Ask HN: Should I switch from software eng if I want to be an entrepreneur?
Hi everyone. I'm a software engineer with 2.5 years of experience. I've built a lot of frontends, backends, and I can take care of DevOps/infrastructure stuff.
I'm wondering if I should switch careers (maybe to sales/marketing) in order to learn new skills. I don't want to be good only in software development. The cons of switching careers would be that right now I work remotely (so I have time to spend on side projects) and I earn good money (so I can save).
What do you think?
36 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 70.4 ms ] threadFocus on creating value. You use this value to market and sell.
Jobs/pains/gains is my favourite way of thinking about this, but everyone has their pet frameworks.
Make an MVP and try your best to sell it, if you cant sell the MVP its probably not worth it to continue to work on the product.
It's important to validate your ideas before going head first into something that nobody really needs/wants
Coming to making some money, you can use your strength so you don't spend too much time or energy in making money and use rest of time on your project
Its incredibly important to have laser sharp focus, but focus is easy. The hard part is figuring out what to focus on. Prior work can give you very helpful tools to figure that out.
https://blog.phuaxueyong.com/post/2020-03-24-how-to-improve-...
This is the first safety net you will be sacrificing if you do the switch. Make sure your decisions are informed enough to make it worth the risk. Good luck.
Incoherent Mind dump incoming
Some people want to jump from job to product/own startup.
Personally my risk appetite is low. So I went down the job -> consultant/freelancer -> agency route.
Next step is product but not sure when.
I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve soft skills.
Conferences travel, trade show advice is correct.
Trying to be closer to customers advice from others is also correct.
Most advice works. But nothing beats real experience.. you can only prep so much.
What I wish I had done better before taking the jump
- build LinkedIn/Twitter/any following audience. - throw myself out there with a blog or something.
The above are two you can do right now.
Find me on LinkedIn. Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel. Happy to connect and share more thoughts.
Thanks
Since you're doing a mind dump; do you mind sharing some of the books that stuck with you?
You're 100% right that sales/marketing/growth skills are necessary for building a startup, but I'd offer up two key points:
- Your product is everything, and having a gifted engineer fully bought in to developing the product from the jump is a huge advantage for any startup.
- Running growth for an early stage, 0-to-1 startup is not the same as doing it at a larger company, where you're likely to get a sales/marketing job.
All of this is just my experience, but I think the only way to learn how to grow a new startup is to do it. The biggest advantage you can have in that situation isn't previous experience with sales cycles or PPC advertising, it's the ability to build a great product.
TLDR: Continue to develop as an engineer, learn the business side when you decide to start a business.
I should also add, however, that if you're unhappy as an engineer and that sales/marketing seems attractive, that's a different situation altogether.
There is a a lot to learn and it can shift greatly as a company grows.
Find and talk to people that have a problem, and come up with the simplest way possible of offering a solution in exchange for money. Ideally the v1 solution doesn’t involve creating any software.
Regardless of what you do you need to be able to cover food, rent etc. Whether that is living with your parents, working as a software dev etc you need some way to survive as you work on your business. Make sure you have that covered.
Find mentors for the areas you are lacking, get their feedback if you can, and learn as you go.
Optimise and prioritise your life for spending as much time as you can on your business. Only work as much as you need to survive, cut out Netflix and other less important things (yes even if it means limiting socialising), and work on your business. Don’t worry about automation or scale until you’ve started making money in your business.
Make progress every day no matter how small, and if you’re serious make adjustments when you need to but never give up.
Good luck!
On the mentor note, even if you don't have a formal mentor relationship, most people are open to discussing their roles and responsibilities.
Depending on the firm, even more would be ecstatic to talk about a specific idea or side project to provide their input on marketing/strategy/finance. As long as you come from a place of genuine curiosity and not "tell me exactly what to do for free," almost everybody wants to help you.
Acceleration is very important, but it's even more important to be able to keep going for a long time. If you cut down Life-Balance to hard, you might give up before you reach your goal.
What are your ways to find people that have a problem?
How do you avoid potential burnout if you spend as much time as you can on your business.
2. Burnout is a lack of discipline but is often thought about as a lack of motivation. Get clear on the differences:https://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need...
> What are your ways to find people that have a problem?
Below are some very generic ideas around how to find people. These same ways of finding people are going to help when it comes to actually marketing and selling products, so if you can't figure things out at this stage, it's going to be potentially difficult later down the track.
The key idea is to go through a problem solving process asking questions such as:
Are there places these people hang out? Forums / Facebook Groups / Events / Subreddits etc
What complementary products or services are these people using? Can you partner with them in order to reach your potential future clients?
When people have this problem, what do they do to try to solve it? Are there things they might do that can identify them as potentially having this problem?
When you can answer these questions it should become clear on how you could potentially reach out and get in touch with these people.
> How do you avoid potential burnout?
It pays to probably emphasise "as much time as you can". As you can without going insane, as you can while maintaining your mental and physical health. As you can while being able to survive and pay your bills.
It pays to solve a problem that resonates with you personally so that you will still have drive when times get tough.
Something I've been working on is cutting out as much unnecessary stuff as I can, dropping email subscriptions, dropping commitments to things I don't care so much about. You can tell when you're pushing your limits, you just need to keep an eye on it and manage yourself as is appropriate for you.
Technical marketing (narrowing it down to digital) is pretty dumbed down these days, specially with setup wizards. So execution wise, any tutorial can get you up and running.
What you're executing on, that's a different subject, and I dare to say most people do it because it's "what marketing people do".
I tell you this as someone who was on CS and switched down the line to Marketing and Advertising degree - was painful coming from a sciences background, because of social sciences, yet I found both experiences great and such path gave me quite a unique understanding/perspective of the how the world, and how we, function/work/interact.
Plus a lot of things became extremely easier for me, while others struggled.
But I agree with you, I think OP should maybe try to find someone with marketing background to work together with and pick his brain/learn from him.
I am an engineer with no sales training and I’ve learned how to sell (good enough) to get us to the point where we can bring in a real sales team member.
Yes I ended up working remotely from a suburb where I could buy more land for my experiments and hobbies.
Now I am selling 3d printer filament that I manufacture in my garage lab:
https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...
I don't know about you but I like experimenting with processes and turning them into something that could be sold and something which people will pay for.