Reddit reviews Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup
We found 7 Reddit comments about Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
MRR is short for "monthly recurring revenue", and ARR is for "annual recurring revenue." It's how much money your company makes each month / year before any expenses, and that's typically how people come up with a price when they want to sell their company (plus other factors like how fast you are growing, etc.)
"SaaS" also means "software as a service", where people pay you a monthly fee to use software hosted on a website. Before that was popular, you would usually pay a one-time license fee to install the software on your own computer. The SaaS model is much better because people keep paying you each month, and eventually a lot of that income becomes "passive" if you don't have to spend too much time on customer support.
I've learned a lot from these:
But the best way is to just start building something, try to find paying customers, and make lots of mistakes.
Two books come immediately to mind for me:
Both host a podcast at http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
If you are looking to rate alternative solutions to a particular problem, you can use the Pugh Matrix method. Where I work, we've used this to compare multiple options and while it doesn't make the decision for you, it provides some good perspective. Here's an Excel spreadsheet setup for this approach.
By idea, I'm assuming you mean an idea for a new product (or service). Evaluating the viability of a product is more challenging. I would suggest the most important questions to ask are as follows:
I'm working my way through Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling and Mike Taber and they emphasize that market is the most important consideration. If you don't have a market, or if you can't reach into that market, it doesn't matter how great your product is.
Yes, it's certainly possible, but as mentioned, it's difficult. I'd highly recommend looking into the following resources:
Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup
Patrick McKenzie's blog -- Kalzumeus Software. Read everything!
The Lean Startup
Also do searches for "micro ISV" and read anything you get your hands on.
Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling.
Great book!!
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615373968
I am also a developer, and wrote this post about how I generate tech business ideas.
Another recommendation is to read Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup. It has a lot of good advice on how to validate ideas once you have a few ones that sound plausible, and it is written for developers.
It's a funny thing, being able to see needs.
I've been developing for the past 6 or so years and finding needs is a task I only recently discovered. It seems like such a simple concept, but being able to see a need and fill it without being too complicated, loosing touch with the motivation of the need, and actually finishing the solution is tough.
I recently read a great book called, Start Small Stay Small, and it was comforting knowing that marketing of your product is way, way more important than it's feature set. That has been my credo the past few months.