Ask HN: Should I switch from software eng if I want to be an entrepreneur?

[lmdol]

Hi everyone. I'm a software engineer with 2.5 years of experience. I've built a lot of frontends, backends, and I can take care of DevOps/infrastructure stuff.

I'm wondering if I should switch careers (maybe to sales/marketing) in order to learn new skills. I don't want to be good only in software development. The cons of switching careers would be that right now I work remotely (so I have time to spend on side projects) and I earn good money (so I can save).

What do you think?

[LouisSayers]

My advice: If you want to be an entrepreneur, then be an entrepreneur. Don’t “switch careers”, just be an entrepreneur.

Find and talk to people that have a problem, and come up with the simplest way possible of offering a solution in exchange for money. Ideally the v1 solution doesn’t involve creating any software.

Regardless of what you do you need to be able to cover food, rent etc. Whether that is living with your parents, working as a software dev etc you need some way to survive as you work on your business. Make sure you have that covered.

Find mentors for the areas you are lacking, get their feedback if you can, and learn as you go.

Optimise and prioritise your life for spending as much time as you can on your business. Only work as much as you need to survive, cut out Netflix and other less important things (yes even if it means limiting socialising), and work on your business. Don’t worry about automation or scale until you’ve started making money in your business.

Make progress every day no matter how small, and if you’re serious make adjustments when you need to but never give up.

Good luck!

[ralala]

What you describe sounds dangerous if overdone.

Acceleration is very important, but it's even more important to be able to keep going for a long time. If you cut down Life-Balance to hard, you might give up before you reach your goal.

[jptoor]

This is well put and concise.

On the mentor note, even if you don't have a formal mentor relationship, most people are open to discussing their roles and responsibilities.

Depending on the firm, even more would be ecstatic to talk about a specific idea or side project to provide their input on marketing/strategy/finance. As long as you come from a place of genuine curiosity and not "tell me exactly what to do for free," almost everybody wants to help you.

[0xfaded]

This is correct, find a problem worth solving first and ideally know your first customer before you even start. The pitfall that I as a transitioning SW eng fell into was to build the most challenging and complex solution I could and then find a use case. Don't do this, find a problem and solve it with the simplest solution you can.

[uxcolumbo]

Great summary.

What are your ways to find people that have a problem?

How do you avoid potential burnout if you spend as much time as you can on your business.

[medialucky20]

I personally feel, entrepreneurship is learning on the way as it demands. You never know everything or your acuired skillsets may never be sufficient to be successful entrepreneur. As you build your product, keep updating your knowledge in other fields like marketing and sales. If you build really useful product you definitely get succeed even with no prior experience on marketing because people buy it.

Coming to making some money, you can use your strength so you don't spend too much time or energy in making money and use rest of time on your project

[kevsim]

Completely agree. I’ve been in engineering and engineering management for years, but starting my own company has forced me into a whole new skill set, particularly around getting distribution for a SaaS product. It’s all hands on a deck when you’re trying to get the word out about your startup

[hazz99]

I think learning some of the theory and models around entrepreneurship is really valuable.

Its incredibly important to have laser sharp focus, but focus is easy. The hard part is figuring out what to focus on. Prior work can give you very helpful tools to figure that out.

[econcon]

I moved to partime work as my software job was getting boring and mind numbing.

Yes I ended up working remotely from a suburb where I could buy more land for my experiments and hobbies.

Now I am selling 3d printer filament that I manufacture in my garage lab:

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

I don't know about you but I like experimenting with processes and turning them into something that could be sold and something which people will pay for.

[kanobo]

I'm not a great software engineer, but I find engineering a great tool to learn new subjects. For example I built a sheet music analyzer in the browser to learn music theory and it forced me to really understand the subject matter. I would suggest you use your talent in engineering to tackle a project related to sales/marketing and trust me you will on a path to becoming an expert. Maybe a product will come out of it?

[giantg2]

You could look for a job as a 'sales engineer' or similar. You would work with the sales team to make sales by giving demos and answering technical questions. This would be a good way to watch sales techniques being applied and decide on how to transition. Making friends on the sales team could build your sales network too.

[nicholas73]

In the end you have to play to your strengths and do what you enjoy. If you think you would like a sales role and a sales driven company, then go for it. If not, you are spinning your wheels for a chance to glean something. If it's an avenue you would take anyway, then you have more possible positive outcomes.

[sdwedq]

You can learn sales and marketing when you have a product. In mean time, read books on these topics.

[iamricks]

I would argue the opposite, you can have the best product in the world but if you don't know how to get it in front of people who need it, who cares.

Make an MVP and try your best to sell it, if you cant sell the MVP its probably not worth it to continue to work on the product.

It's important to validate your ideas before going head first into something that nobody really needs/wants

[hazz99]

Listen to this. Sales and marketing mean nothing without a product.

Focus on creating value. You use this value to market and sell.

Jobs/pains/gains is my favourite way of thinking about this, but everyone has their pet frameworks.

[rubicon33]

Any suggestions?

[zubairlk]

After being where you are a few years ago, I'm 3-6 months into entrepreneurship journey and can share thoughts.

Incoherent Mind dump incoming

Some people want to jump from job to product/own startup.

Personally my risk appetite is low. So I went down the job -> consultant/freelancer -> agency route.

Next step is product but not sure when.

I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve soft skills.

Conferences travel, trade show advice is correct.

Trying to be closer to customers advice from others is also correct.

Most advice works. But nothing beats real experience.. you can only prep so much.

What I wish I had done better before taking the jump

- build LinkedIn/Twitter/any following audience. - throw myself out there with a blog or something.

The above are two you can do right now.

Find me on LinkedIn. Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel. Happy to connect and share more thoughts.

Thanks

[troughway]

>I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve soft skills.

Since you're doing a mind dump; do you mind sharing some of the books that stuck with you?

[matt_the_bass]

Stay in tech role but figure out how to get closer to customers. Find a position that allows you to go to a few tradeshows (whenever those happen again). Trade shows are a great way to get some experience learning about how to learn about customer needs.

[jack__]

I don't have much entrepreneurship experience but I'd suggest, find a problem. Narrow it down. Find the MVP(Minimum Viable Product) and MVA (for Minimum Viable Audience, reminds me of 1000 true fans), and start charging... Iterate and iterate, keep track of what's working and what's not... It's like finding an answer to a equation in MCQ, exam, where the faster way is to just put the values in the equation to get the results instead of solving the equation from scratch.

[krm01]

Almost always, the best entrepreneurs end up being people in a particular profession that identify a problem and build the solution. They dont choose entrepreneurship.

[_448]

There is something called "TME" i.e. Technical Marketing Engineer. Some big companies have these roles that are a go-between the technical teams and the prospective customers. Try to find these type of roles. Another option, as suggested by other here, is to collaborate with the sales team to help them in understanding technical details of the project.

[nicholas73]

I've done this job. Sure you do learn some sales, but you don't really practice it. Nor does it necessarily expose you to market needs that aren't going to be covered by your bigco.

[throw03172019]

Sales is something you will learn while being in the trenches. You’ll learn something new on each call/meeting which will help you on your next sale.

I am an engineer with no sales training and I’ve learned how to sell (good enough) to get us to the point where we can bring in a real sales team member.

[DougN7]

IMHO there aren’t that many concepts to learn in sales and marketing that it’s worth switching careers. Eric Sink used to (still does) had an excellent blog series about marketing for engineers. Great place to start if it’s still out there.

[libertine]

The value of marketing degrees is mostly understand de fundamentals human/society behavior, as well as communication processes. It's boiled into sociology, psychology, anthropology, semiotics/semiology, etc.

Technical marketing (narrowing it down to digital) is pretty dumbed down these days, specially with setup wizards. So execution wise, any tutorial can get you up and running.

What you're executing on, that's a different subject, and I dare to say most people do it because it's "what marketing people do".

I tell you this as someone who was on CS and switched down the line to Marketing and Advertising degree - was painful coming from a sciences background, because of social sciences, yet I found both experiences great and such path gave me quite a unique understanding/perspective of the how the world, and how we, function/work/interact.

Plus a lot of things became extremely easier for me, while others struggled.

But I agree with you, I think OP should maybe try to find someone with marketing background to work together with and pick his brain/learn from him.

[thomk]

Don't switch. Having a skillset like software development will help any other endeavor when the time comes. If you are good enough at coding, and you like business, sooner or later you'll learn what you need to learn.

[calebkaiser]

In general, I would say no.

You're 100% right that sales/marketing/growth skills are necessary for building a startup, but I'd offer up two key points:

- Your product is everything, and having a gifted engineer fully bought in to developing the product from the jump is a huge advantage for any startup.

- Running growth for an early stage, 0-to-1 startup is not the same as doing it at a larger company, where you're likely to get a sales/marketing job.

All of this is just my experience, but I think the only way to learn how to grow a new startup is to do it. The biggest advantage you can have in that situation isn't previous experience with sales cycles or PPC advertising, it's the ability to build a great product.

TLDR: Continue to develop as an engineer, learn the business side when you decide to start a business.

I should also add, however, that if you're unhappy as an engineer and that sales/marketing seems attractive, that's a different situation altogether.

[diegoperini]

> ...and I earn good money (so I can save).

This is the first safety net you will be sacrificing if you do the switch. Make sure your decisions are informed enough to make it worth the risk. Good luck.

[mharroun]

I would suggest joining a very small startup that will let you learn/observe from watching others tackle those challenges.

There is a a lot to learn and it can shift greatly as a company grows.

[raztogt21]

Easier to teach an engineer sales/marketing, than a salesman/marketer to build. Don't switch, just learn.

[sheeshkebab]

No