Six Software Products in One Year

Yup. Aggressive schedule. More importantly, I won’t be taking on huge projects and then finding that there’s no demand. What I want to build is strongly influenced by what I will use and what I like, and there’s not always going to be a correlation between that and what other people will use and pay for. The idea is to build some things and find out what other people like, then concentrate my efforts on the most popular (and subsequently profitable) projects.

I use the word ‘product’ to mean more than just a piece of software. It’s the software and the documentation and the FAQs and the marketing collateral and the monetization. Which, when you think about it, doesn’t leave a lot of time to write software. Y Combinator gets three months, there are four of them, and they’re sprinting. I’m one man with two months and I don’t know much about marketing.

Nevertheless, I remain confident that this is a sustainable schedule - at least for the first few products. If one of my early products becomes popular, it’ll probably delay the later ones. Which isn’t a bad thing - one of my products will be popular!

The idea is that when something is popular, I spend more time on it. Popularity is easy to translate to money - pay-per-click advertising is the most obvious way. There’s also paid services, consulting, customization, support, feature development and good old-fashioned networking. Getting attention is the trick. There are billions of other web pages out there, and I need to attract attention to mine. I’ll be thinking about marketing a great deal.

There’s also a discrepancy between working time and wall-clock time. While I really, really want that ‘one year’ to be real (wall-clock) time - it’s not going to work out that way. I’m full-time employed right now and don’t know when I’ll be leaving that. I’ve got two holidays and an interstate move planned. The year will have some major disruptions to it. I also plan to keep working for other people a little during the year.

Still, I think one year real time is the best way to measure this, if only because it’ll cut down on me slacking off because “that day I spent watching TV, it didn’t count anyway”. The days all count. Some of them are going to be disrupted.

When ‘the year’ begins is still uncertain. Most likely it’ll be when I reduce my work commitments to two days/week or less. This still leaves me a pretty reasonable yearly income and is comfortably above my expenses.

Because software is what I know

I’ve been writing software since I was five years old. Not to a particularly high standard back then, of course, but I’ve more or less devoted all of my study and work efforts to it.

Because I enjoy writing software

I don’t consider it a wage-slave job. It’s something that I can apply passion to. I don’t just do my eight hours and go home; I think about it a lot and wake up in the middle of the night when I have a great idea. It’s more than just a job.

Because I have significant competitive advantages in the software world

I’m 25 years old. I have no major ties in any particular place; no children or dependents; no requirement for a steady income. I can spend long hours at this, and I have the energy and naiivety to this it’s a good idea. I’m not completely burned on the idea of writing software for a living.

Because the barriers to entry to start a software company are almost nil

I have a computer, a high-speed Internet connection and a brain. Mix them together, bake at 300 degrees for a few months, and a software company will drop out.

A major long-term goal that I want to attack with this company is that of being financially independent. I mean in the sense that I have enough money to live comfortably without needing to work, not in the sense that I’m debt free (but still have to work).

Most of us have to take the slow and steady approach: make investments, live below our means, scrimp and sacrifice to build a retirement fund. I live in Australia, and most of us have to pay 9% of our earnings into a superannuation fund. The problem there is that you can’t get that money out until you’re retired, and I sure as hell don’t want to be 55 years old and crippled before I can enjoy my savings. I view the 9% superannuation contribution as another tax, on top of the 30% (typical) income tax, on top of the 10% GST on expenditure. 49%-ish tax, and that’s before you even start moving into a decent income tax bracket. Nuts to that, I say.

Passive income is the way to go, not just for tax reasons. If you earn enough to support yourself without working, then you have great options. You can travel for a year and come back richer than when you started. You can be more aggressive with salary negotiations. You can choose to work somewhere fulfilling but unprofitable. You can quit your job anytime. You can repeat whatever you did to build up $N/year passive income and make it $2N/year.

There are a few ways to earn this passive income. The scrimp-and-save-and-invest method is the most common, and you’re looking at earning about 7% of your investment size each year that way. The obvious problem is that to make that 7% into a livable income, you need a huge investment. Which means you need to spend a lot of time earning money in the first place. Which means you need to get a job. And I don’t like jobs.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve found paid work rewarding in many ways, including financially. I’ve worked hard since I left uni and responses from every employer I’ve had have ranged from ‘pleased’ to ‘ecstatic’. If you, future employer, were to choose me, I believe it would be a good choice.

Of course.

But I don’t want another job. If all goes well, I have taken my last job for the rest of my life. This is a big claim, which is why I prefix it with ‘if all goes well’. I’m taking on risk.

But back to passive income. While I am earning some passive income, it’s not enough to live off or pay for anything of significance. It’s not growing fast enough to capture my interest. Consumerism is not particularly interesting to me. And paid work is not fulfilling or profitable enough.

I’m interested in not working, and I’m willing to work damn hard to get there before retirement age.

Hello.

My name is Ian, and I’m an alcoholic.

Wait. That’s not right. Can I start over?

My name is Ian, and I’m going to build six software products in a year.

I’m not an alcoholic. And I’m pretty sure I’m not in denial about being an alcoholic, either.

I want to build a software company that I can support myself with. I don’t need to be rich or famous; just independent. I want to be able to travel and work on the road. I want to have a good passive income source. I want to have ownership and satisfaction and find a sense of self in my work.

Here’s the blog. Enjoy.