[davidpolberger]

I have been self-employed since 2008, when I quit my job in software engineering to go all-in on my software business (that dated from 2003). That failed spectacularly, because I only focused on technology and not on the value I was creating, and with few customers, I had to do on-site contracting for more than a year before going on full-time parental leave.

I then rebooted my software project, launched a landing site and started talking to prospects (hundreds of them), before I set out to pivot my existing product to something that might gain traction. (I wound up throwing away 95 percent of the code.) I spent 2014 through 2019 with the product in beta, barely making a living off of a few enterprise support contracts and doing freelance photography (and depleting my savings), but spending at least 80 percent of my time on building the product and getting it to a finished state.

(Some people seem to be able to build a product in a weekend that gets eager customers. I'm not one of those people, choosing to build something that was, in retrospect, much too big of a project for one person. I probably also spent too much time polishing the product before commercializing it, likely due to a fear of failure.)

In 2019, the product was finally commercialized as a SaaS service. I remember thinking that I either wanted it to be a spectacular success, or a spectacular failure (so that I could focus on other things, after close to 20 years).

It was neither, but has been growing steadily ever since. I would have made much more money working for someone else, but the freedom is unparalleled. I get to set my own hours and focus on things I consider important. I enjoy doing everything from support calls and UX work to building a compiler and a type system (that I have mentioned before on HN).

I also have no one I need to answer to, other than our customers. That has been important over the past couple of years, when a series of health emergencies in my family has diverted my attention elsewhere. I have been very fortunate to be able to do so, focusing on what's important, without having to ask permission to cut down on work temporarily.

Overall, I wouldn't trade this for anything. This year, my product will gain a sister product in a more lucrative field (I'm hoping), and I have plans to commercialize my compiler, both as a service and as a traditionally-licensed library. So I'm excited to stay solo and keep working on building the business.

[jacquesm]

That's some very impressive stamina and it must have been really hard at times.

[davidpolberger]

Thanks, it certainly has been. After only a couple of years in the software industry proper, though, I felt I had seen all I needed to see. Crunch time. Arbitrary, ill-informed management decisions. Management who didn't believe in the product the team was passionate about. Products canceled through no fault of anyone working on it. Office politics and bickering.

With my own business, I gain agency. If the product fails, it's because I failed to market it properly, or the product vision was bad and did not resonate with enough customers, or because I failed to execute on that vision. When all the decisions are out of your hands, and you can't even see what prompted them, they can feel capricious and arbitrary.

With my own business, I am in control. I don't have one boss, I have hundreds of them. And as long as I continue to provide them with value, I get to continue doing what I'm doing. I like those terms.

[jacquesm]

Yes, to all of that. But: the amount of control is directly proportional to how fat your wallet is, as it gets leaner you lose some of that agency so make sure you never even go close to depleting your reserves. That's a lesson I learned the hard way at some point and it causes me to be pretty cautious from a financial perspective. So far so good ;)