from Hacker News

I quit my business to start an open-source dev tool

by kirillrogovoy on 8/10/22, 11:37 AM with 6 comments

• by Shindi on 8/10/22, 4:35 PM

  So wait, in your last venture you learned that you should do customer development on people who pay for products, not end users. And now you're deciding to make open source tooling?

  Who is going to pay for this?

  I was in your shoes, building products and tools and not going anywhere for months. I am also an engineer by trade. But building a business is not about engineering, it's about customers. You should have customers giving you real money or letters of intents before writing a single line of code.

  Otherwise you have a side project, not a business.

• by ianberdin on 8/10/22, 8:25 PM

  Hi Kirill. What a long story, nice to read. Thanks.

  As a man, who've building a product for 6 years, I understand you well.

  Keep pushing yourself. As @Shindi said, it is important to start from potential customers and their needs first.

• by phonon on 8/10/22, 4:42 PM

  Check out https://github.com/PostHog/hedgehog.vc

  What do you have to lose? :-)

• by avcab1984 on 8/10/22, 4:14 PM

  Surprised you needed to dip into savings. VCs and SaaS companies are like moths to flames.

• by warpech on 8/10/22, 4:14 PM

  I appreciate the Post Scriptum. Good luck!