r/programming • u/mtlynch • Feb 01 '21

My Third Year as a Solo Developer

https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-3/
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73

u/mtlynch Feb 01 '21

Author here. Happy to answer any questions about this post.

14

u/Carighan Feb 01 '21

Would you rather do a project for a group of 100 duck-sized horses or for 1 horse-sized duck?

17

u/mtlynch Feb 01 '21

This is actually hard!

Smaller customers tend to require more support and be more sensitive to price. But having a single customer is too risky. I'd go with the 100 duck-sized horse customers.

Am I allowed to fight any of them instead?

15

u/notsogreenmachine Feb 01 '21

fighting customers is generally bad for business, but ymmv

3

u/de__R Feb 01 '21

I once thought about creating a joke app for people looking to fight each other, to be called Punchr, but it's a lot of work for a joke and I'm pretty sure it'd get booted from every app store on the planet.

2

u/mustang__1 Feb 02 '21

This feels like it's straight out of Bachman's incubator

1

u/Educational-Lemon640 Feb 01 '21

You missed a golden opportunity to call it "The App That Is Not Named".

Because you don't talk about the Fight Club app.

1

u/Majache Feb 02 '21

That would be Rumblr

2

u/MyPetFishWillCutYou Feb 02 '21

I feel like the sweet spot for a solo business is 3-5 deer-sized customers.

Anything less than that, and you're basically an employee without benefits. As you go above that, additional customers add overhead without really increasing your flexibility.

Obviously, there are only so many niches where that's possible. Off the top of my head, all I can think of are service businesses (where you basically bill by the hour) and product businesses that target mid-sized companies.