After 20 years building software for other companies, I started my own thing a few weeks ago. The reality check hit fast. When you're an employee, you can hide behind process and blame the market. When it's yours, every signup or lack of one is direct feedback. No buffer.
> When you're an employee, you can hide behind process and blame the market.
You can still blame the market. A good market makes everything easier, a bad market makes everything harder.
But here’s the catch: You choose the market.
To share an example: When I started my react teaching side business in 2015 it was so easy. Growing 2x year over year, I thought I was some kind of business genius. Then one day it stopped. React became old, no longer the exciting new thing, the market consolidated into 2 or 3 big players with The Default resources and my stuff wasn’t one of them. I totally missed the land grab aspect of the early market phase and didn’t go hard enough on pure growth. Not a business genius after all.
In 2020-2022 I had a repair side-hustle that became unexpectedly profitable, so I started scaling it up and thinking about quitting my job. Then interest rates went up, assets stopped appreciating, and I realized that most of the value I thought I was adding was actually just asset inflation and the common wisdom that repair is a miserable business niche was correct after all.
Yes, and none of that matters when the money runs out and you can't convince investors that your business will bring them a worthwhile return in an environment that includes all of those outside forces.
