Are you a flip-flop entrepreneuer / junior programmer?

This article is for people just getting into programming, who want to get a programming job but also want to start a tech company at the same time (extremely common in my experience)

This is a snippet of advice from a senior developer, startup owner and programming instructor.

So you have a great idea for a project. That's wonderful! It's a great rush to be excited about a new product or startup idea. Before you go further, ask yourself:

A) Are you making that app to learn programming?
B) Or do you sincerely plan on launching a succesful startup of your own?

A) Is your aim to be employed as a junior developer in 6 months?
B) Or do you aim to be raising capital from investors with a prototype and a killer business plan?

So which one is it? Are you an A or a B? It probably shouldn't be both if you're just starting learn software development. At least not optimally.
Let's say you have two tasks:

1. You need to cook some spaghetti as your friends are coming over for dinner.
2. You need to have a shower before your friends arrive.

Oh, but you could do both at the same time right? Sure, chuck the spaghetti in the bath and it would get sort of cooked, and sure you'd get sort of clean in the spaghetti bath, but .. why would anyone do this?

It seems common that we mix up being a programmer and an entrepreneur. We have Mark Zuckerberg to blame for this I guess. These are however, objectively, two very different skillsets and worlds. They should be learnt separately. If you've barely done either, then trying to build your first company and product with skills that you dont yet have won't be a good way to do either and will just lead to frustration.

Keep this in mind.

Programming isn't entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship isn't programming.

And your future career isn't a weird analogy about spaghetti baths.

I've had this conversation a hundred times with bright eyed students of mine. (I'm also guilty of endulging in this fantasy).
This was the most recent conversation with a student:
"I've had this great idea for a homeschooling management tool for teachers and students during quarantine!, will you help me build it?"
"Who is the target audience? How would you monetise it? Which age ranges and regions would you focus on?"
"I don't know.. but we should just build it. Teachers and students need a shared calendar or something for managing classes right now. I just know it's a great idea!"
"How do you know it's a great idea?"
"..."
"Do you know what schools are already for managing students at home? Did a teacher or parent tell you that they need a solution like this?"
"..."
"How many schools have you called?"
"...."
"What's the competition like?"
"...."

"oh i think it would just be fun to build it, just to learn ya know.."

I googled the idea and found 4 established alternatives alone for this city, that my student had never heard of. Because googling and finding out that our special idea isn't that special, is painful.

After that we spent a while planning out a survey of questions to ask schools, and he agreed to go and call at least 10 schools and tabulate their answers the next day. The focus was on listening to their needs and trying to find common problems faced by school staff during corona-related lockdown.

By our next conversation a few days later, my student had done no research and was still telling other students about "the great idea" and about building his app, inviting other students to join him. It is cool to build stuff and fun to dream.

He had flipped to "it's just fun" while talking to me, and then flopped back to pretending that no plan was a solid business plan. The spaghetti bath analogy had struck again.

This is how entrepreneurs spend their time:
Talking to lots of people, researching. Being very critical of their own ideas, even throwing them away in pursuit of more realistic solutions, based on customer feedback. Being responsible for a company's finances, relationships with freelancers and employees, personal sacrifice, investing a lot of time and money into getting the company off the ground.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, those are the actions and behaviors that you should be studying and practicing. I'm definitely not saying you can't also learn programming either! It's a fine and interesting way to make a living. I personally love it.

Starting a business involves market research, competitor analysis, lots of customer interviews, pitching your idea again and again to unforgiving investors. Learning programming involves a lot of sitting in front codecademy all day (and asking me, your mentor, for advice )

You may feel like you don't want to give up your dream projects, or make hard decisions just yet. That's okay. You may have started out your project on the dopamine high of how great the idea was and the possibility of success, and that dopamine has kept you in the groove of learning and making something. That's great! It's also totally fine to build things just for fun. That's how I spend most of my time!

"Just building it" is cool to try out and learn new technology, but it's not generally how good products or succesful startups are made. Trust me, i've built hundreds of things this way.. and they're all just sitting on my computer or in my portfolio.. which is fine for what it is..

Be aware that if your goal is to become a real business owner, legitimatley trying to start a company, then building a prototype while avoiding everything else is worst possible thing to do. The product you choose to be should be the final result of all your hard work researching the problem area, interviewing customers, analysing competitors, and building a business concept.

Building a prototype is worthless if its all you have.

It may turn out that 6 months later, that your target audience doesn't want your product, or doesn't have the problem that you imagined afterall. You've just wasted 6 months of your own time and the time of whoever else you convinced to come along for the ride (don't worry, the project could look cool on your portfolio though )

Learning to be a programmer is one thing.
Starting your first company is another thing.

So would you like to become a programmer? Or an entrepreneur? Or both?
Get out of that nasty spaghetti bath and pick one for now, and give it your undivided attention for at least 6 months. You can still do both, but i really recommend learning in a more focused way, and then turn your full attention and new skills to your passion project.

Go and finish the whole "Front-End Engineer" or "Full-Stack Software Engineer" path on codecademy if getting a job is important or you're more interested in tech than dealing with taxes.

If you're seriously looking for the first step into entrepreneurship, your homework is to go and read this book, and learn how to do market research link
And if you're genuinely focused on researching and building a succesful startup, probably a more realistic thing would be to focus solely on that, and seek the help of an experienced programmer or technical cofounder to build a quality product with you.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that you could aim to be a technical cofounder. This means focusing on all technology-related tasks, creating a technical roadmap for the company, and providing your domain expertise to other non-technical cofounders. This still means you need to build up your technical expertise though. And finding a good cofounder to manage other non-technology related aspects of a startup is hard! There are a lot people in that category also with a lot of enthusiasm, but who still have a lot to learn regarding the day-to-day of running a succesful startup. And you'll be reliant on them to push the company forward just as much as they'll rely on you for all tech requirements. Something to think about.

If you have questions, or you're looking for an experienced entrepreneur programmer spaghetti mentor, please drop me a line.

Hopefully this post helps you think a bit about how your actions and expectations can sometimes be mismatched.

Oh wow I actually found a stock photo of somebody with spaghetti in a bath. have a great day.