I would look onto Udemy, and just see how many people have bought and reviewed the course. Also the ones that say “2023 edition”, if you buy them you buy every update after that. So if they make a 2024 update you’ll automically get upgraded. I bought a python course in 2018, and I checked my account and there was 2023 version there. You also wanna take a look at the length of the course. Honestly they are all gonna be the same, it’s a matter of your own drive to make the most out of it.

Honestly a CS Degree will prob not be an excuse to jump to intermediate, a reason I rage at Job listings requesting CS Masters students, where a programming diploma will suffice. I would personally start on Web before Mobile, because mobile is os dependant often.

If you still attend school, try getting linked in Learning using your school email. Free for all students, you may still have the benefit.

Otherwise take a Udemy course on Intro To Web dev for 15$ finish it in a week, and then Jump into React or Angular. I’ve helped CS students with their projects and studying, and while they’re learning the most complicated parts of Development, the result is just math with code. You’d fully utilize your degree creating the BIOs for motherboards more than you would with creating a website. In my 4 years of development, I’ve never had to used any math harder than a quadratic equation.

You should be familiar with Fiverr, and their strategy. Essentially they advertise products sold by profiles on their website. You want to advertise on behalf of either the business looking for a service, or for a freelancer looking for work. I would choose the business who needs a service.

HERE is what you do: Cold email a bunch of businesses, quickly tell them about your product, and give them this offer:

“We will pay to advertise on your behalf, to help you find a contractor/freelancer who will _______. You just have to commit to your budget in advance we will credit you on the website. Then use our platform to hire a freelancer/Contractor”

They would give you their budget of 10k or whatever. You use advertise “Free lancer wanted on ______ project, signup before deadline!” AT THE SAME TIME you will run ads saying: “(Niche of BUsiness) uses our platform to find (Contract type) for their product” EX: “Restaurants use our platform to find Graphic Designers for their Menu’s”

The Graphic designers will create an account to be eligiable for the Jobs you’ve found through cold email. Which will be your starting point for other businesses to access a pool of Graphic Designers.

Once the projects are complete, you get testimonials and you use that to market. Make sure that the first few jobs completed are done by freelancers who have signed up and have been vetted by you.

You can also partner with established freelancers to create your starting pool of freelancers. Then advertise to businesses that they are available. You won’t need a huge amount of free lancers. Free lancers and contractors don’t like over saturated markets. So your ratio between jobs and people looking for work should be 40% contractors : 60% businesses looking to hire.

I love a good book recommendation, especially in this community! Imma add this to my list.

I would recommend a tactic most marketing agencies use to get their initial batch of Email addresses for email marketing. They essentially offer a Free e-product (PDF, template) or a product give away. Take your niche, create a PDF book, bundle of instructions sheet, online course or Template outline, then offer it for free to the first 150 (Scarcity, you don’t have to limit it to 150) users that use the app.

For example: If your app helps fitness trainers get clients by providing free workouts with an upsell to a 1 on 1 Training with Trainers.

You can create a PDF bundle of 10 templates that can be used to track progress at them gym, and maintain a caloric deficit. I know a fitness trainer that would gladly give me all their templates, and let me give it away for free. You would advertise the price that the customer pays if they would go through a fitness trainer: $40/hr * 2 hr/week * 4 weeks a month = $320. Then offer set your offer as

“Free 4 Step plan to abs in 6 months fitness guide! $320 Bundle used by Top Rated Trainers for Free on our paired Fitness App!”

This above example may not work for you, but you’d quickly get a bunch of people who’ve been quoted $400+ by other trainers on the app.

I have been tricked by 2 university ‘Incubators’, that support young entrepreneurs, but in reality they do the bare minimum until you succeed and they can slap your logo on to their website. I don’t know, either I’ve read so many books that their advice was a fraction of what I already knew or they’re genuinely shit. However these incubators are great for making connections and networking, but that’s a bi product of being in a room of entrepreneurial people.

I’d love to offer you some advice:

1. You don’t have to be Techy to succeed online, Jeff Bezos started Amazon as a the least technical website. He would wait for an order, go find the book at a nearby bookstore, and ship it to the customer at a markup.

Related to your issue:

1. IF they’ve created a product that’s similar to yours, you need to go right back to the contract you signed, because they may have already added that “any product that is produced through the program is owned by the University”.

2. Just cause someone else has your product doesn’t means it’s dead. Uber is a better app because they had to compete with Taxi services and their other competitors. Door dash came after Uber eats, and had a record breaking Market Share increase from their launch to now. Never before seen has a company that joined the market second beat the leading company. Use your outside perspective of their product to better refine your product.

3. Work fast and work harder, universities are known for creating products that are over marketed and under delivered. My college marketed “THE BEST HACKATHON EVER”. The Hackathon was a pre recorded lecture from a business professor teaching his students, that you had to watch then create a slide show using the teachings. It was shameful and horrific.

Good luck and get the most out of their program so that you don’t waste an opportunity that 10k brought you. 90% of startups fail, but the more startups you start, the more experience you build onto the next one.

I’d like to see this community have incubator type events where people share their ideas looking for collaboration, something live or interactive.

I agree, if you’re going to work hard make sure it’s for the right reasons. You can work 50 hours a week as a waiter to build capital, but if you’re working 50 hours a week to accomplish your first million then you’re working backwards. I’ve been trying to start a software development business for 3 years, however I’d be working 40 hours a week for just one client, unless I had a team I can’t scale. However all that I’ve learned, I’m considering becoming a tutor for new grads who want to create triple A project for their resume. I can scale the tutoring business but not the software business.

This is the right idea! ‘If you haven’t tried you’ve already failed’. You have no idea if your product will crash and burn. I’ve looked at Notion, Udemy and Discord as competitors when coming up with ideas for my business. Because while they have market share, they have to many voices in their crowd. With a smaller market I know the real features that will impact the most people in my community. Creating a Notion Dupe but for tutors to interface with students is only useful in my field, and while not grossly profitable, i can iterate slowly to create a product more and more students and teachers like.

Move your product to a different demographic, that may not have access to your competitors. I was worried about the competition as an online Coding Tutor until I realized my entire Apartment building was an untouched market for in person tutors.

I think you know more about finance and business than you give yourself credit. Most businesses are ‘keep doing what brings in the dough’ if 16 year olds are making money through ecomerce I think you’re fine. Keep at it

(Not healthy but I wanna share) I work from home and I eat Cereal for breakfast, make myself pasta, hotdogs, or a chopped cheese sandwich for Lunch, and Dinner is left overs lol. I find that fruits are great for recovering energy so I always have grapes or cut apples next to me after lunch. You waste too much time going out for food, would recommend you just meal prep for the week. Or even practice making dishes you love until it you automate to making it while working, (pasta) or within 15 mins (chopped cheese sandwich)

Update your Paid Screen and advertisements to show features that you don’t have yet. Then before the user gets to entering the credit card information, require they answer: “What feature made you want to sign up”. With a multiple choice with all the features in the paid plan. If it’s a feature that isn’t implemented, offer a free month trial so that you can include the shitty version of the feature into Software. (DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME). If they subscribed with a promise of the feature then they desperately want it, and will survive with a shitty version. When you get enough people coming to you for that feature then invest time to make it better.

Update these fake features every week until you get a feature that gets a lot of registrations. Then invest your time into adding that feature. For all you know nobody cares about another image generator, they may want… a video game asset generator 🤷‍♂️ or Instagram Background generator inspired by current instagram, or an AI image to Coloring book generator.

You should read Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Maybe a cliche recommendation, but it solves the problem you’ve run into. All those crud products you’ve mentioned were stepping stone for someone’s bootstrap career. In terms of “building something that doesn’t exist” that is a risk that not even Apple or Google would commit to. Most the products you find have surpassed the CRUD building phase that would motivate you, and reached a phase where they can pay thousands to sell you an end product on a google search. There’s a resume website I found that is so CRUD, it says ‘AI’ but it’s just a long form where you fill out information and a button that rephrases using GPT-3.5. It’s beyond simple but every week I see a new feature that is available they’re testing for retention. I would’ve requested a refund but in the second week they added ‘Monthly Resume Review by a Human’ which kept me from leaving. That feature over time will be apart of their collection of features that have been proven to attract customers.

Eric Reis talks about how you should create a MVP (Minimum Viable Product). A product that is so simple (To do list) that periodically (weekly) has features added to a A/B testing pool to see if it increases retention (Invest more time) or doesn’t account for increased retention (drop it and move on). After a couple of years that Todo app becomes Notion, a fully realized product that initially charged 4.99 for a CRUD markdown viewer connected to a git repo. Based on their own data they realized their customer base was NOT interested in styling font so they reoriented. Facebook and google use this concept all the time, the like button was created this way. Initially a redumentary feature with just a single functionality that increased retention which produced further investment to become the cornerstone of all social media today.

Consider creating a publicly creating a new app every month. SOOOOOOOO simple, don’t even create an app, create a PWA (Progressive Web App) It’s a website that behaves like an app and users can create a shortcut to it on their Lock Screen (acts just like an app), then let the audience choose its direction. If the product doesn’t get an attention of an audience, then you’ve saved an entire year devoting yourself to a product that fundamentally didn’t have interest.

PWA Example: (This will blow your mind)

• Goto the instagram website on your iPhone,
• press share on safari
• save to homescreen
• save
• Open the new home screen app
• Watch as it opens in a separate window with no URL search bar and no Safari Interface. Starbucks created their app in 2017 like this.

(P.S) Notion didn’t start as a TODO list, but as a mark down website maker. However you can conclude with a Notion like product from starting at a TODO app. Also Door dash came after Uber Eats but now has a 60% market share, The top 10 delivery apps found their own footing by listening to a different market. Uber Eats listened consumers and DoorDash listen to restaurants. CocaCola markets to the youth and Pepsi markets to the boomers (Thus their failed BLM ad).