Great article, thanks for sharing your story, Jimmy! It totally makes sense that you spotted this opportunity and capitalized on it since you are playing in space that you know and care about.
Will be looking forward to see the update when you hit $6k per month =)
I am indeed working solo. Generally finding programmers with lower level OS experience (bit banging, preemption, real time kernels, etc) is a bit harder than finding an iOS developer, absolutely.
Of course, the idea is that our tools make development for these systems much more approachable by the talent pool that is widely available :)
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This is awesome! Thanks for sharing :)
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Pingballs (fliperi) is one of my fav games/toys/fun from the child. Even now when i find pinball somewhere, I always want to play.
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Hi Jimmy interesting and inspiring story. Thanks for sharing.
Did you code out everything yourself in the beginning?
I am a software engineer by trade, so I did do all of the initial development. I, of course, used permissible open source tools where applicable, and publish complete source code where necessary.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
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Hey Jimmy! We worked together at the UGA card office way back when. I remember you talking about your side hobby of pinball machines, it's amazing to see you're still doing it and making money!
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Hey Oz!
Great to see you here on IH! I remember you as our resident iOS whiz. Are you hacking on anything?
Thank you so much for the well wishes! It is definitely growing as one of the streams of side-income!
(Oh, and happy belated birthday!)
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I have a couple projects I'm getting started and seeing what sticks. I'm still doing iOS though :)
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Nice! Still ObjC? I've shipped a few Swift projects and I must say, it has been lovely.
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I only just started doing Swift this past year. My previous jobs were all ObjC. I really like the ease of swift but I miss the power of ObjC.
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Loved hearing your story. I can't help but be curious about your licensing costs. At first blush, I would think the deals you have would net more than $3k a month.
Not meant as a criticism at all, just curiosity. Are they short-term deals that you can increase the cost of over time? I'd stick with your licensing model as long as you can, as you harbor no real risk.
I think your curiosity is very well founded. The industry is very small, but we're planning on rolling out tools and features that ingrain us into more of the entire development cycle, thus providing more value and we'll raise prices over time. I'm also branching out into other market segments (some are actually just other product lines with our existing customers) which are much higher price.
I see you're in Austin! If you're ever in Pinballz, a few of my games are at those locations!
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“Pain is extremely lucrative if you're selling aspirin“
Or OxyContin.
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Great article, thanks for sharing!
I wholeheartedly agree with the niche, bootstrapped approach, but have you considered writing software for some IoT product?
It seems to me that your skills might be transferable for that and it might be a larger niche
Thanks for the kind words! I actually really agree that the skills in embedded design would be transferrable over to IoT. Though I haven't really found something interesting to work on in the field... Of course, if you have any ideas, feel free to share ;)
Great article, thanks for sharing your story, Jimmy! It totally makes sense that you spotted this opportunity and capitalized on it since you are playing in space that you know and care about.
Will be looking forward to see the update when you hit $6k per month =)
Thank you @jianinglai
It has been a blast so far! I've got a few other products planned that could definitely get us past the 6k mark!
I firmly believe that if I'm doing something that I care about/am passionate about, then finding a way to make money will come a lot more naturally.
Kudos!
Are you working solo? As a programmer, I imagine it would be pretty difficult to find coders with the skills and expertise to work in such field
Hey there @nicogranelli
I am indeed working solo. Generally finding programmers with lower level OS experience (bit banging, preemption, real time kernels, etc) is a bit harder than finding an iOS developer, absolutely.
Of course, the idea is that our tools make development for these systems much more approachable by the talent pool that is widely available :)
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing :)
Pingballs (fliperi) is one of my fav games/toys/fun from the child. Even now when i find pinball somewhere, I always want to play.
Hi Jimmy interesting and inspiring story. Thanks for sharing.
Did you code out everything yourself in the beginning?
Hey @LPP007!
I am a software engineer by trade, so I did do all of the initial development. I, of course, used permissible open source tools where applicable, and publish complete source code where necessary.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hey Jimmy! We worked together at the UGA card office way back when. I remember you talking about your side hobby of pinball machines, it's amazing to see you're still doing it and making money!
Hey Oz!
Great to see you here on IH! I remember you as our resident iOS whiz. Are you hacking on anything?
Thank you so much for the well wishes! It is definitely growing as one of the streams of side-income!
(Oh, and happy belated birthday!)
I have a couple projects I'm getting started and seeing what sticks. I'm still doing iOS though :)
Nice! Still ObjC? I've shipped a few Swift projects and I must say, it has been lovely.
I only just started doing Swift this past year. My previous jobs were all ObjC. I really like the ease of swift but I miss the power of ObjC.
Loved hearing your story. I can't help but be curious about your licensing costs. At first blush, I would think the deals you have would net more than $3k a month.
Not meant as a criticism at all, just curiosity. Are they short-term deals that you can increase the cost of over time? I'd stick with your licensing model as long as you can, as you harbor no real risk.
Thank you for the feedback @meeks!
I think your curiosity is very well founded. The industry is very small, but we're planning on rolling out tools and features that ingrain us into more of the entire development cycle, thus providing more value and we'll raise prices over time. I'm also branching out into other market segments (some are actually just other product lines with our existing customers) which are much higher price.
I see you're in Austin! If you're ever in Pinballz, a few of my games are at those locations!
“Pain is extremely lucrative if you're selling aspirin“
Or OxyContin.
Great article, thanks for sharing!
I wholeheartedly agree with the niche, bootstrapped approach, but have you considered writing software for some IoT product?
It seems to me that your skills might be transferable for that and it might be a larger niche
Congrats on your success so far!
Hey @rodrigo
Thanks for the kind words! I actually really agree that the skills in embedded design would be transferrable over to IoT. Though I haven't really found something interesting to work on in the field... Of course, if you have any ideas, feel free to share ;)
-- Jimmy