YouTube Deep Summary

[00:00] This is your typical developer. And this is your typical developer experience. You're 12 years old and you made a video game. Cool. You show your friends and they think it's cool. Cool. But there's [00:13] a problem. Your game is only on your computer and your friends don't have your computer. They have the 2010 fourth generation 8 GB iPod touch with Retina display. You decide you should make an app. Then everyone can play your game and you can sell it and you'd be an entrepreneur. Making a game is [00:30] relatively easy and making an app should [00:32] be similar. But you soon realize the most difficult part of this is actually getting your app on the App Store. All aboard the burger train. Open up the tunnel. To get your app on the App Store, you need an Apple developer account. And an [00:48] Apple developer account costs money. Like a lot of money. Like almost as much as you spent on your 2010 iPod Touch 4th gen. You get the idea. But you got to spend money to make money, right? Oh, [00:59] yeah. And definitely put your dad's name on the account because you're 12 and feel like you're doing something you shouldn't be because only adults do this sort of thing and you don't want to get sued as a kid because you don't understand how laws work. It won't bite you in the butt in the future when you're trying to convince Apple Sport this is actually your account and not your dad's. Cool. You have an app. Actually, you [01:17] have a bunch of apps, but you don't make [01:19] any money from your apps because again, [01:21] you're 12 and dumb and no one's paying [01:23] for whatever this is. But that's okay. It's cool. You know how to make apps. Fast forward a bit and you made some games, entered some competitions. [01:31] Nothing too exciting. And you're getting close to graduating college with a degree in computer science. Time to start thinking about a job. Except you don't want a job. Nobody wants a job. At least not a real job. [01:47] And you don't have to get a real job [01:49] because you're special. You're unique. You're an entrepreneur. And unlike before, now you're prepared, older, more mature, and basically a 10x principled engineer with a decade of coding experience. So, it's decided before you have to go out and get a real job, you're going to make a little app on the side to generate some income. Nothing crazy, [02:13] just enough to keep you afloat while you [02:15] create something you actually want to [02:16] make. You take an online course to learn how to make a real app and realize you may have learned more in one month of doing this than all four years of college. By the end of it, you have a basic to-do list, but not just any basic to-do list. Your basic to-do list. And you know what would make those apps you actually want to create easier to create? A good to-do list. Not like that [02:36] other junk you tried before, but [02:38] something you'll actually use. You'll turn your basic to-do list into a good to-do list because you have such great ideas. Like how a normal combine has three list and you're rewarded for each apartment. Uh what what's that? Nobody cares. [03:00] Right. Your plan is foolproof. People pay for to-do lists made by random strangers. Right. I mean, you don't know anyone personally, but they must be out there. And besides, if it's a flop, [03:10] you're really just making this for [03:11] yourself anyway. It's a win-win. And it should only take like a week tops. You already have the core functionality done. This is just to get a feel for the whole software as a service thing anyway. [03:28] [Music] [03:41] You realize no one knows you or your app [03:44] exists, but that's obvious. And and you can fix that. You just have to put it out there just by ads or something, right? Let the magical ad AI find your magical customers that pay for to-do lists made by random strangers. So, you hire a voice actor on Fiverr, make a quick demo video, and begin paying for ads. [04:06] Okay, little setback, but no worries. This is just to learn anyhow. You did learn your lesson, didn't you? You tell yourself, "No one clicks on ads nowadays. This isn't the early 2000s. [04:17] You need to do things differently." You begin researching on how other solo devs market their apps and learn that in this modern era of internet marketing, if you want to sell something, you have to sell yourself. You need to be an influencer. You learn about build in public and see guys on Twitter making tens of thousands of dollars a month with websites made in PHP. Of course, you can do this. You've [04:39] been coding since you were 12. You can do what they do. You're talented. You're special. You're an entrepreneur. But [04:44] wait, before you put yourself out there, [04:46] what if it works? What if you actually get famous? You don't want to be too famous. That'd be annoying. You decide you better make a faceless persona just in case. Then you'll be safe from the [04:56] evil scary internet. You begin posting every day on Twitter. You make a YouTube channel and post a bunch of audience relevant videos there. You build in public, nothing. You then look back at all your tweets and all your videos and all your posts and delete everything. [05:14] This same cycle happens a couple more [05:16] times, changing some things here and [05:18] there, but eventually you decide it's [05:20] time to put this dream on pause and [05:22] maybe just get a real job. The most useful thing your app can do for you at this point is be something to put on a resume. And lucky for you, it works. You get two serious job prospects. One, a stable job and an established company with good pay and benefits, easy work, flexible hours and locations, and you'll get to travel. Two, a startup that pays [05:41] significantly less. You pick the startup. You don't care about silly things like money and good healthcare. You want experience. And experience you get. You work with a [05:52] small team of insanely smart people and [05:54] see how enterprise level apps are made [05:56] from the ground up. And more importantly, how much they cost. You thought you were a great programmer because you were creative and can solve complex problems. But you now realize that's only half the battle. And the spaghetti code you wrote as a solo dev is actually not great. Over the next [06:12] four years, you learn best practices and [06:13] development, start thinking about [06:15] scaling, privacy, security, and you [06:18] learn so many other things that you've [06:19] overlooked in the past. But while this job gave you an incredible amount of experience and knowledge, the lack of pay is starting to hurt from inflation. Inflation inflation inflation has been higher than You pride yourself in trying to live humbly. But you'd be lying if you didn't admit to feeling jaded at times, especially knowing that former classmates, the ones you used to tutor and let copy your assignments. They now have low stress jobs and are making significantly more than you are. But [06:46] there's no need to be bitter. Don't play the comparison game. That's not going to help you. Maybe it's just time to get another job. But you like your job. You [06:54] like your boss and your co-workers. You can't really put a price on that, can you? Also, you already know this code inside and out. You created it. You don't feel like learning something new, being a cog in another company, and adding to and fixing other people's code. You want to be the one who adds [07:08] the bug for people to find years later [07:10] while you're long gone and onto [07:11] something else. You're burnt out. And why waste more time and energy just trying to make someone else rich? Maybe the only way to get the value you produce is just to do it all yourself. Okay. Okay, fine. Let's do this. You're [07:24] ready now. Now you're ready. Once and for all, you are ready to be an entrepreneur. You decide to make something small, something proven. You would like to make something for a business because businesses actually have money and are willing to spend money to make money, but you don't know what problems businesses have. You're [07:39] not a business. You're a consumer. You know, consumer problems. You know what? No, you are going to make something for a business. You're going to make [07:46] something safe, something of value. A Shopify PowerBI connector with real-time data polling and pageionation. It'll be easy. You can sell that with a little old school email marketing. Relax. You're just over complicating it. [08:00] Just make a dumb chat GPT singlepurpose [08:02] utility in PHP like those Twitter guys [08:04] do. Like what? Like I don't know a YouTube video summarized. That's useful. People surely use that. [08:10] Okay, that's on me. That was dumb. But focus on your strengths. You're a person with real problems. Solve those. Focus [08:16] on your hobbies. You know, things you're familiar with, like lifting. You can build a better AI fitness app than those ads you see plastered all over the place. So, just do that. Make a fitness app. An AI fitness app. The world's [08:25] simplest AI fitness app. Let's do it all again. Pay a guy on Fiverr to make apps. Ah, yeah. He just used Cap Cut and threw something together in like 10 minutes, didn't he? That's all right. They should [08:33] still convert. I mean, that's what the magic AI is for anyways, right? Okay. Don't cut your losses. Keep running those. This is just all part of the [08:39] process. It's normal to not have any installs. This is just the learning phase. It didn't work. Uh, well, maybe just make some ads yourself. Something [08:45] more personal. Remember, you still have to spend like $350 in 14 days to get that $375 free ad credit. You don't want to You don't want to stop now. You got to keep going. Yep. That's normal. Blood [08:55] pressure high, finances low. It's ironic. You spend so much time making an app to help your health and you completely neglected your actual health. Regroup here. Just use your brain. You [09:02] can't keep running those ads. You've got to make something people actually want to give them what they want. Give them a little brain. Maybe tell your story. Another speed design. Okay. Uh really [09:17] a typical developer.