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20 years working on the same software product
- ilamont 2y ago> but I preferred to keep it as a lifestyle business Can we please retire this term? It’s a business. Moreover, it’s a real business, with profit and risk and product and customers, which is a lot more than many investor-funded businesses can say. The fact that it’s flexible and even enjoyable? Wunderbar. And it doesn’t even require foosball tables or free snacks or an in-house masseuse or an on-site gym.
- hermitcrab 2y agoI think 'lifestyle business' is a useful term and plan to keep using it, unless someone comes up with a better term. I think it is hilarious that investors sometimes use it as an insult.
- guestbest 2y agoThat’s pretty incredible. The oldest software I still support as a microisv is in the iOS App Store at 15 years old.
- bennettnate5 2y agoWhat sticks out to me is that the overarching UI design is largely unchanged. OP didn't spend time jumping from hot new UX framework to framework, instead they focused on keeping their core customers happy. Seems like a recipe for success for small software businesses
- deterministic 2y agoI love the fact that lifestyle businesses like this can still work
- hermitcrab 2y agoThere are probably more of us than you think. But the media only ever talks about VC-funded startups, because they fit the silicon valley narrative better and (not being troubled by having to make a profit) they have plenty of spare cash to blow on PR.
- piker 2y agoGreat read. This was particularly funny. > A mock-up of PerfectTablePlan, including icons I did myself, was used without our permission by Sony in their ‘Big day’ TV comedy series. I threated them with legal action. Years later, I am still awaiting a reply.
- piker 2y agoAlso worth noting that a more detailed write up of the business elements would likely go down very well here!
- gwbas1c 2y agoYeah, I'm really curious how the author was able to get the kind of sales needed to support a family.
- hermitcrab 2y agohttps://successfulsoftware.net/category/marketing/ https://successfulsoftware.net/category/marketing/
- gwbas1c 2y agoThe first post is a rant about SPAM, not "how the author was able to get the kind of sales needed to support a family"
- hermitcrab 2y agoThere are 147 articles tagged 'marketing'. Some of them might be the sort of thing you are looking for. Some might not. If you are looking for articles about starting a software business, see: https://successfulsoftware.net/starting-a-microisv/ https://successfulsoftware.net/starting-a-microisv/
- hermitcrab 2y agoAuthor here. Since you asked. This TV comedy included a plot point where some wedding planning software was shown to lose the seating plan. The wedding planning software was clearly a mockup (probably done in Powerpoint), but was clearly based on my software - even including icons I had created. I thought I could get some free publicity from it. I talked to a lawyer friend of my father's and he told me it would cost hundreds of pounds to do the research to even send them a legal letter. It was the early days for PerfectTablePlan and I didn't have that sort of money. So I just wrote my own letter demanding a public apology. I'm still awaiting a reply, nearly 20 years later.
- antithesis-nl 2y agoVery cool! Yet: I found out that CDs are edible PSA: CDs are not, in fact, edible, nor are DVDs or Blu-ray media. Sure, if you click through, you'll see that the CD was not actually damaged and that it was only the printed license key that got mauled, but still: CDs are mostly polycarbonates, and not, in any way shape or form, part of a healthy diet, no matter what your local party liaison tells you.
- dylan604 2y agoYou're clearly not preparing them correctly. You have to ground them down to a fine micro-plastics powder.
- cluckindan 2y agoA quick and easy way to do this is with an angle grinder. Replace cutting disc with compact disc and fire ’er up! Disclaimer: don’t
- aqueueaqueue 2y agoOr just live normal life. You get free microplastics.
- Etheryte 2y agoA spoonful of microplastic in your brain [0]? That's rookie numbers. [0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-human-brain-may-contain-as-much-as-a-spoons-worth-of-microplastics-new-research-suggests-180985995/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-human-brain-ma...
- kmoser 2y agoI prefer the softer, warmer flavors of ground-down vinyl.
- aiauthoritydev 2y agoWrong advice. My Uncle did eat few of them. Some thought it was some trick but later the doctor in charge of autopsy did confirm he ate them.
- 7thaccount 2y agoDoes it still use a genetic algorithm and is this necessary? I'd guess there is some kind of MIP or IP solver solution that you can just call out to, but that could be extremely wrong for all I know.
- hermitcrab 2y agoYes, it still uses a genetic algorithm which is capable of producing decent solutions for thousands of seats in the time you can drink a coffee. Also it is highly specialized for the nuances of seating plans (do you want your partner sitting to the left of right, which tables are near each other, do you want to alternate genders).
- 7thaccount 2y agoYeah, that's cool, but I'm curious if an algorithm exists for that problem that is actually globally optimal. My understanding is that genetic algorithms can get stuck in local minimums. I guess it doesn't really matter though if you can just do a simple check at the end to see if all the rules have been met.
- hermitcrab 2y agoPretty much any optimization algorithm (apart from brute force) can get stuck at a local optima. Often with seating plans it isn't possible to satisfy all criteria. Generally you can only sit next to 2 other people. Combinatorial optimization problems are hard.
- NKosmatos 2y agoNice one! I would expect more versions of PerfectTablePlan all these years, going from v1 to v7 is roughly 3 years per major release ;-)
- zoover2020 2y agoI find it wonderful. As the author mentions in the original post, his code does not have a lot of bugs and is mostly feature complete as well. I think most people never get to work with such software as we need to launch $NEXT_PROJECT
- 101008 2y agoExcellent read. I was happy for the author while I was reading it, looks like it was and still is an amazing journey. By the way, some engineers are dream with working at FAANG, others to create a million dollars startup. My dreams was always something like this: work on a niche piece of software that solves a problem for a subset of people. Give them a something that avoids a headache for them, deliver value, and get paid. You aren't going tonbe millionaire, but it's going to be a nice ride.
- palata 2y agoSome niches can be very big, too! It's perfect when it's small enough to not be interesting for BigTech, but big enough to pay a few up to a few hundred employees!
- hermitcrab 2y agoIndeed. Software is mostly written by young white men for other young white men. Consequently there are loads of under exploited niches, while all the 'sexy' niches are incredibly competitive.
- fph 2y agoI don't understand where gender, age, and ethnicity come into play in this.
- hermitcrab 2y agoNot trying to make a poltical point. Pick an interest that young white men have. You'll probably find loads of software that caters to it. Pick an interest that an equal number of retired women have. You will almost certainly find a lot less software that caters to it. It is simply because people write software for markets they understand. Most programmers (in my experience) are young white men. A lot less retired women have the skills or motivation to write software.
- 2y ago
- huevosabio 2y ago> I was getting married and I volunteered to do the seating plan for our wedding reception. It sounded like a relatively straightforward optimization problem, as we only had 60 guests and no family feuds to worry about. But it was surprisingly difficult to get right. Man, this sounds way too familiar!
- palata 2y agoMakes me nostalgic of desktop software. I hate that everything today is a website and requires a ridiculously fast internet connection. And what seems to be in fashion for "desktop software" today is to ship a website together with a whole browser and pretend it's not a website. I wonder how the licensing works: do people pay for newer versions? Or do people just buy one version but more people get married every year, bringing new customers? I guess it is not a subscription model, right?
- deterministic 2y agoI work for a company that mostly sells complex desktop software (with complex backends) using a subscription model.
- hermitcrab 2y agoYou buy a perpetual licence for version N. You can then optionally upgrade to version N+1 later at a 60% discount.
- lotsoweiners 2y agoThe best business model.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- beached_whale 2y agoI am also ok with one like Jetbrains where you subscribe and after a year you can keep the last version you paid for. They do a lot of updates, so the money is going into the product but one isn't forced to stay in order to use it.
- DrBenCarson 2y agoConfusing IMO because they use years as the major version. If I subscribe May 24 - May 25 and they don’t release 2025.1 until just after my sub ends…which version do I get? That said I’m a jetbrains fan and like their recent move to include all features in community editions (need licensing for commercial use obviously)
- asim 2y agoKudos to you. The only piece of software I wrote was open source and could never find a way to monetize it beyond consulting and VC funding. A sustainable long term business selling a piece of software that just works is all we could ever hope for as developers.
- mezod 2y agoLiving legend! Lifestyle biz bootstrappers ftw. Since I cannot ask you your actual ARR, can you answer if you believe it's feasible to reach high 7 figures/low 8 figures in ARR as a solopreneur over a long period of time? I don't mean 1 year $10M ARR AI trendy apps, but a consistent $10M ARR business year after year >20 years.
- busymom0 2y agoLookup the reddit and hacker news posts about Photopea. If I remember right, he's doing millions: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Photopea&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- hermitcrab 2y agoI can think of 1 solo bootstrapped founder who says he is doing ~$1 million dollars per year. But he is an outlier. The more sales you make the more admin/sales/support overhead there is. Eventually you reach a point where your sales plateau or you take on staff to keep growing.
- aqueueaqueue 2y agoYes. Not me, but check out indiehackers as they show stripe-verified revenues.
- hermitcrab 2y agoBut not their expenses? Revenue != Profit.
- aqueueaqueue 2y agoMost of these businesses are software as a service so it is mostly profit. There will be some hosting and marketing costs sure. Unlike startups they are solo operated and usually won't hire people unless they can really afford it an need it.
- 2y ago
- henning 2y agoIt's cool to see a product that apparently uses evolutionary algorithms do so well.
- pmkary 2y agoMakes me so happy to see people like this exist. All good software, really all good software, is indie small ones made with love and care whose authors also lived a good life outside of the cubicle mess. (I know about the exaggeration, but really, 95% of what I love is indie software, you don't find that kind of creativity and love in any company)
- bnastic 2y agoThere are a lot of small companies / single devs working in very technical, pro-oriented, industries. They still thrive in the days of browsers and javascripts and what not, writing super optimised, super inovative, native code. Like all the 'audio plugins' people that essentially write .so's that go into the big desktop audio workstations, doing anything and everything with sound, while also experimenting with various UI/UX paradigms, unrestricted by what's possible in the DOM/CSS, integrating hardware into it all etc. (I imagine similar in the video/rendering industry, but I'm not too familiar with that side)
- pmkary 2y agoI totally agree, and really love the music space. There's just so much pure creativity there.
- emeril 2y agoyeah - I'm sure Everything by voidtools is precisely that
- Tossrock 2y agoSpacemonger is this to a tee.
- p3rls 2y agoit's true, you can always tell a product that is loved from a product that grew up without it. i'd add as a caveat that your users probably will not be able to tell the difference and it will break your heart if you care about these things too much.
- m463 2y ago> The lowest point was the pandemic, when sales pretty much dropped to zero. Don't know why there wasn't a perfect table plan 6-foot edition. I remember going to an event where someone took out one of those segmented collapsing ruler things to put people a minimum distance apart.
- hermitcrab 2y agoThere is a social distancing option, added due to the pandemic. ;0)
- LoftyHobbitMan 2y agoThis cracks me up. Sounds like a good selling point though.
- wvenable 2y agoThis post makes me nostalgic for the old Joel on Software forums.
- hermitcrab 2y agoI miss Joel's writing. Erik Sink as well.
- wvenable 2y agoI'm glad you're still doing well. I envy your position; I've always wanted to work on a single piece of software of my own. I built a few things while working for startups but nothing stuck. Now I build lots of software in a nice secure corporate environment. I mostly get to do what I want and how I want it but ultimately it's not mine.
- hermitcrab 2y agoSounds like you have a reasonable mix of job security and freedom. The grass is always greener on the other side!
- wvenable 2y agoIt is exactly that reasonable mix -- it's why I've stayed for as long as I have. Previously I was a contractor and so ran my own business I remember the negatives of that sort of thing. Some of the things I've built could be entire businesses on their own and it feels like a lot of missed opportunities.
- hermitcrab 2y ago>Some of the things I've built could be entire businesses on their own and it feels like a lot of missed opportunities. It is very hard to know what will succeed and what won't.
- jwr 2y agoNow compare the longevity and sustainability of this software product to VC-funded startups, which are more like blips on the radar before they disappear by going bankrupt or getting acquired. Having multiple people in a company does not guarantee that it will stick around. People saying "but it's a one-person business, I can't trust it in the long term" are wrong.
- louthy 2y ago> People saying “but it's a one-person business, I can't trust it in the long term" are wrong. The problem is: people aren’t immortal. That one person could be dead tomorrow. So, you can’t trust any one person business in the long term, by definition.
- jwr 2y agoI have business continuity plans. And my point still stands: in practice, within a 5-year time horizon, you are much more likely to see a VC-funded or corporate-owned service shut down, than see a sustainable single-founder business disappear.
- xp84 2y agoDepends on what level of trust you need to have. Obviously you can’t even trust a multibillion-dollar public company like Google to keep maintaining a product forever, or even for a couple years. On the other hand, someone selling a stable piece of desktop software doesn’t even require a tremendous amount of trust. Just the trust not to ship malware or massive security holes. Even if they fully retire and delete the source code, your software will keep working. That’s more than I can say for Google reader, or the Humane AI Pin.
- cfn 2y agoWhen he dies, if not before, he or his family can sell the business. There's even websites/communities where you can post this kind of business for sale.
- chgs 2y ago
- ozim 2y agoAfter 15+ year building stuff for others I would totally like to have one app that earns money and I don’t get requirements from bunch of business people.
- fragmede 2y agoyou'd end up getting requirements from users yourself, instead of business people
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- robocat 2y ago> web. But I couldn’t face rewriting PerfectTablePlan from scratch for the web. Someone will develop for the web. But perhaps you don't want to make it easier to clone. Building a business to sell for your retirement funds would need much more work and would get more money if SaaS for Planners? Unless you sell your engine to a wedding planner software specialist. The browser as a platform is daunting (touch support, small screen support, CSS, HTML, DOM, connections, browser versions, frameworks). > Javascript. Ugh. I personally never found JavaScript to be the problem - I think a single developer can good engineering workarounds. Avoid the bad parts. I developed for the browser using JavaScript: without using frameworks because my engineering was better than what was available. I personally would still avoid a frameworks unless I needed accessibility (which is crazy hard to support). > Also PerfectTablePlan is quite compute intensive, using a genetic algorithm to generate an automated seating plan and I felt it was better running this on the customer’s local computers than my server. And some of my customers consider their seating plans to be confidential Sounds like a price point: standalone should be more expensive. However likely difficult to hit that enterprise sale point (re patio11?)? Ideally you want to charge expensive wedding planners much more. Low end planners could still use your web version. I assume you've had competitors that have sunk because you are best value for money? Loved the writeup. I'm guessing I've written a bunch of ignorant stuff - I'm just practicing my thinking by writing... Most important, I presume you're looking forward to finishing up and not doing more work. I was.
- hermitcrab 2y ago>Someone will develop for the web. A number of web based alternatives to PerfectTablePlan have appeared over the years.
- fragmede 2y agoWhat's not mentioned is marketing. I tried a couple of queries into Google, and this software didn't come up. I wonder what a couple k of marketing and ad spend a would do for revenue. There's clearly a need for this kind of software, and little bit of marketing could help others find it when they need it.
- hermitcrab 2y agoIf there was a way to spend $X and get $2X back and it didn't require a lot of my time, I would be on it.
- fragmede 2y agoThe problem is we as engin-nerds don't want to pay for something nebulous like marketing, with no proof that it pays off. And back before the Internet, that was the world of advertising. How do you track if that crazy expensive billboard in Times Square was seen by people and resulted in an uptick in sales? But thanks to tracking, it's easier to quantifiy results. Time is money so I'd suggest finding somewhere/someone and giving them the money for their expertise, but it doesn't takes much time, you could do it yourself. Create a Google AdWords account and buy AdWords for "wedding planning seating chart" or other combination, and see how many hits you get for that, and judge for yourself if it's worth it. A competitor (zola.com) already has the first result for that, but that should be enough to for you started. My email's in my bio if you want to chat more.
- hermitcrab 2y agoI've been doing PPC for PerfectTablePlan since the days before it was even called Google Adwords. https://successfulsoftware.net/category/adwords/ https://successfulsoftware.net/category/adwords/ PPC used to be very lucrative, but the bid prices have inflated to the point that it is increasingly borderline. I'm currently turning PPC on and off alternate weeks to try and see if the ROI is positive. This is an off week.
- 2y ago
- kayo_20211030 2y agoLove it. Keep on keepin' on.
- mparnisari 2y agoLoved this post! It's my dream too to come up with an idea for software that doesn't exist, that I can build, and that people are willing to pay me for ;)
- racl101 2y agoOk that Perfect table plan software looks amazing. I so wish I could work on something like this. A standalone desktop app that solves a need and that people keep coming back to year after year, that people love, that people will buy. You are living the dream!
- 4rt 2y agoYou're living the dream, great work. Looks like an impressive bit of software and not some flash in the plan disruption nonsense.
- bsnnkv 2y agoReading this gave me a lot of hope. I started selling software licenses this year, and I would be very happy if I were able to write a post like this about the same software 20 years from now!
- alberth 2y ago> It is about 145,000 lines of C++. Huge respect for maintaining such a large codebase.
- kylecazar 2y agoThis is awesome and I love stories like this. I miss installable software. "It has seated royalty, celebrities and heads of state" Reminded me that there really are more potential attack vectors in software than one would think. Not immediately sure what a bad actor could do with manipulating or stealing seating charts but I'm sure thre's something.
- hermitcrab 2y agoGoogle "supply chain attack". It is a worry.
- tasuki 2y ago> A well known wedding magazine ran a promotion with a valid licence key clearly visible in a photograph of a PerfectTablePlan CD. I worked through the night to release a new version of PerfectTablePlan that didn’t work with this key. This is weird to me on several levels. - Why would it require "working through the night" to blacklist a key? In large enterprise software, sure. But in a one-person project? - If past versions still work with the leaked license key, what does this solve? If someone wanted to steal your software, they'd find a key anyway, no? [Edit]: But a very cool project and a nice writeup! I enjoyed! Good luck!
- lozenge 2y agoI'm guessing CICD isn't a priority on a desktop product that doesn't need to be released all that often.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoYou would be surprised how sales are affected by piracy. Making it just a little harder can have a noticeable impact. All that stuff you read about piracy having no commercial impact is bullshit used to make people feel better about what they are doing.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI’ve used (and paid for) BBEdit, for more than 30 years. https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/ https://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/