I've always been interested in building developer tools, I did it at the beginning of my career, 4 years ago, but I've always thought it was a "bad market", a "small one", "there's no money in it".
I've been, secretly, working on a tool while working at a startup and bootstrapping my own startup (my hours are 8am to 4-5am), for the past couple of months, but it has always been kind of a disappointment when I try to think on how to create a business out of it. With these investments - Meteor, 10gen, and the Github rumor - I, definitely feel more encouraged :-)
The plan is always bootstrap - of course - since I don't have a track record, I'm not a ex-facebook employee, nor went to a top CS school.
Since, I'm not from the valley, or any tech hub by that chance, I haven't been able to understand the "industry". I think I get it now, it doesn't matter what you make (money) and the fools that ask "What's the monetization strategy?", you just need to create something very cool that you and other people find useful. I might be wrong but that's my observation.
"you just need to create something very cool that you and other people find useful."
No. You need to convince investors that whatever you have is "cool" and "useful", even if it burns money.
Derby is cool. Express is cool. Knockout is cool. There are so many cool, free, open-source libraries. It has become crystal clear that getting investment is about being on the inside, having a hip website, and valley celebrities saying good things about you.
Thanks for that comment, it expresses exactly how I'm feeling towards this. This is stupid and pointless. Instead of developing a framework I should be designing a beautiful website, fuck features, it's gotta be good looking!
There is no money in developer tools. Maybe libraries, but add on tools, no. First, your market is way smaller than "people". Second: 1. Nobody believes they need your tool. 2. They will convince themselves they can do better in a weekend. Third, your customers will be total assholes, because every tiny bug is something "that never would have happened if you had any quality controls at all." Fourth, the people who will use and benefit from your tool and the people with budgets are generally totally separate, which may have major marketing/sales implications.
I could go on, but don't want to get too down, but it can be a very hard market.
I've been, secretly, working on a tool while working at a startup and bootstrapping my own startup (my hours are 8am to 4-5am), for the past couple of months, but it has always been kind of a disappointment when I try to think on how to create a business out of it. With these investments - Meteor, 10gen, and the Github rumor - I, definitely feel more encouraged :-)
The plan is always bootstrap - of course - since I don't have a track record, I'm not a ex-facebook employee, nor went to a top CS school.
Since, I'm not from the valley, or any tech hub by that chance, I haven't been able to understand the "industry". I think I get it now, it doesn't matter what you make (money) and the fools that ask "What's the monetization strategy?", you just need to create something very cool that you and other people find useful. I might be wrong but that's my observation.