Should you launch your own product?

Perhaps you can do better on your own. But, perhaps, it's not a wise choice.

Should you launch your own product?

I am running a profitable software company for some 20 years now. The experience turned out to be pretty different than what I expected.

For most people, it's better to be an employee in a good company than starting something of their own.

Building software is a skill. Doing that daily for years can make you superhumanly fast and efficient.

In your own company, you are no longer primarily a software developer

In your day job, you whipped up features, optimized code, made software you were proud of. It felt good to be clever.

You are now jack of all trades and master of none

But you suck at so much else that's needed to run a company. You hate dealing with accounting and taxes. And you need a website - let's code one! And make sure people find your software - let's learn SEO. And your customers write to you every single day, discovering bugs your happy path usage does not expose. You have no idea about marketing, so you ignore it.

Suddenly you learn how much work was done to support your coding, on a daily basis.

So who should do it?

In the end - if you have to do it and you can't live without launching your own business - you should absolutely do it. You will grow as a person and learn so much.

But remember - they say entrepreneur is a person who works 80 hours a week so they no longer have to work 40 hours a week. Unfortunately, that's true (for a while).