend 5 months coding plus N months trying to sell it. So at the end of 6-12 months, suppose you discover that Product X is in fact not valuable. All of the coding time and a substantial portion of the marketing time will be wasted. Ask yourself: what's the cheapest possible way to test your core assumption?
- briandear 14y ago
  Read the Lean Startup and learn what an MVP really is. And MVP can be built without writing any code. Your first few months should be figuring out what your customers want.
ricardobeat 14y ago
I have to disagree with the first points: 1. Code is 5% of your business: no, it isn't. If you have a watchmaking company, is making watches 5% of the business? Marketing, sales, and operations are only important as long as you have a quality product. 2. Design is everything: it can used to great advantage, but let's keep it real. There are plenty examples of successful "gray boxes" applications, don't confuse aesthetics for usability. We are here on HN, aren't we?
- rogerchucker 14y ago
  I think the word "Design" is being thrown around a bit too liberally. User experience is what people mean when they talk about design because the former covers more than aesthetics and is an essential part of a software program's usability. Any mundane looking yet extremely utilitarian command-line based software program needs to be usable, especially in the middle of a heavy-duty workflow.
- djt 14y ago
  I agree that its higher than 5% but if you think that your product is the majority of running a business then please explain the Snuggy.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Snuggy? Google didn't help.
    - chops 14y ago
      I'm sure he's talking about the Snuggie, a ridiculous looking blanket with sleeves, known for its ridiculous infomercials in the US. http://www.mysnuggiestore.com http://www.mysnuggiestore.com
      - sigkill 14y ago
        Wow, that product is crazy. Was it a success?
happypeter 14y ago
>Treat it like you are learning to program all over I really love this part, diving into the bigger world of building sth real and serve people directly, with the same passion and curiostiy for coding itself.
jasveer 14y ago
"People DO judge books by their covers." Stopped reading after this. Your blog looks like shit, guess I'm not missing anything.
Estragon 14y ago
Is his rss feed broken for anyone else?
- ralph 14y ago
  I get 500 Internal server error with some command-line HTTP fetchers, not wget(1). And http://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ianlandsman.com%2Frss http://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator/check.cgi?url=http%3A%... is unhappy.
Void_ 14y ago
> bring your design all the way up to the level of a 37 Signals type app What? 37Signal apps are usable and all, but just open Dribble..
noelwelsh 14y ago
This article seemed to miss what to me has been the biggest change: redefining yourself. If you're like me a lot of your self image is tied up in being a programmer and being very good at it. Being an entrepreneur means giving that up. It means not knowing what the cutting edge is any more, not knowing your way around every library, etc. Worse, it's not like you become a good entrepreneur overnight. So you go from being excellent at one thing to mediocre at many things. That's hard for a lot of people to accept.
- john_flintstone 14y ago
  The biggest problem I had - one I'm battling with right now - is that when you move successfully from being just a programmer to being an entrepreneur who sells software, after a while the software part becomes less important. You start thinking: If I can do this with software, I can do it with OTHER STUFF. And then you drift away from code and software entirely, as you realise your new entrepreneurial skills can be put to better use in other areas. It's a huge thing to stop being a programmer, when you started out thinking it was the only path open to you career wise, and that you would be in the software business in one form or another for your entire career. But cutting that cord - as difficult as it is - can be liberating. Cause face it - if you can sell software that you wrote yourself, you can sell anything online.
adviceonly 14y ago
Godin disagrees with the term entrepreneur used for someone working on their own: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/the-difference-between-a-freelancer-and-an-entrepreneur-seth-godin http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/...
dkb 14y ago
I agree that code is not the only thing that should be worked on. Loving customers, treating them with respect and listening to them is also essential to me. I am currently working on an idea and have a lot of questions on different aspects and don't even know where to look for answers. Is there some online resources related to the different aspects of an online business? (understanding a service that you pay for and use online, such as BaseCamp from 37signals). For example, should you start to give a service for free at the beginning and then monetize it when you have a lot of users, if you do so, is there some legal issues following this way? Another example, the disclaimer: how do you manage this, does it really protect the entrepreneur? I feel like there is a lot to considered out of the code itself and the marketing.
- franzus 14y ago
  > should you start to give a service for free at the beginning and then monetize it when you have a lot of users Are you VC backed and can live without positive cash flow? Ore are you trying to build a real business?
  - dkb 14y ago
    I do not have any fund and have a job, but I was thinking about starting something aside of my job and try to make it known. The biggest problem for me now is not technical, I could write an app to develop my idea and put it online. The problem is that I don't know what I am allowed to do or not allowed to do as an owner of a website/webapp that I put for free online. If you take for example the case of Craiglist, someone will put an ad to sell something, and potential buyers will contact this person. How does the website discharge itself from being responsible from any failure in the process? Every law related question are pretty hard to find an answer to.
franzus 14y ago
> Design is everything I don't think this is true. Features are far more important than shiny buttons. Custom design is a problem too as it fragments the user experience. People want software that looks and feels native .
- wpietri 14y ago
  You're arguing with something he didn't say. Nowhere did he advocate non-native UI widgets. He's just saying that in the eyes of your audience, your product should look better than the competitors.
j45 14y ago
Regarding the 5% number, it might be closer to 20%. We spend more time reading about tools that benefit technologists than strategies that create value and convert into paying customers. Most startups don't solve technically complex problems, except how the technologists are making their own lives easier through the latest language, tool or framework. Building a project is different than a product. A product is not just the code. We see proof of marketing ruling with garbage products getting into customers hands and they have no idea of better solutions that are available. The most important part of this journey is absolutely finding the customer, finding their need that they're willing to pay for, finding how to reach them, and then part addressing their need through code. You need all of those to have a business that makes money, other wise you have a project you want to try to make money with, not a strategic approach to establishing a business. Focusing on making money is terrifying to too many technologists. The only way you get there is realizing the product itself is 20% of your business and you will inevitably spend 80% of your time learning to get it traction and paying customers. Of course, it's easy to just code some more to add some "value". If that value doesn't reach customers, it's not realized value, just more potential that will sink. I agree with the entire article except for the last point: read everything possible. It's an epic waste of time to read about things in detail that you aren't looking to implement right away. Reading articles, especially if you don't end up acting on them is too often a waste of time because you have to come back to them later and re-read when you're ready to do something with them. I use a slight tweak on the rule: Only read in detail what I need to do right now, or my next step. Only read things in general to understand where I am on the overall project.

zengr 14y ago

"Code is 5% of your business" Really? Of the business yes, but for the product too (beautiful code is reflected in a beautiful product)?

edwinnathaniel 14y ago
Please name a few products that adhere to that principal :)
malandrew 14y ago
Stating how much of your business is code, design and hustle is extremely relative. The relative proportions of each are a lot like fertilizer numbers. Some plants require one ratio of nitrogen, potash and phosphate and others require a completely different ratio of each. The ratios are a function of things like audience (awareness, inertia), competition and the status quo of your market.

nodemaker 14y ago

As a single founder I am sort of confused about these things too.Here is what my plan is -> Basically become a code monkey for a first four-five months and do minimal promotion marketing.Once MVP is ready then do full time marketing pitching and fix bugs once in a while.If you get funded hire more people and more coding. Anyone see a problem with that approach?

eLobato 14y ago
I feel like if you cut off time programming and spend that time working on building hype you might be able to earn a bunch more of customers earlier, which might turn out to be the difference between not needing external funds and needing them. Or the difference between being able to getting them and not getting them, if that's what you want. Anyway best of luck!
- nodemaker 14y ago
  Thanks for the advice.Can you please point me towards where I can find some knowledge about building hype.I have seen some companies do this (Recent Example - LightTable). In my case my product is really different and I dont know how I can get people to understand what it is without actually getting them to play with it.My belief is that my MVP will be the best tool for building hype.
  - chmike 14y ago
    Check the story of dropbox. This is one approach to test your idea. If it succeed, things get much easier.
    - chmike 14y ago
      Unfortunately, I can't find the initial promo of dropbox : " throw away your USB drive". It is also not accessible on the wikipedia page. This is a good example off startup project testing. They did so many things right. EDIT: check this http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Is-the-original-Dropbox-private-beta-video-still-available-online-somewhere http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Is-the-original-Dropbox-private...
SatvikBeri 14y ago
My approach (if you haven't already) would be to essentially get pre-sales. Cold call potential customers, or talk to people, with your 30-second elevator pitch. Get to the point where people tell you they want to buy your product as soon as it's available-then build, iterate, etc.
- philip1209 14y ago
  Build a really cool marketing website, an awesome promo video, then buy google ads to test how many people click the 'sign up' button that says 'Coming soon - give us your email here so we can let you know when we launch.' Divide amount spent on ads by number of emails and you have a cost of acquisition. See how this compares to potential ad income / user monthly cost. If the latter is higher than the former, you have a quantitatively-substantiated profitable business model, and you should then talk to an investor/angel.
  - citizens 14y ago
    The real cost of acquisition would be much higher. Newsletter Subscriber != Customer
getsat 14y ago
Bro, you need to read this book: http://www.startupbook.net http://www.startupbook.net – http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-ebook/dp/B003YH9MMI/ http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-ebook/dp/B... That mentioned 4-5 months will, statistically, be for nought if you don't do the important marketing/prep work ahead of time.
- benblodgett 14y ago
  I would say this is a more appropriate recommendation - http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful/dp/0976470705 http://www.amazon.com/The-Four-Steps-Epiphany-Successful/dp/....
jakejake 14y ago
As hard as it is to admit as a programmer, I think it can be smarter sometimes to flesh out the idea and get a feel for the market before spending much, if any time coding. Building wireframes and screenshots can be enough to show investors if you're going that route. Of course if it's just you and you're committed to launching your product regardless of whether you get investment or not, then you might as well code it up and see what happens!
chmike 14y ago
I would say you put yourself at risk to have wasted the 5 to 6 months of programming. For some applications the risk is low or the possible loss acceptable. A preferable approach is if you can test the business/app soundness before investing 5 to 6 months in programming effort. If you can test two or three app ideas in that same period you significantly increase your chances to hit gold.
rmATinnovafy 14y ago
I do. You are wasting your time by building the product first. You have to do the inverse. Become a marketing money for the first four to five months and do minimal coding (that is why its called an MVP). Once you have people buying your product, then you focus on improving it (or refactoring to rails, for example). If you do get funding, then use the money to grow the business and software at the same time/ratio. Reason why this may seem a bit alien to you is because it requires you to go into marketing mode from day #1. Something you may not be comfortable doing. Plus, marketing a product is just not about adwords, blog posts, and link on hacker news. It requires you to actually talk to other people directly. This is where a lot of introvert hackers ( like me ) quit.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ams6110 14y ago
  Also requires you to market the thing that programmers hate, vapor-ware.
  - rmATinnovafy 14y ago
    I disagree. You would have an MVP. Something tangible to sell. Vapor-ware is software/hardware that is sold before it is built. The purpose of the MVP is to get something good enough out of the door so you can focus on testing. Testing sales, marketing, user experience, etc. Once the initial testing is done, and the product has proven itself to be profitable if not then iterate/pivot), then you go and refactor the software if, and only if, the costs of doing so are worthwile. I know of products out there that are complete and total bowls of spaghetti that make a lot of money and would be re-written by most of us. But they are profitable, and that is the ultimate test for a product. Does it sell?
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Not to nit-pick to much, because I agree with your basic point, but I think the ultimate test for a product is does it profitably deliver value. Every scam artist in the world is profitable, and I see too many people go wrong by pursuing pure profitability. Coughzyngacough.
j45 14y ago
It's a little backwards. What you're proposing is a little like building a house to see if a customer likes enough to buy it, without letting them pick a layout/blueprint they like, or the conversation that goes into the blueprint of ensuring the customer would want the house. First, find a target customer. Learn what their painpoints are. See if they're willing to pay for that painpoint. Then, build something to sell to them. This allows you to explore multiple hypotheses, instead of going to them with your idea that ends in a yes or no. By involving customers from the get go, they are more engaged, invested and committed, especially if it could make their life easier. You will find that this path will reveal to you a completely different set of priorities and pain points that would be small to do, but have a huge impact, which is a great basis for an MVP. By doing it doing it in reverse, you're hoping you take a stab at it and it pans out, at the expense of not doing the idea development upfront before writing a single line of code. The best way to "market" is to do it as you explore what to do and build a mailing list. Share your journey through a blog focussing on the life and business problem you're solving (not your code or tech breakthroughs). Learn about your customer instead of guessing your way through what someone might want. Having domain knowledge in a field that you build something for could be helpful but you still have to validate, first, if anyone will pay for it. That's the scary, and what makes it a real business (self sustainable and makes money for you).
wpietri 14y ago
Yes! Like others, I see a problem. You have a big assumption: Product X will be valuable enough that people in group Y will pay for it. Your way of testing that assumption is to spend 5 months coding plus N months trying to sell it. So at the end of 6-12 months, suppose you discover that Product X is in fact not valuable. All of the coding time and a substantial portion of the marketing time will be wasted. Ask yourself: what's the cheapest possible way to test your core assumption?
briandear 14y ago
Read the Lean Startup and learn what an MVP really is. And MVP can be built without writing any code. Your first few months should be figuring out what your customers want.

ricardobeat 14y ago

I have to disagree with the first points: 1. Code is 5% of your business: no, it isn't. If you have a watchmaking company, is making watches 5% of the business? Marketing, sales, and operations are only important as long as you have a quality product. 2. Design is everything: it can used to great advantage, but let's keep it real. There are plenty examples of successful "gray boxes" applications, don't confuse aesthetics for usability. We are here on HN, aren't we?

rogerchucker 14y ago
I think the word "Design" is being thrown around a bit too liberally. User experience is what people mean when they talk about design because the former covers more than aesthetics and is an essential part of a software program's usability. Any mundane looking yet extremely utilitarian command-line based software program needs to be usable, especially in the middle of a heavy-duty workflow.
djt 14y ago
I agree that its higher than 5% but if you think that your product is the majority of running a business then please explain the Snuggy.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Snuggy? Google didn't help.
  - chops 14y ago
    I'm sure he's talking about the Snuggie, a ridiculous looking blanket with sleeves, known for its ridiculous infomercials in the US. http://www.mysnuggiestore.com http://www.mysnuggiestore.com
    - sigkill 14y ago
      Wow, that product is crazy. Was it a success?

happypeter 14y ago

>Treat it like you are learning to program all over I really love this part, diving into the bigger world of building sth real and serve people directly, with the same passion and curiostiy for coding itself.

jasveer 14y ago

"People DO judge books by their covers." Stopped reading after this. Your blog looks like shit, guess I'm not missing anything.

Estragon 14y ago

Is his rss feed broken for anyone else?

ralph 14y ago
I get 500 Internal server error with some command-line HTTP fetchers, not wget(1). And http://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator/check.cgi?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ianlandsman.com%2Frss http://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator/check.cgi?url=http%3A%... is unhappy.

Void_ 14y ago

> bring your design all the way up to the level of a 37 Signals type app What? 37Signal apps are usable and all, but just open Dribble..

noelwelsh 14y ago

This article seemed to miss what to me has been the biggest change: redefining yourself. If you're like me a lot of your self image is tied up in being a programmer and being very good at it. Being an entrepreneur means giving that up. It means not knowing what the cutting edge is any more, not knowing your way around every library, etc. Worse, it's not like you become a good entrepreneur overnight. So you go from being excellent at one thing to mediocre at many things. That's hard for a lot of people to accept.

john_flintstone 14y ago
The biggest problem I had - one I'm battling with right now - is that when you move successfully from being just a programmer to being an entrepreneur who sells software, after a while the software part becomes less important. You start thinking: If I can do this with software, I can do it with OTHER STUFF. And then you drift away from code and software entirely, as you realise your new entrepreneurial skills can be put to better use in other areas. It's a huge thing to stop being a programmer, when you started out thinking it was the only path open to you career wise, and that you would be in the software business in one form or another for your entire career. But cutting that cord - as difficult as it is - can be liberating. Cause face it - if you can sell software that you wrote yourself, you can sell anything online.

adviceonly 14y ago

Godin disagrees with the term entrepreneur used for someone working on their own: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/the-difference-between-a-freelancer-and-an-entrepreneur-seth-godin http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/innovation/article/...

dkb 14y ago

I agree that code is not the only thing that should be worked on. Loving customers, treating them with respect and listening to them is also essential to me. I am currently working on an idea and have a lot of questions on different aspects and don't even know where to look for answers. Is there some online resources related to the different aspects of an online business? (understanding a service that you pay for and use online, such as BaseCamp from 37signals). For example, should you start to give a service for free at the beginning and then monetize it when you have a lot of users, if you do so, is there some legal issues following this way? Another example, the disclaimer: how do you manage this, does it really protect the entrepreneur? I feel like there is a lot to considered out of the code itself and the marketing.

franzus 14y ago
> should you start to give a service for free at the beginning and then monetize it when you have a lot of users Are you VC backed and can live without positive cash flow? Ore are you trying to build a real business?
- dkb 14y ago
  I do not have any fund and have a job, but I was thinking about starting something aside of my job and try to make it known. The biggest problem for me now is not technical, I could write an app to develop my idea and put it online. The problem is that I don't know what I am allowed to do or not allowed to do as an owner of a website/webapp that I put for free online. If you take for example the case of Craiglist, someone will put an ad to sell something, and potential buyers will contact this person. How does the website discharge itself from being responsible from any failure in the process? Every law related question are pretty hard to find an answer to.

franzus 14y ago

> Design is everything I don't think this is true. Features are far more important than shiny buttons. Custom design is a problem too as it fragments the user experience. People want software that looks and feels native .

wpietri 14y ago
You're arguing with something he didn't say. Nowhere did he advocate non-native UI widgets. He's just saying that in the eyes of your audience, your product should look better than the competitors.

j45 14y ago

Regarding the 5% number, it might be closer to 20%. We spend more time reading about tools that benefit technologists than strategies that create value and convert into paying customers. Most startups don't solve technically complex problems, except how the technologists are making their own lives easier through the latest language, tool or framework. Building a project is different than a product. A product is not just the code. We see proof of marketing ruling with garbage products getting into customers hands and they have no idea of better solutions that are available. The most important part of this journey is absolutely finding the customer, finding their need that they're willing to pay for, finding how to reach them, and then part addressing their need through code. You need all of those to have a business that makes money, other wise you have a project you want to try to make money with, not a strategic approach to establishing a business. Focusing on making money is terrifying to too many technologists. The only way you get there is realizing the product itself is 20% of your business and you will inevitably spend 80% of your time learning to get it traction and paying customers. Of course, it's easy to just code some more to add some "value". If that value doesn't reach customers, it's not realized value, just more potential that will sink. I agree with the entire article except for the last point: read everything possible. It's an epic waste of time to read about things in detail that you aren't looking to implement right away. Reading articles, especially if you don't end up acting on them is too often a waste of time because you have to come back to them later and re-read when you're ready to do something with them. I use a slight tweak on the rule: Only read in detail what I need to do right now, or my next step. Only read things in general to understand where I am on the overall project.