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I'm an autistic 15-year-old with OCD, and have created 2 software platforms — AMA

Hi, my name is Sewell. I'm an autistic entrepreneur with OCD as well and have created two software products. Please don't act weird in the comments section and whatever else. Anyway, let me explain myself.

I always wanted to be a business owner as a kid, and I'm working on that dream still so I haven't fully achieved it yet. I hope to make money of creating software one day. Unfortunately, my software has not been as successful as I had wished. A lot of people with mental problems get annoyed/mad if you call them like for instance an Autistic instead of a person with Autism. That doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is whether or not you respect me for who I am. I hope to become successful one day. The products I've created can be found on my profile, so go check out my profile if you want to see more info on that. Anyway, when I was real little, I wanted to start a restaurant when I grew up. That wouldn't have worked out since I hate cooking. So then I decided I wanted to start a lighting company when I grew up. That was very unrealistic since I wanted to run the factory that made the lights and I can't afford anything like that. As I got older, I started to understand that business models have to be unique. So I've now moved on to software. As a software developer, (I guess you can me that) I've created two software products. Rototer and Twayo Biz. As I already mentioned, you can find more under my profile. I hope you enjoy my story.

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    Hey stephens! I'm fifteen as well and my dream job is to become a fullstack developer.
    Having OCD doesn't limit you in any way. You are a software developer (who is probably much smarter than me or any fullstack developer). Keep going, keep working, and eventually, you might achieve your goal.

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      I go by Sewell by the way. And yes I'm aware of the fact that OCD doesn't limit me. I found a post about a portfolio you made and it looks good. I made a portfolio too but it's not quite as good as yours. I feel like mine is missing some pieces. anyway here you go: https://sewellstephens.com

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        That's great man! I've been coding for around five years so maybe that explains why mine turned out the way it did. It all comes with experience.
        I haven't actually been able to make any money with my projects just yet and you have. I guess you're more skilled in business stuff than I am.
        I like the design of your portfolio a lot.

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          I made some money for a little while but the customer downgraded back to the free plan on my website, unfortunately. It was back when Sewellstephens.com was my like only website. (yes, It was my only website at one point and was used for a different purpose) I created sewellstephens.com back in December 2017 a few months before the GDPR and CCPA we know of today was in place. Back then my website was a mess of content that got put together without loading speeds in mind. The main problem was all the third party snippets that piled up over the years.

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            Yikes. That is pretty hard to believe. I saw that your products have a revenue of -70$ per month. I hope you can get it balanced back out before you lose more money.

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              Yeah, I know. That's because nobody really uses my products. When you have no/few customers for a project you create, you have to pay into the resources with the money that you have. Whats worse and something that still haunts me to this day is this product I tried to create to help people manage their advertising effort that ended up being a money pit of $1,500 paid into advertising for this product, plus the money for hosting, email newsletter provider, domain name, etc. (Of course, this is over the course of several years) Anyway this was supposed to be a product that helped people manage their PPC advertising campaigns. Well covid-19 comes and screws up the whole idea of the platform because of this company named Adzooma that basically had the same idea I had on making advertising easier for businesses. So they turn around and make their product free and everyone is like "Oh wow, here's a free platform that helps manage your advertising efforts for free" and it's like dude, I'm working on the same exact product and I guess let's kiss this whole idea goodbye. Well to this day, all this money I put into an idea that I never finished haunts me and makes me sad just thinking about how my product launch failed miserably. And by the way my product wasn't going to be slam packed with as many features either since unlike Adzooma, I was going to make money off my subscription-based product and their way of making money is through this thing called the Adzooma marketplace where you can pay to be featured in. I'm sorry this is so long, I'm ending it here so you don't have to read a whole lot more.

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    Great to see someone so young with a great with ethic. Keep it up!

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    Hi Sewell, great to see you're diving into this world head first! Can you elaborate further on your idea that business models have to be unique, and how you got to that point? It kind of goes against the established truth on here that it's better to go with a model which already has been proven, so I'm really curious about your train of thought there.

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      My business models have lots of thought put into them due to my belief of unique business models seeming a lot nicer in the sense that your idea is more original-seeming. Like for instance would a business model with 1,000,000 competitors or a business with 100 competitors seem more reputable and experienced? I'm sure you would say 100 competitors is better than 1,000,000 since you have less of a crowd of businesses to deal with.

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