Engineer planning an escape from golden handcuffs with SAAS

[OMDA]

Hello everyone,

This post is a long time coming. I've been building a product on the side, but not with the aggressiveness and speed that I should be.

That changed after reading 3 books:

• Unscripted (finished yesterday)
• Fastlane (read earlier this year from library, just bought for kindle today and am re-reading it)
• Breaking Out of Homeostasis (Not DeMarco's but it was crucial for me)

Who am I an what am I doing now?

• In my 30s
• Degree'd engineer and making great salary, but sick of seeing time wasted on projects that fail due to bad management, decisionmaking, and lack of flexibility by management/owners/etc
• Programming hobbyist for many years. Currently familiar with Javascript, Elixir, and Rust for web development
• Very good at mechanical design of things. Not as good of a programmer. However, also tired of seeing the same mistakes made by newer engineers and management, over and over again, resulting in crunch times and failed companies

Where I'm at financially

• Savings good enough to live off of for a few years if I move to a less expensive location
• 401k with some money in it, not stellar
• Some crypto investments to catch the upside of the beginning market
• Only debt is a sports car (I know....) with affordable payments that is not underwater. Willing to flip it if I need to in a money crunch

What I've tried and failed at to make money

• Android apps
  • I re-learned enough Java and the Android framework to make a useful app. The problem was I hated it the whole time and I chose such a limited use market that my userbase could probably be counted in the hundreds. And it wasn't all that useful.
• Affiliate marketing
  • This was so far out of my normal thing, with no real value to add, that I couldn't maintain interest in it to ever go anywhere.
• Coding an app for someone else
  • Someone contacted me. I got a running prototype up quicker than I thought I could. I was answering their texts on Fridays when I was out to fix server/SSL issues and do other things. Lost interest after months and no real movement on their side to go anywhere with it, and communication was difficult across state lines. Still, I gained a substantial amount of confidence because I was able to build the prototype, and am thankful for the experience regardless and hold no ill-will
• Making poor products (T-shirts) and half-heartedly trying to sell them
  • The value I was adding wasn't there. However, I learned a lot about how easy it was to navigate the tools and am less afraid of doing that for advertising, if I need to
• Consulting
  • I made enough consulting to buy a laptop. This was mostly just confidence inspiring but when I saw how much time it would consume without building a product that would make money in my sleep I did the above.

What I'm doing now

• Building a SAAS app
• On the third or so iteration, and it is finally showing some promise
• Have shown in to a few people, but not yet viable as a product
• Some competition, but I believe there is a large untapped market that is not being exercised right now due to the complexity, difficulty, and slow moving nature of this market. Because of my work history, I have some non-proprietary specialized knowledge that can make money (key is non-proprietary, because I want zero chance of anyone claiming I stole their work. Because I don't and won't)
• Know there is plenty of room to scale and a rough outline, but need to hunker down and actually finish the MVP

What's holding me back

• Bad habits with web use, moderate alcohol consumption, and personal relationships

Both of DeMarco's books are fantastic. However, I really needed to read Breaking Out of Homeostasis to reinforce the damage I was doing with poor habits. My poor habits demotivated me and distracted me from doing a lot more with my time. Instead of only averaging an hour or so of work on my SAAS I can push much harder if I ditch drinking, stop catching up on the latest news, and stop investing time in relationships that my heart isn't fully into.

This is going to be a difficult journey. The technical part doesn't scare me at all. It's the changing of attitude and self that is required to accomplish it.

Glad to be here, and I'm hoping to add something useful to the forum.

Anything technical on the mechanical, physical design of things I could be very helpful on. Other than that, I'm hoping to update here with my progress.

 

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