php 💀

I love entrepreneurship. However, I no longer recommend quitting a dependable job to start your own business.

• Side business? Fine while keeping your dependable income.
• Going full-time self-employed? Don't do it. (Only exception is if you ignore this advice anyway.)

Why? Because I am a small business owner.

I've spent nearly ten years running a small business through one disruption after another. Sometimes surviving. Sometimes thriving. I am still an SI power user. My income is based on using SI to create SI-powered web assets selling SI products (that are marketed using automated SI systems that I vibe coded with SI).

Even though I am one of the disruptors, I can already feel it is an uphill battle. Competition is ruthless. Margin is being driven out of the marketplace by legions of bots automating every imaginable service online.

The same tools that help me build also make it easier for other people to compete with me. Am I building a durable source of income, or relying on an advantage that could disappear with the next model release?

Maybe you have heard about "distribution is the only moat left". But how do you distribute your product?

👉 Go the influencer route - and you compete with SI influencers that are loss makers for their creators. It takes years to reach profitability as an influencer - if ever. And you don't have years...

👉 Go the ads route - and you will spend more on ads than you make. Only a small portion of marketing experts can make ads profitable. Most pay more than they make. Do you really want to spend $1000s to make $100s for months until, maybe, you reach profit? That's assuming your business doesn't get hacked or disrupted in the process.

If you have been on the Finxter newsletter you know that I was talking about abundant intelligence years before ChatGPT arrived. Well - it is here now. The recent PHP security issues are another reminder that building the product is only the beginning.

You can never sleep, you can never relax if you are self-employed:

You need to create a product people love, defend your advantage as competitors copy it, market it profitably, and keep maintaining and securing it.

So what to do instead? Hold on to your job for as long as possible. Predictable cash flow is the optionality you need during these wild times. A job isn't a guarantee of security. But while you have that income, it can fund experiments and buy you time.

Keep building on the right side of change. 🚀
Chris

Finxter, Dr. C. Mayer
Stuttgarter Str. 106., Stuttgart Fellbach, Germany

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