Moving from Programmer to Entrepreneur
Ian Landsman’s 10 tips for moving from programmer to entrepreneurÂ
As always, I comment (note - you should read the original too - there’s a lot more there)
- Code is 5% - agree
- Design is everything - disagree. Design is important, but for many types of customers, it isn’t critical.
- Think Long Term - agree - it’s easy to let yourself avoid uncomfortable non-technical tasks. Don’t let them slide!
- Understand the end user - agree
- Love your customers - generally agree - don’t forget, you can always fire them if they are , or become unloveable.  Better to fire them and suffer for a while than keep them and suffer forever
- Design for ease of use - agree. 100%
- Bounce ideas off of uninvolved friends - generally agree - it can be very easy to “drink the koolaid” and think you’re smarter than you are. HOWEVER - “game changing” ideas are usually thought of as quite stupid or bizarre and unserious, until you make millions with them.
- Pull code out - agree
- Patience is a virtue - agree - although I might have said - be realistic with what you can accomplish.
- Learn how to be an Entrepreneur - agree - it’s a much different kind of work, and it’s easy to fall into old habits. Read blogs about entrepreneurship and books and such - very valuable!
Other tips:
- You have to put time into networking, and all those icky, seemingly wasteful direct human interactions.  Like debugging, you just have to do it, even though it is frustrating.
- Save money on infrastructure - as a technical person, you often have a tremendous store of knowledge about how to do more with less.  Open source software, low cost hosting, demos and betas and so forth - you can easily get 80% of a full “commercial” environment for $0
- Save money in general - programming is often lucrative. Entrepreneurship is not always such. Try very, very hard to manage your expenses.
- Refer your competitors - in the process of going out on your own, you’ll meet a lot of other consultant/entrepreneurs. If you find an opportunity that’s not a good fit for you, but a good fit for them, pass it along. They will return the favor.
- Don’t be ashamed to subcontract - when you’re in-between gigs, or you’re having trouble meeting cash-flow - do anything you can to keep money coming in.