I think I'm not that guy anymore - Took me YEARS - FTE and execution

[Fatrys]

Hello,

Yes, I'm that guy. Sorry @MJ DeMarco, you haven't changed my life... yet

The one who read all the books (TMF in 2016), and got nothing much done except for some action-faking. I know I'm far from being the only one. Even so, something has started to change in the past year. I'm posting this in case it helps others like me start executing.

Let me explain.

Coming from an upper middle class family, when I was about 17-18 I always wondered how rich people got rich. Trying to find which job paid the most... but the numbers were never adding up. Read lots of Slowlane books and thought it was the only way. Yet the idea of working in a cage from Monday through Friday till you retire was quite depressing to me.
Sometimes I look around in the office and ask myself: "Do these people really want to be here staring at their PC?"

That's just how it is, right?

Of course, it was not hurting bad enough since I hadn't even started working.

Started my career in 2017 as an industrial engineer in a big corporation, and loved it there. Had the opportunity to work almost as a freelancer, traveling to places when I wanted, how I wanted, to deliver actual value to my internal customers. Was working on Business Intelligence and other digital tools implementation. Great and inspiring managers too.
I was not thinking too much about Fastlane, since I was very happy with my situation.

Then in late 2021, things changed. I accepted another position at global HQ, also to work on digital tools as a Product Owner. At first, everything was good. But one day, management changed (N+1 AND N+2 at the same time, great), and that was the first time things went down for me.

I discovered "normal" management, the kind that needs to justify its existence and wants to control everything you do, impacting your motivation. This created conflicts that ended up in me asking to change positions.

For the first time in my life, I was asked to work more hours while there was not more to work on (the bottleneck was our development resources), and that if I want to have some kind of career I should work loooong hours all the time. This, even if I had reached my targets. Results were never mentioned, it was all about the hours. I did work more hours in my previous position, but only because management was inspiring.

It sealed my mind. Can't live like this anymore. I'm OK with working hard, yet if I have to work hard all my life, it better be on my terms.

Now, to the execution part:

In 2021-2022 I was already thinking about some exit strategy. Found the @Fox 's thread about web design, which was quite inspiring. Immediately started learning HTML/CSS/Javascript through Udemy. I knew NOTHING about code, did nothing in coding classes at school (there was always that guy who knew everything already), and even hated it for some time. Also chose to learn Python/Django with Youtube, without a specific goal in mind, just thought that it could be useful one day, since Python is the go-to language for AI etc...

It takes some dedication and discipline to do something that no one is forcing you to do. I ended up loving the process of learning, and more importantly I felt that I was opening new paths for my future. The motivation was not about coding itself, but what it enabled you to do, and how it can help people and organizations thrive. Actually, this has been my job for the past 6 years, and I loved the process of it. Seeing people happy with my digital solutions.

So, armed with the knewly acquired knowledge, I started asking around (friends & family) for static websites needs, for free of course. Very hard to overcome the self-imposed mental barrier of simply asking this.
Created one for a friend for her yoga classes, and she was happy with it. It was very simple, so I needed to move further.

Then, my sister told me that in her field (medical), they would love to have some platform on which practitioners could select candidates to back them up on specific days for a specific period. Armed with my fixed-growth mindset, I immediately told her that I only knew how to design static websites, and that this would be too complicated.

A few weeks later, things were still not going well with management, so I changed my mind, and chose to see this as a personal challenge. Remebered I learned Django a few months back, and that it could be the solution. If I managed to build it, it would be a good addition to my current non-existent portfolio.

Looked at the competition. There were several competitors already, but no one within my relatives seemed to know about them. So, I thought that I could first tackle this, as well as providing additional value.
Even if it failed, at least I would have learned how to build a web app and market it, and no one can take this from me.

In late 2022, I started this project from scratch with just an idea. Created a Figma for it, then started designing the DB, then the views, the templates etc... It took me a lot of late nights, followed by several-week breaks. Each task felt impossible until I managed to complete it (thanks StackOverflow...).

Today, August 2023, I'm almost ready to launch my application in production and market it.

I chose to focus on delivering an MVP and provide it for free. Now I need to make sure I market it well, and to the right audience. Competitions straight away ask for money, and as a result, not so many people are willing to be on the platform. I believe the actual value of this kind of platform first comes from the fact that everyone's on it. (Instagram bought for billions with no revenue generation). Next step would be to do some ads, or premium functionalities. It could potentially grow to 200k+ users...but I'm just dreaming, we're not there yet.

Next steps:

- Release the app and market it (relatives, Facebook, Instagram, specific communities...) in September 2023. Look for any echos
- Assess and adjust based on echos

Will also find other static website projects after release, depending on how busy this will keep me.

Conclusion, not a $5M exit, yet I feel like I actually did a little something. Let me keep you posted.

Thanks for reading. Any advice or comment is appreciated!

 

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[Fatrys]

If I had to forget all what I know but 1 thing that really helped me, I would keep this:

Just solve the problem that is in front of you, then move to the next one and so on...

This is clearly mentioned in the books and is so simple.

Each problem can be decomposed into simpler ones for which solutions probably already exist.

Without this mindset, I would not have been able to create the app, or it would have taken 3 more years.

It was so easy to think of all the nice-to-have features I could implement...

 

[OverByte]

Good on you for taking something from idea to reality. Even if it doesn't work out financially for this project, this will pay dividends from the experience and confidence you gained. Good luck.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Pretty damn impressive.

You have exactly what it takes to transition to the Fastlane, and I say that regardless of how your current project turns out.

As I try to pound into people's heads, LEARNING and GROWTH can be passionate. You started out hating code... and then you learned it and connected your feedback loop, and then understood how powerful the skill was.

I think Navil Ravikant says CODE is one of the 4 types of leverage. If you know code, you have access to leverage.

 

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[Fatrys]

Pretty damn impressive.

You have exactly what it takes to transition to the Fastlane, and I say that regardless of how your current project turns out.

As I try to pound into people's heads, LEARNING and GROWTH can be passionate. You started out hating code... and then you learned it and connected your feedback loop, and then understood how powerful the skill was.

I think Navil Ravikant says CODE is one of the 4 types of leverage. If you know code, you have access to leverage.

Thanks for the feedback.

Code as leverage is indeed very interesting. Not sure yet how to leverage it (subscription, package and sell?). Priority right now is given to releasing something on the market.

I still find it so hard to work on this stuff. And so easy to give up. Will probably get better with the first feedback loops.

But then ... what's the alternative? Save a little more, get a 10% (if only...) raise with 10% inflation?

I actually have a lot of savings that could last me at least 5 years without frugality.
It's a little liberating, but not too much as I still see these savings as my "precious" that I cannot really enjoy till/if I retire.

What's missing is cashflow within an unscripted environment...

So, not really tied to a job. However, until my side projects can provide around the same amount or I make sure that I will actually leverage the additonal free time, no need to quit.

 

[Fox]

Hello,

Yes, I'm that guy. Sorry @MJ DeMarco, you haven't changed my life... yet

The one who read all the books (TMF in 2016), and got nothing much done except for some action-faking. I know I'm far from being the only one. Even so, something has started to change in the past year. I'm posting this in case it helps others like me start executing.

Let me explain.

Coming from an upper middle class family, when I was about 17-18 I always wondered how rich people got rich. Trying to find which job paid the most... but the numbers were never adding up. Read lots of Slowlane books and thought it was the only way. Yet the idea of working in a cage from Monday through Friday till you retire was quite depressing to me.
Sometimes I look around in the office and ask myself: "Do these people really want to be here staring at their PC?"

That's just how it is, right?

Of course, it was not hurting bad enough since I hadn't even started working.

Started my career in 2017 as an industrial engineer in a big corporation, and loved it there. Had the opportunity to work almost as a freelancer, traveling to places when I wanted, how I wanted, to deliver actual value to my internal customers. Was working on Business Intelligence and other digital tools implementation. Great and inspiring managers too.
I was not thinking too much about Fastlane, since I was very happy with my situation.

Then in late 2021, things changed. I accepted another position at global HQ, also to work on digital tools as a Product Owner. At first, everything was good. But one day, management changed (N+1 AND N+2 at the same time, great), and that was the first time things went down for me.

I discovered "normal" management, the kind that needs to justify its existence and wants to control everything you do, impacting your motivation. This created conflicts that ended up in me asking to change positions.

For the first time in my life, I was asked to work more hours while there was not more to work on (the bottleneck was our development resources), and that if I want to have some kind of career I should work loooong hours all the time. This, even if I had reached my targets. Results were never mentioned, it was all about the hours. I did work more hours in my previous position, but only because management was inspiring.

It sealed my mind. Can't live like this anymore. I'm OK with working hard, yet if I have to work hard all my life, it better be on my terms.

Now, to the execution part:

In 2021-2022 I was already thinking about some exit strategy. Found the @Fox 's thread about web design, which was quite inspiring. Immediately started learning HTML/CSS/Javascript through Udemy. I knew NOTHING about code, did nothing in coding classes at school (there was always that guy who knew everything already), and even hated it for some time. Also chose to learn Python/Django with Youtube, without a specific goal in mind, just thought that it could be useful one day, since Python is the go-to language for AI etc...

It takes some dedication and discipline to do something that no one is forcing you to do. I ended up loving the process of learning, and more importantly I felt that I was opening new paths for my future. The motivation was not about coding itself, but what it enabled you to do, and how it can help people and organizations thrive. Actually, this has been my job for the past 6 years, and I loved the process of it. Seeing people happy with my digital solutions.

So, armed with the knewly acquired knowledge, I started asking around (friends & family) for static websites needs, for free of course. Very hard to overcome the self-imposed mental barrier of simply asking this.
Created one for a friend for her yoga classes, and she was happy with it. It was very simple, so I needed to move further.

Then, my sister told me that in her field (medical), they would love to have some platform on which practitioners could select candidates to back them up on specific days for a specific period. Armed with my fixed-growth mindset, I immediately told her that I only knew how to design static websites, and that this would be too complicated.

A few weeks later, things were still not going well with management, so I changed my mind, and chose to see this as a personal challenge. Remebered I learned Django a few months back, and that it could be the solution. If I managed to build it, it would be a good addition to my current non-existent portfolio.

Looked at the competition. There were several competitors already, but no one within my relatives seemed to know about them. So, I thought that I could first tackle this, as well as providing additional value.
Even if it failed, at least I would have learned how to build a web app and market it, and no one can take this from me.

In late 2022, I started this project from scratch with just an idea. Created a Figma for it, then started designing the DB, then the views, the templates etc... It took me a lot of late nights, followed by several-week breaks. Each task felt impossible until I managed to complete it (thanks StackOverflow...).

Today, August 2023, I'm almost ready to launch my application in production and market it.

I chose to focus on delivering an MVP and provide it for free. Now I need to make sure I market it well, and to the right audience. Competitions straight away ask for money, and as a result, not so many people are willing to be on the platform. I believe the actual value of this kind of platform first comes from the fact that everyone's on it. (Instagram bought for billions with no revenue generation). Next step would be to do some ads, or premium functionalities. It could potentially grow to 200k+ users...but I'm just dreaming, we're not there yet.

Next steps:

- Release the app and market it (relatives, Facebook, Instagram, specific communities...) in September 2023. Look for any echos
- Assess and adjust based on echos

Will also find other static website projects after release, depending on how busy this will keep me.

Conclusion, not a $5M exit, yet I feel like I actually did a little something. Let me keep you posted.

Thanks for reading. Any advice or comment is appreciated!

Great read and cool to see you keeping leverage in mind. Just keep going and thinking big. The forum is here to help and you have plenty of guys to ask advice from who have done similar things. Nice work!

 

[Fatrys]

A quick update to show that I'm consistent...

Yesterday went to bed at almost 04:00AM as I was so focused on solving my issue.
Today, it's 01:13AM and I'll go after writing this message.

Thoughts:

1. The html/css/js/python code itself is already quite demanding, but is only a part of this whole process. Otherwise all developers would be entrepreneurs and making millions...
That's why I always focused on getting to the MVP and test it on the market as soon as possible.
2. During this process, I was actually suprised at how everything had to be coded almost from scratch, even a login/register/forgot password thing. There are a lot of resources available obviously, however in 99% of the cases you must THINK and ADAPT the code to your project.
3. Time flies when you're focused!

So what's left before go live?

I'll give some details to show the kind of tasks I assign myself and the kind of questions I ask myself.

- I need to choose the right DB. Currently use the default sqlite. I read that it might be perfectly OK, however I prefer planning for scale. Need to research on this as I'm no expert.
- Secure user uploaded files. Don't know what to do yet for this.
- Send emails asynchronously. It can work synchronously, but it definitely takes some extra time. Asynchronous is better anyway if the app scales, and does not seem too complicated to implement.
- Proper environement setup (DEV, UAT, PROD...). Already have my GitHub that I pull from PythonAnywhere, but sometimes I still don't know what I'm doing with these branches, merges. I was just focused on deploying it.
- A minimal SEO check as I'm not counting on this, and complying with GDPR requirements (I'm in France, Europe)
- And of course, an extensive testing process... For now I've not automated any test, it's just functional. Maybe when the app takes off. In my current company, I know this is not even done on projects impacting thousands of users...

And that's it for now. Will continue working hours this week, as I'll go on holidays from mid-Aug till early Sept.

 

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[Fatrys]

Was on the road yesterday, and while looking at cars on the road, I noticed companies websites or emails plastered on their vans, which is very common in most countries I guess.

Actually, I see this all the time.

The only difference now, is the way I perceived it. I thought that I could check their website out and if it could be improved for them to get more sales. Then cold call or e-mail them.

Also, booked an appointment with my hairdresser step sister. She owns the place and uses a web app that most probably has fees for each transaction. It’s a very basic app and I know I can do the same kind based on my newly acquired skills.

So if I build a similar (or even better) app for her, without transaction fees, I think there no reason do refuse that.

Next action : I’ll ask her about how much these fees are per month on average. Then suggest I can do the same app for her for free. Even if the amount is not significant, this would be my first project developing something that helps the business owner save money.

I used to think that I could not have any ideas, or that people finding ideas just had a better network. Sometimes you just have to change your self imposed filters.

 

[Genius01]

Also, booked an appointment with my hairdresser step sister. She owns the place and uses a web app that most probably has fees for each transaction. It’s a very basic app and I know I can do the same kind based on my newly acquired skills.

So if I build a similar (or even better) app for her, without transaction fees, I think there no reason do refuse that.

But wouldn't this be a distraction to the one you're already working on, the marketplace app?
Because from your preceding post, it seemed like you had a lot of work cut out for you on that one, and many things to figure out still before you ship that one.
Wouldn't it be better to focus your energy on trying to ship that one as fast as possible and get market feedback, before trying to take on a new project?
Especially as you also have a day job if I understand your scenario right from your earlier posts.

That's just me wondering anyway, as I don't know you personally or your abilities, so I can't say for sure, it may be easy for you to do all together.
But I'm just wondering if you wouldn't be spreading yourself too thin without shipping the first one you've done so much work on already. So you don't get burnt out.

Great progress by the way, you're doing great so far.

 

[Fatrys]

But wouldn't this be a distraction to the one you're already working on, the marketplace app?
Because from your preceding post, it seemed like you had a lot of work cut out for you on that one, and many things to figure out still before you ship that one.
Wouldn't it be better to focus your energy on trying to ship that one as fast as possible and get market feedback, before trying to take on a new project?
Especially as you also have a day job if I understand your scenario right from your earlier posts.

That's just me wondering anyway, as I don't know you personally or your abilities, so I can't say for sure, it may be easy for you to do all together.
But I'm just wondering if you wouldn't be spreading yourself too thin without shipping the first one you've done so much work on already. So you don't get burnt out.

Great progress by the way, you're doing great so far.

You’re right, I must focus on the app that is almost completed now.

I was just thinking of other ideas based on my interactions from that day. I’ll not execute on them right now, at least before I’ve completed the app release and marketing part.

On the day job part, I actually signed my exit already, will receive a check and leave by late September. So I might be unemployed then, unless I find another position.
I like the idea of having a lot of time, however I need to make sure it won’t be wasted.

 

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[Genius01]

You’re right, I must focus on the app that is almost completed now.

I was just thinking of other ideas based on my interactions from that day. I’ll not execute on them right now, at least before I’ve completed the app release and marketing part.

Okay great, makes a lot of sense then.

On the day job part, I actually signed my exit already, will receive a check and leave by late September. So I might be unemployed then, unless I find another position.
I like the idea of having a lot of time, however I need to make sure it won’t be wasted.

Wish you all the best in this next phase of your life. And yes, do create a strong plan for what to do with your time if you don't find another position in September.
As such free time has a very sneaky way of slipping away without you realizing it if it is not tightly planned for ahead of time. You'll just find you're using it on doing other things that are somewhat important but are not actually the most important things you should be doing.
So actively watch out for that.
Speaking from experience, lol.

 

[Fatrys]

Okay great, makes a lot of sense then.



Wish you all the best in this next phase of your life. And yes, do create a strong plan for what to do with your time if you don't find another position in September.
As such free time has a very sneaky way of slipping away without you realizing it if it is not tightly planned for ahead of time. You'll just find you're using it on doing other things that are somewhat important but are not actually the most important things you should be doing.
So actively watch out for that.
Speaking from experience, lol.

Oh yes, so easy to waste time and then complain I don’t have enough of it!

This will be a huge challenge. Probably worth the effort eventually!

Thanks for your support

 

[OverByte]

I'll give some details to show the kind of tasks I assign myself and the kind of questions I ask myself.

1 - I need to choose the right DB. Currently use the default sqlite. I read that it might be perfectly OK, however I prefer planning for scale. Need to research on this as I'm no expert.
2 - Secure user uploaded files. Don't know what to do yet for this.
3 - Send emails asynchronously. It can work synchronously, but it definitely takes some extra time. Asynchronous is better anyway if the app scales, and does not seem too complicated to implement.
4 - Proper environement setup (DEV, UAT, PROD...). Already have my GitHub that I pull from PythonAnywhere, but sometimes I still don't know what I'm doing with these branches, merges. I was just focused on deploying it.
5 - A minimal SEO check as I'm not counting on this, and complying with GDPR requirements (I'm in France, Europe)
6 - And of course, an extensive testing process... For now I've not automated any test, it's just functional. Maybe when the app takes off. In my current company, I know this is not even done on projects impacting thousands of users...

And that's it for now. Will continue working hours this week, as I'll go on holidays from mid-Aug till early Sept.

Some feedback on these

1 - i wouldn't worry too much about db architecture scalability prior to MVP. There are lots of ways to scale dbs. A single sql db instance will scale to quite a few customers provided you construct your tables well. This is of course not knowing your specific use case. Don't worry about pre-mature optimization. One thing you'll want to do is make sure you are supporting multi-tenancy properly (each customer == tenant), this means proper keys to segregate data (it should never be possible for customer a to see customer b's data). There are a ton of DB optimization considerations but again focus on getting something done simple. Using Django ORM keeps things simple.
2 - i would just put these in s3 but not sure on your tech stack / where you are hosting. I like AWS for this reason but it has a learning curve. There are probably simpler options but i would definitely recommend a third party solution to save you time. Don't reinvent wheels. Using something 3rd party gives you a lot of stuff for free (backups, redundancy, encryption, etc) and will have a simple interface for upload/download. S3 for example gives you a presigned url which you can pass back to frontend and handle upload. There are also a lot of js libs with drag and drop components that will hook directly into s3 / other well known services.
3 - use a third party provider for this like sendgrid. You can start with a shared ip that is cheap. There are several ways to make this async. It will be way easier to make nice looking emails with a service like this.
4 - dev setup - its good you have separate branches for dev testing and prod. Are you the only dev on this? I would keep this simple if so, setting up CI/CD pipelines can be a decent amount of effort depending on full tech stack.
5 - i wouldn't really be too concerned about GDPR for a MVP but I'm not a lawyer.
6 - biggest mistake i see from devs (i was an engineering manager and tech lead for one of the large tech companies) is not writing automation tests early. I do this now on all projects and make my devs do it as well. When hiring foreign devs i notice this is the biggest gap. If you do unit testing pragmatically it will usually both speed development time (way easier to expose edge cases and bugs and faster to test happy path as well then full deploy/setup/manual test) and also gives you confidence that you can refactor your code base later which you will definitely need to do buidling a new project without breaking a bunch of stuff previously tested/working. It is way more effort to retroactively add tests.

 

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[Fatrys]

Some feedback on these

1 - i wouldn't worry too much about db architecture scalability prior to MVP. There are lots of ways to scale dbs. A single sql db instance will scale to quite a few customers provided you construct your tables well. This is of course not knowing your specific use case. Don't worry about pre-mature optimization. One thing you'll want to do is make sure you are supporting multi-tenancy properly (each customer == tenant), this means proper keys to segregate data (it should never be possible for customer a to see customer b's data). There are a ton of DB optimization considerations but again focus on getting something done simple. Using Django ORM keeps things simple.
2 - i would just put these in s3 but not sure on your tech stack / where you are hosting. I like AWS for this reason but it has a learning curve. There are probably simpler options but i would definitely recommend a third party solution to save you time. Don't reinvent wheels. Using something 3rd party gives you a lot of stuff for free (backups, redundancy, encryption, etc) and will have a simple interface for upload/download. S3 for example gives you a presigned url which you can pass back to frontend and handle upload. There are also a lot of js libs with drag and drop components that will hook directly into s3 / other well known services.
3 - use a third party provider for this like sendgrid. You can start with a shared ip that is cheap. There are several ways to make this async. It will be way easier to make nice looking emails with a service like this.
4 - dev setup - its good you have separate branches for dev testing and prod. Are you the only dev on this? I would keep this simple if so, setting up CI/CD pipelines can be a decent amount of effort depending on full tech stack.
5 - i wouldn't really be too concerned about GDPR for a MVP but I'm not a lawyer.
6 - biggest mistake i see from devs (i was an engineering manager and tech lead for one of the large tech companies) is not writing automation tests early. I do this now on all projects and make my devs do it as well. When hiring foreign devs i notice this is the biggest gap. If you do unit testing pragmatically it will usually both speed development time (way easier to expose edge cases and bugs and faster to test happy path as well then full deploy/setup/manual test) and also gives you confidence that you can refactor your code base later which you will definitely need to do buidling a new project without breaking a bunch of stuff previously tested/working. It is way more effort to retroactively add tests.

Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback.

1. Alright so I may keep on working with SQLite then

2. I saw this s3 a lot already, so I will give it a try

3. Saw Mailgun and Sendgrid for this solution, then started doing something with Django celery and redis, which worked really well, only to realize celery cannot work with PythonAnywhere where I host my website. I just thought that for now, async emails are not really a must for my MVP.
Do you think I should still look at it at this point?

4. I’m the only dev yes. Still struggling with understanding the git stuff. I know a little about the CICD pipeline as my dev team has worked on it, however I don’t know yet how I would implement it.
Do you think it’s a must to have early in the project?

5. I’m not too concerned about it either, just want to have a look at the basic rules and how I should inform users about their data usage

6. The funny thing is that automation testing is the first thing that I asked my current dev team to implement, yet I’m not even doing it myself! Don’t know how to write them yet but will have a look.
Automated tests and CICD seem to be a must

No access to my PC till late August since I’m doing some hiking in the mountains right now.
Will definitely keep my progress updated when I get back. Lots of things to do still.

I’m with a physiotherapist and he confirmed once again the need for a better solution on the market. Gave me a lot of insights, so I’m not giving this up!

 

[Fatrys]

An update:

On the development part:
- Async email with Amazon SES DONE
- Media & Static files now served from DigitalOcean
- Implemented a new functionality that lets practitioners contact potential applicants when they post their request (vs posting and passively waiting).
- Next: automate my tests

Realized I spent a lot of time developing without reassessing my value skew. Now is the time.

Last week, went to the dentist and asked the practitioner about it. She told me that today, there is no well-known platform, and that my idea could work well. It's a very general feedback and worth what it's worth. Still, everyone I asked in the medical field so far said they need this kind of service, but would they pay for it?

Read @Gllman 's answer and I'm reconsidering making the app totally free. I was thinking of this because I have this fear that people won't use it if it's not free... Maybe a 1 year free period, followed by a subscription.

Looked again at the info I gathered on competition months ago, and a competitor charges €120/mo for their premium subscription, which more or less matches my functionalities.
It was created in 2014, advertised on tv etc... but it's not really known by people around me it seems. They report having 10k+ users though.
Checked the business on Google and a 1 star rating reads:
"
The subscription at 40 euros per month does not allow you to have a single replacement contact information, at least 120 euros for a single email address??
You be the judge !
"
Others are 5 star ratings without barely any relevant comment

The second competitor charges €15 to get access to each potential applicant. €12 for each signed contrat after 5 contracts a year (Electronic signature). This may easily to in the €100/mo zone for a practitioner.

The third one charges a 8% fee on the total revenue. I was told by my physiotherapist friend that it is crazy and he would never give 8%.


I really must ensure I have a sufficient value skew if I ever want to get people to pay for it.
Next steps:
- Keep focusing on the developments' last steps - will be done by late Sept
- Gather a list of names to prepare some beta testing on the app
- Assess and Adjust

 

[Johnny boy]

You engineers are always doing things the right way...the wrong way.

Congrats on learning to code but you should've been learning to sell and test ideas in the marketplace with a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH shorter feedback loop.

Money loves speed.

You seem to have the mind of a highly skilled employee. Nothing wrong with that.

You need someone on your team who is a ready, fire, aim type of person who makes you nervous and knows how to get things to market FAST while YOU are the methodical, prudent, patient type who makes sure the product/service/software is great and keeps you guys grounded.

As an entrepreneur you have an idea, make some Frankenstein amalgamation with a pretty face and see if you can generate hype in a few weeks to a few months. Then you call up the nerds and pay them a salary to sit in a closet and build it properly while you go make deals happen. This should be FAST. The reason why is because you will have to try many things, launch, fail, and the market will give you feedback. Without the feedback, you are playing guessing games... and if you are playing guessing games, they better be fast guesses and fast results or else you will spend 20 years iterating before any success.

If you come to me and say "I need a site for booking appointments and an app for clients to manage their account" then I'm downloading wordpress, installing divi, placing a block of code and embedding calendly, using make.com to create automations that put leads into a marketing sequence, and ties into the back end where I build an app on Adalo, connect the database without having to know any code, and dress it up and POOF, now I have it done. I don't know how to code the way you do and it doesn't really matter. I can get a concept that actually works out into the market in a week. When it's doing 100k a month then yeah I go hire a 3 people to build it, but until then, just get something out there and don't do it the 'harder than it has to be' way, it's already hard enough to get customers and get them to pay, don't make it worse by doing the equivalent of digging a ditch with a spoon.

 

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[Fatrys]

You engineers are always doing things the right way...the wrong way.

Congrats on learning to code but you should've been learning to sell and test ideas in the marketplace with a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH shorter feedback loop.

Money loves speed.

You seem to have the mind of a highly skilled employee. Nothing wrong with that.

You need someone on your team who is a ready, fire, aim type of person who makes you nervous and knows how to get things to market FAST while YOU are the methodical, prudent, patient type who makes sure the product/service/software is great and keeps you guys grounded.

As an entrepreneur you have an idea, make some Frankenstein amalgamation with a pretty face and see if you can generate hype in a few weeks to a few months. Then you call up the nerds and pay them a salary to sit in a closet and build it properly while you go make deals happen. This should be FAST. The reason why is because you will have to try many things, launch, fail, and the market will give you feedback. Without the feedback, you are playing guessing games... and if you are playing guessing games, they better be fast guesses and fast results or else you will spend 20 years iterating before any success.

If you come to me and say "I need a site for booking appointments and an app for clients to manage their account" then I'm downloading wordpress, installing divi, placing a block of code and embedding calendly, using make.com to create automations that put leads into a marketing sequence, and ties into the back end where I build an app on Adalo, connect the database without having to know any code, and dress it up and POOF, now I have it done. I don't know how to code the way you do and it doesn't really matter. I can get a concept that actually works out into the market in a week. When it's doing 100k a month then yeah I go hire a 3 people to build it, but until then, just get something out there and don't do it the 'harder than it has to be' way, it's already hard enough to get customers and get them to pay, don't make it worse by doing the equivalent of digging a ditch with a spoon.

Thanks for the honest and necessary feedback.

I need a shift in a way I approach things, and focus on getting market feedback as soon and as cheaply as possible.

Knowing code is useless if I don’t sell!

Just read “The Right It” which is aligned with what you say, now I need to act on it.

Right now I’m working by myself and would like to learn the sales/marketing part

 

[mattn]

You engineers are always doing things the right way...the wrong way.

Congrats on learning to code but you should've been learning to sell and test ideas in the marketplace with a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH shorter feedback loop.

Money loves speed.

You seem to have the mind of a highly skilled employee. Nothing wrong with that.

You need someone on your team who is a ready, fire, aim type of person who makes you nervous and knows how to get things to market FAST while YOU are the methodical, prudent, patient type who makes sure the product/service/software is great and keeps you guys grounded.

As an entrepreneur you have an idea, make some Frankenstein amalgamation with a pretty face and see if you can generate hype in a few weeks to a few months. Then you call up the nerds and pay them a salary to sit in a closet and build it properly while you go make deals happen. This should be FAST. The reason why is because you will have to try many things, launch, fail, and the market will give you feedback. Without the feedback, you are playing guessing games... and if you are playing guessing games, they better be fast guesses and fast results or else you will spend 20 years iterating before any success.

If you come to me and say "I need a site for booking appointments and an app for clients to manage their account" then I'm downloading wordpress, installing divi, placing a block of code and embedding calendly, using make.com to create automations that put leads into a marketing sequence, and ties into the back end where I build an app on Adalo, connect the database without having to know any code, and dress it up and POOF, now I have it done. I don't know how to code the way you do and it doesn't really matter. I can get a concept that actually works out into the market in a week. When it's doing 100k a month then yeah I go hire a 3 people to build it, but until then, just get something out there and don't do it the 'harder than it has to be' way, it's already hard enough to get customers and get them to pay, don't make it worse by doing the equivalent of digging a ditch with a spoon.

This is F*cking spot on. As an engineer, I f*cked up with this and fixated so heavily on building a fancy app before understanding what people wanted and I paid the price (Quit my job to build something and lost a ton of my money in the process — never even released because I ran out of runway). I've also been hired to build apps by the same engineering type. A guy spent 6 figures for me to build him an app and it was crickets on release day... a few family members downloaded and bought but that's it.

It's a difficult mindset to shake. I've still got it to some extent and the only thing that manages to change it is to go out and socialize with as many people as possible about their problems and realize that they don't need all this fancy shit. Every time I bring up a somewhat complex, "shiny cool" engineering solution people shut down. Every time I propose something simple — almost parroting what they say but with 5% more information — they're more interested. Talking about anything technical or engineering-related is a no-no if you're talking to someone outside the tech space.

 

[Mikkel]

You engineers are always doing things the right way...the wrong way.

Congrats on learning to code but you should've been learning to sell and test ideas in the marketplace with a MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH shorter feedback loop.

Money loves speed.

You seem to have the mind of a highly skilled employee. Nothing wrong with that.

You need someone on your team who is a ready, fire, aim type of person who makes you nervous and knows how to get things to market FAST while YOU are the methodical, prudent, patient type who makes sure the product/service/software is great and keeps you guys grounded.

As an entrepreneur you have an idea, make some Frankenstein amalgamation with a pretty face and see if you can generate hype in a few weeks to a few months. Then you call up the nerds and pay them a salary to sit in a closet and build it properly while you go make deals happen. This should be FAST. The reason why is because you will have to try many things, launch, fail, and the market will give you feedback. Without the feedback, you are playing guessing games... and if you are playing guessing games, they better be fast guesses and fast results or else you will spend 20 years iterating before any success.

If you come to me and say "I need a site for booking appointments and an app for clients to manage their account" then I'm downloading wordpress, installing divi, placing a block of code and embedding calendly, using make.com to create automations that put leads into a marketing sequence, and ties into the back end where I build an app on Adalo, connect the database without having to know any code, and dress it up and POOF, now I have it done. I don't know how to code the way you do and it doesn't really matter. I can get a concept that actually works out into the market in a week. When it's doing 100k a month then yeah I go hire a 3 people to build it, but until then, just get something out there and don't do it the 'harder than it has to be' way, it's already hard enough to get customers and get them to pay, don't make it worse by doing the equivalent of digging a ditch with a spoon.

This post is

I'm working on inventing a product right now. As I start my 2nd and 3rd projects, this is essentially what I am focusing on. Getting a real simple MVP, seeing if the function of the product works, then testing the market. I believe their is a market, but going to market and getting feedback is the only way to truly know. If the feedback is not ideal, then scrap it and move on to any number of other different projects.

It is likely you will fail multiple times when starting a business. Even successful businesses fail within their own business occasionally. Maybe a product didn't sell well, or a service was just not needed. However, the quicker you find this out, the quicker you can move to the next project. Just don't bankrupt yourself in the process.

The question will be, what tools and techniques are the best way to test the market in your field of business? It might be different between different types of businesses, but spending some time to get your process down would be worthwhile.

 

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[hoangdangvn84]

Thanks for sharing, buddy. Hope everything's going well for you. I always aspire to be like someone who can learn a valuable skill from scratch, even with a bit of resistance (hate coding before). I'm curious how people like you manage to do that. Have you learned from high-priced courses or other methods?

 

[Fatrys]

Thanks for sharing, buddy. Hope everything's going well for you. I always aspire to be like someone who can learn a valuable skill from scratch, even with a bit of resistance (hate coding before). I'm curious how people like you manage to do that. Have you learned from high-priced courses or other methods?

The answer is they just do it.

As you might have guessed from previous replies, I’m the type to overthink things at the expense of action, yet what helped me being consistent with it was that the expected pain of working at a corporate job became too high to justify not acting anymore.

I learned through Udemy and YouTube. I would never buy high priced courses, you can learn 100% you need to know for free, and there is no secret method. ChatGPT is also incredibly helpful.

Following a course to know the basics is easy. Then you need to use what you learned to sell/build something that solves a need, which is the part I’m addressing at the moment.

Check this video from MJ

 

[hoangdangvn84]

The answer is they just do it.

As you might have guessed from previous replies, I’m the type to overthink things at the expense of action, yet what helped me being consistent with it was that the expected pain of working at a corporate job became too high to justify not acting anymore.

I learned through Udemy and YouTube. I would never buy high priced courses, you can learn 100% you need to know for free, and there is no secret method. ChatGPT is also incredibly helpful.

Following a course to know the basics is easy. Then you need to use what you learned to sell/build something that solves a need, which is the part I’m addressing at the moment.

Check this video from MJ

I see. Thank you for sharing your experience. It resonates with me a lot, as I'm someone who's looking for ways to transform my career and could use a real-life example.

 

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[hoangdangvn84]

The answer is they just do it.

As you might have guessed from previous replies, I’m the type to overthink things at the expense of action, yet what helped me being consistent with it was that the expected pain of working at a corporate job became too high to justify not acting anymore.

I learned through Udemy and YouTube. I would never buy high priced courses, you can learn 100% you need to know for free, and there is no secret method. ChatGPT is also incredibly helpful.

Following a course to know the basics is easy. Then you need to use what you learned to sell/build something that solves a need, which is the part I’m addressing at the moment.

Check this video from MJ

MJ's video is valuable. Thank you Fatrys!