Starting a side-project: Why you (and most developers) should, and how AI can help.
Summary
TLDRCarl, a veteran software professional, encourages developers to start their own software businesses or products, arguing it enhances programming skills and changes perspectives on software quality. He acknowledges the current challenging job market and the potential impact of AI on programming jobs. Carl suggests starting with a problem you've faced, leveraging AI for marketing through A/B testing, and building a minimum viable product. He warns of the hard work involved and the scams in the startup space, advocating for a cautious yet proactive approach.
Takeaways
- 🚀 The speaker encourages viewers to consider starting their own business or building a product, despite the challenges and without expecting quick riches.
- 💼 The script is aimed at developers or those aspiring to be, and assumes they are not bound by restrictive employment contracts.
- 💡 Starting your own venture can make you a better programmer by changing your perspective on software development, bugs, and user experience.
- 📈 The speaker has personal experience with starting several ventures, which have provided valuable lessons even if they didn't result in significant financial gain.
- 🛠️ The best programmers the speaker has encountered have often been those who have taken on full responsibility for a project or worked in very small companies.
- 💼 The job market for programmers is not as robust as it was a few years ago, and economic indicators suggest a potential recession on the horizon.
- 🤖 There's skepticism about AI replacing programmers soon, which is good news for developers as it means their skills remain in demand.
- 💼 The cost of starting a software business has never been lower, with cloud services reducing the need for significant upfront investment in infrastructure.
- 🛠️ When starting a business, it's advised to build something that would be useful to you personally, ensuring you gain value even if the business isn't successful.
- 🔧 The speaker suggests using AI for generating marketing text and employing A/B testing to refine it, leveraging a programmer's strengths and AI's capabilities.
- 💼 The script concludes with a cautionary note about the hard work involved in starting a software business and the importance of being wary of scams in the space.
Q & A
What is the main message Carl wants to convey in the video?
-Carl encourages viewers, particularly developers, to consider starting their own business or building their own product to become better programmers and to change their mindset about bugs and software users.
Why does Carl believe that starting your own business can make you a better programmer?
-Carl believes it can make you a better programmer because it requires you to be wholly responsible for the project, which includes dealing with bugs, customer support, and financial implications, thus enhancing your skills and understanding.
What is Carl's view on programmers who have never been wholly responsible for a project?
-Carl views programmers who have never been wholly responsible for a project negatively, as they often consider themselves too good for QA or first-line support and lack the experience of dealing with the full scope of software development.
What is the significance of the interview question Carl mentions about building something with $100K and six months?
-The interview question is significant because it indicates whether a programmer has thought creatively and independently about product development, which is a trait of good programmers according to Carl.
Why does Carl think the current job market for programmers is not as great as it was a few years ago?
-Carl thinks the job market for programmers is not as great due to economic changes, potential recession, and the rise of AI, which some companies are hoping will replace the need for programmers.
What is the 'magic trick' Carl refers to for improving AI-generated marketing copy?
-The 'magic trick' Carl refers to is A/B testing, where multiple versions of a webpage are shown to visitors, and statistical analysis is used to determine which version performs better.
What advice does Carl give for the type of business a developer should start?
-Carl advises starting by building something that would be useful to the developer themselves, ensuring that even if the business doesn't succeed, they still have a useful software product.
How does Carl suggest using AI in the context of starting a software business?
-Carl suggests using AI to generate marketing text for a website and then refining it through A/B testing to improve the effectiveness of the copy and the overall business.
What is Carl's stance on the idea of using AI to replace developers in the software creation process?
-Carl is skeptical about AI replacing developers for technical tasks, as he believes AI is better at generating marketing text rather than writing code, which is where developers excel.
What precautionary measures does Carl suggest for developers considering the current economic climate?
-Carl suggests that developers should start thinking about starting their own projects or businesses as a precautionary measure against potential economic downturns and job insecurity.
What resources does Carl recommend for those interested in starting a software business?
-Carl recommends books like 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries and 'The Lean Product Playbook' by Dan Olson, as well as websites like indiehackers.com and microconf.com for community support and learning.
Outlines
🚀 Starting Your Own Business: A Developer's Perspective
The speaker begins by candidly admitting the difficulty of discussing the topic without it sounding like clickbait. They emphasize that starting a business or building a product is not a get-rich-quick scheme and that few will become wealthy quickly, if at all. The speaker encourages viewers to consider entrepreneurship, especially developers, as it can significantly improve their programming skills and change their mindset towards software development and users. The speaker shares their own experiences with starting various projects, which, despite not making them wealthy, provided invaluable learning experiences. They contrast the attitudes of less effective programmers who have avoided full responsibility for their work with those of the best programmers they've encountered, who have often taken on significant challenges or started their own projects. The speaker suggests that taking on one's own project can lead to better software development practices and fewer bugs.
💼 The Current State of the Job Market and the Potential of AI
The speaker discusses the current challenges in the job market for programmers, noting that it's not as robust as it was a few years ago, and the possibility of an impending recession in the US that could affect global economies. They also mention the trend of companies delaying hiring programmers in favor of waiting for AI capabilities to mature. Despite these challenges, the speaker sees opportunities for developers. They argue that AI is unlikely to replace skilled developers soon and that AI's strengths lie in areas like marketing copy, where it can be refined through A/B testing. The speaker highlights the reduced costs and increased ease of starting a software business, thanks to cloud services and the ability to trade time for development costs. They advise starting with a product that would be useful to oneself, leveraging common architectural elements across online services, and being prepared for the iterative process of startup development and pivoting.
📚 Resources and Advice for Aspiring Software Entrepreneurs
In the final paragraph, the speaker acknowledges the vagueness of the details provided in the video, attributing it to the complexity of starting a software business, which has been extensively covered in books and could fill many hours of video content. The speaker's intent is to inspire viewers to consider starting their own business and to look for problems in their lives that software could solve. They mention plans for more videos on the topic and introduce a channel membership for deeper, code-focused content. The speaker recommends 'The Lean Startup' by Eric Ries and 'The Lean Product Playbook' by Dan Olson as starting points for further reading. They also suggest an article by Patrick, known as patio11, for insights on A/B testing. The speaker warns about the prevalence of scams in the space and recommends indiehackers.com and microconf.com as communities that have been helpful. They conclude by emphasizing the hard work involved in starting a software business and caution against believing in quick-success promises.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Clickbait
💡Get rich quick
💡Side hustle
💡Developer
💡AI
💡A/B testing
💡Recession
💡Minimum viable product (MVP)
💡Pivoting
💡Indie hackers
💡Lean Startup
Highlights
The video discusses the benefits of starting your own business or product, despite the challenges.
It emphasizes that getting rich quickly is not the goal, but personal and professional growth is.
The speaker, Carl, shares his experience as a software professional and his quest to eradicate bugs on the Internet.
The video encourages developers to consider starting their own projects to enhance their programming skills.
It suggests that taking full responsibility for a project can lead to better programming practices.
Carl highlights the importance of being responsible for all aspects of a software project, including QA and customer support.
The video points out that the best programmers often have experience running their own projects or being in small companies.
An interview question about building a product with a budget and timeline is mentioned as a good indicator of a good programmer.
The current job market for programmers is discussed, noting it's not as strong as it was a few years ago.
The potential for an economic recession and its impact on the job market is mentioned.
Carl talks about the possibility of AI replacing programmers, and why he thinks this is unlikely in the near future.
The video argues that starting a software business has never been more accessible due to cloud services.
A strategy for starting a business by building something useful for oneself is suggested.
The concept of startups pivoting and the importance of learning from the process is discussed.
Carl explains how AI can be used to generate marketing text and the power of A/B testing in refining it.
The video advises against quitting your job to start a business full-time, but suggests it as a side project for income and skill development.
Resources for further learning, including books and websites, are recommended for those interested in starting a software business.
The video concludes with a warning about scams in the space and the importance of being cautious and patient.
Transcripts
So as I'm recording this, I have no idea what
this video will be titled, or what the
thumbnail will be.
I'm finding it really difficult not to have
this topic sound like a bunch of clickbait.
This is not a get rich quick scheme.
Very few, if any, people who do what I'm about to
describe are going to get rich, and for any
that might get rich this way,
it's not going to be quick.
However, I want to encourage you to do it
anyway.
I want to encourage you, or at least many of
you, to consider starting your own business, or
at least building your own product.
Today, I'm going to talk about why I think many
of you should, and some about how, although
that's a huge topic,
and it won't fit in one video, or even a dozen.
But if you're watching the video because you
saw the title and you want to get rich quick, I
can help you.
But good news is there are a lot of other
people on YouTube who say that they can, so
they might be able to help you,
but they probably won't, because most of them
are full of sh***.
This is the Internet of Bugs. My name is Carl. I've been
a software pro for about 35 years,
and I'm on a quixotic quest to
eradicate bugs on the Internet.
So today, I'm going to be talking about
starting your own thing.
Product, service, business, side hustle,
something - We'll talk about what later-
With AI. Now, assuming that you're a developer,
or starting to be one,
that is. If you're not, or you don't want to
write a ton of code, this path isn't for you.
Also, I'm assuming that you're not working for
an employer who has an employment contract with
you,
where everything that you write belongs to them.
If you're in that boat, feel free to think
about this,
but don't actually start anything, or write
anything down until you get a different kind of
job,
because you don't want that lawsuit. But if you're
a developer currently looking for work,
or expecting that you might be looking for work
soon, or you think that your current work isn't
100% secure, then I encourage you to start
thinking about this. And if you aren't in one
of those
three buckets, I'm not exactly sure what you're
doing. Okay, that out of the way. Let me tell
you
why I want you to start your own thing: because
it will make you a better programmer. And it
will
change your mindset about bugs, and about the
people that use your software. So I've started a
few things.
None of them made me a lot of money. Some of
them never really got off the ground,
some were instrumental in getting me hired
somewhere, and some I launched and eventually
shut down. But I learned a ton from all of them,
and I think that you will too. All of the worst
programmers I have ever worked with, some of
them very, very, very senior at very big
companies,
all spent all or almost all of their careers in
teams where they avoided being
wholly responsible for anything. I think there
was one of them that actually did his own thing
for a very short period of time and didn't like
it and bailed. These folks, guys, almost all
guys,
all consider themselves too good for QA. They
consider themselves too good for first line
support.
They never worried about losing money because
some customers stop using their software. Now,
not every programmer that I worked with that
had that background was awful, but pretty much
all of the awful ones had that background. Also,
none of the best programmers I've ever worked
with
were ever that kind. All of the really good
programmers I've ever worked with at some point
did their own thing, or they were at a really,
really small company where they were running
the
whole show. And the best development manager I
ever worked with had an interview question that
he said was the best indicator of a good
programmer. It was something on the order of: "If
I give you
$100K and six months, what would you build?" The
numbers change depending on the years, but you
get
the idea. He said anyone who didn't seem to
have thought about that question never made his
teams.
Better developers make software with fewer bugs.
I want fewer bugs, so I want you to all be
better
programmers. And that means that I want you all
to do your own thing. Now, let's talk about
what's
in it for you. So first off, I've got three
pieces of bad news. So number one, the job
market for
programmers right now isn't great. It's still
better than for a lot of professions, but it's
nowhere near it was three to five years ago.
Number two, there's a decent chance that we
will - here in
the US where I am - are heading into a recession.
And when the US has economic issues, it affects
a
lot of the rest of the world. Now, I'm not an
economist. I don't know if we're heading for a
recession. I don't know if anybody else really
knows, but here are some articles, links in the
description, from actual economists talking
about indications that we might be starting one
or
might be in the beginnings of one. And the idea
that we might be close to one is enough for me
to start to try to take precautions. Number
three, there are companies out there who are
holding
off hiring programmers, hoping that AI will be
able to do that work soon. This will be the
case
until the AI bubble pops, and I don't know how
long it's going to take for the bubble to pop.
And when it does, it's going to take a bunch of
stuff with it, and it's going to take us a
while to recover. So it's not unlikely that it's
going to be a rough couple of years.
So let's talk about the good news. There are a
ton of people out there promoting using an AI
to start a business, and almost all of them are
counting on the AI to do some or all of the
programming
or technical tasks. And if you've seen my other
videos, you know that I doubt that those AIs
will
do a very good job of the technical tasks. But
that's good news for you, because you're a
developer,
and that's the part that you are good at. And
the kinds of things that developers typically
aren't good at, marketing copy, sales copy,
that kind of stuff. AI is way better at that
stuff
than it is at code. And even if that AI
marketing copy stinks, there's a magic trick to
make it
work better. And that magic trick is called "A/B
testing," and it absolutely should be in every
programmer's toolbox these days. More about
that later. So here's the thing. It has never
been
cheaper or easier to start a software-based
business than it is now. If you go look at most
of the "let me tell you how to start a
business" folks. You'll find that the thing
they say is the
biggest cost these days is the development cost.
And that's what you already do.
Back when I was starting out, you had to have
your own servers, you had to have your own
UPSs, you had to have your own network
connections, all that kind of stuff. All that
stuff's in the
cloud now. It is so much easier to start a
software business now. And the startup costs
are really,
really small. If you're not having to do the
development, or if you're not having to pay for
developers, which you luckily don't. In
startups, of which I've done several, there are
really
two huge costs, development, and marketing
advertising and sales. You can trade your time
for the development costs, and you don't need
to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on
ads
because you don't have a bunch of venture
capitalist investors that want to get their
payout as fast as they possibly can. I only
have one piece of advice for you about what
kind of
business to start, and that's to start by
building something that would be useful to you
yourself.
That way, if it doesn't work out, you still
have the software that you built to use
yourself.
From a development perspective, realize that a
very large amount of the architecture of any
online software service is pretty much the same
as all the other ones. You need a website, you
need
a database, you need authentication, you need a
way to take money, etc, etc, etc. So first off,
what you learn building your own thing will
have a bunch of overlap with whatever future
opportunities might come up for you in the
online software service. And secondly, whatever
you build
will share a lot in common with a bunch of
other things that you might have built or could
build.
And that's something a lot of people don't
realize about startups. Startups do a LOT of
pivoting.
I've worked at several early stage startups,
and none of them have ever found success
on the first iteration of the first idea that
they started building. You put the thing out
there,
you see what people resonate with, you tweak it,
you change it, you tweak it, you change it,
you find something that people like that you
didn't expect, you start focusing your product
on that.
That's the pivot, that's the way it all works,
right? So the idea is to get something out
there,
and then to see what people respond to. And
once you get something out there, a lot of the
basic puzzle pieces you've got are the same, no
matter what direction you start going from
there.
There are a lot of opportunities once you get
something up and running.
You're quite a way down the path of having
built a lot of other things that you could have
built.
So even if your first idea doesn't work out,
and there's a good chance that it won't,
you've still learned a lot, and you've built
foundations that you might be able to apply to
other problems as they come up. And once you
have that foundation and a minimum viable
product,
then the goal is to attract people to it, and
that's where AI comes in. You can use AI to
generate
a bunch of marketing text for your website,
and some of it will stink, maybe most of it
will stink,
but that's okay. Because that's where A/B
testing comes in. You make however many copies
of the
webpage that you want. Just ask GPT, ask Claude,
whatever. You randomly assign each person,
each visitor to your website, one of the
versions of that, and then you use statistics
to figure out
which one performs better. You throw out the
ones that don't perform better, you iterate
over the
ones that do perform better, and you just keep
going. Over time, you refine the copy, you keep
refining your services until either you realize
that you've got something worth selling, or you
don't.
In the startup world, all of this is
accelerated by throwing a ton of money at it.
Develop faster,
to bring in a ton of website visitors with
expensive ads, but if you can be patient, you
don't have
to throw a lot of money at it, but that means
it'll take a long time. And that's okay,
because the
idea here, at least to start with, isn't to
quit your job and do this full time. That's a
really
bad idea. But you could potentially make some
amount of side income, and that gives you a
little
bit of financial cushion, and honestly, you'll
be surprised how much of a difference that
makes.
If something happens to your primary income,
having that little bit that doesn't seem like
much
actually turns out to be a lot more important
than you'd think, or at least than I ever
thought,
until it happened to me. And if you do end up
laid off, it gives you something productive
you can do with your time besides fretting
about job hunting. Now, don't get me wrong,
people who've been laid off need to spend time
job hunting, but it turns out that the
difference in effectiveness of job hunting
between job hunting two hours a day and job
hunting 16 hours a day is actually pretty small.
But once you get to a couple hours a day,
you're really not doing much except churning
and stressing yourself out. And the impact on
your
mental health of spending 16 hours a day job
hunting is very, very high. So having something
productive to do if you do get laid off is
great, and it gives you something to talk about
in
interviews. Now, I know I've been pretty vague
on the details in this video, and that's
because
there've been a lot of books written about this,
and there can be many, many hours of video
content
made on on each little subtopic of starting a
software business. This video was just about
making you start thinking about whether or not
you should do it. And if you think you might,
start looking around for things in your life
that bug you, that a software service
potentially
might be able to help with for you, and
potentially for other people with that problem.
I'll be making
more videos on this topic, probably a lot of
them. As I've said before though, once I get
into
talking about specific blocks of code, YouTube's
analytics tell me that a lot of people stop
watching.
So at YouTube's suggestion, I've started a
channel membership as a way to separate those
deep
dives from more general interest stuff. I've
got a video linked at the end of this video
talking
about the membership, so please watch that if
you're interested in a deeper, more detailed
code-based content. And if you really can't
wait for more videos, here are some resources
to tide you over and get you thinking: A couple
of books, "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries,
R-I-E-S, not sure how to pronounce that, and "The
Lean Product Playbook" by Dan Olson are
good places to start. For the incredible
utility of A/B testing, here's an article that
you started
on a site from one of the authorities on the
topic. His name's Patrick, he goes by patio11
on the internet, everything he writes on this
topic is gold. So once you've read this article,
click around on that site, there's a bunch of
good stuff there. There are also a ton of
websites
dedicated to starting these sorts of businesses,
but be very, very careful because there are a
ton of people running scams in this space.
indiehackers.com and microconf.com are two
websites I've had
pretty good luck with, but those are both
communities and with a lot of people in them,
and where there's a lot of people, they're
going to be grifters, so be careful. Because
starting a
software business will teach you to be a better
programmer, and it might make you some money as
well, but it's definitely a lot of work, and
anyone who says that there's a quick path
is trying to sell you something. Let's be
careful out there.
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