HACKER Q&A
📣 fnoef

Building a solo business is impossible


I, like many engineers, dream about turning my love to programming into a side business. Nothing crazy, but enough to replace an average SWE income. And I, like many engineers, fell into the "build, and they will come" trap.

I tried to build, calibrate, engage in SEO, talk to customers, but I can't seem to find traction. On one hand, people say that you need to build to solve a problem. You find a problem in a niche, say accounting for plumbers, and build for that, then you just go and market to these people. On the other hand, I see people who advocate for "I just built something that I needed, and it got traction". There are multiple examples for both camps, but the problem is that they contradict each other.

This leads me to believe that most people either get lucky and then apply a framework in retrospect to justify their luck, or they simply don't tell the whole truth.

I want to escape a salaried coder job, more so with the "push" of vibe coding across the board. But I have no idea how to approach a business. I refuse to believe that everyone who succeeded with a side project and replaced their job - is a liar, but maybe the truth is that it does not take 7 months, but 7 years?

Anyone got something helpful to share in that regard?

  👤 jgbmlg Accepted Answer ✓
7 years, or rather, more time than you expected is correct. Generally, success happens slowly. To succeed, just don't fail. If you keep your job, muddle along with your side business, avoiding debt, keeping your fixed costs low, and most importantly, survive, your customer base will grow and your competitors will melt away. If you are not luckier or earlier than others, you will still succeed by being more patient than others.
👤 daemin
I too am in a similar situation, where I am building a niche product - partly for my own benefit, partly for learning, but mostly with the idea of selling it as a commercial product.

I have plenty of worries about it - will the product sell at all, is the product too niche so I'll have sales but not enough to make it full time, am I barking up the wrong tree and there is already an open source free alternative that I've somehow missed, what if nobody likes it? All sorts of stuff, some warranted, and some just the usual fear of making something and putting it out there.

With that being said I do consider a big portion of success being luck, as any one lucky event could catapult you to riches, and any unlucky event could ruin any chance of that happening, but in the end you have to take a risk and put yourself out there for the lucky events to happen.

But as with all risky things you have to be prepared for it all to go to shit, and then have enough of a support network which will help you get back onto your feet.

I genuinely hope that other people have some more concrete advice here or even war stories to tell.

👤 bigfatkitten
If you’re an expert in a particular niche and people just bring you work, then being a solo operator works fine.

You choose which engagements to take on based on your own capacity, and you’re not burning cycles on business development etc.

👤 anovikov
I know one guy who actually succeeded. He ran a hard-mode outsourcing shop for like, 15 years, for many years making 100-150K/month net in his pocket, but with AI, it went to zero by about end of 2024, so he was left with no income and lost all his (rather large) team. He started experimenting with products and after about 3-4 failed tries, landed a successful one which nearly replicates his old income, it is a mixed (live women and AI) porn webcam app. Took more than $2M sunk into dev and marketing costs before he hit PMF. He still spends almost everything he makes on research into new niches - fintech, trading, various scam niches, and more porn, but so far nothing else sticks.

Yet, he is delighted to not have to run outsourcing shop anymore, and make same income with much smaller team and much more ethical line of business than outsourcing.

👤 lyfeninja
Hang in there. It does take longer than you think and it's a marathon with a lot of peaks and valleys.

You do need a market, not just a product. You also need to network to get input, partners, and build a BD pipeline. You don't necessarily need revenue at first, you need to prove external interest, whether that's a beta, pilot, or collaboration/partnership. All these things will add to your momentum.

👤 nacozarina
People were sold on the lie that solo was the way to go.

Solo, not one time in all of human history, has ever been the way to go.

Of all the lies you could chose to believe in life, this one is the worst.

👤 fiftyacorn
The issue is that building is the easy bit, but most devs lack sales and marketing

Its like a builder cpuld build a doctor surgery but it doesnt make them a doctor

👤 late_night_fix
I feel like it's not luck vs strategy.May be it's just time+ exposure.The more you build and put things out there,the higher you chances something clicks.