First Year as a Solopreneur. Here's what I did:
A summary of my first year being a solopreneur
👋 Hey, it’s Orel here! Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share my journey and lessons as a solopreneur who quit his job to chase his dreams.
I am a software developer, and so far I have x3 failed projects, and x2 ongoing.
I also publish Tech Books summaries along with Anton Zaides.
Exactly 1 year ago I told my boss that I quit. 2 days later I was jobless, without any plan in sight.
In today’s article, you’ll read how the first year was, material progress wise and in the next article you’ll read about the mentality.
I’ll start with the products I built and move on to the social progress.
Products
During this year, I built 8 products:
x3 failed
x2 are live, 0$ income expected
x3 in development, some income expected.
I’ll review each one briefly and chronically.
The failures
Unity Game - The Necromancer
What is it?
I tried to remake an old browser game that was incredibly popular a decade+ ago.
Why did it fail?
Building a Unity game is incredibly complicated and costly. You can’t just build components and place them on the screen like a website or an app.
You need to either draw it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. And it’s not cheap.
So I decided I will not be a game developer at this stage.
Chess app
What is it?
A platform to help chess club managers turn annoying manual tasks automatic.
Why did it fail?
The first attempt failed due to an incompatible partner.
The second attempt failed because the chess union denied my request to build this platform for them.
The third attempt, which was the best one in my opinion, failed because club managers were not interested at all. I tried to verify the idea as soon as I gathered the courage to make cold calls and ask managers about it.
Sharpic
What is it?
A tool that improves images of properties on sites like booking and airbnb.
Why did it fail?
The tool relied on Photoshop API. In April of this year Adobe decided to discontinue the API, and allow only 500 free tokens (500 API calls) without the option to buy more, unless your’re an enterprise.
Live apps
BookWiz
What is it?
BookWiz is a tool for book readers, to build shareable read lists, manage their own book backlog and get recommendations for next reads.
How is it going?
I would consider this one as a failure as well. After 3 months of running and marketing it, there are 100 registered users, 2 of which returned to the website once.
That’s enough for me to consider the product as a failure and keep it up for personal use only.
PinkyPartner
What is it?
PinkyPartner is an accountability app, that helps you build or strengthen habits with a partner.
How is it going?
60 Signed users, 10 repeating users. I would consider this a small success. :)
In development
PlayTaylor
What is it?
A kahoot-like app, Taylor Swift themed, for all the swifties out there.
Why?
Apparently there are many swifties in the US that occasionally organize Taylor Swift nights, and building a new game for them could really catch fire.
MeetMeter
What is it?
A tool that helps engineers managers get a sense of how valuable their meetings are, by getting feedback from the attendees.
Why?
Anton Zaides sent me a message one day, telling me that he has an idea for a B2B product for me and that he would be the first customer to try it.
That caught my attention, and I thought: “why not?”
SaaS template course
What is it?
A course that teaches all the technical things I learned in the last year about writing a saas product, summarized into a template to build products that much faster.
Why?
As a solopreneur in his first year, my products made 0$.
I am eager to get some sort of validation, that my knowledge is valuable and I am doing something good.
The first dollar will do that. And writing a course is another venture I am giving a go to.
Social
Linkedin
These stats are with close to no extra engagement, besides writing posts and responding to all the comments.
I recently started spending 30-60 minutes a day engaging with other posts and people. We’ll see how it goes.
Substack
Same as the LinkedIn, I rarely engaged with anyone beyond the comments section.
YouTube
Final words
During this first year I learned a lot about entrepreneurship and how to sustain my mental health for the long run.
If you’re interested in all the mistakes wrote an article about that:
Shoutouts of the week
How to Start An Online Store With Just One Product by David McIlroy - David speaks about his one product that made the difference and throws in some valuable tips to use when building a product.
The hottest marketing trend right now (summer 2024) 🎢 by Tom Orbach - Tom keeps bringing up awesome ideas that just make you want to add them to your products asap. I love Tom’s articles.
Time management techniques that actually work by Lenny Rachitsky - 10 Fantastic time management techniques that I can confirm, from personal use, that work very good.
Wow, this was super interesting and helpful! My latest failed product was a long-form AI writing tool that helps AI write coherently without losing the plot for 3K or more words. Alas, my ICP turned out to be high school and college students who want to cheat on their essays, so I stopped promoting it.
Some of these products sound like things I’d use! Pinkypartner caught my eye. It sounds fun, although my wife might get pissed at me if I tried to make her use it. My wife didn’t grow up in the American hustle culture, so she wonders why I work all the time. The opposite of Pinkypartner, though, might be something like Relaxpartner, an app for couples to unwind together. Honestly, I could use that, and it might make my wife happy. We’re supposed to rest on the Sabbath, but I’m terrible at it, aside from my Sunday nap. Weekends are packed with errands and keeping the kids entertained, so rest gets pushed to the side. When I think about the apps I subscribe to, they all slot neatly into my day. If you can create something like that, even with a spiritual or religious undertone, it’s a niche worth exploring.