What an amazing dream, not having to deal with coworkers/managers/meetings/scrum/stand ups/reporting/RTO/etc. He spends his days doing programming, some customer support, self marketing on niche forums and subreddits, and thinking about the next idea.
It is truly my ideal life. I have had these thoughts for years, and every time I suppress them thinking “the grass is always greener, you’re a highly paid FAANG engineer, shut up and milk it”, but they just keep coming up in my head and I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m wasting my time in corporate America. It’s not even about the money, I am (currently) making more than my friend, it’s about the freedom. It would still be worth it even if it resulted in a 10x paycut for me.
How do I get an idea to start? I do not have any niche skills, I’m your typical run-of-the-mill backend developer with no particular expertise. Lately I’ve been learning the theoretical aspect of ML, and find it fascinating.
A couple other notes to hopefully prevent some of the most common responses:
- I am not afraid of hard work: I have worked in 80h a week hedge funds, and in no way I think of a solo business as “working less”. I am ready for it to take a large portion of my time and mental energy.
- I am fine with taking risk: I have worked in several early stage startups as an early employee, taking on many hats compared to my SWE role. I’ve done tech marketing, customer support, sales engineering, etc.
- I am in a financially stable position: I have multiple decades of living expenses because I aggressively saved up and invested in liquid assets ($4.5M in Vanguard index funds), no kids to support and no debt
If you want a community of like-minded people to support you, consider TinySeed capital, they invest in solo SaaS founders, although you need to have some traction. Also happy to chat if you want to reach out to the email in my profile. I have some ideas I would build if I had more time, but happy to give them out to someone else starting out.
If you want freedom, you don't need a business. Just a good enough day job. Then you can do anything you want to do when you're not working the day job.
It would still be worth it even if it resulted in a 10x paycut for me.
This seems like a sketch of what a good enough day job might be.
I can’t shake off the feeling that I’m wasting my time in corporate America.
Do you think building another corporation is the best way for you to shake that feeling? I'm not saying it isn't or it is because it's your feeling and I am not you. Good luck.
The hardest part is the idea. But rather than sitting and thinking about it, I found the best way is to start a consulting business (PG talks about this in his essays)
We started with a recruiting business, which not only taught me sales and general business skills, but more importantly let me discover a problem I could solve in software (www.Dopplio.com if interested)
If I had to come up with more ideas, I would just run more “traditional” businesses like dropshipping or digital marketing and see what problems I encounter.
One resource I haven't seen mentioned yet is https://tinyempires.substack.com/. He emphasizes not going the VC route and keeping the business small (solo) instead.
I feel like there should be a support group somewhere for like-minded software engineers that are unhappy with the typical job and yearning for a more self-fulfilling path.
Good luck on whatever you end up doing!
Edit: I forgot to mention there's also a bunch of good videos on YouTube from ycombinator startup school. They go into a lot of detail about cultivating ideas, etc.
Easy to keep your motivation just by going and reading the forums and seeing the projects :: https://indiehackers.com
Can't say I've been able to quit my day job or even made enough to brag about but its put me on a path of creativity and ambition. In the process, I've learned so much and done so much including built my own web host, a series of different products, both paid and free, and spoken to so many people from all over the world.
While I still owe a mortgage or two... and I took too much time focusing on "adding the next feature" rather than just an MVP, I probably wouldn't change how I went about any of it.
I miss video games like crazy... but I keep saying to myself: "Goal is to be comfortable and able to retire by 45." If I can reach this goal, I also have some reward in mind for allowing myself to start gaming again.
I am still working my day job which is remote and afford me the time to work on side projects throughout the week and have no dreams of ever quitting, but figure out the niches that you are good at. My dream is certainly in automation, a one-man business with maybe a virtual assistant or two to answer support calls if any of my products were to be that in demand and grow to those heights.
So I learned that if you work on something you have no interest in and you don't use yourself, you're not going to go far. You need to solve your own problem first. And you have to find the niche market of people who either have the same problem or didn't even realize it was a problem until you pointed it out and you just made their lives so much easier.
But just like the lottery, unless you start playing, you won't accomplish anything. Good luck. Keep the innovation and dream alive!
Cash out $90,000 a year for the next 5 years from your index funds and do whatever you want. If you’ve got no debt and are healthy you can live a pretty great life with that.
Or is “not working” something you don’t believe you’re not physically capable of doing? Whether through health, old age, or some other reason, we all stop working eventually. Better be ready to deal with it when it happens to you.
Alternatively, find a product in market that is pretty expensive and offer a budget version of it. NewRelic -> DataDog for server monitoring is one example.
It sounds like you have some skills and feel willing to take a risk with your time. You don't want to risk any capital. Just jump in to one idea and run with it - you'll never know if an idea has legs if you don't try it.
That said, your unwillingness to put even 1% of your net worth into a project that you control does send a clear signal to other people that you don't believe in yourself. That may be inaccurate - it sounds like you believe that it is - but you don't get to dictate how something comes across to other people. Not putting your own money into a venture will give others pause, if you ever look for co-investors or cofounders (or even customers, if they should learn of it).
If you don’t want to take some of your cash to risk, you will have to try things and fail until you have PMF.
Also however you are going to need to be willing to take risks. If you have $4.5M in index funds, you can certainly use some of that to bootstrap yourself. The fact you don’t want to, but instead want to spend your time (which is much more limited and you cannot make back, unlike money) might indicate you don’t have the right mindset (yet).
> How do I get an idea to start?
I usually check marketplaces where businesses are sold. Not to acquire one, but to get an idea of what makes money. Then start assessing each business from your point of view: Is it easy to build a similar product? Do you have ideas for a improvement? Do you have a strategic advantage through your network or knowledge?
Everyone wants a lifestyle business. Everyone desperately wants money. Why do you deserve it more?
From there you’ll hear about related books, events, groups etc that will benefit you on your journey.
Good luck!
I'm really serious. Business is very special thing, that you could taste it only yourself. Nothing could show you real taste of your own business. Not books. Not videos. Not talks.
Sure, better if you will find mentor, who you trust, and who will help you setup all things right on first year, and will help you if got in trouble on first crisis.
Also good to find community of people with similar look, but community is also special thing, I cannot guarantee they will do all things right.
1. Start with problems, small or big. Write them down. Do it for a few weeks or months.
2. Go through the list and come up with solutions to each problem or discard it.
3. Choose your top 5-10 problems and solutions.
4. Now for validation, create a form that collects email addresses for each problem. Write some marketing stuff there too.
5. Define your target audience for each idea and create ads. Link to your forms.
6. After a few weeks or months, see which idea generated most interest. That is probably what you should work on.
Most software developers lack marketing skills and tend to underestimate the value of it. Even with a good product or service, it's pretty rare that customers will come looking for you.
It is for this reason that I formed an informal partnership --- I develop the product and my partner provides marketing and support. This has worked pretty well for the last 25 years.
HN0 will discourage you but eh, running my own business is the most fun (and work) I've ever had in my life. Some people have to do that Eurotrip. Some have to get into Harvard. Some want kids. And some just need to start a business.
Clone something you already have proof is profitable. Simply find an existing business you KNOW has good economics and that you know you can execute by yourself possibly better than the original… and just clone it.
You eliminate the need for ideas and a lot of risk. You simply have to execute better than existing competitors (not always hard).
Check Indie Hackers idea generation posts