TL;DR Learnings the last 15 months
I left my full-time gig as a software engineer 15 months ago to pursue the fastlane. To be honest, my co-founder and I didn't have much of a plan besides create a software business that will reach at least $20M in value. Given that, we have had a lot of failed ventures.
Our graveyard + reasons for failure
Current focus: Daily games for digital publications (+ other brands we're expanding to)
We have 3 customers now which nets us $750/mo. A huge improvement for us (people are paying us for our software!) but we're still far away from making the money we need ($10k/mo) to support our families and stop gauging our savings. That's before we even start working toward our goal of building a $20M business
There as so many highs and so many lows. Currently we've been feeling pretty down on ourselves. You see people making profitable businesses so quickly and sometimes it gets to us that we're over a year in and barely making enough money to cover our costs. It's also funny how some things that seemed impossible (for example we got our dream client as only our 2nd client) feel normal very quickly.
Anyway just wanted to rant and reflect about this in case there were some others who are in a similar place 1+ years in who could relate.
- It's fine for your ideas to change (and they should) but it'll make your life way easier if you pick a problem space OR customer niche to focus on. That way your learnings add on top of each other instead of it feeling you're starting at 0 with a whole new product/idea
- The goal post is always moving. You think "everything will go smoothly I just need my first customer!" but once you get them you realize you're just getting started. Find healthy ways to work through the mental ups and downs of this, because it wont stop once you reach your next milestone
I left my full-time gig as a software engineer 15 months ago to pursue the fastlane. To be honest, my co-founder and I didn't have much of a plan besides create a software business that will reach at least $20M in value. Given that, we have had a lot of failed ventures.
Our graveyard + reasons for failure
- AI powered performance review SaaS tool
- Built too early before validating
- Studied/interviewed end users instead of decisions makers which ultimately lead to no sales
- Software Engineering Coaching
- First time we started making money, netted about $2,000
- Stopped once we realized this will not make us FU money (coaching not as easy to scale as software)
- Financial Modeling Software for hit based businesses (movies, games, etc)
- My co-founder was in software so we did what all the big VCs recommended (something relevant to your current job)
- Made a tool but was hard to sell to CEOs, they were fine paying CFOs to manually do most of this work and CFOs didn't care enough to pay
- Hyper casual game mobile app
- Reached ~700 users, made maybe $100 in ad revenue
- Dying market, we decided to jump ship once we realized this was not a great path to FU money
Current focus: Daily games for digital publications (+ other brands we're expanding to)
We have 3 customers now which nets us $750/mo. A huge improvement for us (people are paying us for our software!) but we're still far away from making the money we need ($10k/mo) to support our families and stop gauging our savings. That's before we even start working toward our goal of building a $20M business
There as so many highs and so many lows. Currently we've been feeling pretty down on ourselves. You see people making profitable businesses so quickly and sometimes it gets to us that we're over a year in and barely making enough money to cover our costs. It's also funny how some things that seemed impossible (for example we got our dream client as only our 2nd client) feel normal very quickly.
Anyway just wanted to rant and reflect about this in case there were some others who are in a similar place 1+ years in who could relate.
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