starrhorne

For the owners of a small bootstrapped company, pretty much anything that doesn't increase revenue is a distraction and should be delegated to someone else, or some other company.

That doesn't mean you always can delegate them. Or that things like ops aren't important. It just means that a company's founder isn't the ideal person for the job, even if they can do it well.

There are 20-30 ruby conferences every year in the US alone. I've been to about 7. They all had > 200 attendees. Even the less-known ones tend to sell out well in advance.

Freelance rates for ruby developers are crazy-high. In Seattle, at least, I'm seeing $200/hr as not uncommon.

And on a side note, PHP has been around for about 80 years now and it's still moving along.

So I don't think ruby/rails are going to "die" any time soon.

I switched a few months ago and it's been great. I was afraid I was going to have to switch away, since we're going to be out of the country a lot next year. I'm super happy to be able to stick with them now.

Is that $25k in revenue? Profit? Or total transactions from which you take a %?

Just curious. I really like your lean approach.

Secret SaaS jiu jitsu: ditch the free plan and let your competitors deal with all the freeloaders.

You are a black box. Your brain and body take in the world as input and produce thoughts, feelings, and actions as output.

Some of the most valuable knowledge you'll ever acquire is knowledge of how that black box works.

Are you feeling distracted studying french? Is it because you hate french or because you skipped breakfast?

Once you're able to link up cause and effect, you can take action to minimize things you want less of, and maximize things your want more of.

How do you know what you want? It takes time, and you have to fumble around. I've found that a lot of people who take a super-narrow path in and after college tend to look up one day and find that they're in a place they never wanted to go.

BTW, I would personally suggest that you ignore anybody here who's giving you answers about investing or going to elite schools, etc. Those are means to an end. And it may not be the end you want.

The only important life goals for you are the ones you come up with. And you get to change your mind. :)

ps. Who am I? I'm in my mid 30's. Co-founder of a successful software business (not a funded startup). And I've fumbled around a lot. The one thing that's saved me time and time again has been a modicum of self-knowledge and a willingness to jump in and learn new things, many times outside my comfort zone.

pps. Don't forget to enjoy your life. Be kind to yourself.

You are giving up too early. You can make money on this product, but you just have to be willing to spend time learning to market it.

And by market I don't mean advertise. I mean, finding a group of people who really need inventory management and then tailoring your app to their specific needs.

For example, how many $1000s of dollars a year do restaurants lose from inventory spoilage? How does that compare with the cost of paying someone to enter all that data into your system?

Because, as a business owner, I only care about how your app is going to make or save me money.

One more thing. Not every type of business does well with a no-touch sales process. I suspect that with something like inventory management, you'll want to focus on an industry, go to trade shows, and really insert yourself into that world. Bizdev is really underrated in this self-serve world.

Seems like this article is conflating service workers with knowledge workers. Being a chauffeur isn't the same as being a designer.