Day 386: If I Hired People

There are many things I want to work on, like mobile versions for Intention and Hide Likes, that simply don’t happen because I’m a solo developer and I only have so much I can work on in a given amount of time.

I’ve been wondering whether I should hire people to work on these projects so that they can make progress even when I’m working on other things like Browserflow.

Christina recommended that I find someone to build the premium plan and payments flow for Intention because that should be pretty straightforward. I’m inclined to agree, although I always had in mind that I’d want to include multi-device syncing which does require more extensive plumbing through the extension as a paid feature. Maybe I can add it on later. With my mind on Browserflow, I’m not giving Intention the attention it deserves, and it feels like I’m doing myself a disservice by not making it financially sustainable (especially when people have reached out asking how they can pay and support the project).

There are several parts about hiring someone that makes me uneasy:

• I’m not making enough revenue to pay them, which means that I’d be paying them with my own money. That’s fine because it’s an investment, but it feels scary to be sinking thousands of dollars for a potential payoff
• Vetting people seems like a lot of work
• Getting someone familiar with the codebase feels like a lot of work
• Communicating what I’d want built feels like a lot of work

But in the long run, it’d be less work than doing everything myself because I’m clearly not doing it.

I think I’ve been valuing frugality / reducing spending too much at the cost of time and opportunity. Maybe I should set aside like $5,000 and commit it to using it for getting external help so that I force myself to explore this option instead of putting it off. Of course, part of the reason why I’ve done everything myself is because I also enjoy it, but things are getting to a point where I feel like I might be my own biggest bottleneck.