My introduction as a young software developer

[buznezGopher]

I've always been interested in entrepreneurship. When I was about 12 I started a local webshop for my small town where you could buy screen protectors and phone cases among other things I could find on eBay. I gathered a bunch of friends to promote the site and we used school printers to print out flyers that we would put in every mailbox we could find, even those who said no advertising when I think about it. Legal/moral? Nope, but I had no clue or care what I was doing at 12... I got a few orders here and there and I would deliver the items on my bike.

That's a fun memory because it reminds me how much I like coming up with projects like that. At the same time it makes me think how much time I've wasted in the last few years sitting on my a$$ playing games, being unhappy with my university studies and barely getting anything done with my remote developer job or my personal software app project. Now I'm 21, and being interested in gaming -> cheats/hacks -> coding from an early age made it possible for me to land a pretty cool remote developer job at 16 through relatives. Sometimes it's fun to work, but most of the time I procrastinate and self-sabotage by gaming or watching YouTube instead of getting anything done. The same goes for my bachelor which is mostly digital now due to the pandemic, although I'm in my final year. And the same goes for my solo company I started about 1,5 years ago, focused on creating a desktop app for monitoring and controlling your local area network in a modern and easy-to-use way. I've had waves of productivity where I am hooked on working on it until I get tired/bored and go back to being hooked on some game. I hate that and I've said to myself I'll uninstall all the games if I start to get hooked again. I work, study and game on the same PC, so it has been difficult to separate the tasks.

Stumbling upon several books, including TMF made me realize that entrepreneurship is what I really love and want to do. I have always thought my dream was creating a successful company that provides others with value and at the same time provides me with wealth. I realize now that in the latest years I've been more pushed into the idea of getting a degree in software engineering and getting a safe job was the best I can achieve. TMF woke me up again and made me think about what I really want to achieve in life. It sure isn't a 9-to-5 job writing boring software for a cause I don't believe in or care about.

More about my current company/project: It's free to download, but to get access to all features there's a pro subscription model. The business is barely paying for itself, and reading TMF and other books in the same lane (like $100M Offers, highly recommended!) made me think if it's a limited idea. That is, an idea that doesn't have the ability to scale very well getting new customers and growing to the point of the fastlane. At the same time I will not give up that easily, and I'll try a lot of different monetization strategies before throwing the project into the trash. Also, the product itself is currently very limited, and I'm trying to work on it to implement more features. My current plan is to 1) add more functionality, 2) add a 7-day trial to the pro plan (lower risk for the customer), and start marketing more. Currently the only marketing is through YouTube videos. I've tested Google ads, but it's expensive and cash is low in the company account.

Sidenote: When I read TMF I realized my knowledge of programming languages is something that can be valuable to others, too. There are lots of websites that can help you learn a language, sure, but I haven't seen any focus on a site or service that can help you decide which language or framework fits different tasks better. Obviously experienced programmers know what tools to use themselves, but as a newer developer, it must be confusing to see the insane amount of frameworks and languages being recommended every day depending on what's currently hyped and what the other person prefers. Thoughts? If you're a new programmer, have you experienced this?

So that's where I'm at currently and I hope that's a decent introduction. I'm happy to be part of this and I want to learn as much as possible. If you have any tips or ideas for the things I've written, I'm very interested in hearing them

 

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[Practic]

I've always been interested in entrepreneurship. When I was about 12 I started a local webshop for my small town where you could buy screen protectors and phone cases among other things I could find on eBay. I gathered a bunch of friends to promote the site and we used school printers to print out flyers that we would put in every mailbox we could find, even those who said no advertising when I think about it. Legal/moral? Nope, but I had no clue or care what I was doing at 12... I got a few orders here and there and I would deliver the items on my bike.

That's a fun memory because it reminds me how much I like coming up with projects like that. At the same time it makes me think how much time I've wasted in the last few years sitting on my a$$ playing games, being unhappy with my university studies and barely getting anything done with my remote developer job or my personal software app project. Now I'm 21, and being interested in gaming -> cheats/hacks -> coding from an early age made it possible for me to land a pretty cool remote developer job at 16 through relatives. Sometimes it's fun to work, but most of the time I procrastinate and self-sabotage by gaming or watching YouTube instead of getting anything done. The same goes for my bachelor which is mostly digital now due to the pandemic, although I'm in my final year. And the same goes for my solo company I started about 1,5 years ago, focused on creating a desktop app for monitoring and controlling your local area network in a modern and easy-to-use way. I've had waves of productivity where I am hooked on working on it until I get tired/bored and go back to being hooked on some game. I hate that and I've said to myself I'll uninstall all the games if I start to get hooked again. I work, study and game on the same PC, so it has been difficult to separate the tasks.

Stumbling upon several books, including TMF made me realize that entrepreneurship is what I really love and want to do. I have always thought my dream was creating a successful company that provides others with value and at the same time provides me with wealth. I realize now that in the latest years I've been more pushed into the idea of getting a degree in software engineering and getting a safe job was the best I can achieve. TMF woke me up again and made me think about what I really want to achieve in life. It sure isn't a 9-to-5 job writing boring software for a cause I don't believe in or care about.

More about my current company/project: It's free to download, but to get access to all features there's a pro subscription model. The business is barely paying for itself, and reading TMF and other books in the same lane (like $100M Offers, highly recommended!) made me think if it's a limited idea. That is, an idea that doesn't have the ability to scale very well getting new customers and growing to the point of the fastlane. At the same time I will not give up that easily, and I'll try a lot of different monetization strategies before throwing the project into the trash. Also, the product itself is currently very limited, and I'm trying to work on it to implement more features. My current plan is to 1) add more functionality, 2) add a 7-day trial to the pro plan (lower risk for the customer), and start marketing more. Currently the only marketing is through YouTube videos. I've tested Google ads, but it's expensive and cash is low in the company account.

Sidenote: When I read TMF I realized my knowledge of programming languages is something that can be valuable to others, too. There are lots of websites that can help you learn a language, sure, but I haven't seen any focus on a site or service that can help you decide which language or framework fits different tasks better. Obviously experienced programmers know what tools to use themselves, but as a newer developer, it must be confusing to see the insane amount of frameworks and languages being recommended every day depending on what's currently hyped and what the other person prefers. Thoughts? If you're a new programmer, have you experienced this?

So that's where I'm at currently and I hope that's a decent introduction. I'm happy to be part of this and I want to learn as much as possible. If you have any tips or ideas for the things I've written, I'm very interested in hearing them

"If you have any tips or ideas for the things I've written, I'm very interested in hearing them"

1. Before adding additional functionality to your software, ask users what features they want most.

2. In addition to youtube marketing try to use your current users as promoters of your software via referral or income sharing programs.

3. When planning to develop some solution ask yourself a question: which painful problem my solution solve?

 

[srodrigo]

I work, study and game on the same PC, so it has been difficult to separate the tasks.

I don't know what kind of games you play, but a few ideas:
* Sell your games accounts if possible
* Get a Mac, or even better, a Linux machine. Hopefully the games that hook you in won't run there

I go through this cycle of install, play till I realise WTF am I doing, uninstall, install again. I think only the two above would help.