Ask IH : How many people here are self taught programmers and have launched their product(s) ?
Hi guys,
I want to know that how many founders here are self taught programmers . How much time did you spent on learning ? How was your learning flow ? Were you sharing your daily success with someone so that you could feel better ?
I've been self learning and working on my product. Still a lot of work left because the problem area is not yet clear and I am experimenting with it .
This is my 1st product and I am already feeling the anxiety for not being clear on the best idea. I redefined what the new idea will be because I researched and narrowed down the original.
How you all were sure that you were solving a right problem which was worth solving and would benefit your product ?
How did you first launched? How did you identified your channels ?
Lastly, please provide a link to your completed or WIP projects if possible 😅😄
Thank you
I'm a full-stack self-taught developer with a full-time job who runs http://spacedoo.com - short actionable marketing hacks.
Similar to @AndrewV I have failed with my previous 2 ideas (reason: lack of marketing )
From this experience, I have learned that very important is to find a market that you like to server and then find/solve a problem they have as before I was into just building/ coding and not paying attention whom I want to serve or if there is a real need for the product.
I know @mijustin was talking about this approach (can't find the link to this video) .
I talk about this quite a bit in Marketing for Developers.
I also talked about it in my 2017 talk at Laracon, NYC. 👍
yes, this is what I was looking for, I need to read your book!
Just bought your book last week, great read so far and it is up to date.
#metoo
Folks who've shared, can you also share a roadmap that's worked for you?
Self taught. Took some graduate level CS courses but didn't finish the program and wouldn't say the course-work was particularly relevant.
Talk to your customers...that's how you know you're solving the right problem. Build a spreadsheet of potential solutions, email ideas to some "friendlies" and get their feedback. Ask them to prepay.
Start collecting feedback as soon as possible and avoid building until you've really narrow in on the solution. A spreadsheet, landing page built with landen.co, wix, or Squarespace are all great places to start. Don't over complicate it.
Channel identification is more difficult. Read https://medium.com/@yegg/the-19-channels-you-can-use-to-get-traction-93c762d19339 and start to do experiments. Many channels can be ruled out instantly due to budget constraints. Start with asking your friends and customers for intros and referrals.
https://asciiprints.com
I'm self-taught, but probably not in a way that's useful to you. I started programming on an Apple 2e as a teen, and kept learning with Visual Basic, C/C++, then PHP and web languages after I started working in tech support for a web hosting company. Back then, just used IRC to talk to people, try to build and share stuff, and learn.
But programming is a separate topic from being a good entrepreneur. I would say I'm a pretty skilled developer, and that hasn't helped me build a great product :)
I've built 3 apps that all failed, a combination of bad ideas and lack of marketing. My latest might also be in that group - an open source organizer/productivity app, https://brisaboards.com.
I would suggest joining a community in the area you plan to develop a project. Actually talk to people before deciding what app will help them (and make you money), try to help them, maybe even try to build simple little projects that will help individuals. I should also follow my own advice ;-)