Painful Product Obsession

Will McLellarn -

 

What’ssss good YouTubers?!?

My brainwaves are being dominated by the painful realization that I’ve never built a product.

One of my core beliefs in tech is that you should build what you know. It’s no surprise to see awesome software engineers solving problems through code. They see problems, and have the ability to build solutions with their own two hands.

Weirdly or through observation of this phenomenon, non-technical people (like me) have started identifying these same problems, but we are stuck behind the looking glass..

 

 

We dream about the solution, and use phrases like “If I just had an engineer, I’d x…” I both am one of those people and despise those people. When I first started working in tech in 2015, I was so embarrassingly ignorant to the ins & outs of software development, let alone iOS app development. I watched as our CEO browbeat the 20yo engineer on our team until he was so fed up he nearly deleted the entire codebase.

I’ve spent a lot of time becoming MORE technical. Not quite to the point of being self-sufficient, but far ahead of my “business” peers. I took a introductory js course, knocked out all the CodeAcademy courses etc… and spent a lot of time with my engineering colleagues. I don’t know how far I want to take it, but probably further than here. In the meantime, if I do want to build a product, I have to take one of three routes:

  1. Learn to build software by myself (high time cost, low $$ cost)
  2. Pay someone else to build your software (low time cost, high $$ cost)
  3. Recruit a co-founder (high time cost, potentially high $$ cost in equity)

Perhaps obvious…whatever. I’m not really a fan of #2 becauseI I don’t have any money, and I feel like the jabronis with money just blast it at the problem, without enough consideration or understanding of the solution they’re pursuing. 

I split super hard between 1 + 3. I know I can’t do everything, and my skillset definitely leans toward marketing, sales and business development. But those skills are useless unless you have a product to market, sell, and business develop…lol. 3 sounds good in practice, but I know engineers get pitched all the time by idiots and I don’t really have the resume to pull someone amazing in (yet). 

And I suppose to go the #3 route for now would not be “building what I know” as much… I think I need to keep teaching myself the basics until I can product the MVP of MVPs. Which in all honesty is pretty simple. I am at least pretty good at knowing how to start small.

I need a plan. Time to make one. Stay tuned…

-Team Health & Team Wealth

P.S. Should I even build software? Another damning question ¯\_(ツ)_/¯