It's not really a herd mentality issue, it's more like if I'm going to quit my already boring job to start a company, I need to be passionate with what my new company is going to do. Maybe most entrepreneurial devs aren't into niche retail software, they'd rather write something that's directly useful to them... like a to-do list.
I half-heartedly started down the path of researching and developing a couple of apps with this in the back of my mind. Rental property management software and janitorial service management sw was where I went. I had experience in both and areas and I knew that there's boatloads of money waiting to be made in just these two fields, but finally I realized it was boring beyond belief, so I lost interest.
And that was a big mistake! The mistake was in focusing on how exciting it was to write code for that domain but instead I should have focused on how great it would feel to help people in that industry with their problems. Approached that way it becomes, for me at least, much more interesting.
Going back to the article, I'm sure that many entrepreneurial devs would love to start a business in retail software if they deeply understood how much impact they would have on people's lives and livelihoods.
"- Look in obscure places- We're often fascinated with the shiny things in the internet industry. Many overlook the obscure and unsexy. Don't make that mistake. If your goal has primarily monetary motivations, look at the unsexy."
I agree. Writing an 'uncool' app that makes lots of people happy and is very profitable is preferable to writing a 'cool' app that no-one uses and makes no money (e.g. yet another Twitter client).
I hear this from developers a lot, but here's the rub. Developing software that developers find interesting is no different than any other highly sought-after profession. Lots of young people want to be rockstars too, but there are only so many rockstars among us. The same applies for software. There is only room for so many "social networking X" companies.
I hate to be the killer of dreams, but I've talked more than a couple of devs in to tackling less-than-interesting problems, with the promise that I'll do the footwork of getting the client on board for doing interesting things within their problem domain.
For my part, I'm fortunate that I find business interesting. It doesn't matter much to me whether the business is publishing books or facilitating purchases. I enjoy the landscape view of every market. When you step back and look at these varied industries, many are just as subtle and interesting as the companies that occupy SV. You just have to look at them with the right set of eyes.
> I hate to be the killer of dreams, but I've talked more than a couple of devs in to tackling less-than-interesting problems, with the promise that I'll do the footwork of getting the client on board for doing interesting things within their problem domain.
Are you still looking for any devs like this? I'd be interested in working on something practical even if not sexy.
