Building a business - 1

Starting a business is mainly so I can work on my own terms, so I have more control over (and get more satisfaction from) my busy-ness. Which raises the obvious question: what actually counts as good “work,” for me?

The ideal version is an expenditure of time, energy (thought and action) and resources, to produce something of value to other humans, for which they’re willing to give me money, during the process of which I get to maximise the things I want to do and be. Basically, kind of Ikigai.

The master plan meta is, I think, always the same: give value, get money, and hopefully nudge (and iterate towards) a better world along the way. The hard part isn’t the meta (it’s finding the specific thing).

What problems do I actually want to solve

Kinda following this video, my approach was to find a purpose in the things I already like doing and the problems I already know I want to solve, then build a business on top of that.

So: what problems do I want to solve? Finding your tribe, since I’ve never really felt like I’ve met mine. Knowing yourself, instead of going through life without ever experiencing anything like zen. Procrastination, especially on the big things. Improv practice (now this is a specific niche, and I’ll allow it). Learning by yourself, in a chaotic, constraint-free environment. Improving yourself, against the inertia of good enough. Having a positive mindset, always, especially when I’m not being kind to myself. Writing more, and writing better (also possibly a niche, but I’ll allow that one too).

Hmm, wait. I’ve talked about this with other people before. My purpose is:

Helping people with technology

Let’s get a little more precise:

Helping people make meaning in their lives with technology

It still feels a little too generic, and meaning is a lot of different things to different people, even if it can technically be abstracted into a few common categories. It sounds like I’m saying I want to create value for people, just in so many more words. Maybe I’m being stubborn with the exercise, like the time in a workshop when my answer to “What do you wish people would say about you at your funeral?” was “Oh look, he’s not really dead!”

Betting on myself first

Purpose is one thing; what do I actually do about it while delaying gratification? This part is maybe self-fulfilling. Something like this blog. Or maybe a stream where I solve my own problems in public. The point is that it has to be something I mostly enjoy doing, something I do diligently, like a practice, that makes me better over time, doubles as free value creation for other people, and triples as marketing material for me. Best case, that’s how I build a loyal following: being useful to folks by building in public. Worst case, I’m forced to confront the solipsism of my perceived utility, and either try something else or accept existing purposelessly.

I’m decent with tech, and I like attention enough to think I’d enjoy building in public (AI should make it less tedious too). I just need to mix that with my interests and lived experience: learning, teaching, improv, meaning. Applications abound. In theory.

Practically, that means I can start with templates. Most of these projects need the same basic scaffolding, so before I even build anything I can design the application’s purpose, its domain, and its data models, then standardise all of that into a templated system I can repeat easily. Build and host it off the mini PC (and Cloudflare), and step one is basically: start, and the rest will happen.

Working backwards from the customer

If purpose is the start, the other way to approach this is to work backwards from the end: who’s paying me, what are they getting, how are they getting it, what am I actually doing or making for them, and how did they find me in the first place?

Three ideas fall out of that, so far.

Unnatural Learning. Optimise your learning. For anyone who wants to seriously learn something and have fun doing it. Students use it free; professionals and parents pay me.

Unnatural Teaching. Maybe technically a manual transmission learning app. For anyone who wants to seriously teach something, do it well, and cut down the tedium of repeating themselves.

Unnatural Living. Optimise your life. For anyone who wants to seriously live to their fullest: a personal coach, an unrelentingly positive presence, a perfect memory, a sense maker, a borderline therapy assistant and research assistant, a timekeeper, a manager, a PA.

And then there are the fever dreams

Some of this doesn’t survive contact with the questions above. It’s duck logic, not customer logic: a magnifying glass ARI device. A GREAT self-manipulator. I’m not entirely sure yet what either of those actually is, only that the impulse to build them refuses to go away, so I’m writing them down before I talk myself out of it.

All of which is still just theory, of course. I haven’t put much of this into practice yet. This is the plan as it looks from before the doing, and I’d guess a good chunk of it turns out wrong once it meets an actual customer, an actual line of code, an actual Tuesday. I’ll update as I go.