An entrepreneurial book by the founder of gumroad and a good speaker.

Summary - lots of good advice and common sense

Background - I’m becoming a student of business, and am enjoying seeing the commonaliites that everyone talks about.

I’m back in the initial stages of launching a product after some forays which fortuntaly I’ve backed out of before they consumed too much. It is a fascinating, stressful,…. path. Like learning how to program for the first time and thinking you’ll never understand anything, and you’re doomed.

How to find a problem worth solving is my blog post on this first stage of entrepreneurism.

Like programming there are many people telling you what you should be doing. For example Design Patterns in programming always were an anathema for me, and felt like soemthing to strive towards. I’ve learned on the Journey (to hopefully Master) that no, they need not be something to strive towards. It is only by doing and understanding that we know this. I wish I’d read some good code earlier in my career that steered me in that general direction. It really is annoying the MS promote some complex code when simplicity is really the key.

So, how can simplicity be tranferred into the business realm?

A problem I’ve been struggling with is what problem to solve?

I’m a software person, so I can build SaaS products, and love being a builder!

1. Profitability First

Being in a good Market

brokenlinkchecker.org is a technical exploration project of mine where I thought there may be a market.

As a ‘cash machine’ I think it will ultimately not be what I want

eg

  • B2B
  • 100 customers paying $100pm

What is the product I want to sell to a customer?

2. Community

I like this advice. Essentially we are starting with the customer first. and finding the right customers

If I talk, who listens

  • Programmers - .NET, Wordpress hosting, Jekyll blog
  • Tinkerers and explorers of software technology, infrasructure,
  • Infrastructure people
  • Linux people
  • Windows desktop (and WSL2 people)
  • Vim people

  • Bloggers

  • Local people in village needing tech advice
  • Business owners eg Carey who need tec guidance

  • Academic PI’s eg Yvonne who need built

  • Freelancers - if people need help in .NET / Web back end.

Where and with whom do I already spend my time, online and offline

  • Kingston running group
  • Cask beer society
  • Lewes home brew club
  • DH and MH haning out for beers and food
  • Academics
  • Human Rights Invetigators
  • Musicians
  • Friends drinking beer and going to breweries
  • ex Raleigh expedition
  • The Skiff People
  • Facebook contacts

In what situations am I most authentically myself

  • programmers
  • outdoors people - climbers / mountaineers
  • parents of young kids
  • nct gang
  • family

Who do I hang out with, even though I don’t really like them, but it’s worth it since we share something more important in common

  • parents at school
  • home brew club (some people don’t listen well)

Turn this list of communities into a list of online and offline locations, in which to spend more time learning and contributing

Notable teachers in each area (mindful of costs)

In person

  • Meetups
  • Workshops
  • Classes
  • Speaker series
  • Networking events

Contribute, Create, and Teach

1% rule

Once you start contributing people will start to recognise you.

  • Work in public
  • Teach everything you know
  • Create every day

From here you’d start to see problems which need solving.

Picking the community

4 Types of Economic Utility are:

  • Place utility - coffee wholesaler - eg getting coffee beans from Ecuador to SF
  • Form utility - coffee shop - coffee beans have changed form by being ground. Also a place utility if the coffee shop is closer to the customer than wholesaler. Many businesses are a combination.
  • Time utility - coffee shop sells croissants - make something slow go fast if it takes 3 days to make a croissant.
  • Possession utility - coffee shop buys own croissant making machine.

Stories of successful businesses

gumroad - a marketplace. Not where I want to be

interesting to look at businesses inside of gumroad

eg https://twostraws.gumroad.com/ - Paul Hudson who is an iOS developer. Parent company is Hudson Heavy Industries (great name). Seems like he is doing really well, but as a money making machine, I’d argue it is a hard market to be in.

basecamp - project management software to solve their own internal problem

tock - ticketing for reservations at restaurants tock to go -