[noname123]

Hi Matt, thanks for sharing. Just a proof of my staying power, I saw your Preceden post on HN; and paid for a license 13 years ago promptly your v0.1 and I am still here. https://i.imgur.com/ejUm3Gh.png

I had bought a license purely on a whim as I was browsing HN on company-time. I was in 20's, bored and ambitious with no concrete plans and I proceeded to play on company-time in my cubicle the rest of the day and planned out my life plan on Preceden instead of working, like the timeline for when I should get my next promotion (maybe in 2 years for at least 10K, rite??), when I should buy my 1st house etc (maybe a fix upper? duplex so I can rent it out?), when I should get married etc (in 5 years). I showed my entire life plan to my co-workers whom all laughed at me b/c (a) I planned everything out in my life, and (b) I paid for a $19 license to plot out my life plan.

To get to the bottom-line, I never got that promotion, am still renting and still haven't gotten married! So definitely you who got my $19 license fees and my co-workers got the last laugh!

(But like you I kept on and off workin' my side-hustles since 2010 even when it seemed entire hopeless - which was building a trading bot; and like anything in life after so many false starts, it eventually started becoming consistent and compounded; and my capital gains from trading has been significantly greater than my W-2 as a SWE for the last 3 years. So much has changed on HN since 2010: crypto, Web3, new JS frameworks that pop up every year, unicorns; but the only thing that has paid off at least for me - it seems is sticking to something and showing up for it every day for 13 years and counting... thanks again for sharing!)

[matt1]

Wow, you got on one of those $19 for life plans that I initially offered, that's wild!

It's great to hear you got some use out of the tool and hopefully continue to do so. I look forward to your next life update in 13 years when Preceden makes the HackerNews homepage again :).

PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans, and definitely not for $19, lol.

[hermitcrab]

Congrats on 13 years. I started selling my (desktop) software in 2005 and am still going.

>don't offer lifetime plans

Yep! https://successfulsoftware.net/2008/09/08/should-i-give-free...

[778hbff]

Could tie them to the life of your dog or so. Be upfront about age and health of it and perhaps your creativity scores a few customers on that plan.

[vram22]

Congrats, Andy.

I have been reading Andy's blog for some years now. Though the main focus is on his own products and his product development experiments and experiences, many of the posts have good advice for those wanting to create their own products for sale. There are also some interesting interviews with other product creators.

[OJFord]

> PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans, and definitely not for $19, lol.

To be fair though, the chances of your service still being around and GP still getting value from it 13y later were pretty slim weren't they? After all, you listed some other SaaS products shutdown in the interim in OP, did any of those have lifetime [of the product] plans?

Of course, I do realise non-recurring sales (coupled with the non-recurring sales not continuing, growth in users slowing) hurts those chances itself.

[fencepost]

PS for any aspiring entrepreneurs: don't offer lifetime plans, and definitely not for $19, lol.

And for those aspiring to find the lifetime plans by startups, go look through offers on AppSumo.

[jwmoz]

Can you talk more about your trading bot? I've also done something similar the last year, mainly systematic trading and cross-sectional system.

[mnky9800n]

Did it make money?

[dylan604]

>(maybe in 2 years for at least 10K, rite??)

grabbing the wheel and jerking hard left on the conversation, but this comment struck me as funny.

rite?? like getting a 10K raise in 2 years is a rite of passage that we should all be expecting to happen to all of us, right?

[post-it]

A raise, no. A new salary at a new job, absolutely.

[778hbff]

Which is odd in and by itself. Whenever you have a review with me as your employee and we discuss salary, consider this as a from-scratch negotiation. Just as if I just had quit, left the company, and now somebody new (me) showed up at the doorstep, about whom you have from a very trusted source super-reliable info about their capabilities, work ethics, etc. How much would you pay that person? If the answer results in "10K more than you today" then that's the raise I'm expecting. Anything lower is trying to trick/cheat me and banking on momentum/laziness on my end. Which ultimately would be quite offensive. So, just offer me that money and explain why. (Same goes for salary reduction, obviously. Better that than building a grudge and then suddenly firing me.)

[dylan604]

Some companies have internal policies that set hard limits on the increase an existing employee can receive per year. Those obviously do not apply to a new hire, so the salary negotiations are expected at that time. This has been the reasoning for the "if you want a raise, get a new job" concept that I have always understood.

[Fanmade]

That's indeed part of it. Another part is that working at another company usually gives you new perspectives and you learn more. So having been in a lot if companies and in turn having seen a lot of different approaches counts towards your experience, which also justifies a higher salary.

I actually got a 10k raise in one company, but only because I really didn't earn enough before. When I quit a year later anyway for another job (which offered me another 14k raise), my employer made a counter-offer of 30k. I did not take it, but at least it gave me a perspective how much I apparently was really worth to them.

[caffeine]

I read this as tongue-in-cheek.

The author was amused at his younger self’s naïveté and entitlement in assuming such a raise was a given and planning it on a timeline app.

So I think you are actually in agreement.

[dylan604]

I was keying in on rite vs right, right?

[swyx]

> To get to the bottom-line, I never got that promotion, am still renting and still haven't gotten married!

i felt this so hard. similarish boat. how do we unstick ourselves?

[778hbff]

> and I proceeded to play on company-time in my cubicle the rest of the day

> To get to the bottom-line, I never got that promotion

To state the obvious .. these two are likely related.