Unless your friends have experience building a business, I'd take their opinions of building a business with a grain of salt.
They might mean well, but it doesn't seem like they don't know what they are talking about. They might even want to believe it's impossible, so that they don't need to admit they aren't as ambitious and couragous as you.
Probably best to avoid this topic. Ask them to respectfully stop telling you it's a bad idea and focus on topics that you can have a productive conversation around. If that proves impossible, reconsider what the friendship is providing you.
I'd also consider finding additional friends that do share that entrepreurial mindset. It's a long road to go on all by yourself. Being on WIP hopefully helps, but there's nothing like having IRL chats with like-minded people.
Thanks @marc . I really want to be an entrepreneur and really want to solve and big problem in the near future. My friends never done this type of things ever before. Thanks for this platform. And, I dont know what is IRL chats means. Can you point me there?
Regarding burn out: building a solo business can be hard and chaotic work. I think the key is learning how to prioritize and getting comfortable with many parts of the business being broken or incomplete. There's always more to do, and you'll never finish your todo list.
So practically that might mean ignoring certains bugs that are not crucial, being okay with some design issues, "firing" customers that take up too much of your time, limiting your availability to certain people (especially people that want to chat without a clear goal).
I also think each project can feel different. Some feel like an uphill battle, while others almost pull you forward. It requires having worked on multiple projects to develop a solid awareness of this. So feel free to experiment with different ideas and compare how easy or hard they feel to work on.
I've always had problems with webpack and webpacker (the tool that integrats webpack into Rails). It might simply be because I don't understand enough of the eco-system and I never bothered to really look into it. But with some recent changes to Rails and new alternatives I finally decided to get rid of webpacker altogether. It's actually the new default for Rails apps as many developers had issues with it.
So what do you use if not webpack?
@kimsia I would imagine he moved to import map, which is the rails 7 default - github.com/rails/importmap-ra…
Their rationale is here: world.hey.com/dhh/rails-7-wil…
I'm saying to focus on the things that deliver value to the users. Ignore everything else until it becomes a necessity.
The billing system is just an example of something many makers invest a lot of time on upfront when it's not necessary yet. (Because for the first couple dozen customers you can handle it manually.)
Yep, focus on the core part that provides value to the customer. Only must-haves, no nice-to-haves. And don't worry about it being scaleable, etc.
For example if you're building a $50/mo SaaS business, you don't need to ship the $50/mo recurring billing system until exactly one month after launch :) (and even then you can probably just charge their card manually, rather than having it fully automated)
Ok, i understand. But can you tell me why I shouldn't be doing that? You don't think a recurring billing system is good? Or you are saying that first check whether the users want to pay for the service or not?
I'm saying to focus on the things that deliver value to the users. Ignore everything else until it becomes a necessity.
The billing system is just an example of something many makers invest a lot of time on upfront when it's not necessary yet. (Because for the first couple dozen customers you can handle it manually.)
I think you can build a product in a month. It's not about working fast, but more about adjusting the scope to the bare minimum so you can finish it within a month.
So,That means not too many features. Make it minimum and simple. Got it. Thanks!
Yep, focus on the core part that provides value to the customer. Only must-haves, no nice-to-haves. And don't worry about it being scaleable, etc.
For example if you're building a $50/mo SaaS business, you don't need to ship the $50/mo recurring billing system until exactly one month after launch :) (and even then you can probably just charge their card manually, rather than having it fully automated)
Ok, i understand. But can you tell me why I shouldn't be doing that? You don't think a recurring billing system is good? Or you are saying that first check whether the users want to pay for the service or not?
I'm saying to focus on the things that deliver value to the users. Ignore everything else until it becomes a necessity.
The billing system is just an example of something many makers invest a lot of time on upfront when it's not necessary yet. (Because for the first couple dozen customers you can handle it manually.)
Shipping "12 products in 12 months" (or eleven haha) is a great way to both build a shipping muscle (learn how to get a product out the door), and try out many different ideas to see which ones get traction.
Because the truth is, it's hard to predict which idea will work. So you'll just have to try a bunch and see what happens.
So yes, I think launching a lot of products is definitely a viable strategy. You can do the same for marketing. Try out 12 ways of marketing your product in 12 weeks. See what works, and double down on that.
Hey Lillo, welcome to WIP and apologies if it took me a while to approve your intro post 😅
You definitely have an interesting background with journalism and communications. That's actually something many bootstrappers seem to be lacking in haha. Anything you've learned so far with regards to communication and storytelling that others could benefit from?
Also curious to hear what your current project is, and if there's anything we can do to help?