How to go from Developer to Entrepreneur?

Question

Hello. I've been a developer for many years. Recently I've started a project that is becoming very popular and could be a huge success. But I know that will not happen unless I turn it into a business and hire people to help me built it. It's simply not a one-man-job.How do you go from "this is my own beloved project and I want to write every line of code myself and control every aspect of it" to actually building a team and company around it?

dbupdate_net · Accepted Answer

My roots are similar; I have always been a product person, naively thinking that if I build it, they will come.
But if your project looks like a viable business could be created then you need to go all in. This is what developers dream of. Once you break away from the cubicle, you will never want to go back. After my 1st taste of it, I could never go back. I have charted my own course for 35 years; countless failures, 1 medium success, and 1 major success.
Marketing is the key so your 1st hire should be a marketer who understands both tech and your industry. Tall order, but the 1st hire is critical to get right. The 1st hire can break startups if done poorly.
Make sure you also spend time (or dollars) to ensure you have the necessary contracts/user-agreements/etc in-place. Contracts are key. Don't know how many times a good contract has saved my ass.
Because you are a developer, you will try to retreat into that world when things get crazy. Don't do it. Marketing and customer relations are the focus now. But of course the tech stuff is also important but there are plenty of eager, smart developers who can probably do your job and do it better (no offence).
Work on growth, which can only be done via marketing. Growth will attract the money, either venture or buyouts. When my major success started to takeoff I had 4 buyout offers within the year.
Good luck.

mardiyah · Answer

Just quickhttps://www.jigsawacademy.com/blogs/product-management/types...https://mopinion.com/top-20-best-project-management-software...Build systems, imho:BuildAMation, a multi-platform tool, using a declarative syntax in C# scripts, that builds C/C++ code in a terminal using multiple threads, or generates project files for Microsoft Visual Studio, Xcode or MakeFilesCMake generates files for various build tools, such as make, ninja, Apple's Xcode, and Microsoft Visual Studio.[2] CMake is also directly used by some IDE as Qt Creator,[3] KDevelop and GNOME BuilderGN is a build generator which knows how to generate ninja build files.Meson, a build system optimized for performance and usability is based on ninja on Linux, Visual Studio on Windows and Xcode on macOS. Meson is also directly used by GNOME Builder