Unfortunately, if you genuinely want to build something cool, the correct path is build it as open source project while having a job.

If you want to make money (at least break even the opportunity cost of a programmer), you need to work backwards: build things that you will be comfortable to pitch to your connections. Selling home-made chilli sauce to friends&relatives is unironically a better business model than building an app for most people.

Yup.

Stuff I build for fun, I generally just open source. If there is an audience, you can always build a commercial model later.

Thanks, that makes sense. I did reach out to my limited network and the reception has been good.

    > For example I'm building something cool, a no-code visual regression tool. 

Make sure you do your research on what's already out there, how much they charge, who their target market is (startups? Mid market? Enterprise?), what's their marketing strategy, etc.

Basically understand how your solution fits into that market and how you'll differentiate and make money.

These come up every few weeks on HN. Something something Playwright, something GPT something.

I fully agree that you should try to sell the thing first, because a good chunk of the people who might want such a tool could already have the savvy required to bolt together the relevant open source and off the shelf building blocks.

Even before getting any sort of demo/landing page up?

Yes. The more excited someone else is about an idea, the stronger the signal. The more you have to show them the idea, the weaker the signal (with exceptions at the edges)

That's fair but I need a job so this demo is a perfect way to showcase all of my skills and to add something recent to my portfolio. Maybe if I have like a year of runway and no money stress I can try the pre-sell thing.

Do it for your portfolio; keep it open source. Use a license that's conducive to OSS and possibly a paid version in the future or dual license later.

Just be realistic with your expectations and don't quit your job until you know that there are customers willing to pay.

I haven't worked in over a year and I'm in dire straights. I'll do the OSS version later.

hey

some time ago i skimmed around notion of Wardley maps and bookmarked it but did not pay (enough) attention. The other day there was another post on the topic, now with some basic resources, and i got hooked.. and read half of that book [0]. But right now have nothing on my mind to play with. May be that is a way? Map-and-try-predict the battlefield (needs lots of reconnaissance and "feeling" of the "landscape" and what-else-is-there). Mail me if you want a sparing partner - i want to learn this technique. But Anyway, have fun.

[0] https://feststelltaste.github.io/wardley-maps-book/#_the_fir...

(IMO, read chapter 2+ then 3~4 first, then restart from beginning)

Hey I'll definitely reach out. The first 5 times I read your comment I had no idea what you were talking about then did some reading. Very cool.

Who do you expect to buy it? How many face-to-face conversation with them about why they’d use this tool?

Customer don’t exist in hn, ph, twitter, they exist in their own offices, on Zoom, and your local coffee shops.

I expect managers of small/mid size product teams to buy it instead of pinging me and my friends at the end of the day/start of the day/throughout the day. This makes it so my managers don't have to ping me all day, helps devs monitor UI breakages, and helps stakeholders get easy made reports on changes they requested. It's quite useful.

I've had 10ish face to face conversations with people, people who've sold significant companies / engineering managers at FAANG's.

My competitors all require code, mine doesn't.

I threw up a sign up page on https://shutr.app if you're interested. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it goes nowhere. But I believe in it, and it's useful for me.

Quick reminder that FAANG is not small/mid.

My guess is, you’re selling to the individual devs at the smaller places. Talk to them and their managers. If they want to buy, they’ll buy with what you have already.

Right, true. Thanks.

Ph? Product Hunt?

Yes