Re: The Small Developer
Re: The Small Developer
- Subject: Re: The Small Developer
- From: Jeff LaMarche <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2002 00:58:28 -0700
On Friday, June 21, 2002, at 11:45 PM, Jason Moore wrote:
Hmmm... is this a troll, or an honest inquiry? =)
>
What i'd like to know is what it takes to become a successful small software
>
developer. First, let me clarify what i mean by 'successful'. Successful
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to me is defined as making enough in revenue to cover any relavent expenses
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and be able to pay the developers a decent salery (say, around, $40,000 a
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year). Is there some critical mass a small developer would need to achieve
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to reach this sort of goal? Can one person do it? Do you need a 2 person
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company? 6 person? 12? What? (let's assume that the software these people
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develop is of the quality people expect from a Macintosh program, and that
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it does either fill a void or differentiate itself from competetors enough
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to be viable)
There's no reasonable way to answer this; there are so many factors as to
make any "hard" numbers meaningless. $40k a year is a good salary in some
locations, and a laughable salary for a software developer in others. The
"critical" mass depends on the price of your software and the size of the
potential market, as well as the competition for that market. I can think
of one-person companies that are doing it (LemkeSoft), as well as larger, but
still small (Ambrosia), and also consultant/developers who make part of their
living selling software they write, and part of their money from selling their
services as developers (OmniGroup, Stone Studios). The one thing that I can
tell you is that it is not an easy thing. All of the companies I mention above
are standouts whose products are unusually good and unusually good values
compared to their commercial competition, and even at that, they do not make
the money that their commercial competition -- like Adobe, Microsoft, etc.
-- makes from the same product. Dedicated marketing and sales people do help
a business, even if they don't make the product any better for the consumer.
>
What i'm looking for is not on advice, but also some numbers. Not exact numbers,
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but something. I have yet to find any hard data to be able to size up the
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'small business' developer in terms of how well they do. What kind of numbers
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(users that register, support requests, etc) should a budding small mac company
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expect? How do you find that balance between charging enough for your software
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to be profitable and charging so much that you start turning away most people
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because your program is expensive and doesn't have a well known brand plastered
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on it?
There's no magic formula. Put out some more specifics and somebody might be
able to give you some useful numbers, but even then, those numbers would only
be marginally applicable to your situation.
>
Some people write programs just because they need it and then give it away
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to be nice and help out the rest of us, others (like myself) would like to
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make some money doing it (so as to avoid the need for a horrid retail job
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to pay the bills, and just maybe the ability to pay for school without the
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need for loans). Am i nuts here?
Not nuts, a lot of people would like to do what you want to do, but don't
be fooled into thinking it's easy. For the individual or small developer you
need to be good at many things, with writing software being only one of them.
If you only provide the same level of functionality as your commercial competition
and don't offer a substantial discount in price, you will not survive. If
you can truly offer something that there's a market need or desire for and
can do it better or faster than the commercial offerings currently available,
then you will do okay. But it's a never-ending battle - once you become successful,
the commercial software companies will learn from your success and that will
make it harder for you, meaning you have to be good, and constantly innovating.
If I had to give any advice, I'd say first and foremost, do it because you
love it. If you don't, then find something else. If you do and you're pretty
good at it, you'll find a way, whether it's working for a larger company, or
a small one, whether it's being an independent consultant or an independent
software publisher, you will find a way that works for you, although it very
likely won't exactly match any well-laid plans you may make. =)
- Jeff
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