Many people get into software engineering to build startups, but few succeed. I spent 5 years coding side projects before I could fully support myself from them. This is why I kept failing.
“When you build something for yourself you have much intuition for how to design and market the product. This is better than any market research you can do.” Love this
more videos like this please. i wanna make my own business but i'm working full time at the same time. so few progress on my projects and i need motivation, seriously
will kwan thank you for being so transparent and honest about yourself it takes so much courage you have my full respect. im not even into coding and entrepenuer i just want to live off photography but still your videos teach so much about how career works. your existence is truely valuable for others.
You hit the nail on the head when you said the bit about developers thinking that adding features is productivity. I also liked what you said about leveraging social media, it's super important. But how do you balance the other hats you have to wear as an individual entrepreneur with building a social media following? It seems like such a big undertaking to create quality content. Also, as much as I like the idea of building a following, Id rather work on my business than in it, and doing something like a RU-vid channel seems like a huge time commitment that requires my own personal time and attention. How do you handle something like that?
I love this channel, also I don't think that any other channel that I have came across, Which have the this look in the eyes like it will kill you, if you don't watch the video completely... 😂😂😂
I am not a genius or even a crazy hard worker like you. But my logic is that: the money is in the people. Not the tech. Understand the people, understand why they do or do not do something . Then you build your stuff based on that knowledge. And that's it. Do you think that your addiction to DOTA is a random phenomenon? Nope there are people at Dota or Facebook or Kings (candy crush) who's job is to make people addict, with science. A book " Hooked" explain that . Good luck you deserve to make it bigger . Peace.
I think DOTA being addictive is a pure accident. Dota was made by hobby programmers in 2003 and since 2008 the core gameplay has pretty much stayed the same. It just happened to become the best map for WC3
Yes, the core mechanics are more or less the same as the original Dota. But there's a been a lot of development around that, many features, the feel of the game, the sound (don't underestimate sound) etc... that are designed to be addictive. If Dota was still the same old game with just better graphics, it wouldn't be anywhere nearly as popular.
@@Sevendogtags Good take actually. I'd still argue most addictive games are not intended to be so. It's mostly after the fact that people have studied the properties of addictive apps and games.
100% my story through yours. Hated mobile games, but loved game dev. Start with simple concepts and get use to failure. Failing is upwards in software development. Wish you the best of luck in the business, hope to see you in it someday.
you are so right. i just feel that without a good mentor and a good story most people have to go through this themselves. you have to figure out how not to do something. thanks for the super inspirational video. rock on!
Cool video and thanks for posting. IMO, another reason why (fellow) software engineers struggle with startups/entrepreneurship is they can't sell. Not to throw darts, but the email pitch you did is a perfect example. An email pitch should be at most 3 lines selling the end result which you did address in the vid, after the fact. Typically developers are introverts and reserved and don't know the value they bring, not to mention outsourced labor is buckling the market. But thanks again for posting, I'm going to watch a few of your other vids in the near future!
Right now i'm exactly in the position you described with super aquarium. I'm developing a web app and the product is completed, but instead of showing it to people and start promoting it i'm adding features day after day without even having any feedback on usability or anything. Thank you for sharing your experience , dude!
I quit a great job a couple years ago to start my own company and create an app called Sybily, which is a very different concept for social media. You give excellent advice on entrepreneurship and the challenges you encounter in starting a company.
Isn't your app just Facebook but the privacy controls are based on how much you interact with someone? why would people completely switch to a new social media out of the 1000s that are already available just for weird privacy controls. surely people that care about privacy would rather decide themselves went to share different stuff?
Hey Will! This was very helpful for me. Thx for sharing experiences! I do not code or publish, but your message is valid over many fields of creative works! Thx
How do you get the graphic assets for your games, do you hire someone to make them or you make them by yourself? That's the part I'm struggling with...
Men, please do more content. I'm so glad that youtube showed me this channel! I hope in the next series you will lunch a multi billion start up! Good luck!
I work as a software engineer but I want to sustain off personal projects alone. That's why i watch videos of people like you who enter the wild wild west of indie game entrepreneurship. I like your speech. It's really what I wanted to hear. I think you want to make more indie games since you talk about it so much
Everything you said in this video that was just me, I spent a lot time and money adding features after features to a product that was cool but actually useless and didn't solve any problems
It´s great to hear real life examples, thanks for sharing your experience! I was just hoping you had said the formal concepts, so people could look it up, like MVP, user testing, user research, ux writing, user flow, growth hacking. At the end, your main problems was because of design, that just shows the importance of a really well done research before beginning the development.
Thanks for making this video. I'm a visual designers that's interested in app/game development and I'm always curious how developers/programmers think and work.
Any tips on what to do if someone steals your game concept? (Like what happened to you with hasty enemies) It sounds great to share your game protype on sub reddits etc. as you mention, but I'm somewhat scared of someone stealing my ideas. I see that this could be a more general problem than just when it comes to mobile games, but wonder if you (or anyone else) have tips/experience with this and how to deal with it
Will on a similar path. Four years of university, one year at a startup and now I'm working full time in my startup (documenting the whole thing on my channel) . Would love to get your thoughts 🙏
6:50 Dude, you cant say that you are working more than your audience :D You can but dont expect people to like that, even though its probably true. Also dont be a cheap, hire someone to do the front end development that will put as much energy and thought into it, like you put in functionality of your projects. Just my feedback to your amazing content. Keep it up I really believe you will make something big.
