I have been lurking on this forum for a long time now. A couple of posts with false starts. This will be a first for me on here as its actual execution time.
I can get into the FTE and all the other background later on when I have a bit more breathing room, but I have officially gotten started; and its a bit terrifying.
To start, I am working with a partner. The fact I have come to realize about myself and my current job is that I am so far into the weeds that I ignore almost all other problems in my life besides what's right in-front of me, and that's usually code. I really wanted to see if I could find someone who cared about the business side as much as I did about the tech side and see if that could produce something. I am a full time software developer for reference.
I have read multiple threads on here where people author and post threads on books. A couple of them spoke about picking up the phone and calling contacts to simply let them know what you were trying to do, even if no progress was made. So that is what I did.
I didn't call many people in retrospect, maybe 5 people in my life that I thought would even be in the realm of wanting to try and start something. And no one had anything that day.
But a couple of months later, my friend from college called me. He is out in Colorado and working in an industry (left blank intentionally) and had an idea to serve the market. After we had a few calls and back and forth I knew he would be as passionate about the business and structure side as I would about the technical side and the domain stack and we got to work.
He comes from the Microsoft Excel world, so he gave me lots of spreadsheets that hurt my brain trying to keep track of. So I took them all and translated it into an ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) and gave it back to him. Once he saw that, he knew he wanted to make tweaks and we have gone back and forth on design ever since. As a result, I have Part 1 in hand and Part 2 will be signed off on tonight.
This gets a bit technical, sorry:
For tech stack I am using React.js for front end (served from S3), .NET 8 for APIs and logic (EC2s), and EF Core 8 (with SQL server express) (RDS). This allowed me to do EVERYTHING for the domain in code. (Including AWS .yml deploy files for resources and VPC creations)
To date, I have already created the dev and prod domain stack. (In AWS) I serve nothing other than a static landing page atm so we can NOT spend while in development of the MVP, but it is proven as working and ready to launch again with just a few buttons. We did have a few weeks where we held a sign up form and fed to my db but we decided to shut it down and backup the data as the cost was not worth until MVP was live. (We could have done wix or squarespace LP as well, but we decided we needed to make the domain stack anyway so lets do it ourselves).
The code all has built in CI/CD pipelines for auto deploy and are behind an Elastic Beanstalk so it can do self healing and auto LB management. This is a more costly approach than say putting everything behind lambda functions (current implementation runs about 200 bucks a month per env) BUT since I am working a full time job and cannot handle live troubleshooting or restarts, it's a cost both my partner and I think its worth until I can focus more dedicated time to our biz.
As far as the domain stack, I have just completed Phase 1 of the DB CRUD and api layer. I still have a part 2 once my Partner gets me final relationships, but at current state I am over 60% done of MVP domain.
I have also done POCs for the UIs like using Google maps and other map provider. I plan on making our site search look a lot like zillow.com where listings are plotted on map and side bar and clicking pin will allow for more stuff. More integrations will include Stripe for payment and Identity verification, Email service provider (not decided yet) and something else that currently slips my mind. We will use a different map service I have not done a POC for so its still work that needs done, but the concept is proven and a map is there.
As far as proving the need before building everything, (after all what if this is a waste of time?) we already have things to list on go live that ties directly into my partners current business. And his business works on both sides of the producer / consumer model. Meaning that we will have both the buyers and sellers loaded up in to the site on day one which I think is pretty unique; we just need users to log in and decide they can trust us to do business! Of course we will need to go out and sell and onboard in future, but if I can deliver the tech stack, he already has the leads; so I am driving like crazy.
My posted goal is to have at least our MVP live by October, but I plan on having a couple more items live before then as well. That will leave us in a state with a scalable and self healing infrastructure; and a system that will allow us to capture repeatable business that can scale from very small to very large units of business (and of course generate revenue!!!).
I am sure I am missing a ton. I welcome all questions and feedback. I will post as I make further milestones. Thanks for your time and input. -Matt
(MJ, sorry I let Sumo lapse, but only because I am tracking another way. Progress is progress!)
I can get into the FTE and all the other background later on when I have a bit more breathing room, but I have officially gotten started; and its a bit terrifying.
To start, I am working with a partner. The fact I have come to realize about myself and my current job is that I am so far into the weeds that I ignore almost all other problems in my life besides what's right in-front of me, and that's usually code. I really wanted to see if I could find someone who cared about the business side as much as I did about the tech side and see if that could produce something. I am a full time software developer for reference.
I have read multiple threads on here where people author and post threads on books. A couple of them spoke about picking up the phone and calling contacts to simply let them know what you were trying to do, even if no progress was made. So that is what I did.
I didn't call many people in retrospect, maybe 5 people in my life that I thought would even be in the realm of wanting to try and start something. And no one had anything that day.
But a couple of months later, my friend from college called me. He is out in Colorado and working in an industry (left blank intentionally) and had an idea to serve the market. After we had a few calls and back and forth I knew he would be as passionate about the business and structure side as I would about the technical side and the domain stack and we got to work.
He comes from the Microsoft Excel world, so he gave me lots of spreadsheets that hurt my brain trying to keep track of. So I took them all and translated it into an ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) and gave it back to him. Once he saw that, he knew he wanted to make tweaks and we have gone back and forth on design ever since. As a result, I have Part 1 in hand and Part 2 will be signed off on tonight.
This gets a bit technical, sorry:
For tech stack I am using React.js for front end (served from S3), .NET 8 for APIs and logic (EC2s), and EF Core 8 (with SQL server express) (RDS). This allowed me to do EVERYTHING for the domain in code. (Including AWS .yml deploy files for resources and VPC creations)
To date, I have already created the dev and prod domain stack. (In AWS) I serve nothing other than a static landing page atm so we can NOT spend while in development of the MVP, but it is proven as working and ready to launch again with just a few buttons. We did have a few weeks where we held a sign up form and fed to my db but we decided to shut it down and backup the data as the cost was not worth until MVP was live. (We could have done wix or squarespace LP as well, but we decided we needed to make the domain stack anyway so lets do it ourselves).
The code all has built in CI/CD pipelines for auto deploy and are behind an Elastic Beanstalk so it can do self healing and auto LB management. This is a more costly approach than say putting everything behind lambda functions (current implementation runs about 200 bucks a month per env) BUT since I am working a full time job and cannot handle live troubleshooting or restarts, it's a cost both my partner and I think its worth until I can focus more dedicated time to our biz.
As far as the domain stack, I have just completed Phase 1 of the DB CRUD and api layer. I still have a part 2 once my Partner gets me final relationships, but at current state I am over 60% done of MVP domain.
I have also done POCs for the UIs like using Google maps and other map provider. I plan on making our site search look a lot like zillow.com where listings are plotted on map and side bar and clicking pin will allow for more stuff. More integrations will include Stripe for payment and Identity verification, Email service provider (not decided yet) and something else that currently slips my mind. We will use a different map service I have not done a POC for so its still work that needs done, but the concept is proven and a map is there.
As far as proving the need before building everything, (after all what if this is a waste of time?) we already have things to list on go live that ties directly into my partners current business. And his business works on both sides of the producer / consumer model. Meaning that we will have both the buyers and sellers loaded up in to the site on day one which I think is pretty unique; we just need users to log in and decide they can trust us to do business! Of course we will need to go out and sell and onboard in future, but if I can deliver the tech stack, he already has the leads; so I am driving like crazy.
My posted goal is to have at least our MVP live by October, but I plan on having a couple more items live before then as well. That will leave us in a state with a scalable and self healing infrastructure; and a system that will allow us to capture repeatable business that can scale from very small to very large units of business (and of course generate revenue!!!).
I am sure I am missing a ton. I welcome all questions and feedback. I will post as I make further milestones. Thanks for your time and input. -Matt
(MJ, sorry I let Sumo lapse, but only because I am tracking another way. Progress is progress!)
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