Why I started solopreneurship and why you should think about it too.
If you’ve read my previous newsletter issues, you know how challenging 2023 was for me.
In particular for one of the two unexpected events: being fired in a layoff.
It was the first time it ever happened to me, and it sucks.
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t feeling comfortable in that company, the culture, and the engineering mindset were not aligned with my expectations.
I thought that in a startup I would have had the possibility to make an impact, much more than in a 1000+ employees tech company. I was wrong.
It’s not the size of the company, but the company culture to determine if you’ll have the possibility to learn, grow, and have an impact on the product and on the people you work with.
Lesson learned.
But at the same time, it was the real proof that full-time jobs are not secure at all (especially if you work for a US company—per my experience).
I knew that already, it's no accident that I started building my products on the side of my 9-5 job. I started in 2019.
Why did I start solopreneurship?
A couple of reasons.
#1 the so-called rat race.
This metaphor shows the usual life of a person, trying to make more money to spend and save more, trying to live a comfortable life, and competing with others to get to the top of the pyramid (more power, more responsibilities, more money).
Those positions are usually limited in number, and the accessibility of them doesn’t completely depend on you—there are external factors.
Plus, working for others (the employer) means investing years of your life and selling your time (and your expertise) to grow and make better something (a product, a service), that someone else will benefit from (the owner).
It doesn’t sound exciting and like a good investment of my life.
#2 the millionaire fastlane
It was 2017 when I read for the first time this book, suggested in a podcast.
Everybody wants to become a millionaire. It would make life easier, and you could even think of retiring early on.
This book makes it super clear the chances you have to become one with different lanes.
Job career (slow lane): few seats available, uncontrolled external factors, 20/30 years
Freelancer (slow lane): you have more freedom but you’re still constrained to your time
Inventor (mid-lane): patents are a great way to create a passive income for years
Entrepreneur (fast lane): especially with scalable solutions (online) you can get thousands of customers
This analysis was like a slap in the face at that time.
Let me highlight that the author of this book leveraged the dot com bubble in the 2000s in the US—timing and location are everything—becoming a millionaire under the age of 30 with an online limousine rental business.
And that entrepreneurship is not easy at all, but it’s supposed to be the fastest way to achieve that goal.
This was how my mindset shifted from a career path to solopreneurship.
What were your motivations to start the entrepreneurial journey?
As you know, I have a couple of ways to help your solopreneurial spirit.
Shipped.club is the Next.js boilerplate that includes all you need to build your product, ship it in a weekend, and finally validate your product idea.
It is meant to be used by developers (even beginners) and people who want to get hands-on with coding.
It provides detailed documentation and a private Discord community, where the members support each other, and I help you bring to life your product.
The second is Userdesk, the AI Assistants platform to automate your leads collections and your customer support for your digital business. I recently added a ton of new features and a brand-new analytics section.
Next Thursday, I’ll be launching Shipped on Product Hunt, if you want to support me, please follow me on Twitter / X, and I’ll give you more details.
That’s all for today.
See you next Sunday 🙌
Luca