Re:Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
by pavlov on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @01:48PM
(#14149938)
(I can't edit the parent comment anymore, so a clarification: when I wrote "not a hard goal", I meant that the $10k number is just a rough ballpark -- not that the goal would be somehow easy to accomplish.)
Re:Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
by GoodbyeEarl on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @01:33PM
(#14149753)
Have you already accomplished such a goal?
Re:Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
by pavlov on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @01:47PM
(#14149922)
Yes, but no thanks to myself. I wasted about a decade being a crap entrepreneur that didn't have such goals. It was easy to rationalize spending time on the work I liked doing under the pretense that I was improving the product's fundamentals. In retrospect, I would have been much better off facing my fears and doing clearly delineated 3-month efforts with revenue targets rather than persisting with products that don't quite work.
I'm still a crap entrepreneur, but I've become slightly better at teaming up with people who can make it happen.
Re:Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
by GoodbyeEarl on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @05:15PM
(#14151847)
Have you started a side project and after 3 months you were making 10k per month?
Re:Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers
by pavlov on Wednesday April 19, 2017 @05:51PM
(#14152128)
No, but I've been in a startup that got to $10k MRR in under three months after launching the product... And that opened my eyes to what all the talk about the mythical "traction" actually meant.
If it's a side project, that's a different game. A side project doesn't need traction to be successful for its creator.
It's really a way to frame the product launch by forcing you to ask hard questions about what you're doing. If you don't even see a way for the product to reach $10k/month with a short-term plan, maybe it's a side project rather than a startup? Or maybe the product niche is too vague or unprofitable, and you need to work on that first?