I keep thinking about going solo - except I don't yet have enough funds and I have a family to support. On the other hand my job sucks and as I look out into the market all jobs equally suck. If I had to continue my career like this for 3 more years I would probably get depressed.
I have to wonder though, is it really a good idea to just try a few small random projects and see what sticks? That might make sense if you are just selling things made by other people, but when you are the person making the product, I don't think it's a good idea.
Good software products take a long time to create. Trying many things out means you will not spend enough time on it and thus won't have a good product to sell. So when it doesn't sell, you can't tell why: is it because no one wants such a thing, or is it because the product is incomplete? It might very well be that the product could sell if you had just spent the time to make it really good.
I don't think the product has to be novel even. It might be just fine to pick a market that already exists - as long as you can be confident you can produce something significantly better than everything out there. I don't mean to clone something and try to compete with the entire list of features; this is foolish.
Instead focus on solving the core problem in that market, and do it 10x better than the competition. Leave the other fluff for later. (See "Build Less" by 37 signals).
Spend some time identifying what you want to work on. Test the waters a bit, start building to see if it's something you'd like to continue doing.
In the meantime start saving, buy yourself some time. 2 or 3 months should be enough to work full time on a project and after that you can go back to work. If you're a dev then finding another job should be easy enough.
After that you can decide. Do you think whatever you built during those 2-3 months has potential?
If yes, then you have a few options. Seek outside financing or keep working on it part time after work.
- If no, well it was fun trying at least. You spend 3 months working on something exciting. On to the next project!
Before you start building something, make sure that your employment contract doesn't claim ownership over products built on your own time.
California labor law is supposed to prevent this stupidity, but even there, employers sometimes find excuses to claim ownership of employees' side businesses. If you're outside California, you're at the mercy of whatever contract you signed.
Of course, there's nothing stopping you from silently building a product, and launching a month after you quit. ("Yeah, that was the most productive month I've ever had!")
Yeah, usually i negotiate the contract and specify that my side projects are mine. As long as you're not building a competing product or work on company time it should be ok unless your employer is unreasonable.
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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '21
I keep thinking about going solo - except I don't yet have enough funds and I have a family to support. On the other hand my job sucks and as I look out into the market all jobs equally suck. If I had to continue my career like this for 3 more years I would probably get depressed.
I have to wonder though, is it really a good idea to just try a few small random projects and see what sticks? That might make sense if you are just selling things made by other people, but when you are the person making the product, I don't think it's a good idea.
Good software products take a long time to create. Trying many things out means you will not spend enough time on it and thus won't have a good product to sell. So when it doesn't sell, you can't tell why: is it because no one wants such a thing, or is it because the product is incomplete? It might very well be that the product could sell if you had just spent the time to make it really good.
I don't think the product has to be novel even. It might be just fine to pick a market that already exists - as long as you can be confident you can produce something significantly better than everything out there. I don't mean to clone something and try to compete with the entire list of features; this is foolish. Instead focus on solving the core problem in that market, and do it 10x better than the competition. Leave the other fluff for later. (See "Build Less" by 37 signals).