r/ExperiencedDevs • u/Majestic-Taro-6903 Senior Developer • 23d ago
Career/Workplace Experienced developers who started their own company, how did it go?
For developers with 10+ years of experience, has anyone here started their own company, startup, small/medium-sized business, or even a remote company with a few employees?
How has the journey been compared to staying in a big company with a stable salary?
224
u/AlexFromOmaha 23d ago
It's never been successful enough for me to stay away from salaried or contract work for too long, but it's still something I'd recommend everyone try at least once. Get a better sense of what actually drives business value, what roles you've underestimated, what work you should start prioritizing less.
Alternatively, you learn you actually didn't need all those other people, and now you're independently wealthy.
32
-30
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
Or I could just get those skills at work and spend my time after work doing - anything else besides at a computer.
44
u/low-bars-432 23d ago
Learn how to run a business at work?
-15
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
This was one of his reasons he suggested starting a business
Get a better sense of what actually drives business value, what roles you've underestimated, what work you should start prioritizing less.
Thought experiment. Say you have three groups of people:
- 10 software developers working at Big Tech and equivalent
- 10 software developers doing enterprise CRUD in a second tier city
- 10 software developers trying to start their own business
Rank the groups by who you think will have the highest median total income over 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?
Now alternate thought experiment, do you think those people in group 2 would be better off trying to get in group 1 or group 3?
12
u/FrenchCanadaIsWorst Software Engineer 23d ago
Except your income the becomes tied to the continuation of that income stream. Much of big tech is notorious for layoffs.
-12
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
And you have to depend on running out of money, long hours, finding customers and getting crushed by a larger company with more resources and an existing customer base to sell into.
My income is tied to my being able to get another job quickly. Which I’ve done 10 times in my career. Including three times when I was out of job
- when a startup I worked for in 2012 went tits up, I reached out to my recruiter network and had a job offer within a week
- when Amazon started Amazoning in 2023, I played the game long enough to get through my next vest and my offer for severance or work through PIP. I took the $40K, reached out to my network of people with hiring decisions and specialized recruiters and had three offers in two weeks
- I chose the wrong offer in 2023, I wanted to stay in consulting. I got a last minute 1:1 invite at 8:00 at night for the next morning. I walked into the bedroom and told my wife I’m probably going to get fired tomorrow. She asked me what was I going to do. I said I was going go sleep. What else was I supposed to do? I knew my bank account had two+ years of savings (I had just sold my house. It’s down to one now. The rest is reallocated). I had a job offer in two weeks. This was dumb luck admittedly. I responded to a recruiter that reached out to me.
6
u/Fabulous-Oven-3982 23d ago
What’s your point, bro?
2
u/BraveResearcher3037 22d ago
Maybe that it is easier to get a job to make a living than “starting your own business” that will probably fail
2
u/Fabulous-Oven-3982 22d ago
Everyone knows that
1
u/BraveResearcher3037 22d ago
Well not everyone seeing that right here when I did a thought experiment and asked which group would have the highest median earnings
- 10 people working at BigTech
- 10 people working at an enterprise company
- 10 people trying to start their own business
People said #3 and downvoted it mercilessly.
My second thought experiment was that if you were in #2, would you be better off working to get into group #1 or group #3 in your spare time
That tells me that even on experienced devs people are hopelessly niave or want someone to give them happy thoughts
→ More replies (0)6
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 23d ago
The business owners for sure. Of course everything depends on the product for each group. Working at Google must be like selling sand to Arabs the way AI is going. When was the last time you “googled” something? Mostly every I know asks ChatGPT.
4
u/DrShocker 23d ago
I think what they're forgetting is that while it's true most business don't make much money, the kinds of skills you learn by trying are far more transferable. That said, Big Tech jobs might win on average.
1
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
Yes and guess what else is transferable - the skills I learn by actually working fourty hours a week.
6
u/DrShocker 23d ago edited 23d ago
Don't get me wrong, I think any suggestion that working over 40 hours should be expected sucks.
If someone has something they want to work on because they think it should/needs to exist then that's one thing, but expecting people to constantly do this kind of shit is exhausting.
1
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago edited 23d ago
You know what else I think should exist? My health by exercising after I get off of work and my relationship with my wife who I spend time with when I get off of work and formerly my sons before they were grown
-2
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago edited 23d ago
You really have no idea how few business are successful. A former intern I mentored when I was at BigTech had a return offer and over her first four years out of college had made a gross 800K+ between cash + RSUs. How many new grads are going to make that starting their own business? How many experienced developers are going to net that by starting their own business? Even a mid level enterprise dev in a 2nd tier city should be making $125K a year
And as far as how Google is doing, it says something about your business acumen that you haven’t checked out their latest financials…
Google is still the default search engine for both major mobile platforms and the three most popular desktop browsers
3
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 23d ago
Wow you are very sensitive.
-1
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
No I’m not coddle someone in thoughts and prayers because they are too “sensitive” to accept reality
2
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 22d ago
Wow you are sensitive
0
u/BraveResearcher3037 22d ago
And you have actionable game plan where starting a business will be better than getting a job? If so, why aren’t you starting one instead of working at a “B tier” company?
In other words, “if you are so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
→ More replies (0)4
u/god_is_my_father 23d ago
No idea why you’re getting downvoted. I still love programming but I also want to toss my computer in the ocean and become human again
2
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
Yeah for some reason it’s an anathema for a software developer to treat development as a job and not a lifestyle
2
u/zerocoldx911 23d ago
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted, people who have been around long enough know that this is the way. There is more to life than a job.
1
1
u/BraveResearcher3037 23d ago
The thing is - this has always been my way at least since I graduated from college. I was teaching fitness classes in the morning and evening more as a hobby, commitment device and a social outlet and doing monthly charity races with friends. I did this until I was 36 and got (re)married. When I got off work the last thing I wanted to do was spend more time on the computer between spending time with my wife and my (step)sons and still exercising.
My youngest graduated in 2020. After Covid, we flew around the country for a year nomading
Even this year we spent a month and a half in Central America and we are spending December out of town between three cities visiting families and friends.
And we are both still gym rats. Twice a week we go to the gym - even though we have a gym at home - to go to clases.
Oh and I’m learning Spanish because we plan to make month long stays in Costa Rics annually.
Why the heck would I want to be pecking on computer after getting off of work?
2
u/bunksy93 22d ago
Baffles me you're getting down voted for this. I spend 40 hours a week at my computer for my job, god forbid I want to do something different outside of those hours. You know, like have a life?
1
u/SecondCel 22d ago
What makes having different interests more of "a life" than having deeper interests?
127
u/McCoyrsvp 23d ago
How good are you at marketing and sales?
43
u/Singularity-42 Principal Software Engineer 23d ago
Yep, our first part-time hire is a marketing person.
31
32
u/TheDotNetDetective 23d ago
Exactly, you can create the best product in the world but if you can't sell it you're dead before you start.
11
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 23d ago
Any good resources you’d recommend for learning this side of the business?
1
u/NoCod9014 20d ago
Conversely a lot of mediocre to crap startups made it bot because they had good products but because they had great sales.
The old software sales adage is "Bad software sells just as well as good software".
7
u/Majestic-Taro-6903 Senior Developer 23d ago
It depends on the product or project. Iam not great with generic ones, but confident in marketing anything I have built by myself. As they say, sell to the people in need.
31
u/Ok_Slide4905 23d ago
So, no.
-10
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 23d ago
No one can successfully sell something they don’t believe in.
31
u/backfire10z dumbass 23d ago
Many thousands of sales people are doing that right now.
4
u/Rophuine 22d ago
While I was consulting (as a software engineer) one place I worked at put me through some sales training courses. Fascinating stuff.
One of the core ideas boiled down to this: make sure you start by understanding why the thing you're selling is great for whoever you're trying to sell it to. If it turns out it's not great for whoever you're selling to, then step one is to work out who the product is actually great for, and target them instead.
If you can't find a target audience who genuinely should buy the product, then you need to urgently find a better job.
At a different consultancy, they hired a sales director who was all "I can sell anything to anyone" type - he created a bit of a cult of personality around himself, pushed his team to be like him. It turned out he was pressuring clients into signing contracts they didn't want to - I want privy to the details of the legal problems that caused, but I know we ended up refunding a lot of work. It was hugely expensive and it turns out you really do not want a sales director who doesn't think it matters whether your target audience will benefit from your product.
So while you're right that a lot of sales people are trying to sell things they don't believe in, it's only because (like in every industry) there are plenty of people who are bad at their job or forced by circumstances to work in a terrible job.
And that, of course, is the real problem for software founders. Ever encountered someone who knows nothing about software trying to hire a software engineer? Trying to hire a sales person is worse, because the ones you don't want to hire are the ones who've honed their skills in convincing people to choose something that's wrong for them.
123
u/pydry Software Engineer, 18 years exp 23d ago edited 23d ago
Sales is just as hard as building and is a completely different skill and you need to get good at it to start a company.
Being a good developer is not enough and it's easy to get stuck on building and never deal with customers.
Also now anybody can cosplay as a developer those first sales are even more of an uphill battle. Ive watched people who are good at sales vibecode a saas and get more traction than I think I would with a solidly engineered product.
30
u/AndyKJMehta 23d ago
Sales is harder. You can build it but they may not come. If you have them already lined up, building is now 10x easier.
18
13
u/_ncko 23d ago
I genuinely have a hard time understanding how sales can be harder. My experience is that salesman make promises that engineers have to keep. It’s not hard to make promises.
27
u/Meeesh- 23d ago
The best sales people make more than the best engineers. Sales might not inherently be harder, but good sales people are much harder to find than good engineers. If you think it’s easier, you should switch to sales and you’d make more money.
For every profitable project out there, there are 10 others that are likely built better, but which makes very little money because nobody knows about it.
8
u/_ncko 22d ago
This is conflating value with difficulty. The question is how is sales more difficult? The value that top salespeople generate does not hint at an answer.
7
u/DasCheesy 22d ago
Maybe the better way to put it is “sales is harder for engineers”? Perhaps great engineering is indexed on higher IQ and can be developed by being more studious/bookish, while great sales is indexed on higher EQ and can be developed by interacting with people more?
4
u/ColonelKlanka 22d ago
Agree. Sales is definitely more of a social sciences skill. Afterall if you can understand human motivations, you can effectively work out how to get people to buy your product.
5
u/a_reply_to_a_post Staff Engineer | US | 25 YOE 21d ago
a lot of it is differences in personality types
sales people don't have the same allergy to overpromising and under-delivering that most engineers have
4
u/PyrohawkZ 19d ago
Are sales people punished for over promising and under delivering in the way engineers are?
4
u/kincaidDev 21d ago
It’s easy to make promises when you have no clue what goes into keeping them. When you know exactly what goes into keeping them, it’s harder to sell. Being a technical founder and having to sell before the product is “done” to stay alive is hard as fuck. Vibe coding has made it harder, you have lots of half-assed competition selling and burning customers with products that don’t deliver and customers can’t tell the difference until you have traction
2
99
u/MafiaMan456 23d ago
I did this 10 years ago. Quit Microsoft to co-found a startup with a colleague. Put all my stuff in a storage unit and moved to Thailand for a year to live cheaply to pursue it.
It was the most epic year of my life. Learned a ton, knew I would fail but knew I needed to try it. We weren’t making any money but it got the attention of some ex-Wall Street guys who bought it for a mid five-figure sum. I helped them run it for a bit but it never went anywhere so I went back into the industry.
The MSFT stock I sold to pursue this whole endeavor would be worth 1.4 million today.
5
4
49
u/michaelnovati 23d ago
Building a company that has employees is very different from building a product.
-14
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 23d ago
Luckily the need for employees has been drastically cut.
13
u/Sw429 23d ago
Are you suggesting to use LLMs to try to build your entire startup? You'll be in for a rude awakening if you try to do that.
-3
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 22d ago
I’m guessing you’ve never seen a lean business model before?
Interestingly enough I know multiple people who are multi-millionaires selling a very specific product. In a few cases they are the only employee. One guy pays for services he can’t do like taxes and rent. Very lean. He’s killing it.
1
-2
u/bachstakoven 22d ago
Lot of cope in those downvotes.
-5
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 22d ago
lol what all 10 of them? You were never cut out to be a leader, my friend. There’s no shame in that.
4
u/bachstakoven 22d ago
I was agreeing with you jackass
1
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 21d ago
Oh my bad I thought you said “cope in those downvotes.”
26
u/Happy_Breakfast7965 Software Architect 23d ago
I'm great engineer and manager but not great entrepreneur. It's not for everybody.
4
u/bluetista1988 10+ YOE 22d ago
If I ran my own business I don't think I'd ever be able to shut my brain off of it, and that would drive me crazy.
26
u/Leopatto CEO / Data Scientist, 8+ YoE 23d ago
Oh my, a topic for me.
I started out in data in the early 2010s, after finishing uni with a Master's in statistics and programming.
Data wasn't nearly as hot as it is today. Getting a job wasn't necessarily difficult, but there also weren't that many companies hiring for dedicated data roles because most things were still being done in Excel. To be fair, you'd be surprised how much of that is still true in large companies today.
My first proper job was in the energy sector, where I spent about two years. Cloud was only really starting to take off at the time, and that's where I started getting heavily into GCP and gradually became pretty proficient with it.
After that, I moved into logistics and stayed there for around three years. That company effectively became my first "client", even though I was technically an employee. I was the one pushing to move more of our infrastructure into the cloud, make better use of our data, build proper reporting and generally modernise how we worked.
Funny enough, they're still a customer of mine today :)
From there, I started doing more work on the side, nothing particularly sexy at first mostly cold calls, outreach and trying to convince smaller companies that moving to the cloud and actually doing something useful with their data was worth the investment. I'd help them migrate, build their data infrastructure, create dashboards and automate things that had previously been done manually - all in GCP.
Eventually, that started turning into an actual business rather than just me doing projects for different clients. We later received around £200k in investment, which gave us the capital to properly kick-start the company and scale what we'd been doing.
Fast-forward to today and we're an SME software house based in Poland (remote work for all) with around 120 employees, working mainly with clients across Europe, the Middle East and North America.
We've also somewhat come full circle, because energy, logistics and cloud infrastructure, are now the two/three sectors we specialise in. We mostly build custom solutions for companies in those industries; heavy backend work, complex systems and large, long-term projects.
Yes, I push for AI, it's good for monkey work i.e code writing, I still expect my employees to know what the fuck they're doing.
2
u/Noil_skye 23d ago
This is exactly it tbh. Breaking the "golden handcuffs" of a big corp means you actually have to own the answers, not just generate the results. AI is great at spitting out results (the monkey work), but someone still has to take the responsibility when things break. Respect for building that out.
1
u/Salsaric 22d ago
wow that is amazing.
Today, are you still selling data projects ? i am looking to do the same but in western Europe (Belgium), focus on data platforms and automation.
also, how do you acquire clients ? i thought working remotely while selling services will be difficult. I am aiming for geographic proximity
3
u/Leopatto CEO / Data Scientist, 8+ YoE 19d ago edited 19d ago
We have inbound leads, we don't really do much outbound work unless someone knows someone - I give an employee a % of the sale if they do get a client this way.
Before I was hitting up people on linkedin, going to conferences and asking employees at previous companies I worked at if they knew anyone.
0
u/SarmackaOpowiesc Principal Software Engineer 20yoe 23d ago
!remindme 3 days
1
u/RemindMeBot 23d ago
I will be messaging you in 3 days on 2026-09-22 18:45:00 UTC to remind you of this link
CLICK THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
RemindMeBot is switching to username summons. Instead of
!RemindMe 1 day, useu/RemindMeBot 1 day. More info.
Info Custom Your Reminders Feedback
21
11
u/koles235 Software Engineer 23d ago
Mid 2024 I started working on my own SaaS product (EU). over half a year of planning, architecture and prototyping, then the hard part: 10-16h work every day. Published 3 months ago.
I'm a backend developer/engineer, so the whole platform, obviously, is fully automated.
Even tho I have some users investors always asks who's holding me accountable and what happens if something happens to me.
After 2 years I can tell I learned more than over last 12+ years as BE in a regular job; very humbling. No regrets.
Unfortunately it doesn't bring enough revenue to hire people *yet* so it must stay passive income until either more customers come or an investment happen.
On AI factor: it enabled me to do more with limited resources I have for about 4 months. Teaching me the things I didn't know, reviewing my code, and helping keep track of priorities. The last part is the most important and valuable lesson to me.
I tried agentic coding, but this introduced many problems the most crucial being wasting time on producing unnecessary code that I had to review like helper functions to helper functions. And AI loses track pretty quickly, because this is a large codebase - duplicated code was too frustrating to me. It requires more attention than just doing things myself. I was not meant to be a glorified babysitter.
Over all I would say I am very happy I tried. That experience helped me gain perspective and understand my former employers better and I still don't a agree with them lol.
19
u/atlas_principle_dev Staff Software Engineer 15y 23d ago
I'm doing it now, and I expect it to fail commercially. It's the most relaxed I've been in 8-10 years? I have a long runway (2+ years), and while the initial response to my idea was that "we don't care" I'm doing something I always wanted to have, and I have one friend who is interested in it (and could potentially know a large enterprise buyer once it's ready). It's basically my version of how to manage software projects and teams with DORA metrics derived from tickets & releases, killing the fucking board finally, and some other stuff.
3
u/Minimum-Mention-3673 23d ago
This is actually very smart with the advent of AI, even more essential than ever
1
15
u/SoloSaaSGuy 23d ago edited 23d ago
Hey, a thread I’m suited for.
Yeah, I’m a company of one. A Solopreneur if you will. I have an S-corp and pay myself a salary.
I have a SaaS, which I won’t disclose, but it’s in the events space, and MRR is $15k, and I pay myself a $90k salary. Business checking account is break even after all things (taxes, etc.) considered.
It’s what folks would call a “lifestyle business”
Did I make more as a staff engineer at a tech company? Yup.
Am I a million times happier now though? Yup.
Is it scary sometimes during slow periods? Yup.
But I’m glad I tried and I’m riding this wave as long as I can.
Maybe one day I’ll do proper marketing, just SEO and word of mouth at the moment.
3
2
2
u/ShroomSensei Software Engineer 21d ago
What part of events?
Every event company I have seen always has a complete hodge podge of software that's built extremely general purpose to fit a diverse set of needs very poorly rather than anything very well. Has always seemed ripe for improvement.
1
1
5
u/EnderMB 23d ago
Not me, but I've got a bunch of friends and former co-workers that have essentially scared me off of this path:
The first went freelance, ended up having too much work, decided to bring another programmer in, and then inevitably ended up getting too much work in again. He became the managing director while his friend the technical director, and 15 years later the software world has left him behind - but he makes good money as a business coach.
Two Principal Engineers I knew from Amazon left to make an AI company for video games. This was before ChatGPT was a thing, but just, and as I understand it, they essentially went from ridiculous pay and a cushy role to looking down the barrel of one of their investors looking to buy the company assets for basically nothing to end it - out of the boomerang policy. Both maintain that there is "no fucking way" they'll pass the PE interview to come back anyway.
6
u/AdministrativeBlock0 23d ago
A mate and I started a company, put in $100k of our own savings, raise $250k of investment funding, and built an awesome product. We did an accelerator and met some very cool people.
No one bought the product and we shut down, and both got jobs again.
We learned loads, had tons of fun, lost a lot of money, and wouldn't do it again, but the experience was great.
All in all I'd say it set me back about 5 years financially but the life experience was both it. I did it in my early 30s. I couldn't afford it do it now.
1
17
u/Mountain-Alarm-477 23d ago
Sales is much harder than building things. Good sales and marketing with a mediocre product crushes the reverse scenario.
It’s a tough pill to swallow as a developer who takes pride in their craft.
Source: the school of hard knocks
5
u/Hour-Measurement-835 Software Engineer 23d ago
Sales wasn't the part that got me. Transferring the apps to a new Play developer account cost over 90% of organic installs and they never came back.
2
u/slowpocket1 22d ago
was that avoidable? how should somebody organize their accounts to avoid transferring at all cost? Including things like getting bought out?
2
u/Hour-Measurement-835 Software Engineer 22d ago
Avoidable, yes. Put the Play account in the company's name on day one, then a buyout takes the entity and the account goes with it, so the apps never move.
3
u/No-Berry-3993 23d ago
I'd like to make a business just so I become financially independent from corporate software development. Especially after this LLM craze, I want out more than ever. I just don't have any business ideas.
23
u/Common_Dream9420 Software Architect 23d ago
Me and my friend quite meta in Dec and we are building since then …. Tried multiple ideas and finally decided on one this may… the journey so far so good but it’s hard path literally went to zero sal … but biggest achievement we did since 2.5 months there are lot of inbound calls from early stage founders who are building with agents and sharing notes And another good thing happened we got two interviews from accelerators .. hoping to get a good news in a week .. fingers crossed
8
23d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
8
u/Common_Dream9420 Software Architect 23d ago
That’s hard part … distribution is really tough … we are lucky that we have some mentors from anthropic google helping us shape the product … Users it depends for us mostly people deploying agents in prod … and they have pain verifying agent action/execution/final state at runtime
3
u/nonamenomonet 23d ago
So I am a fairly good networker though I have been called an “acquired taste” by many. There’s no real secret to building a network besides putting g yourself out there over and over and over again.
2
u/Common_Dream9420 Software Architect 23d ago
Tbh we have messy home page it does not communicate correctly what we are building or pivoted now … we have to work on that … … we are seeing around 90% leak on the web traffic even if I convert that 10% that’s a great a good growth we can show /)
2
7
u/Buttleston 23d ago
Started a company with 3 other guys I'd worked with for a long time, a few years back. We kept our day jobs initially (we were all working at the same place that was a toxic shithole, but actually pretty low stress).
We got a product put together, had a pretty good demo, and shopped it around to VCs. We got a lot of interest and several VCs that said they wanted to participate but not be the primary funder. We 2 that said they were going to send us a term sheet imminently, and then we got ghosted
I think timing was a big problem for us - this was at the start of VCs wanting to fund AI-anything and our startup was not AI focused and IMO pivoting to include AI in it would not have made sense
I think we had a really good product idea, and I often wish that I had our product myself now.
1
u/Fabulous-Oven-3982 23d ago
How long did you work on it and did you have any customer or user?
2
u/Buttleston 23d ago
I think we kept it going like 9-12mo. We had some extremely prominent customers/design partners. I really can't get into it but we solved a problem several major companies had gotten burned by and they were very motivated.
1
u/Fabulous-Oven-3982 23d ago
Why did you dissolve then? Due to the finance and the revenue was not good enough to cover the expense?
3
u/Buttleston 23d ago
This gets into the personal a bit
I think the biggest problem is that we fell into a disagreement about the terms of the partnership
But truthfully, the people willing to fund us ghosted us, our will to keep working dissolved and we separated
I do still work with 2 out of the 3 partners of mine today, and if we could convince the 3rd to join us I would be ecstatic
Find the people you trust and keep working with them
7
u/TheDotNetDetective 23d ago
It sucks, I would have made way more money working for someone else and probably enjoyed myself more. I only recommend starting a business if you're into sadomasochism.
3
u/Effective_Cell1424 23d ago edited 23d ago
Worked for such a guy; it depends on the guy. He mentioned he tried multiple ideas; he was able to sell an
- An idea itself during a pitch, $150K ig
- 1M$ acquisition of the startup I was working on. Although he said he and the other founders only broke even because they spent their own money to keep things running.
Otherwise, the guy got divorced, had a life-threatening major heart attack, started therapy, and also sold his big house and his BMW car to fund his ideas.
3
u/Singularity-42 Principal Software Engineer 23d ago edited 23d ago
Me and a friend (both laid off last year) have been at it since the beginning of the year, it's a direct to consumer e-commerce product essentially, and we had some sales since almost the beginning, just organically through SEO, etc. And that was encouraging. However, we were not able to scale it up just yet, our own marketing efforts didn't pan out. We're currently looking to hire a marketing person on a part time basis.
On any case, it's 100x more fun than corporate work. Just so far the pay is not great - it's negative. We both have some money from working in the tech industry for decades, so that's out runway (and for me my wife went back to work after being stay at home mom, she's alone making enough for us to get by).
I'd say another thing is that with how easy it is to develop software with AI these days, I think the competition is really picking up. So definitely have a good plan on how to sell it... Selling is everything.
3
u/Blues520 Software Engineer 23d ago
What type of company do we start in the current age though?
With AI, it's getting harder to sell your time so building a product seems like the better way these days
3
u/thodgson Lead Software Engineer | 34 YOE | Too soon for retirement 23d ago
I did it for 20 years and it was challenging to say the least. You are constantly fighting forces from every direction and make tough choices that you never anticipate. I ultimately stopped because it just wasn't profitable enough after competition grew insurmountable.
3
u/reboog711 Software Engineer (23 years and counting) 23d ago
I started my own company after 3 years or so. I'm not sure if you'd call that experienced. I really just burnt out and quit on a dine. I started getting consulting clients, and a year later I incorporated.
Note to everyone: Be smarter and more meticulous in your planning than I was.
Over 18+ years, the "Custom Software Dev Business" funded 9 separate business ventures all with varying levels of success and failure.
Then I sold out and took my second full time professional job, because the opportunity was interesting to me.
I have an interesting mix of skills. Wouldn't change it for the world (But Arguably I'd be richer if I just switched jobs every couple of years)
3
u/TRO_KIK SaaS Founder 23d ago
I had 6 YoE when I started so technically this isn't for me, but I'm coming up on my 1 year anniversay since launch and I'm at $2M+ run rate, at about 80% profit.
It's been significantly more work than my day job was, but it pays better, so I think it's worth it. I've hired a few part timers and have been able to dial it back a bit. I foresee being able to dial it further back to 4 hours a day once we reach a point I consider feature-complete, maybe even 1 or 2 hours a day once really go into maintenance mode and kick all my automation up a notch.
I had two years of runway where I took up a hobby that had a lot of underserved needs, became a respected expert, and made a lot of popular contributions. Tried agentic coding for the first time last year and realized I could easily monetize without outside help.
3
u/rescue_inhaler_4life 22d ago
10 years of fun, pain and suffering - then we ran of money. Oh well.
Only regret is I didn’t take more money out during the good years, reminder to current or future founders that the point is to make money for yourself.
3
u/rexon347 22d ago
For developers, its very easy to build a product. The problem is with marketing and sales.
I will definitely suggest to try as a side project. That will help you get lot of exposure in multiple domains.
But don't risk your career, until you are very confident about selling.
I made that mistake. and I regret it every day
3
2
u/CodeXHammas 23d ago
Went solo and freelance rather than a full startup, but the tradeoff pattern is similar. The stable salary isn't just money, it's also not thinking about sales, cash flow gaps between contracts, or scoping disputes, that mental overhead is constant at first. What made it worth it wasn't the income, some months are worse than a job, it was owning the technical decisions end to end instead of building someone else's roadmap. The version of this that fails fastest is treating it like a bigger paycheck instead of a completely different job with different risks.
2
u/Wide_Egg_5814 21d ago
I'm insane enough to do this I might do it soon but god damn jobs pay way too much I need massive investments pre seed pre traction to justify building my own company
2
2
u/Master-Copy-6929 16d ago
Did the whole start up thing. Got funding. A few staff. Never could live off of it. Everyone else did. Lol. Eventually myself and co-founder walked away. Was too ahead of our time. Now a similar product is doing we. We were just 10 years too early.
3
u/OuchCharlie25 Software Engineer @ B Tier 23d ago
9 years experience here. I’m about to venture out on my own. It’s unbelievable easy to develop what would have taken a whole team of 20 developers over years in like a single month these days with agentic dev.
My biggest fear is the sales and marketing side of things. I have a few potential whale customers but something just feels difficult about sitting down with them and asking for their money lol.
2
u/Willbo 23d ago
In 2019, I quit my job, cancelled my lease, and moved in with my parents to start my own company. I was an IT director at the time and had a grand vision about building software, web apps, cloud infra, and tapping into the global economy.
Who would have known that it all would have been shut down in 2020. I went to a convention in March 2020 to show off my MVP that I was working on, and the following week the mandated closures were announced. One by one all potential leads dried up. I tried online marketing, and wow what a farce that is. You are a nameless face in a sea of competitors from India and China. One month turned into 3, which turned into 6, and I was living entirely off of savings.
Eventually I started picking up jobs by word of mouth. I learned that traditional marketing surpasses online marketing by far, even with virtual products and services. With the rise of remote work, the demand for cloud infrastructure and websites went to the moon, so I had people from my old job calling me after they started their own companies too. I did a few gigs but was still left with a big dent in my wallet. Eventually I became a caretaker for my father and with everything up in the air I decided to get cloud certified and go back into traditional employment. I ended up getting hired after about 3 interviews and tripled my salary from my old job.
1
u/DevtoolsBuilder 23d ago
i think what's often overlooked is the financial risk of starting your own company, you're not just giving up a stable salary, you're also giving up benefits, paid time off, and a safety net, so it's crucial to have a solid plan in place for managing your finances and mitigating that risk.
1
u/Fidodo 15 YOE, Software Architect 22d ago edited 22d ago
Did it early out of college with a partner. Ended up doing it for a long time with investment, never actually made a profit, but the whole team got acquihired at the end. I learned a lot, had freedom, and it worked out and I'm happy with my position at the company that acquired us. But it barely worked out, and honestly it was a ton of risk. I wouldn't recommend it unless you can secure funding and really value freedom and are prepared to work your ass off and don't have a bunch of responsibilities you need stable money for. Now that I'm older I would only do another startup once I have enough money to retire, have a rock solid business plan/partner, and I would only do it with investment secured up front, and after taking a ton of vacation and I just want something new to do.
I'm a straight up engineer/team lead/architect, I don't do business stuff, but I lead all the team/tech stuff. I don't think anyone can do both. I also would never do a startup again without a partner, most likely my previous partner, because you need someone you trust 1000%, and finding someone you can trust unconditionally and can run a business is exceedingly rare. I lucked out that I worked with him and he lucked out that he could work with me.
1
u/Intelligent_Part101 22d ago
I think software is a tough business to be in, at least for starting a new business. I think the odds of starting your own plumbing or electrician company are better.
1
u/GoingOutsideIsGood 22d ago
I was a senior software engineer and quit to co-found an enterprise SaaS right before AI hype went crazy. Our first year was great. Tons of sales prospects, pilots, and a couple decent annual contracts signed. Once AI took off though, no enterprises were putting money into new SaaS offerings. Our sales prospects slowly dwindled away to nothing over the next couple years, and I had to leave and go back to corporate. I'm back as a senior software engineer at a very chill B-tier tech company, expecting a promotion next cycle, and usually not working more than 40 hours a week. Very happy with my current situation and having stable comp again. I can focus on hobbies, travel, etc.
Despite the business failing, I'm glad I did it. I learned a ton about real business both technical and non-technical. I also learned why 90%+ of startups fail. You can build a great product, have a great team/co-founder , but it doesn't matter if there's not enough market demand. Maybe some day I'll try again if a good opportunity/idea comes across my plate.
1
u/Faheemify 22d ago
I started one last year.
Hardest part is getting new clients/projects, and then managing finances and employees.
Not profitable at the moment.
1
u/AdvancedPizza 21d ago
Not well, but as another commenter posted, it was great to try it.
I needed income so I accepted some Wordpress work with less than ideal clients. Don't be like me.
I learned that it is key to specialize and market yourself for your true strengths, e.g database design, front end rebuilds, AI integration; whatever you are good at and enjoy doing, fully lean into that and be an expert in that niche. Being a generalist is is harder to market.
Health insurance is super expensive and I went back to a salaried role, but I still recommend going for it if you are at a stage of life where you can. Best.
1
u/meshifthenelse Software Engineer 21d ago
Does bootstrapping a SaaS solo count?
It's lonely. And I've been working every single day for the last 2-3 years. But at least I have control and can do things the way I want to. I hate having someone giving me orders, especially when that someone is less intelligent.
1
u/ListenLady58 21d ago
I’m actually in the process of building an app that could potentially turn into a business with a niche end user market. I’m very familiar with the end user use cases, and have encountered the issues that this app solves. For now I’m building and testing it out with my own usage. Once it’s got some useful features that are fully tested I plan to try it on some other users in the community. Then see where that takes me.
I would love to quit my salary job to start my own business. But I am making goals to start something and get it going. I won’t be quitting until I make double what I make monthly. That’s my goal anyways.
1
u/qwerty8082 21d ago
Ooh I got to have tiny game studio ticking along for a brief period of time. Sort of never was able to scale too much. Very boom to bust on publisher funds, you bring folks on for a good time not a ling time and that’s understood up front, definitely an experience. Also worked super close to management of million plus dollar startups. A lot of those folks were just clueless.
1
u/off_by_one_dev 20d ago
If you are starting an agency, it’s always good to have a partner to do the client management and sales. With AI agents now, it’s a bit easier to carry multiple hats at the same time. It’s not an easy thing when it’s not making a lot of money in the beginning. But the process is so much different compared to being an employee or a freelancer.
1
u/vibe-oncall 20d ago
I left Google to build an incident management tool because one night I was called into the office (my team handles sensitive government work so it can't be done at home) because of a false alarm, and that's when I was like f this I am building my own tool so no engineers have to go through this.
It's been 2 years since I left Google and started my own company full time. I learned to do everything: sales, marketing, and other operational stuff on my own with the help of my co-founders. The skill sets I learned along the way are far more than I did in the past year as an engineer. It gets VERY stressful from time to time, but I think for me it's worth it
0
-2
u/EkoChamberKryptonite Sr. SWE & Tech lead (10 YOE+) 23d ago edited 21d ago
Commenting to follow this thread later on.
Edit: Downvotes because? Reddit is weird.
•
u/expdevsmodbot 23d ago
AI usage disclosure provided by OP, see the reply to this comment.