Because the idea is boring, not very innovative/blockbuster but proven to work for me and others.
Yet another software development company, with new knowledge/experience applied.
!WARNING! TLDR
Have some possible points of failure, but if that happens I'll just have to repeat with different people... And that all comes from slight lacking of CENTS, so
Control
The worst part. Me and 2 more partners. Much better than solo, much better than more, worse than only one of them. And, being INTJ, I definitely need one (let's call him M) for his communication/engaging talents. Haven't met the other one (DH - dark horse) yet, meetup scheduled for tomorrow. But past experience taught me that not having 50% is VERY RISKY.
Entry
Everything's fine here. Not much money upfront, but pretty high monthly expenses for paying salaries to people doing nothing. Not very easy to get good clients. And, right now, competition for good developers (employees) is rather high in my city, but we'll handle it.
Need
The demand seems even higher than 10 years ago. We'll be focusing on a smaller niche with some approaches to get in front of the competition.
Scale
Definitely much harder than digital products, harder than physical products, but pretty doable with some strategies/systems applied. Doesn't require a lot of money to scale, but requires human resource and efforts to hire them. And more clients of course.
Time
Well... Services are harder than the products here, but it can be done. Shouldn't be done till it's big though.
Things to keep in mind from the previous similar venture:
I have a meetup with my potential partners tomorrow. Important stuff:
P.S. A lot of things changed in those 10 years. Notably back then 20% margin was a bare minimum, now some companies are ok with only 7% (info from a bunch of drunk CEOs at the party). Mostly that's because average salaries in IT here have risen 50-70% since then depending on job position (juniors 300%). Will be tough as we need to aim much higher...
Good luck & have fun everyone!
Yet another software development company, with new knowledge/experience applied.
!WARNING! TLDR
Have some possible points of failure, but if that happens I'll just have to repeat with different people... And that all comes from slight lacking of CENTS, so
Control
The worst part. Me and 2 more partners. Much better than solo, much better than more, worse than only one of them. And, being INTJ, I definitely need one (let's call him M) for his communication/engaging talents. Haven't met the other one (DH - dark horse) yet, meetup scheduled for tomorrow. But past experience taught me that not having 50% is VERY RISKY.
Entry
Everything's fine here. Not much money upfront, but pretty high monthly expenses for paying salaries to people doing nothing. Not very easy to get good clients. And, right now, competition for good developers (employees) is rather high in my city, but we'll handle it.
Need
The demand seems even higher than 10 years ago. We'll be focusing on a smaller niche with some approaches to get in front of the competition.
Scale
Definitely much harder than digital products, harder than physical products, but pretty doable with some strategies/systems applied. Doesn't require a lot of money to scale, but requires human resource and efforts to hire them. And more clients of course.
Time
Well... Services are harder than the products here, but it can be done. Shouldn't be done till it's big though.
Things to keep in mind from the previous similar venture:
- Try not to burn out. Working 16+ hours a day 7 days a week doesn't work at all.
- Don't fall into trap of coding a lot to get more done to get more instant profits. I'll take that to the extreme and try not to write a single line of code here. Focus on a big picture, strategies, customer acquisition, planning.
- Hire more aggressively. For example, a team of 6 can tolerate 3 idling employees with much less loses than a team of 3. A team of 12 can tolerate 4 idling with profits.
- Manage client/work-flow better. Having no work suxx, having too much to deliver suxx even more. Losing an opportunity of returning client suxx the most.
- Filter out clients more carefully. Similar to the above - stay in the niche, don't spend time trying to get shitty projects/clients.
- Finalize partner
- Setup/half-setup everything
- Get client/hire employees (chicken or egg? depends, but will try customer first; have an idea for the opposite too - with close to break-even friend-client)
- Build first "scalable unit" (a thing we figured out on the past company, but haven't got there, unfortunately)
- Evaluate current partners
- Decide/do legal stuff/corporate. Estonia/Malta corporation or work as a Ukrainian contractor for now (have a lot of issues). Not action faking, required by dumb Ukrainian laws...
- Look for an office. Again not action faking: work from home is not the greatest idea for new employees on a new company; apartments as an office is proven to scare good employees away. Something not too expensive for 10-12 people will do for now. Smaller will actually limit the opportunities (been there before).
- Decide on leaving 9-5 right away or keep 9-5 and hire from day 1. This one is a little tricky, on my first company we only had option #1. But now I actually much more inclined to option #2 since I can pay for living and pay a few salaries with my current income. Option #2 also looks more right to me from "how it should be done" perspective.
I have a meetup with my potential partners tomorrow. Important stuff:
- Get to know DH more, we haven't met before. They had plans with M to start a company in June, so I'm actually joining the boat here by wanting to partner with M too. M had me in mind but thought that I'm too busy with 2 kids and can't afford to lose a job... That turned to be almost the opposite. Oh, and did I mentioned that waiting June is too long for me?
- Make sure we're on the same page with why? what? how? when?
- They probably don't fully realize what they're up to, and that 80% of their programming skills will be useless, especially in the begininng. Scare them to hell with reality and check if everything's still fine.
- Be quite offensive since I can bring a lot to the table from my bunch of failures . Gut tells me that they need me more than I need them, but we'll see.
- Would be great to get M, ok to get both, not great to get none, but I have two more options on partners (but not as great as M).
- Discuss some stuff if everything else goes well. Finalize some plans. They had some plans too, will be interesting to listen.
- Back to the forum
- Very quickly looked through my notes from some books
- Scanned my network for useful contacts. Will schedule a call with IT lawyer to get some bits of advice on the setup part. Found one strong customer lead (a bit too early, but it will be like winning a jackpot if they sign up).
- Thought again on a backup partner just in case.
- Quickly looked at the current state of the industry.
- Done most of it on my 9-5. F*ck this is great. Still have a lot of important, but not urgent work to do. Spent only 1.5 hours on more urgent stuff today. Planning to work for 3-4 hours tomorrow. Having a flexible schedule is great, exploiting it feels even better! Not concerned too much about being laid off too early. I'm not irreplaceable but replacing me effectively would take a few months and definitely more than one good hire. Don't want to screw up the project though, our clients are great and people I work with are too (and I've hired half of them ). They just owe me a lot for saving the project during the past 3 weeks .
P.S. A lot of things changed in those 10 years. Notably back then 20% margin was a bare minimum, now some companies are ok with only 7% (info from a bunch of drunk CEOs at the party). Mostly that's because average salaries in IT here have risen 50-70% since then depending on job position (juniors 300%). Will be tough as we need to aim much higher...
Good luck & have fun everyone!
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