Having a project you are trying to turn into a business is often a red flag. A company considering hiring you wonders if you will jump ship as soon as you have the opportunity to go full time on your own project
Thanks, not really trying to do that, more built it out of frustration. I've heard this can be an advantage in an interview to essentially sell 'look what I built in my down time' etc - Who knows.
it cuts both ways! it is hard to find engineers who are self-motivated to think about product, customers, and conversion. this project gives the candidate strong credibility there.
I have also been burnt with employees leaving to start their own thing, but that's more the exception compared to engineers who don't deliver much value because they're not actually interested in building stuff or only interested in the programming part of building stuff.