Decommissioning my first commercial product

https://binarysolo.blog/decommissioning-my-first-commercial-product/

by elawler24 • 2 years ago

48 17 2 years ago

codazoda• 2 years ago

It was also targetted at non-technical people and as an indie developer, it’s very difficult to reach that market.

I found this comment interesting. I haven’t had any success, not for lack of trying, but it seems like most advice I’ve heard is that technical users are hard to sell to.

hermitcrab3• 2 years ago

Programmers are famously hard to sell software to. Because:

a) They think they could do it themself in a weekend. Even though it took you 5 person years of work.

b) They are used to using lot of free and opensource software and don't expect to pay for software.

Other technical users (chemical engineers, civil engineers etc) are probably easier to sell to. But I don't have any data to back that up.

Buttons840• 2 years ago

Or:

c) They don't trust that the tool will be around for a long time

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

Civil engineers won't buy from small companies because they don't think you'll be around for long. And then when you sell to Autodesk because nobody is really buying, they will buy and complain forever about the Autodesk price gouging.

senkora• 2 years ago

There’s sometimes some truth to the “I could do it in a weekend” thing (hear me out!).

I think it is often true that 1) a talented programmer 2) can solve their own specific use case 3) in a janky way that is only usable to them, in a weekend.

That’s very far off from a product, but is enough for the programmer to not become a customer.

sethhochberg• 2 years ago

I read that more as saying the technical author had trouble selling to a nontechnical audience because they found them hard to relate to, rather than the traditional wisdom that technical people in general are a tough audience for anybody

ayushn212• 2 years ago

The market I was referring to here are the kind of people who use a computer and the internet, but are not technical beyond those basics. They won't have even heard of ProductHunt, they don't follow tech twitter etc.

When they need software for something, they would google it and use the top results. Those folks are very very difficult to reach as an indie developer.

In my case, if someone google's "how to create a blog", there's literally no chance anything I do as an indie will put me in the top 5 results. Just one example of course, usual caveats and exceptions etc etc ...

bruce511• 2 years ago

> I find that focusing on the process instead of the outcome not only removes the pressure of chasing success, it also just makes it more fun. Whether this translates to any commercial success remains to be seen, but hey, fun is good!

This is important. All businesses should understand what their goals are, and should make decisions that serve their goals.

And it's very important to understand that there are different goals, and hence that there are different companies doing things in different ways.

One person's experience in one kind of company can lead to the conclusion that all companies behave like that. Which is untrue.

If the goal is to have fun, then make decisions that lead to fun.

However if the goal is to make a living, then make decisions that lead to income. Unfortunately most of those decisions will lead to not-fun.

Developing a software business, with paying customers, able to pay salaries, becoming sustainable, means mostly doing business things not software things. And in most cases building software does not lead to success. It is necessary, but not sufficient.

Most business (financial) success comes through the other bits. Marketing. Sales. Support. Documentation. Invoicing. Accounting. Etc.

Having fun is good. But it's ideal if that's not your day job and you can afford not to rely on it for income.

mrbluecoat• 2 years ago

Did you open source it after calling it quits? You never know when someone might feel inspired to breathe new life into the project.

ayushn212• 2 years ago

Nope, I'm far too embarrassed of the code .... might clean it up and open source in the future but I can't see myself having the time or motivation any time soon haha.

flobosg• 2 years ago

Inevitably, with an audience that size, a loud minority made their negative feelings known. Instead of letting these comments deflate them, they turned the tables on them.

“Primus sucks!”

Decommissioning my first commercial product

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