u/ImpressiveFocus303

hello,

From what I've observed in this sub, almost every one man band operator in technology development is running a pure software business. However, does anybody here run a software business that's related to hardware, or very close to hardware? And I don't mean hardware development as that sounds like nightmare for a one man band operator, but more like IoT, or maybe development of firmware, drivers or high-level software that's communicating with hardware?

I wonder, whether:

• Is hardware related business worth the additional hassle and complexity?
• Are there any rewards due to additional complexity and more deep tech knowledge required, such as better moat and stickiness of clients?
• Is there less competition in such businesses?

thanks

Due to AI, pure software is becoming a commodity. Is there more business potential in hardware or at least bundling hardware and software together ("Don't sell a gadget. Sell an ongoing outcome, delivered through a gadget")?

What do you think?

hello,

From what I've observed in this sub, almost every one man band operator is running a pure software business. However, does anybody here run a software business that's related to hardware, or very close to hardware? And I don't mean hardware development as that sounds like nightmare for a one man band operator, but more like IoT, or maybe development of firmware, drivers or high-level software that's communicating with hardware?

I wonder, whether:

• Is hardware related business worth the additional hassle and complexity?
• Are there any rewards due to additional complexity and more deep tech knowledge required, such as better moat and stickiness of clients?
• Is there less competition in such businesses?

thanks

I'm software development contractor/freelancer selling time for money. I'd like to start a one man band business, that's scale-able and that's not primarily software development (I don't really enjoy doing software development for more that 20% of workload - I'd like to focus on business, sales and marketing instead).

What would you recommend? Could i use existing software solutions and solve business problems with them, and just develop for small stuff around existing ecosystems, if really necessary (integrations,connectors, automation)?

I'm software development contractor/freelancer selling time for money. I'd like to start a one man band business, that's scale-able and that's not primarily software development (I don't really enjoy doing software development for more that 20% of workload - I'd like to focus on business and marketing instead).

What would you recommend? Could i use existing software solutions and solve business problems with them, and just develop for small stuff around existing ecosystems, if really necessary (integrations,connectors, automation)?

lep pozdrav,

sem full-stack programer freelancer in pogodbeni sodelavec, ki že kakšni dve leti full-time prodajam svoj čas za denar v sklopu projektnega dela. Kot naslednji korak bi rad dosegel, da delam manj ur na dan, da delam manj programiranja in več poslovnega razvoja, predvsem pa da ustvarim one man band posel, ki je mnogo bolj skalabilen, kot pa nudenje storitev razvoja programskih rešitev po meri. Kar opisujem je verjetno malo daljši opis za težnjo po finančni neodvistnosti.

Prvi pristop, ki mi pade na pamet, je nudenje neke naročnine za standardizirano storitev večim malim in srednje velikim podjetjem. Poudarek na standardizaciji, ker nočem več delovati agencijsko v smislu, da vsaki stranki zgradim neke specifike, in potem tega ne morem prodati drugim strankam. Ciljam na to, da nekaj zgradim za eno stranko in prodam večim.

Drugi pristop je razvoj nekega SaaS produkta, ampak ta ideja mi je še najmanj všeč zaradi velikega rizika. Nočem razvijati nečesa vsaj pol leta, kar na koncu ne bi nihče kupil, kljub temu da produkta ne bi razvijal v izolaciji ampak bi pred tem naredil validacijo trga ter razvil nek MVP (lean pristop razvoja). Razvoja lastnega produkta bi se lotil le, če bi imel že vnaprej naročila večih potencialnih strank za isti produkt in tako ne bi nekaj razvijal "na zalogo".

In pa še ideja, ki je malo bolj specifična - zakaj bi sploh karkoli razvijal? Ali ne moreš vzeti neke že obstoječe programske rešitve, po možnosti open source, jo malo rebrandati in prodati v sklopu naročnine neki netehnični stranki, ki nima pojma o razvoju programske opreme, inštalacijah, konfiguracijah, infrastrukturi in podobni kolobociji? Mogoče pa obstajajo podjetja, ki se jim ne da bockati s tehnologijo ampak jim je samo važno, da imajo neko rešitev poslovnega problema?

hvala za mnenja in predloge

Just well-executed, polished small games that prove you don't necessarily need years of development to create a commercially successful game.

What examples come to mind?

It would be interesting to build a list of solo projects that were completed in just a few months and still performed well commercially. As a rough benchmark, "commercially successful" could simply mean generating an effective hourly rate or annual income comparable to a software developer's salary.

I'll start with the list - However, I don't know whether these games were really developed in only few months, but I'd make a guess that they were, based on the relative low amount of game content they have:

• Digseum
• Click and Conquer (basically a Digseum clone)
• AdVenture Capitalist
• Holyday City Reloaded
• A Short Hike
• Vampire Survivors (apparently it took more than a year of work)
• Brotato (apparently it took more than a year of work)
• Mosa Lina
• Luck be a Landlord

General consensus about possibility to make a living from game development, especially as one man band developer, is very bad - probably more than 80% of games don't make any money, and those that do, it's way below software development salary that one would get in a non-game development industries.

But the minority who managed to make a decent living from game development as one man band developers, how did you achieve a sustainable business? Emphasis is on sustainable, because one could maybe get lucky and earn some money with one game title, but then would follow a series of flops, lowering his effective hourly rate on the hamburger flipper level.

hi,

i'm an employed software developer with an educational background in electrical engineering. I'm considering to start a one-man band/solopreneur business in eCommerce selling physical products as a side hustle, which would over time hopefully grow into full-time activity, so I can some day quit my job and stop working for others.

I'm considering selling physical products, simply because there is no full-time software or hardware development process involved. Instead of lengthy development process, one just buys existing product by a lower price and sells for a higher price, while possibly adding some value in between, with, for instance, re-branding and customizing the product. It's that simple. Instead of pure development, time is spent on operations, logistics, marketing, communication and so on, which are for me way more interesting fields as is software or hardware development.

I wonder, is it even possible to run a one-man band eCommerce business selling physical products?

I'm thinking in this way - if goal is to achieve 4k USD per month in gross revenue (before taxes), which is a decent salary in my country of residence, I'd need to achieve 20k USD in sales per month, by assuming 20% net profit margin while selling physical products. Achieving 20k USD in sales per month sounds crazy to me, especially when taking in account, that I'd like to to run business as solopreneur/one-man band.

To complicate things even further, I will assume that I can handle 10 packages per day at best, which in 20 work days per month represents 200 packages per month. At 20k USD monthly revenue and 200 packages, that represents a 100 USD price of a product that I would be selling. This sounds expensive, especially for B2C domain, but more realistic when selling to other companies (B2B).

What's your take on this?

Coming from web software development field and electrical engineering educational background, I'm trying to understand how starting a solo game development business compares with starting a business in the mentioned fields in terms of risk and reward.

I'd say that in context of job market and freelancing/contracting opportunities it's a no brainer, as there is simply way more jobs in EE and SWD, which are stable, pay more and don't require wearing multiple hats as it's usually the case in game development (programming, marketing, visual art, game design, physics, networking, QA, etc.). However, what interests me is comparison between these fields in a sense of development of a product as a solo/one-man band, therefore starting a business.

First thing that comes to my mind is that solo/one-man band game development has long time of development in order to deliver a fun and polished game product, therefore time-to-market is long. It can be from 3-6 months to a year for development of a small game before you see your first $ of income. But, what about in a case of SWD (for instance SaaS development) or EE (for instance electronics device development), or ecommerce (for instance selling curated product junk from Alibaba)? It can take from 1 to 2 years, before you see your first $ of income in terms of consistent business. Plus you normally need upfront capital - especially for physical products - and deal with manufacturing, physical storage, operations, hang on meetings, take care of logistics, certifications, with liability and tons of other nightmare.

So I wonder, is solo/one-man band game development business really that bad endeavor, where you only need a PC, internet connection, time and patience?

Or, where is the trick, otherwise more game developers would be running their own game development businesses, and not just treat this activity as a hobby?

hello,

i'm a web developer with an educational background in electrical engineering. Since I don't want to do software development contracting/freelancing anymore - at least not full-time - I'd like to start a one-man band business in eCommerce. However, I don't have yet an exact idea how to approach everything - what to sell, how to sell, should I consider b2b or b2c, should I sell software or hardware, etc...

Regardless, here are some hints, that might limit the scope of the problem:

• since I come from software world professionally, it might make sense to consider selling software-related products, or Value-Added-Reselling (buy a software product at a lower price, modify product / add stuff -> sell at higher price)
• since I have an educational background in electrical engineering, it might make sense to consider selling physical, electronics-related products. But I'm highly skeptical about this route due to all hassle that selling of physical products introduce (the need of warehouse, problems with importing goods at customs, especially if importing stuff from China, warranty, certifications, packaging and dispatching, returns...)
• as I want to operate as one-man band, I'm probably targeting a low volume, high-ticket hardware products, therefore B2B selling. In a case of software, it may be B2B and also B2C since selling of high low software products can be largely automated, therefore manageable by one-man band.

I would appreciate for any ideas how to approach starting an eCommerce business.

thanks

hello,

I'm full-stack software development freelancer/contractor and an electrical engineer by education. The thing is that I hate development and I don't enjoy this process at all, but I like tech industry on a general level. I would like to ditch this lengthy and painful development grind, or at least limit it down to maybe 20-30% of workload. At the same time, I would like to start a one-man band business while mostly working from home, but not sure what could I do, that is not a (full-time) development and that I could manage as solopreneur?

To recap my wishes, and add some:

• a business manageable by one-man band (solopreneur)
• not (full-time) development, especially not programming
• if possible, to leverage my software development skills and a degree in electrical engineering
• if possible, not to deal with physical products, unless low-volume and high-ticket (the need of warehouse, packaging & dispatching, harder to scale, hassle with importing from China, return complications ...)

If I'd be able to pick, I'd do some kind of sales. Something like buy low->sell high, or even better, buy low->modify/add->sell high. Or just buy->sell and make the main money on support and not on a product reselling.

Any suggestions or ideas?

thanks

hello,

i'm full-stack software development contractor/freelancer with an educational background in electrical engineering. I always dreamed about starting my own business, but I'm unsure about what kind of a business could I start so that it's not dead on arrival in the early beginning, and that it also aligns with what I like to do.

I know that I don't want to code full-time anymore, but if I have to do it, I expect that coding wouldn't take more than 20-30% of workload. Instead, I would like to focus on business development, marketing and sales while leveraging my engineering skills. I also know that I'd like to run a business as one man band and predominately working from home office.

I briefly considered going into consumer electronics hardware selling, i.e. buy low from Alibaba, sell high in Western countries, but I'm very skeptic about this route as:

• earning margins are low relative to software products
• competition seems to be high as anybody can do a buy low->sell high approach
• I would need some kind of a warehouse to store physical products
• scaling seems to be way harder and limited compared to software
• I would probably need somebody to employ for packaging, dispatching and costumer support, especially if business would be oriented around selling higher volume of products, therefore likely B2C oriented
• hassle with import/export paperwork

Gut feeling tells me to stay away from physical products, especially when just reselling them without creating any added value, but I may be completely wrong.

Instead, gut feeling tells me to consider something software-related, something like value-added reselling: buy->modify/add->sell, but this is very general, without any specific idea.

Furthermore, I thought about this approach: Firstly I'd do some consulting/services to identify potential clients' problems and get paid at the same time, then I'd offer some productized service and finally I might build some SaaS product. However, I wouldn't jump straight into developing a product, especially not full-time since that sounds as a way too risky behavior (9/10 software products fail while requiring large amount of time and money investment).

So what's your take on this?What kind of tech-related software or hardware business could I start as a one man band?

thanks

hello,

I'm a full-stack software development contractor/freelancer and electrical engineer by education and I would like to start a software selling business as one man band while working from home. The important thing is that I'd like to avoid software development part or at least decrease it it like 20-30% of workload and instead focus on sales. It's also important that business would be scale-able and even better, semi-passive.

I was also considering selling electronics hardware, but I feel that even if such business would succeed at some point, it would be hard to run it as one man band as I'd need to employ somebody just to keep packing and dispatching stuff, along the need of a warehouse and other hassle that comes with physical products, and lastly, low margins compared to software.

What kind of a business could I start? B2B or B2C? Most importantly, what could I sell?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

hello,

I wonder how does starting an indie game development business work out of majority of developers? I see often on this sub mentioned people going into such super risky, if not straight crazy endeavor, and I question do people really know what they're doing or it's just me that's overly pessimistic?

For comparison, starting a non-game software development business in terms of developing and selling a software product is a huge gamble. Statistically, 9/10 software dev startups - if not more - don't reach sustainable profitability over 5 year period, and one is actually trying to solve some problem for somebody. There are hundreds of thousands, or millions companies around the globe that need something, so there is plenty of local and small markets that need to be served. And in a case of games? Well, games from whole globe end being sold only in few places, that being mostly steam, but also itch for desktop platforms. Then there is a platform for xbox games, a platform for playstation, and play store and apple app store for ios games. That's pretty much it. So in short, there are a dozen market places for overwhelming majority of games. The result is that you get a ultra competitive, an overly overcrowded space with tiny less-than-1% chances to financially succeed with your game product, and that's assuming you have a decent budget to market your game, which majority of devs don't have. Without marketing, you're probably in less than 0.5% of chance of recouping your game development costs, assuming you also value your time.

It's also worth to mention that development of non-game software product takes a fraction of time relative to game development, so one can deliver multiple software products in a year and learn, and improve and finally succeed in this time frame. And i case of games? You need half of a year to a year just to spit out something that might be only remotely interesting for some gamers. Yet, assuming a good game is made, one can still fail due to no proper marketing done.

Then there is a need of multidisciplinary skills in game development - from programming, to math, to game design, to art, to sound engineering, to marketing and probably a few other disciplines as well. On the other hand, in non-game software development a solid knowledge of full-stack development and business development is normally sufficient.

I could go on with more stuff, like deploying a bug in b2b saas app and no one will care about it, and deploying a bug in a game, followed by a crucifixion by gaming community, and getting a significant drop in sales and churn as a reward.

So at this point I wonder what people are thinking when they straight quit their jobs, possibly with a family and a mortgage on their shoulders, to start a game development business and even worse - without any saved crisis found, without any marketing budget, and without any real gaming industry experience? This is not risky business, it's insanity.

hello,

I'm an android developer and electrical engineer. I would like to develop an application for smartwatches for improving safety of lone workers and construction workers. The main feature of the smartwatch application is that when a worker is in distress, one presses a dedicated hardware SOS button for 3 seconds and an alert is sent to security dispatch center via all available communication channels - cellular call, SMS, wifi..etc. The app must be extremely reliable and must be rock solid as it's supposed to save people's lives. The app would be used in a small pilot project first, later it would be expanded for production use at a larger scale.

While the app is conceptually simple, I've encountered problems with implementation, at least on older Samsung galaxy watches. The problem is that when smartwatch goes in inactive states such doze mode, sleep mode, power saving mode, or when app goes in foreground/background, or when screen goes off and so on, the SOS app stops working or stops receiving hardware button press events. Such behavior is unacceptable for a safety critical application.

1. Is it even possible to implement such extremely reliable lone worker application on android-based consumer smartwatches such as Samsung galaxy smartwatches without any workarounds and hacking?
2. Is it possible to implement what I need on the application (android) level at all, or would I need to consider modifying firmware?
3. If modification of firmware is necessary for my needs, should I partner with manufacturer of some OEM/ODM smartwatches? Would it be somehow possible to avoid this and just use off-the-shelf smartwatches, even if they're not android-based, such as RTOS-based?

thanks

hello,

I'm an android developer and electrical engineer. I would like to develop an application for smartwatches for improving safety of lone workers and construction workers. The main feature of the smartwatch application is that when a worker is in distress, one presses a dedicated hardware SOS button for 3 seconds and an alert is sent to security dispatch center via all available communication channels - cellular call, SMS, wifi..etc. The app must be extremely reliable and must be rock solid as it's supposed to save people's lives. The app would be used in a small pilot project first, later it would be expanded for production use at a larger scale.

While the app is conceptually simple, I've encountered problems with implementation, at least on older Samsung galaxy watches. The problem is that when smartwatch goes in inactive states such doze mode, sleep mode, power saving mode, or when app goes in foreground/background, or when screen goes off and so on, the SOS app stops working or stops receiving hardware button press events. Such behavior is unacceptable for a safety critical application.

1. Is it even possible to implement such extremely reliable lone worker application on android-based consumer smartwatches such as Samsung galaxy smartwatches without any workarounds and hacking?
2. Is it possible to implement what I need on the application (android) level at all, or would I need to consider modifying firmware?
3. If modification of firmware is necessary for my needs, should I partner with manufacturer of some OEM/ODM smartwatches? Would it be somehow possible to avoid this and just use off-the-shelf smartwatches, even if they're not android-based, such as RTOS-based?

thanks