Independence - Ruby FTW 2014

A lighthearted take on the pendulum swinging back and forth between idealistic hopes and dreams and the slightly-less-amazing events from reality when building a small business as a sole founder.

Transcript

1. “INDEPENDENCE” Making a living selling your own software. What I’ve learned from 6 years of building a pro fi table web application.
3. Hours Worked Income NOT IDEAL Income tied to hours worked.
4. Hours Worked Income IDEAL Income independent of hours worked.
8. 2000 2014 2007 FULL TIME FREELANCE
9. c c c Hope: c c c MONEY “I’m going to be fi lthy rich.”
10. Fear: MONEY “I’m going to be fi lthy rich.” “I’m guaranteed to bankrupt my family.”
11. Reality: YES Balance optimism and caution. Build up a cushion. Don’t quit your job on a whim. Prepare ahead of time. Don’t rush it.
12. c c c Hope: c c c GROWTH “I’ll just post to (insert popular web site here), and it will go viral.”
13. Reality: NOPE Slow and steady linear growth is the standard. It sounds boring, but it’s sustainable and reliable. (It’s also much more likely than viral growth.)
14. Example: CONSTANT CONTACT How to Negotiate the Long Slow SaaS Ramp of Death http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/
15. Fear: LEGAL “My company will sue/ fi re me if I work on side projects.”
16. Reality: NOPE Unless you’re fi ling directly competitive patents, you’re probably OK. If you work for a particularly vindictive boss or company, this may be worth thinking about. Otherwise, your current company probably doesn’t care what you do at all.
17. c c c Hope: c c c FUN! “I’m going to write software all day!”
18. Reality: KIND OF Fraud. Spam fi lters. Spam accounts. Hackers. Chargebacks. Server upgrades. Security updates. Support. Marketing. Taxes. Legal. Testing.
19. c c c Hope: c c c NO MARKETING NECESSARY “Great products don’t need marketing.”
20. - Marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.” Robert Stephens, Founder of Geek Squad “
21. Reality: REMARKABLE IS TOUGH It’s virtually impossible to be “remarkable” when you launch. It’s a poisonous expectation to place on you and your team.
22. Reality: MARKETING CAN HELP The idea that your idea and execution have to be amazing enough that you don’t need marketing is poisonous. Marketing, when applied wisely, can make a di ff erence.
23. Example: EVERYWHERE Apple. Samsung. Windows. Amazon. Google. The de fi nition of “remarkable” is both subjective and constantly evolving, but these companies are remarkable and spend a lot on advertising.
24. c c c Hope: c c c NO BOSS “I won’t have to take orders from anyone.”
25. Reality: MORE BOSSES Instead of reporting to 1 or 2 bosses, you report to hundreds or thousands of customers with frequently divergent needs and priorities.
26. c c c Hope: c c c NO CONSTRAINTS “I can invest time on fun things instead of rushing half-baked ideas assigned to me by pointy-haired bosses and clients.”
27. Reality: MORE CONSTRAINTS Bills. Employees. Revenue. Accessibility. Security. Front-end. Back-end. Server. Marketing. Once you view everything holistically, you recognize the importance of tradeo ff s.
28. Fear: TEAM “I need co-founders.”
29. c c c Hope: c c c TEAM “I can do this all by myself.”
30. Reality: YES Pros and cons to both co-founders and going solo. There isn’t a right or wrong. Only what’s best for you in the here and now. Don’t be overcon fi dent about going solo, but don’t let the lack of a co-founder stand in the way.
31. Fear: COMPETITION “There’s 100 alternatives. I can’t compete.”
32. Reality: FRAGMENTATION & VALIDATION Be smart and di ff erentiate.
33. A) Email Integration B) Attachments C) Search D) API E) Milestones F) OpenID G) Text Formatting None of them
34. Example: BUG TRACKING 45 options listed on Wikipedia. Many of which are open source and/or free. Probably just as many that aren’t listed. Do your own thing, and don’t worry about “competition.”
35. Example: ACCOUNTING Quickbooks vs. Less Accounting. Quickbooks is a borderline industry standard. Yet Less Accounting is still a pro fi table and healthy company.
36. - We’re the cockroach of the accounting software industry.” Allan Branch, Co-founder of LessAccounting “
37. Fear: BIGGER TEAMS “Our small team can’t possibly compete against a team of 20.”
38. Reality: AGILITY Have you ever watched a team of 20+ try to get something done? You’re faster than they are.
39. Example: EVERY SUCCESSFUL TEAM EVER Google. Facebook. Apple. Twitter. They didn’t start with 20 people. Everything was a side project at one point.
40. Fear: HEALTH “I can’t a ff ord health insurance.” “What if something happens to me?”
41. Reality: MIXED There are very legitimate health reasons not to start a business. Hypothetical reasons, however, are not among them.
42. Example: MY FOOT Lost about 6 of the last 12 months to being in bed, on pain killers, or in the hospital. Being self- employed actually made the situation tolerable. Recurring revenue ensured no negative a ff ect on our income.
43. c c c Hope: c c c FREEDOM “No meetings or interruptions, and I’ll work from the beach all of the time!”
44. Reality: FLEXIBILITY Work when you want. How you want. Where you want. (Most of the time.)
45. Example: MY FOOT I got to work from a hospital bed.
46. Non-example: CONNECTIVITY Hosted software needs to be available 24x7. (More or less.) If you like to get o ff the grid, ignore what I said about co-founders. You’ll want one.
47. Fear: KNOWLEDGE “I don’t have enough experience yet.”
49. Reality: YOU NEVER WILL The only way to learn is by doing. Running an app is nothing like running one for a corporation. You have to become a generalist, and most corporate jobs just don’t enable that.
50. Thanks!