On my way from a software engineer to tech entrepreneur

I am reading, actually, re-reading the book called Start Small - Stay Small: a developer’s guide to launching a startup with no outside funding. First time I just read this book, but now I want to actually apply the knowledge from this book as I am planning to find a product to build and launch it. Just a small one. At first. And the key part is to actually apply and use the knowledge from this book. Otherwise it is just being a “wannapreneur”.

My goal is to take notes on my journey to testing product ideas and trying to build small stuff. I am not in a shape to build something big for next couple of years, but I would like to learn what it’s like to make something worth paying for form scratch.

I am good technician (according to my mom) and a problem solver, but when I know the problem.

The idea to build my own product that solves somebody’s problem in a way a person wants to pay for it always appealed to me. But I never made a good progress with it.

I am going to start series of notes while I am reading the book. It is going to be a compilation from ideas and quotes from this book, but also my own thoughts and ideas I experience while reading the book. Also, I am going to actually practice advices from this book and write about it: what worked, what confused me, what failed.

The first chapter of the book is kinda like an overview of an entrepreneurship journey, introduction into what to expect and key ideas I and the reader need to accumulate and accept in order to move on.

There are no frameworks and steps to do there yet, but there are critical ideas that has to be digested before moving on.

Now, let’s go to the Chapter 1 notes.

I think the biggest learning that makes me as a tech guy struggle the most is this short quote from the book.

Product last, Marketing first

But we will get here soon.

First, let’s take a look at 2 presented types of entrepreneurs:

Micropreneurs - wants to stay solo, one or few projects. No employees no matter what.
Bootstrappers - have a vision about something that one person cannot handle and needs a team to build it.

I think I personally would try to get into micropreneur. Maybe I am wrong, but for me it feels like even before going into bootstrapers I need to experience all the things by myself.

There are also things that are needed for both categories:

finding a niche
finding a product
building
launching
marketing
and more.

Building something in a small niche should be easier comparing to a generic product. More generic products require more marketing and support. That would be impossible for somebody who tries to run it solo and for the first time.

Good point about niches: they are too small for large corporations allowing small entrepreneurs room for building. So there is a change for one person to find and building something profitable while not trying to compete with big companies.

The key factor in an entrepreneur’s success is their ability to market their product. … Millions of people in this world can build software. A fraction can build software and convince people to buy it.

An entrepreneur is a combination of developer, webmaster, and a marketer. And while it is relatively easy for me personally to build a software as I am doing it for many year. Being a marketing person is going to be hard.

“Product Last. Marketing First”

This was always confusing for me. But after reading the book about marketing and watching different companies - looks like it is true. Often bad products with good marketing wins good products with bad marketing. Somehow I need to change my attention to Marketing word.

While there are good reasons to start a product - there are wrong reasons as well:

Just having a product idea. There might be a product/product confusion.
- Project is a software that you build for fun. It is fun to implement because there’re no concerns about performance and quality. The end results is something that will be used by just a few people.
- Product is a project that people wants to buy. Without a market a software application is just a project.
To get rich. If doing it only for money it could be hard to work without visible income. I mean eventually I want to get rich. I mean not like crazy, but to have an income that can replace 9-5 job. So I will be thinking about money since the beginning. Otherwise I would just do all my projects as OSS. But this is not what I want to try. And it is not why I am reading the book.
Because it is sounds like fun. I think it was using fun in a different term. Like there is an assumption that micropreneurs only write code all day and the money comes. I think I accepted that building the software does not mean writing code all the time, there are other things to do. What I would think I would try is to build my own internal tools that will help me with some tasks, especially with LLMs or will learn how to leverage VAs

Now to the right reasons according to the book.

First, it depends on goals.

Micropreneurs: lean towards lifestyle.
Bootstrapers: embrace the challenge of owning a business.

It’s a long road to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

From all the goals listed in the book I would pick this one: Building a portfolio of products and quitting my day job while still writing code. That is the end goal. Probably I will need a first step, which is: keeping my day job and earning extra money on the side. So I can practice skills from this book and over years starting to change the ratio between improving my current career and going full self-employed

How to increase changes of following goals:

Written goals. I will write them into my notes, but also I am planning to publish my learnings and progress here.
Public commitment
Accountability - “… sent weekly progress reports to their friends (or maybe blogging) accomplished significantly more than those who had unwritten goals…”

What I am thinking during reading the book and observing - making the first profitable product would be super hard. But in order to make it I will have to learn so many different things and eventually that will become my toolbox as well. The whole idea to build something that is living kinda separately and lives it’s own live to make a profit sounds interesting. And I hope that will give me more sense of purpose as I think I would find something worth solving. I would understand why I am building it. But the thing is - I am not sure I am good for corporate ladder. I believe I can climb it. On one hand it looks cool when you have so much resources, at the same time they are not mine. Maybe it is worth making a small thing that I fully own then exchange my time. But, will I make it happen? I don’t know.

While trying to accomplish this there are some roadblock I will eventually face:

No market for a product. How to avoid: build a product after I verified there is a market for it. I will do it non-negotiable for products I want to be paid off. Cool stuff can be done just as OSS, but I would not spend time building something I have 0 information about possible demand.
Fear. Fear of failure, rejection, mistakes. How to avoid: “The up-front fear is a big indicator that you’re going to grow as a person if you proceed through it. And, frankly, the terror wears off pretty quickly.” … “It’s a huge confidence boost to look back at the things that scared you last month, last year, or even five years ago. And realize you conquered them.” All the good things happened with me started from a fear. E.g., I was terrified to ask one girl to start a relationship with me. Now we are married for 10 years and have a wonderful kid. Or all the good things that happened with my career started from stepping into unknowns.
Lack of Goals. Without goals both for myself and my startup I’m flying blind without guidance in situations where there is no right or wrong answer. Answers should go from long-term desires. How to avoid: Define goals and Write Them Down
Inconsistency. Inconsistency makes me lose momentum and it is critical to stay productive. Feeling productive is not the same as being productive towards the goal. How to avoid: information diet. Cannot consume and produce at the same time, there is only one mode.

Being in the pattern of checking your RSS reader every time you sit down at your computer kills hours of productivity each week. Those are hours that could be spent building your product.

…

Anytime you’re on your computer ask yourself “Is this activity getting me closer to my launch date?”

example: outsource searching for 50 blogs to market to virtual assistant. Instead of searching by myself - write a task for VA to make a list. There is going to be a chapter about VAs and I am going to actually try it and publish here the results.

Only reading books get met no closer to launching than playing video games.

Most of the information I consume is a waste of time. It is enjoyable to consume, but few of them increase productivity towards the goal. By information here I mean everything: TikTok videos, news, random productivity videos.

The more I think about this the more I understand that the problem usually is a short content: small messages, short videos. Reading books and harder to watch videos might give more value comparing to 100 short videos I will never remember.

Believing I have to do Everything by myself. T_his is the hardest for me. I am still struggling what to outsource to VA in this case. Maybe personal stuff? so I can free some time for projects. Or data collection for research?_. How to avoid: start small, gain comfort with working with a VA/contractor and then increase amount I could outsource.

Changing my time mindset

It is a big leap to move from employee thinking to entrepreneur thinking. I need to accept that the time is the most precious thing. Putting a value on my time is a foundational step in becoming an entrepreneur.

Skipping this step can result in late nights performing menial tasks I should be outsourcing.

It does not sound like a good idea to pay someone out of my pocket for something I could do myself. But I need to realize the economics of doing it.

Approaches to dollarizing my time:

Freelance rate. Setting a hourly rate for my time and bill clients by time spent
Salary. Yearly salary / 2000. This is an average hourly rate for your current job. Funny that if you take a salary and calculate hourly rate - it does not look like much.

Some realizations:

Outsourcing is a bargain. If I really earning more during my work hour versus outsourcing - than I can buy more of my hours cheaper.
Keep work and play separate. Doing something that is not moving my goals forward and not fun - I should quit. (bad game or TV episode - quit).

Work hand and play hard, but never do both at once.

If you’re playing with your kids and working on your iPhone you’re not really working or playing – you’re doing both poorly. Put the iPhone away and focus on your kids;

Wasting time is bad. Keep notebook and pen always with me so I can take notes and/or brainstorm some stuff during wait times. I personally can use Daily notes in Obsidian to capture quick ideas, this is what I do occasionally. Then review them from time tom time to extract good ideas into ideas inboxes.

The real statement here is that you should never find yourself killing time.

Again, time is the most valuable thing. There is no way to earn more or return it.

Information consumption is only good when it produces something.

When reading blogs or books or listening to podcasts or audio books, take action notes. _Action notes are short- or long-term to-do items that apply directly to my businesses.

Transitioning from developer to entrepreneur:

While I am being good tech person, good at solving problems and puzzles - I am not an entrepreneur at all. I was working as photography freelances and coding freelancer, but it is still exchanging time for money with direct relation. So, what should I do to change it? Again, notes from the book.

1. Being a good tech is not enough

There are 3 archetypes of running a business: entrepreneur, manager and technician.

entrepreneur is a dreamer, the visionary, and a creative one
manager is the person who thinks about ROI (return on investment), productivity and near-term success
technician gets the job done. Follows manager’s guidance and focused on today’s success

95% of us, **including me**, are comfortable at being technician. I am good technician, good at solving problems with tech. But it takes more to run a business. It basically needs to combine all 3 archetypes: to think near-term to determine which features to market, think 1 year+ to define long-term vision and also implement all of these today.

First - I need to determine my goals and objectives. Without planning, organising, systematising, outsourcing, and marketing, all the things I am shy away from as a tech person. Otherwise I won’t be able to pass the top bar and stay al low end.

2. Market first, marketing second, aesthetic third, and functionality a distant fourth

The product with a sizeble market and low competition wins even with bad marketing, bad aesthetic, and poor functionality.

In the same market, the product with better marketing wins. Every time.

With equal marketing the one with better aesthetic wins. Small portion of people will find out that the “ugly one” has better functionality, but in most cases it won’t work.

This is a hard pillow to swallow, honestly. But it is true. How many popular companies you know that selling tons of stuff, but if you pay attention to product only - it is not that good and you could find an unknown product with better quality. And yet we pay for a story, for a brand.

Unless it is a product for developers the order of importance should be:

market
marketing
aesthetic
function.

3. Things will never be as clear as I want them to be

Writing software is more predictable. In general I would know how I want my app to work and behave.

As for marketing - it is not that clear as it’s about math & human behavior. The math is straight-forward. But the humans are unpredictable.

I can plus into point about human’s unpredictability. This is the hardest part in management. It is much harder to make any predictions for a system of humans versus software system. Because people are way more complex creatures.

It is always about making predictions and taking a guesses, but no one know exactly what will work.

What I will have to do is a lot of guesswork to understand the product. And instead of making decisions based on facts I will have to make guesses and test them.

Then do it like 20 times more.

4. I cannot specify everything, but I do need a plan

Agile methodology is more aligned with entrepreneurship: define a long-term goal, look at next set of tasks and will get me one step closer to that goal, execute, and re-evaluate in a week. And repeat.

Waterfall for product launches won’t work as I would spend lots of time building something unverified.

#1 advantage is reaction time.

5. Need to fail fast and recover

I will have to fail a lot: make bad decisions, waste time, waste money, run ineffective ads, miss deadlines, make bad releases. Every time I should accept that, take learnings from it and move on. And repeat.

The faster cycle of fail&learn happens - the faster I can improve. Overtime I will become much better at all things, but before that happens - I need to hit many roadblocks.

6. I will never be Done

It is possible to finish a software. But it is impossible to finish a software product.

The idea of building an application and sitting back to collect a check is, unfortunately, a pipe dream. You have to continually invest in both your product and your marketing in order to remain successful.

7. I should not expect instant gratification

A product, marketing effort, and a reputation takes time to build. Once they build they snowball. But it takes time.

Don’t expect that your work is over the day after you launch. That’s the day work really begins.

After trying to grow YouTube channel I do understand that it might take a lot of time. And never pay off. We have to be very patient until the compound effect hits. We just never know when it will happen.

8. Process is King

I should document every repeatable processes for anything that I do. It will help me more than once to keep my sanity.

Without process it’s impossible to delegate, difficult to bring on a business partner, and easy to make mistakes. As details are easy to forget.

First - create a process. Second - once it’s a descriptive process it can be automated or delegated.

9. Nothing about a startup is a one-time effort

There is no way I can establish everything, launch, and then just write the code.

I will have to invest time every month into marketing, development, support, SEO, Ads, and everything else connected to a product.

To get to the point of an automated startup I have to choose my niche and product wisely, but also invest a large amount of time outsourcing and automating business. Marketing is one of the most hard things to outsource.

Realizing the differences between development and entrepreneurship is something that will benefit you in the long run as you pursue your dream of starting a company. Understanding and embracing the entrepreneurial mindset will go a long way toward preparing you for the chaos that is a startup.

Foreword

That is the end for notes from chapter 1. Next one should be more actionable, so I might do other postings with experiments before making a summary of chapter 2.

Again, this is the book: Start Small - Stay Small: a developer’s guide to launching a startup with no outside funding. Check it out if you interested as well. I am not affiliated with it, but believe that I should share the source of information I am using to learn.

Cheers, Roman