Is it a mistake to be both developer and entrepreneur?

I think there's nothing better than being able to come up with an idea and build it yourself! As with all things, it takes time and lot of mistakes to get good, but it's totally doable. Fundamentally, they are both similar in that they both require identifying a problem, prioritizing efforts, and coming up with creative solutions. You also don't need to stay solo forever. You can always bring on a better business partner later, or if business is your main focus, a better developer. Still lots of value in being able to get an MVP out and validate before trying to build a team.

There is this great book called "The E-Myth" by Michael E. Gerber (which I reviewed here).

In short, the "Entrepreneurial Myth" is that being a good technical founder is enough. The book then dispels that myth by explaining how any successful business needs an entrepreneur, a manager, and a technician.

If you're a solopreneur, you will have to be all three at the same time. At least, in the beginning, you will need to do these jobs at the same time. Later down the line, you will focus on the one where you will have the most impact.

Here is what I learned from my own transition from developer to "entrepreneur": It's not that you stop developing because you're not good at it. You stop because the job of a business owner is to maximize the opportunities and revenues of the whole business. You learn that employing someone else to focus exclusively on one aspect of the business will create more growth and value than you stretching yourself thin.

I still love being a developer, and I really enjoy coding. But as a business owner, I needed to make decisions about something bigger than myself.

To answer your question: I don't think you're too negative. You just haven't learned how incredibly capable you can be as a founder. I always thought I'd be a developer for life. And then, FeedbackPanda happened, and I love juggling being an entrepreneur, a manager, and a technician. It's like learning multiple languages as a developer, but at a much higher level. All of a sudden, you do things that you never thought possible before.

It's definitely difficult. That's also why, once you commit to it and stick with it, your chances increase by an order of magnitude. The fact that you aren't sure if you're too negative or not is a great indicator that you have the reflection capabilities needed to be a great founder. Enjoy! :D

I'm trying to do just this.
The engineer wants to build beautiful software, the entrepreneur wants to make money.

I think it's about balance. And more particularly, knowing when to be the entrepreneur and when to be the engineer. The struggle is real!!

I went from "entrepreneur" back to developer.

I love coding. If I won 100 million in the lottery, I'd still spend most of my free time coding.

I would do it even if I didn't get paid for it.

But I didn't win the lottery. And I need to pay the bills (especially important when you have a family to support).

So I built up an online business.

I made a lot of money, but quickly realized I was no longer coding.

So I sold the business to start coding again.

But, I hate client work. It ruins the whole coding experience for me.
Yes, some clients are great, and I like helping them with new projects.
But the majority of clients suck and chasing them down every month for pay just isn't my cup of tea.

So here I am living off the money I sold my business for and coding all day.
I'm working on a variety of projects I like for myself.

The harsh reality is that I know this won't last forever. Eventually I will once again need to build up a business, take on clients, or the best option - find a business that makes me money that still allows me to spend most of my time coding. This is what I am searching for now...

I resonate with this question a lot @indieanton and I think you and I are similar in this way we are thinking. In my quest to learn more about this chasm between being exclusively a builder and/or a founder I've stumbled across a resource that has really helped me:

The Founder's Dillema Book by Noam Wasserman - https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Dilemmas-Anticipating-Foundation-Entrepreneurship-ebook/dp/B007AIXKUM/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+founders+dillema&qid=1588606928&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Alternatively, there's a good summary of it here - https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma

Though, I have found based on reading posts similar to this one and talking to other successful builders/founders that at the end of the day you can carve your own path. Yes at the beginning you may need to prioritize being a builder over a founder/CEO vs. a CEO over a builder in order to achieve initial success; however, you should operate the business also based on the actions that make you happy and delegate the things you don't like to do as time goes on and you have more resources/leverage to do so.

A good example of this is the founder of Shopify, Tobias Lütke, who pretty much outsourced the CEO position to others so he could still code :)

Here's a link to the NPR episode explaining this: https://www.npr.org/2019/08/02/747660923/shopify-tobias-l-tke

So I think later once the thing we are building becomes a success we have a lot to say in how we spend your time if we are the main drivers of that success, and that's reassuring I think!

Interesting question. This is the case for me: When I was child, I was have effort to understand how electronic devices works. I opened all devices in our home. Then I saw the neighbor's computer at the age of 12 and was not interested in playing games, I was wondering how it works. When I was 14, I accumulated my scholarship and bought a computer and hacked the Windows on the 2nd day. Hooray! Then I made a game and tried to make money, I succeeded. Legal payment companies did not serve to me, because I was under 18. I lost very big money I would make. I wasn't interested in the software anymore since I couldn't make money from the software until I was 18. I found a job for a small company as a technical employee at the age of 18 and bought the company the same year. Then I got bored and moved to a biggest city in my country to start a faster growing company. I worked as a designer and as an advertiser for a while because I wanted to meet people. One year later, I started a new company. I tried to find a technical founder, but I couldn't find a very skilled person, and this brought me back to the software. Because it's much easier to find a founder who will take care of marketing. The company failed because of inadequate investment. One software engineer is not enough, a team of software developers is required, and developer salaries are quite high. Years passed and it was not enough to be both ceo and cto, I also have to work for years and save money. Only serial investments are made in the country where I live, you have to start the company with your own money. By the way, I studied computer engineering to move to the another country which angel investment available, all requires bachelor's degree for visa. Now I am considering re-location after pandemic. If I had the chance, I would definitely not want to deal with software more than to describe how the product would be to engineers. But Elon Musk also coded his first product, we just need to go through this stage fast.

Wow many great answers. I had really a "terrible" monday so I couldn't reply, but I'd like to keep this discussion open because this is a really interesting topic and some kind of life dilemma for many. Also, I'd be curious to know Courtland opinion on this because I feel from his podcasts in some way he's struggling too with this, maybe leaning more toward the entrepeneur side, but it's just my feeling and I could be wrong.

We could also come up with new ideas on how to keep and manage both the jobs. This field has seen a tremendous fast evolution and maybe there are some inexplored paths we could find comparing our ideas.

I'm happy to have the opportunity to talk with you guys 👍

I did the other way around from entrepreneur to dev then I could dev my product on my own. As weird as it sounds I still did not develop a real product for me but I am still holding for the good opportunity

It depends on the scope of the project and your expertise as a developer. If your a vet and the project is easy to assess correctly that the scopes aren't large then I think it's reasonable to play both.

I think it's reasonable to start from either points and then evaluate later if the pace is satisfying or if delegating would make the process more efficient.

I just want to only work with someone whose committed to seeing things through to the end it.

So you rather pay someone for a minimum of $50 an hour to build something you have validated? Say he needs 200 hours?

I've found it can take a while, i'm still trying to fix this myself. You see, when you are a coder first, your brain gets very used to being task based/problem solving based. Hence you get used to having instant feedback from the screen.

However, on the entrepreneur front i'm finding it's a case of taking steps but not necessarily getting much feedback from what you are doing, not initially anyway. It's more of a case of, do some stuff, then wait and see if you get any feedback (delayed feedback).

But switching back to developer, you know if you've taken then wrong or right step as you will get errors or the program will work.

So it's constant balance/switching of thinking of the mind?

Anton, in my experience I'd had the opportunity to participate in a fair amount of projects as a developer or software architect, the developer is the position that I enjoy the most but it is very rewarding also been the entrepreneur and also the developer since you have control of the entire project.

This allows you to move forward and gain more progress faster than waiting for a client or owner validation of your work.

The most important skill here would be your project focus even if you show your prototype to someone else who might not be gentle on the feedback, listen to them and keep working to achieve more progress to get you closer to your goal.

I hope you get some answers on this. I am curious about this too because I am doing exactly the same thing. I am learning to code while building my company. I do think that it helps a lot in avoiding costly mistakes that entrepreneurs make when hiring developers and all you really need is rapid prototyping/iteration compared to a full-feature product.