Great article by Patrick McKenzie on Running a software business on 5 hours a week .
Some of the advice I found interesting:
- Time Assets: stuff that will save you time in the future. For example, code that you write today that will save you time later, or automating a process.
- Build less: everything you add will take time later.
- Look for people paying money to solve a problem semi-manually to find good software opportunities.
- Plan your business for long term – when you are working part-time things that change quickly are a poor match.
- If you have a day job, one way to get your employer to sign a contract saying that your work is your own is reminding them that you will learn stuff (languages, technologies, etc) that can be used on your regular work without any expense for them.
- ”The only acceptable response to a feature request is: ‘Thank you for your feedback. I will take it under advisement and consider it for inclusion in a later version of the software.’” I have been using a somewhat similar response (your request was added to the to-do list or something) but I only say that when I mean to eventually do it.
- Document everything
- Avoid events, plan for processes.
