[joelennon]

There is no one size fits all answer to this question. What’s your definition of success? Owning your own business that pays you an above market salary and allows you to live comfortably and independently? Or do you see success as growing to being a huge global corporation? Do you want to start a company that targets consumers, small to medium businesses or large enterprises? There’s a ton of other factors that have a huge impact on a potential roadmap for success.

One bit of advice I’d offer is to know going in that software development is likely to be the least of your problems when running a software company - especially for a software engineer. Your real challenges lie in sales, marketing and customer relations. If you’re not successful at these aspects of the business, it doesn’t matter how good or bad your product or code is.