David Vávra
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

I’m indie developer myself (we are a small startup now, but it’s similar) and I disagree with some of the points in the article.

Most of the points are valid — think about your app as a business, have a plan, don’t sacrifice your life for the app, have savings, fail fast, release early etc.

But what the article suggests is that only way to become an successful indie developer is basically to turn into a company you left. Maximize profit, throw away morality and ethics. It’s definitely easier to do it this way, but I strongly believe it’s possible to do all things “developer cares about” (interesting project, good code, ethics, personal reputation) and still be successful (financially). You can turn it into an advantage — larger company can always win by lower price, better scalability, marketing, partnerships etc. But you can win by staying true to your principles, build an strong relationship with your users, create some wow moments. You don’t need to build an app for everybody — just for a small niche of users which will love you. Big companies won’t see an opportunity there = less competition. But for yourself it could mean a comfortable life (financially) and a full-filling job.

You could overdo this and fail. If you rely on donations only for example. If you only contribute to open-source and think that that will save you. You need to be strategic, validate ideas, have a life. But it could be done without sacrificing ethics and puting profit always first. A good way is start the app as a hobby project on a side to your day job. If it doesn’t catch on, try something else. If it catches on and people are actually starting to pay you for it, it’s time to think about quitting your day job. I did that after 5 years with Settle Up as a hobby project. I think that quiting a day job just with an idea is very risky.

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    David Vávra

    Written by

    Google Developer Expert for Android, Founder & CEO at Step Up Labs, early adopter.