
My First Year as a Solo Developer - mtlynch
https://mtlynch.io/solo-developer-year-1/
======
claudiulodro
Admittedly I haven't followed your blog, so you may mention this somewhere on
there. You seem to fall into the common developer trap of building a bunch of
stuff without gauging demand and then trying to monetize it afterwards.

Like, are there people out there clamoring for a one-stop location where they
can check if food is keto? Is your site less friction than just Googling "Is
dark chocolate keto?" then reading the little blurb answer Google generates?
Can the bulk of your value proposition be copied easily by anyone with access
to WordPress?

IMO you are going after areas that are too saturated/competitive. Those sorts
of fields are great for marketers that know how to navigate, differentiate,
and promote them, but they are not so good for developers that mostly
specialize in building complicated things.

In your situation it's probably fine to keep doing what you're doing since you
have stacks of BigCo savings/investments, so you can more-or-less take your
time and eventually build traction with something. I'm not worried about you
specifically, just other people taking your approach that don't have such long
runway.

Not trying to be harsh, just trying to help.

~~~
soulnothing
An honest question. How do you gauge demand? Do you go to different forums and
ask. Local mixers etc?

~~~
claudiulodro
Basically yeah. You're on the right track. It will depend on your product.
Here are three example methods I have personally used:

e.g. If you're starting a consultancy/dev shop, do you have people already
trying to get you to do work for them or complaining to you about difficulties
finding good freelancers? If so, there is clear demand for your specific
services.

e.g. One of my most successful side projects was a web browser for the Roku
that I developed after reading a bunch of people complaining there was no web
browser in the Roku forums. The browser went on to get over 500k active
installs (there are ~10mm active Roku devices).

e.g. Another popular way to do it that works great for local businesses (or
SEO-based businesses like OP's Keto business) is to use the Google keyword
research tool and see what sort of traffic your keywords get and how much
people are paying for clicks on those keywords. If it costs a lot to buy
search ads, the niche is likely too competitive.

~~~
pragmatic
Were you able to monetize the Roku browser?

~~~
claudiulodro
Not really (just like $40 in donations from a donation button on the site).
Releasing it for free captured basically the whole market, but I had no real
way to capitalize on those users. That was my big learning lesson with that
project.

In retrospect, I should have probably used it solely to get user data like
Google does with Chrome and then done something useful with that data, but
this was before I realized that (somewhat shady) business model.

------
steve1977
_There was one enormous hidden expense that my profit and loss chart didn’t
show: me.

My living expenses were rapidly eating away at my personal savings. Between my
$3.3k/month Manhattan apartment, private health insurance, food, and
utilities, it cost $6-7k per month just to sustain myself._

I wouldn't really consider this hidden expense. It's just expense. I think
this is one of the most dangerous lies startups tell themselves.

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading!

>I wouldn't really consider this hidden expense. It's just expense.

Maybe I should have worded it differently. I meant "hidden" in the sense that
the chart I showed didn't reflect it because that only showed my business
expenses.

I definitely did take into account my living expenses when I decided to quit
my job.

~~~
polygotdomain
>Maybe I should have worded it differently. I meant "hidden" in the sense that
the chart I showed didn't reflect it because that only showed my business
expenses.

Salaries are a business expense. If you hired a second programmer would you
not expect to pay them? So why wouldn't you expect to pay yourself?

~~~
mtlynch
They are, but all my other expenses are objective and quantifiable. I could
make up a salary for myself, but it would kind of be pulled out of thin air.

I've thought a lot about what the dollar value is of my time and I haven't
come up with any way of reaching a number that I find practical. It can't be
my earnings, because that's negative. It's not 0 because I do value my time.
It's not my opportunity cost from not doing consulting work because that would
just tell me that I should outsource everything. I could just make up a number
like $50/hr, but I don't know that it would help me make decisions that I
couldn't other make.

~~~
jammygit
Are you incorporated? I think you're required to pay yourself if you are, even
if minimum wage. That would put it back on your balance sheet, and make the
IRS happy.

(If its a sole proprietorship, I'm not sure shat the rules are)

~~~
bearmcbearsly
That's completely untrue. In fact, it's the opposite -- the IRS objects if you
pay yourself _more_ than a reasonable salary.

~~~
BubRoss
Why would they? If you pay yourself through income, they will get the most
taxes through income tax.

~~~
bearmcbearsly
If you're the sole owner of a corporation and also an employee, you can move
money from the corporation to your own pocket by either paying yourself a
salary or paying a dividend out of corporate profits.

At least prior to the recent corporate tax rate cut, the tax you'd pay on the
salary would typically be less than the sum of corporate income tax and tax on
the dividend, so people would pay themselves unreasonably large salaries to
save on taxes, and the IRS would object to this.

Here's an article that goes into more detail:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2016/05/13/reasona...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonynitti/2016/05/13/reasonable-
compensation-for-c-corporation-shareholder-employees-how-much-is-too-much/)

------
azhenley
> Your job at Google used to impress people. Now, when people ask about your
> work, you awkwardly tell them, “Um, it’s a website where you type a food,
> and it tells you whether it’s keto…” Shouldn’t you do something that sounds
> more impressive?

This is a very real doubt that I think about constantly.

~~~
Aqua
It comes down to whether your ambition is to do something you like/interests
you or something that you're doing solely to impress people that ask about
what you do for a living.

~~~
munificent
I think your sentence works better without "solely".

The reality is that we make choices to simultaneously maximize a variety of
internal and external incentives. Personal interests are one, so is money, and
social prestige is one too.

Left-brained tech nerd folks tend to look down on the last one because it
isn't "rational" or something, but prestige is an important part of life. One,
for most people, it makes them feel good. Ultimately, that's a major goal of
life. Two, prestige can directly translate to social capital, which can
materially affect you. If you make a stronger impression on someone because
you "work at Google" and that leads to them remembering you better and
thinking of you later when an opportunity comes up, that actually matters.

There's nothing wrong with having the social side of your identity be part of
the goals of your life. The risk is when you over-focus on it to the expense
of everything else, because then you lose agency. We don't control which
things are considered prestigious, so if we aim too much for prestige then
we're basically letting the crowd make our decisions for us.

------
ndonnellan
The title of your post is "My First Year as a Solo Developer" but then you
mention "I work with an excellent developer who handles all the coding and web
design so that I can just write.". Did I misread that and it only applies to
the blog or to all development?

I'm not super familiar with 4HWW, but the best advice I've seen on striking it
out on your own is to do everything yourself until it becomes painfully
obvious you need help, then start outsourcing the stuff that can be automated.
Not to outsource everything from day one and be a project manager. (but
perhaps I misread).

That said, the best education for business is to try it and see what doesn't
work! Best of luck! I think the comment here about gauging demand is
important. Have you talked to lots of people on Keto diets? Are their biggest
pain points not knowing what is keto or not (it might be #30 on a list of 31
things)? Do they have trouble searching for resources on this? etc.

~~~
mtlynch
>The title of your post is "My First Year as a Solo Developer" but then you
mention "I work with an excellent developer who handles all the coding and web
design so that I can just write.". Did I misread that and it only applies to
the blog or to all development?

I hire freelance developers for some tasks, but I still consider myself a solo
developer because I have no partners in my company and everyone who does
freelance work for me does it either on a short-term basis or for only a few
hours per month.

>I'm not super familiar with 4HWW, but the best advice I've seen on striking
it out on your own is to do everything yourself until it becomes painfully
obvious you need help, then start outsourcing the stuff that can be automated.
Not to outsource everything from day one and be a project manager. (but
perhaps I misread).

Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at now. My memory of 4HWW was the he was very
eager to outsource anything he didn't have to do personally, but it's been
awhile since I've read it. I've found it more useful to do the task myself for
a while until I feel like it's sucking up a lot of my time and I can write
easy instructions for someone else to follow.

>I think the comment here about gauging demand is important. Have you talked
to lots of people on Keto diets? Are their biggest pain points not knowing
what is keto or not (it might be #30 on a list of 31 things)? Do they have
trouble searching for resources on this?

I got the idea from when I was promoting KetoHub in facebook groups, people
would frequently ask whether X food is keto. And it is hard to just Google it
because you'll get contradictory information, and a lot of it is just
arguments on forum posts.

I don't think it's the biggest pain point, but I think there are already lots
of people competing to solve the top N pain points, so I don't want to try to
enter that battle. What appeals to me about Is It Keto is that nobody else has
a dedicated site for what it's doing, so I hope to be the standard thing
people reference when they want to know if a food fits into the keto diet.

~~~
sigfubar
You're not a developer: you're a product manager who outsources software
development tasks to hired muscle.

------
montenegrohugo
Really liked this post. As someone who is considering this path, this was the
most down-to-earth, realistic(but without coming off as pessimistic) article I
have read anywhere. Also really like the goals for 2019:

\- 500$ per month in revenue

\- 12 blog posts

Somehow these feel like very easy achievements, but insurmountable at the same
time.

I wish you much success Michael!

PS: I hope to write my first blog post somewhat soon-ish too :)

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading!

------
eugenekolo2
I'm sorry, but how is your website worth $4000? It's a static Jekyll website.
This website is 3 to 10 man hours of work. Are you seriously paying people
$500/hr to `gem install jekyll` and pick a theme for you?

Honest question, because I'm either missing something here, or you're throwing
money out the window and in which case: message me about developing something
for you.

~~~
mtlynch
Haha, I wish it were only 3 to 10 hours of work to create the site.

The site is open source if you want to see what it's doing:

[https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io](https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io)

And here is all the work that Andrew, the blog's developer, did:

[https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author...](https://github.com/mtlynch/mtlynch.io/pulls?q=is%3Apr+author%3Ashredtechular)

The repo does a lot more than a vanilla Jekyll install would provide. There
are automated build checks to make sure the pages render with proper HTML, no
dead links, that the correct headers are in place for social sharing.

Vanilla Jekyll doesn't handle image resizing very well, so Andrew did a lot of
work to add in the right plugin to handle it and to go back through all of my
old posts to update the images.

It was also important to me to have Github gist-style file includes, but I
didn't want to split my content between my blog and external gists, so Andrew
added support for file embeddings within my pages.

There's also just routine work in keeping packages up to date. Every few
months, there will be a neat feature I want in either my theme or Jekyll
itself, so we have to upgrade, but often that generates work to check that the
upgrade didn't break anything.

You might still look at that and say it's not that much work, but there's
complexity in keeping all of it working together. It's worth it to me to have
the look and functionality I want on my blog without having to interrupt my
writing to do it myself.

I'm sure I could find someone who will work for cheaper, but Andrew is great
because he's rigorous and an excellent communicator. I've worked with other
Jekyll developers and they've all burned so much of my time not understanding
what I want, explaining things poorly, or expecting me to catch the errors in
their work. When I make feature requests to Andrew, he gets what I'm asking
right away, lays out the options with the benefits and drawbacks of each, and
does the work correctly the first time.

~~~
soneca
Wow! Two (opinionated) thoughts here:

1) Why bother with all this technical excellence if you do not know even if
your site will still exist an year from now? Poor analogy: you are building a
Ferrari to deliver food.

2) You could adapt this tech to create another version of
[https://carrd.co](https://carrd.co), targeting another niche. That seems a
more promising product that would benefit more from your tendency for
technical excellence.

------
chosenbreed37
> Sidenote: My friends with children tell me that kids won’t complicate this
> at all.

Mmm...I'm not entirely convinced. I suppose it depends on whether or not you
already have kids before you go this route. e.g. if you've got a couple of
kids going to school in NY you have to time it properly. And you'd have to
think about whether or not the place you're moving to would suit them. Oh and
there's the small matter of getting "buy-in" from your wife/partner/girlfriend
:)

~~~
TheReveller
I think he's being sarcastic. The one thing that all parents (myself included)
tell non parents is that children change everything.

~~~
Insanity
Yeah I was pretty sure it was meant in a humorous way. Kids will change
everything, which scares my wife and me quite a bit. (We don't have children
yet). :)

------
jtth
"My living expenses here are ~$2k per month, which is close enough to the rate
of return on my personal investments that I’m kind of at equilibrium."

 _Closes window._

~~~
hinkley
Envelope math is telling me that's about 30k/year before taxes. That would be
a 6% annual return on half a million dollars.

Not exactly a recipe for the masses.

------
js4
Why make the goals for 2019 so small? This makes things asymmetric the wrong
way.

The risk associated with doing this is too high considering a 6k per revenue
goal annually. When the cost is your savings and, more importantly, your time.

You don’t need to change the world or anything but why not make the goal 100k?

This will help you focus on things that can make 100k.

~~~
mtlynch
The poster who replied below sums up my feelings about it.

The appeal for me is that with a small project, I get a tight feedback loop.
If my goal is to make $100k in a year, I have to take some pretty huge swings,
so maybe I have a higher chance of making a large sum, but I also have a
greater chance of making $0.

Is It Keto is fun to work on now because I have some levers and knobs, so I
can see how adjusting them affects my income. I made $1.20 in December and
it's looking like around $25 for January. That's lower than what I hoped but
I'm getting that feedback quickly, so I'm learning a lot about what's working
and what's not. If it were something where I'd have to sell $500/mo packages
to each client, I feel like I'd have many months of $0 where I can't tell if
I'm close to making money or if I'm totally off track .

------
mnmapplications
Just out of curiosity, what did you do for your healthcare and everything
after leaving Google?

Great article by the way, I really resonated with the line: "Your job at
Google used to impress people. Now, when people ask about your work, you
awkwardly tell them, “Um, it’s a website where you type a food, and it tells
you whether it’s keto…” Shouldn’t you do something that sounds more
impressive?"

I've had this thought (about my own projects) all too often

~~~
godot
He did mention in the middle of the article, he's buying private insurance:

"My living expenses were rapidly eating away at my personal savings. Between
my $3.3k/month Manhattan apartment, private health insurance, food, and
utilities, it cost $6-7k per month just to sustain myself."

If my experience (in California) is anything close, it costs somewhere around
$500/mo for a single person his age. (If you have a spouse it gets up to
around $1000/mo, and with kid(s) it goes up to about $1500/mo) This was
2013-2016 numbers, and was also with Covered California, not sure if that
makes it any cheaper.

~~~
codeisawesome
five HUNDRED dollars?? Per month?! I’m definitely amazed.

~~~
philsnow
Did you expect it to be higher or lower? A lot of salaried people have never
read their paystub carefully and seen that their employer pays 80-90% of their
health insurance premiums for them.

Further, a lot of people don't realize that employers get a discount on
providing health insurance because they have a pool of people over which to
distribute a bunch of uncertainty. When you buy individual insurance, the
"pool" is you (and maybe any of your dependents), and the insurance companies
charge you "full" price.

~~~
ahnick
My understanding is the "pool" is not you, but the general population who also
bought the plan, which is probably a less healthier group of people than say
your normal technology startup or enterprise company. Also, the state is
probably doing worse on negotiating with the insurance companies for rates
than compared to big fortune 500 companies.

------
break_the_bank
Earlier this year I found this guy called Andrey online. He had left his job
in Ukraine and moved to Bali with the goal of generating $1k/mrr. Check him
out[0]. Fairly inspiring. Maybe you can cut costs further and see different
parts of the world if you are keen.

[0][https://www.andreyazimov.com](https://www.andreyazimov.com)

------
Aeolun
I’m a bit confused about the graph? Your monthly loss seems to have been
reduced to almost nothing, but then in the projects section most projects
appear to be operating at a loss, and after that it still leaves 2k living
expenses unaccounted for.

Am I missing something?

~~~
mtlynch
The graph only reflects my business income and expenses and doesn't include my
living costs, which I'm paying by drawing down from savings.

I thought about how to show a unified view of my finances, but I couldn't
think of any way to do it sensibly because it would included a huge one-time
expense of buying a house, then a bunch of other one-time expenses from
moving, renovating, etc.

------
onemoresoop
Congratulations. I think the best gain from this aside from the learning
experience itself is the fact that you cut down your expenses and learned that
life is still good without spending a ton of money. I did this in my late 20s
and did go back to work un-solo but, i kept the expenses low and managed to
save a lot more. I am still happier with less now and I only spend when it is
necessary. Good luck to you!

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading!

Yeah, I've never considered myself a huge spender. I'm still happy with my
decision to pay for an expensive apartment close to my office when I was an
employee because my income was high and not having to commute saved me so much
time and stress every day.

But early last year, one of my readers sent me links to Mr. Money Mustache and
his ideas about low-spending / FIRE definitely influenced my thinking.

~~~
philsnow
> I'm still happy with my decision to pay for an expensive apartment close to
> my office when I was an employee because my income was high and not having
> to commute saved me so much time and stress every day.

I worked for big tech companies for 10.5 years and, because I started having
kids early in my career, I had a single family home and a long commute. I did
the sad math and figured that I probably spent over 6000 hours over that
decade just commuting.

It is said that to become an expert at something you should spend about 10k
hours working on it. If I didn't make a change I was going to reach 10k hours
of commuting, so last year I got a remote job and it's been pretty
transformative.

------
seanwilson
Can you give any tips on how you find people to outsource to? Where do you
look? Do you interview them? Do you give them a trial period of some sort? Do
you do fixed costs or hourly rates? How do you agree on prices per task? What
do you do if you're not happy with the quality or they're late?

Thanks for the article by the way. It takes a lot of bravery to be this
transparent about your earnings and expenses.

~~~
nyrulez
Not the author but I have been on a similar journey after leaving my job at
Google 4 months ago. I have successfully used Reddit /forhire and Upwork to
find decent people to work with and help code up parts of my new project
([https://stockquanta.com](https://stockquanta.com)).

The most important thing I look for is their past work - its complexity and
usability both. Without that, it's a massive bet. Don't trust their words. And
also you talk to them about your project and see if they ask the right
questions + get the nuances.

Assuming this works out, then you ideally do fixed price, not hourly. Latter
can become scammy. For the fixed price, you will divide it into milestones so
that the first set of costs isn't too much but also gives some kind of re-
assurance to the dev that you're serious and can give money. If the execution
is bad, you can bail out sooner. I have seen developers lie about their past
work too. One Fintech developer claimed he was the main developer for
wealthfront.com and betterment.com lol and had them as part of this portfolio.
I soon found out it was an amazingly bold lie which I guess many folks do fall
for.

In my experience, they are ALWAYS late. I don't have a good way so far to
control for that effectively.

Even after this, you will get bad apples. Some money will be wasted initially.
The trick is to keep the good ones with you as time goes on (become friends
with them if possible), and move away from the rest.

~~~
seanwilson
Thanks for the tips!

> Assuming this works out, then you ideally do fixed price, not hourly. Latter
> can become scammy

Can you elaborate? I'm assuming you mean if they work slower they earn more
money? I prefer fixed price as well when working with clients; it has big
advantages for both sides.

> For the fixed price, you will divide it into milestones so that the first
> set of costs isn't too much but also gives some kind of re-assurance to the
> dev that you're serious and can give money.

What do you do for payment if they don't reach the milestone or you're not
happy with the quality?

> One Fintech developer claimed he was the main developer for wealthfront.com
> and betterment.com lol and had them as part of this portfolio. I soon found
> out it was an amazingly bold lie which I guess many folks do fall for.

How did you find this out?

> In my experience, they are ALWAYS late. I don't have a good way so far to
> control for that effectively.

I find the same with clients. You have to be very cautious agreeing to any
deadline where you're dependent on other people and factors you cannot
control, especially if you've never worked with someone before.

~~~
nyrulez
\- The costs become uncapped and always end up more, with no accountability.
After a certain while, sunk cost factor kicks in and it's too late to back out
when you realize this developer is slow or not so great. Good confident
developers will be able to estimate costs for projects upfront.

\- You either lose the payment or ask for refund. I have done both. That's the
risk. You can perhaps lower the risk by giving a much smaller initial
milestone or negotiating first payment after some work.

\- With crazy claims, the suspicion is already high. I talked to him for a few
mins and it was clear there was no sophistication present and the guy was
trying to attract clients with little to no experience.

Are you already working on a project or planning to?

------
nyrulez
I also quit my job at Google New York 4 months ago to pursue my own
entrepreneurial path [0]. This post is a bit scary for me. I admire author's
transparency, but if I am being honest, I don't want to be at the same place
after 1 year.

I'll probably write down my own summary of all the learnings from my mistakes
so far (there are SO many), but the biggest one was the same that the author
seems to be making: trying to do too many things at once. I also think
freelancing away everything for a strong developer is a mistake because of the
roundtrips involved.

Making a business out of anything requires an insane amount of effort beyond
engineering and I have finally managed to now try to do just one thing for the
foreseeable future, and spend at least 30-40% of my time on outreach,
validation and business aspects.

[0] [https://stockquanta.com](https://stockquanta.com)

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading.

Don't fear ending up like me. It's fun! Just buy a house next door to me in
Western Mass, and we'll go on some hikes together.

Kidding, but really I suspect we just have different goals. I'd like to build
a business that makes enough to support me and a family comfortably on <= 40
hours of work per week. From StockQuanta, it seems like your goal is to build
something that can grow very large, and limiting your work hours isn't as
critical to you.

~~~
nyrulez
I didn't mean your situation but was mostly referring to the profit/loss chart
:-) I am sure you're having a grand adventure, and I hope to have the same.
And I didn't realize you are constraining your work hours, which is a nice
goal. I am trying to front-load the pain haha.

Are you formerly from Google NY too?

~~~
mtlynch
Yep, Google NY. The building in the cover art on the article is 111 8th Ave
(with some creative liberties).

------
mtlynch
Author here. Happy to answer any questions about this post.

~~~
jeanlucas
Very interesting. I took the same path a while ago. My biggest mistake was not
validating business properly. Coding before checking if it was commercially
viable. I think you can do this business/validation part better.

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading!

Yeah, I think my biggest mistake on Zestful was that I spent too long on the
product before validating that anyone would buy it.

I think for some products, it's unavoidable to build a little first but I've
definitely learned how important it is to get to validation ASAP.

~~~
montenegrohugo
How would you go about validating a product at such an early stage though? For
example, what could have told you that no one had an interest in an API like
Zestful?

EDIT: There is actually an extremely similar service that _does_ have a
business use case: [https://dialogflow.com/](https://dialogflow.com/) (from
your past employer)

Does exactly the same thing, take a short input of words and identify overall
intent as well as entities (in your case ingredient, amount, format, etc...)

On top of that, it has a great UI, export functions, integrates with other
services, has an API, etc...

~~~
mtlynch
>How would you go about validating a product at such an early stage though?
For example, what could have told you that no one had an interest in an API
like Zestful?

I wrote a blog post last year[0] about what I think I should have done
differently to validate it sooner but the tl;dr was that I think I could have
pitched it to potential customers before I built anything. I imagine a lot of
them could have told me off the bat that they wouldn't be interested. But even
if I didn't do that, I spent way too long making a demo site even though the
API marketplace I was using had its own (I just didn't like theirs).

>There is actually an extremely similar service that does have a business use
case: [https://dialogflow.com/](https://dialogflow.com/) (from your past
employer)

I've never tried DialogFlow for recipe ingredients, but I'd be very surprised
if it could match Zestful in accuracy. I'm using NLP too, but recipe
ingredients are so niche and specialized.

But their business is general-purpose NLP. I couldn't achieve that and I
definitely wouldn't be able to compete with Google on that battlefield.

[0]: [https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/](https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-
late/)

------
edoo
The real secret with low effort outsourcing is to give them a week and if you
aren't impressed moved on, or hire 3 at the same time and do the same thing.
There are people that are very suited for low input remote work and tons that
aren't.

------
fharper1961
I'm sympathetic to his goal because I have similar aspirations to have more
freedom.

What I might miss in his situation is working as part of a team with others:
business people, SW devs, design

~~~
chosenbreed37
> What I might miss in his situation is working as part of a team with others:
> business people, SW devs, design

Technically he does have a team of freelancers...

~~~
fharper1961
True, but hiring freelancers isn't usually the same as being part of the same
team working towards shared goals.

Ideally I'd find people I enjoy working with and who have complementary
skills.

------
gortok
How did you survive if you didn’t make any money last year?

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading!

I had a healthy stockpile of savings from working 10 years at various software
jobs that paid well. I was at Google for the last 4 years, did consulting
before that, and worked at Microsoft before that.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I'd like to do this (or at least take a sabbatical) like this in a decade -
unfortunately saving as much as you seems difficult to impossible at my
current trajectory.

Did you ever write up how you managed your prior savings?

~~~
mtlynch
I haven't written about it, but my strategy was very simple I just put all of
my money into the Vanguard 500. For about 18 months before I quit, I started
moving my money into less volatile savings like treasury bond funds.

------
juvoni
What specific tactics did you use for Project Managing yourself? How did that
differ from PMing in a work environment?

~~~
mtlynch
I did a few different things. For a few of my projects, I wrote a spec
defining what "complete" would look like. [0, 1, 2]

For the last few months, I've been following a plan that's more loose. I write
monthly retrospectives on Indie Hackers [3, 4] and define what I want to
accomplish next month, but I don't write a formal plan.

Google was very light on PMs, especially the teams I was on. Microsoft used
them more extensively, but even then, their main value was in coordinating
with other teams and synthesizing information about end-users. As a solo
developer, I don't need those things as much.

0: [https://mtlynch.io/files/outsourcing-
mvp/ketohub-v1-design-d...](https://mtlynch.io/files/outsourcing-
mvp/ketohub-v1-design-doc.pdf)

1: [https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/#the-mvp-that-
wasnt](https://mtlynch.io/shipping-too-late/#the-mvp-that-wasnt)

2: [https://blog.spaceduck.io/sia-load-test-preview/#full-
test-p...](https://blog.spaceduck.io/sia-load-test-preview/#full-test-plan)

3: [https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/isitketo-month-4-my-
first...](https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/isitketo-month-4-my-first-dollar-
of-revenue-03e572f661)

4: [https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/isitketo-returning-to-
a-s...](https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/isitketo-returning-to-a-site-that-
grew-without-me-0a0fe3ef52)

------
dennisgorelik
> The things you’re best at are code reviews, unit tests, and refining
> processes for a team of developers. Aren’t you wasting your best skills
> working by yourself?

This is very important question. Unfortunately, Michael Lynch does not have an
answer to that question yet.

------
_zskd
I had to work full time and go to school at night to get my education. I used
to begrudge people who had it "easy", but anymore I feel like the grit and
self-confidence I got from struggling and succeeding has paid dividends down
the road.

I still think I would be better off coming from a rich family. Grit is nice
but you can't call grit and have them cover your rent.

Another thing I got good at was managing a budget and learning to make do with
less. I don't know his upbringing or where he comes from, but there is $$
coming from somewhere. I guess you could save up a lot of money working at
Google? But he previously established he spends $6k/mo on personal expenses.
Doesn't seem like a "retire early" person. This is exactly why I don't compare
myself to the Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world: How am I supposed to compete
with this?

I feel for this person. I'm sorry he had to learn some of these lessons the
hard way, but this just screams "wantrepreneur"

> Outsourcing

I may be missing something but this just seems loony-tunes to me. What is the
business he is trying to create? How is outsourcing all of your tasks "lean"
at all?

> Strategy / Products

Other people have pointed out: Find a product people are demanding and build
it. Launch it as soon as possible. Iterate on it and delight your users. Don't
make it an easy idea that someone can just copy.

A keto diet search engine doesn't even pass the smell test to me. My fitness
app ( edit: The fitness app I use, not own ) Lifesum can do that. I'm sure all
of the others can as well. Why would you create a product in a crowded market
with huge established competitors?

> Travis CI: -$1,419

To me, that is a lot of money.

You can run a Jenkins server for $10/mo on Digital Ocean and get 90% of the
same features. It's not hard if you just need something pragmatic.

Heck, you can even automatically spin the instance down during off-hours and
pay even less than that.

> Coveralls

You can just generate HTML documents for this, you don't need to pay them to
do it.

> Ther personal expenses

I cannot imagine spending 6k/mo on personal expenses. WOW! I thought Portland,
Oregon was expensive!

> Buying a house

Also, why BUY a house? Now you have an asset you have to get rid of at some
point. You now have loan payments to pay that will never go away unless you
manage to sell the house.

Buying a house is often NOT an investment, especially in a tiny little town.
The most expensive house is the one you can't sell.

I mean, I guess maybe the house was VERY CHEAP.

------
meremortals
Enjoyed the article, thanks for sharing and your transparency

~~~
mtlynch
Thanks for reading!

------
dangwu
What affiliate link program are you a part of? That's a notable amount just
from your blog.

~~~
mtlynch
Most of the money is from Amazon. Then I think I got like $60 from Newegg (via
CJ) because 1-2 of my posts mention computer components where the prices are
better on Newegg.

------
gortok
So was this all product work or consulting + product work?

------
dajohnson89
yay another "i quit google" post

~~~
mtlynch
Glad you enjoyed it! I plan to write one every year.

~~~
dajohnson89
Best wishes to you. I think it's awesome to strike out and do your own thing.
I don't think I am gutsy enough to do it.

