I support you and wish you luck with all my heart! Being at the middle (end?) of this journey, I can share my timeline for fun and warning: 2013: "I'm getting tired of my old business..." 2014: "I'm tired of my old business." 2015: "I'm really tired of my old business!" December 2016: "It's time to get rid of the golden handcuffs!" March 2017: "Yes, let's do it..." April 2017: "But first let's make some savings, I know how long it may take to launch." June 2017: "Done! I'm free for the next 4-5 months, it will be more than enough to develop something and make first sales." July 2017: "The draft of the product is almost ready, let's play a game a friend of mine just recommended. Just a few hours, not more." August 2017: "Factorio is cool, I still have 2+ months to go." September 2017: "Shit, I have not enough time, let's make some more money from the old business..." October 2017: "Done! I'm free until the end of the year!" December 2017: "Winter is coming, let's launch in February, but first make some extra money from the old product..." April 2018: "I can't stand it anymore. I'm either closing my old business right now, or I will always wait for something to happen!" March 2018: "Yeah! A leap of faith. Closing down all old websites, starting a new life." April 2018: "3 months is more than enough to finish the product..." May 2018: "I'm tired as hell but I finally did it. An almost perfect product is ready for sales! But first let's try to use it by myself..." June 2018: "Who knew that the product wasn't ready a month ago? If I knew that it will take me so long to finish it, I would give myself more time. Anyway, it's really perfect now, let's just ask people for testimonials and launch." July 2018: "Hmmm... Instead of testimonials I expected, I got a stream of bug reports and feature requests. It took me a whole month to implement all of those. Now let's launch! This time it's final!" To be continued...
Sounds very familiar! Unfortunately, building software rarely takes as long as estimated. What problems does your software solve?
Forex Simulator - yet another backtesting and training software, my attempt to develop a virtual assistant to become a profitable trader by myself. You can find the link in my profile. What problems does it solve? It's funny because it still didn't solve the core problem (profitable trading), but users like it. I can confirm that I'm still not profitable, you can look at my trading journal on my personal blog. And, while first beta users really liked the product (all testimonials are real!), nobody ever told me that the product actually helped them to trade. Yes, they were active in giving me various ideas on how to improve it, but I don't think they actually got any measurable results from its use. So, I'm stuck in a situation where I have a great, good-looking product people actually like but I'm not sure that it actually solves the core problem. I can either focus on making it "work" or just blatantly promote it to earn big money. I know that my competitors are doing great. The only universal problem I have at the moment is the lack of time. I would be happy to spend extra 2-3 months on trading, which may give me a chance to prove that it MAY work, but this way I will not be able to do marketing and sales. It means that I must sell some of my assets to cover this experiment. Yes, I can do it for 5-10 years until going totally broke, but it's not fun at all. I earned big money in the old business, so I'm in a better financial shape than you may expect. The money came relatively easy, they aren't "hard earned". I even have some passive income but it's not enough to cover all my current expenses. But selling anything of what I made in the past means failure for me. Totally psychological, not financial. I'm also sure that I will get more success in trading stocks, not in Forex. I plan to convert the product into a stock trading simulator in the future, but I still need more time for that. So, right now, at this very moment I'm trying to decide: to continue product development at the cost of feeling myself a loser + higher risks for my family or just focus on its marketing and sales which will earn me big money right now. I'm not a "good" or a "bad" guy, I'm just honest Yet another option is to sell the project as a business to someone who may be interested in developing his own trading platform, for example. This way I will be able to focus on stocks from the very beginning, or even launch some other business. Anyway, it's not an easy choice, too. After I invested so much efforts into polishing the product, it's like giving away the baby. The last option to consider is looking for a partner who can finance further development and marketing. I placed it at the end of the list because I got used to freedom. I don't want to report to anyone. Yes, I had both good and bad partnership experience in the past and I know how great or terrible at may be. Sometimes it's even going from "I'm totally happy" to "I can't stand it anymore" in few weeks. I'm explaining it in details because I'm sure that this problem is what 99% of software developers who followed this route will meet at the end. There is no way to develop a silver bullet, or a Holy Graal, there is always a choice between "solving the problem" and "making big money". It's especially hard for software developers who got used to binary decisions. "One or zero... Alive or dead..."
An important update to the previous post: I've made the final decision. You may not support me, but I decided to sell the business and move to some other niche, not related to trading. Something like b2b, where I was good in the past, until my last business died of natural causes. Here is the main reason: when I came into the niche, I expected to become a consistently profitable trader. It was a sound idea: to trade profitably and to organize/automate my work which will give me great products my customers will be happy to buy and use. A programmer's heaven. But, the closer I got to the final release, the more it became clear to me that it was the wrong way. I've got addicted to software development in my early 13th (25+ years ago!), I miss every hour of my life doing other types of work, including trading, marketing and sales. If I decided to go this way, I will be doomed to waste my time doing work I don't like. It's like trading your love, I don't want to do it for any amount of money. It may sound naive, but when you are getting close to 50th, time is running really fast. I don't regret my previous business decisions and I hope that I will not regret this one, as well.
Thanks for the posts Max! I am sure it is not an easy decision to move on to another project. I'll send you a PM as I would like to keep in touch with you. Good luck!
Just got a great idea which can solve the problem without me losing the business. I decided to look for a partner who will do marketing and sales. Somebody with a great experience in the niche, maybe even customers or subscribers. This way I will be able to focus on product development and make it the best product on the market What's funny is that it didn't came to my mind before. Especially taking into account that I had some positive experience in my first business.
You can be the Jack of all trades or the master of one. To grow a viable business enterprise requires you to give up a certain amount of control. You have to create a business model and get people who you can trust to run the departments as carefully as you would. Its still like trading there's always risk in getting the wrong people, but if you base your decision on their experience, it makes it a whole lot less riskier and as a possible carrot to infuse more positive energy into your staff, you can always offer profit sharing at a later date, so they would be more likely to stay or work even harder. I won't say good luck, because in business you have to make good decisions. Lets just settle for Cheers!
I've read some of your past posts before and I've always entertained possibility of reaching out to you privately. I just wanted some more detail to see if its something i might be interested in, not for the sake of development but for my own personal use. Kick me mesg and who knows? But I also wanted to say, don't be to quick in selling off all your work until you know how well it works. You might find that bringing in the right ideas from the right person might just help you create the cash hog you've always wanted in your basement, but since your in Florida at zero sea level that just might not be the place to leave your cash machine.
Thank you for kind works, I really need support at the moment I know that your are talking about right things, I'm just too lazy at the moment to consider them. If I fail to find a partner or sell the business, I may get back to running it by myself. Yes, I will hate it at the very beginning, until I offload marketing and sales, but it will be much worse to feel that I wasted all this time developing the product which nobody will every use.