Technically yes, but the batteries on bikes are better protected, higher up, and usually of better quality than cheap scooter batteries, that are low to the ground. It's more of a statistical decision.
I have some of my old contacts from my prior life flying airplanes for a living. I started there because I know the field extremely well. These are my first customers so far.
The first thing was just some really simple stuff a bush airline I used to work for needed too, like, their software is through a DB run by this other company, they wanted a status board customers could view. That shouldn't be a huge lift, but the company that runs the enterprise software doesn't have the time to build it.
I sent a series of emails, got permission to hit the API, and was able to connect things so now this little bush airline has a customer facing schedule app and people don't call the office 30 times an hour to see if the flight is late or on time or early. Even in the middle of nowhere, if they have Wifi the can check the flight schedule on their phone. That has spread to "hey, do you think you could use this data to auto-populate flight and duty logs?" Yup, not a huge deal. Then onto the next one. Every month it seems I take on a new project for them and the scope of their tooling keeps growing and the recurring costs I charge to maintain things is low enough where I'm worth it. There's a dashboard of data science stuff, then a compliance auditing tool, and the list of bespoke features that are critical to them continues to grow, and they continue to pay me. It's pretty cool.
This has lead to another customer pinging me that wants me to work on an app for their factory floor to help their technicians. Nothing crazy, just a kind of wrapper over USB tool they have and a CRUD app. 99% of the real work is going to be testing out like 30 different layouts and making sure that it works properly in practice, but a big company would never bother to do this. I will go down to their factory this week, set up computer, and talk with their technicians while I vibe code it out with Codex and draw process diagrams and think. 90% of it is really just thinking about what's a prudent choice.
The SaaS the first company is paying for is incredibly necessary to run their business, those guys will probably have their hooks into that operation for many more years because of the inertia to change, but there is tons of room to fix some of the little small annoyances that not having bespoke custom software creates. Also, the software they are kind of locked into is 10s of thousands of dollars a month. I reckon in the long run I'll end up trying to build a replacement for it entirely then charging way less to give them exactly what they need.
Then there's the existential angst of vibe coding this stuff. The truth is, I could write all this code myself. It's mostly Python, and JS, but it would take me a month to do what I can do in a week and I'd be working myself to the bone. Instead, this is more like an extremely fun part-time job that's growing in scope and pay but not growing in time required of me. Seriously, these tools are cool! They're like I have a team of idiot savants/interns working for me but the entire company so far is literally just me and my wife (and she isn't really involved in the technical stuff at all). Codex is dumb and does not understand the use case at all, but good lord does it churn out boilerplate code that solves real engineering problems for customers. My job is largely playing "software plumber foreman" and making sure all the lego pieces fit together nicely and that they're good architectural choices.
For example, I was skimming the code base last week and noticed a ton of just unused code from an early iteration. I spent a bunch of time pruning that as a human, then also having codex refactor code smells I didn't like. "This file is ridiculous, it's like a monolith of 30 different concepts hammered into one place - refactor all this stuff and spread it out, move function X to a separate file, use a functional style" etc. Stuff like that is kind of mandatory, otherwise your codebase will give you a stroke and you can grow it to an extraordinary size that will hurt your ability to iterate because you'll be running into context length issues. But the robot doesn't do too horrible of a job.
I could write all of the code, but the customers don't care if it's written by a human or not? They just want it to work. So I spend a lot of the time coming up with test-cases, then interactively evaluating what the robot is building? Kind of like a really slow REPL? But I'm definitely less of an engineer and more of an architect now. That pains me a bit? But all things must come to an end.
One thing I'd say is important if you're going to do this... use the dumbest possible solution you can. You'll need to specify that to these tools otherwise they'll build you a cathedral? You probably do not need some monster system with 80 layers of abstraction. KISS is important.
Thank you for the detailed response! My background is Ruby on Rails web development, but I started vibe engineering add-ons to my wife's dental practice software lately. Tools to reconcile payments and open invoices, by reading straight from DBF database files of the ancient Windows desktop app. Windows tray apps cross-compiled in Go from my Mac. Things that would have taken me weeks to learn the boilerplate previously. Only possible since about December. Wild times.
Least I can do! And that's awesome! You could totally make money at that.
I think the key is to not think that you need to build some crazy big SaaS app that you're going to charge $1000 a month for or whatever for a product that isn't specifically tuned to the specific customer. That world is fundamentally dead outside of some niches, so your value comes in building some bespoke tools that EXACTLY solve a problem the customer has, and charging for maintenance on it.
If I can keep this going, I figure I'm physically capable of supporting about 5 to 10 small businesses with this strategy, which by the time the dust settles probably generates something around $3000-$10,000 month depending on how much they want, etc. And a lot of this is going to be recurring revenue to maintain various things and produce new creative solutions to problems, so even though I won't be clacking out the code on my keyboard as much I'll be thinking about things much more than I was at my old job.
You could probably "scale" this model or whatever, but I honestly don't really want that? Everything that gets big like that turns to crap in my experience. So, I'm going to try to be a boutique and do a good job. The other thing I'm doing along the way is reinvesting in myself with education. If you pour your wallet into your head, nobody can ever take it away from you. This sort of "bespoke applications engineering" or whatever is going to grow in scope too.
Right now it's just software, but in a few years someone is going to need to set up the robots at Bob's grass cutting service or configure the drones for Steve's delivery service. That's going to be me.
After that though, the economy probably breaks? And I'm fine with that too - it'd be nice to step off the hamster wheel, but I can't yet.
I have had sporadic problems with Vodafone Germany’s IPv4 routing for months, sent detailed analyses and refused in advance to pay for any technicians they might send because the problem could not be on my property. They sent two technicians who confirmed my view. Then they charged me 160 EUR for them without fixing the issue.
1. State stat the error also occurs with the Vodafone router.
2. that you already have done a factory reset of the Vodafone router.
3. that you already have turned your Vodafone router off for 24 hours and it didn't fix the error.
4. that you already talked to the hotline multiple times.
After that you have to pray that someone with the same problem comes along and endorse your problem. Like, "I have the same problem since...". This sometimes conjures a Vodafone guy who tells you he has informed the technicians. Than you have won and within less than a day the error is gone.
I was six month without IPv6 even though the error message was clear. The forum route finally worked.
They are NATing the IPv4s, i.e. multiple customers are sharing the same IPv4, which can cause problems. I called them and told them that I absolutely need to do port forwarding and asked nicely if I could get an exclusive IPv4. The support said „Of course, let me check the box in the UI for your account, should be active by tomorrow“ and done. You have to get lucky to get someone who understands your problem and is willing to fix it, though.
What a great color scheme! Changing colors over the course of the article makes it all a bit more fun and quirky and stand out against common templates.
If you don't want (or able) to use the 'app store app' what the options are there? What options would be when Google/Apple make a smartphone (and an app on it) a requirement, in the name of security?
I have no doubt luck was involved. I hit the market at a good time and gained traction quickly. I have done zero marketing and customers come in through word of mouth and via search engines. Surely there was luck in there.
As for choosing the idea-- that was more systematic. I chose a service that solved a real pain point for many companies in a specific industry. I chose it because it because:
1. There were many competitors (10+). That meant someone was making money, and more importantly, someone was spending money.
2. The industry/customers had a very clear channel for early word of mouth/traction (ie, it was easy to reach the customers and say "hey look at this solution for X").
3. A cottage industry exists around the industry. There are many "influencers" and training seminars, conferences, etc. Once my service gained some traction it was easy to stick around because people kept talking about it at conferences. I also gave access to these "influencers" for free.
I'd say stick to B2B, and look for 1-3 from above.. those are ideal for a solo-SaaS product.
As @lorenzk said, thanks for sharing your experience on these things.
You also taught me something meaningful, and you didn't even have to do anything!
I was curious about what kind of product you've made and started stalking your comment history to see if I got some clues about it.
I eventually reach a comment from you (on a thread about a dev. who got his Apple account cancelled) to which I replied ... like ... this ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38395858
<clown face>
I wish I could hide under a rock now, lol; but on the positive side I feel like I learned how/why one should be more measured in general, to avoid ending up looking in situations like these.
Congrats for shipping whatever it is that you do, and thanks for the life lesson on the side!
