The Beginnings of My Accidental Entrepreneur Journey

I exited my software business after three years of building it.

But how has it started? Did I have a well-defined plan? Have I conducted thorough research before selecting a market to address and a problem to tackle?

The short answer is: No.

I am an accidental entrepreneur.

Picking the path to the top of the mountain is not easy - Generated with DALL·E

I graduated as a Software Engineer but never worked as one. I worked as an IT Project Manager and later as a Product Owner because I have always been more interested in coming up with ideas, talking to customers, and making hard decisions. However, I enjoyed coding and worked on hobby projects frequently.

The idea for the software I later sold found me, and I did not go after it. My parents have an accounting firm. One day, my father asked me: 

'Could you create a small software that transforms this XML file containing invoice data to the format of our accounting software?'

'Well, Dad, it sounds easy; what's the catch?'

'Nothing really; there are only a few rules to map the values.'

So, to make things enjoyable for me (and for other reasons that I will discuss in the Technical Difficulties), I installed Go on my computer and wrote my first lines of code in this superb language. Then, on a cloudy weekend, I created the XML converter, which runs on the command line.

'Hey, Dad, I have finished the program!'

'Thanks! I might need another just like that...'

'Ok...'

'Just a bit more complex...'

'Sure...'

'I have already tried two solutions. The first one was in an Excel sheet, screaming random VbaScript errors every time I tried it. The second one works, but they charge so much that we would be better off hiring some trainees to do it manually. Both are missing key steps and need much manual work.'

'So you say I should try it even though others failed?'

'Oh, I'm sure you can do it. All you need to do is match bank transactions with invoices and load them into the accounting software.'

'I guess the transaction comments often identify the invoices...'

'They sometimes leave them out. Oh, and sometimes the payer is different from who got billed.'

'...'

'...and they can settle multiple invoices in one go. Or pay with a credit card. And, of course, there are the package couriers...'

'Do you think I can come up with a better algorithm?'

'There might be some more edge cases... [There were many - Tamás] I think you can get it done quickly [It took two months - Tamás].'

When I had finished my initial solution, it looked like this: you had to edit an XLSX file (the configuration) to point to the accounting software, set up manual rules, select your input files, and drop them on an EXE, hope for the best as a command line window showed how the program franticly works its way through them and generates an importable file.

I held a small demo for my parents, showing how it handled all the edge cases. They were amazed. The UX was terrible, but I reduced a week's work to an hour. My mother told me I should sell it to accountants; they would pay good money. I jokingly told her that's what every programmer's mother says to their child.

But I wasn't an average software engineer working on a one-off program. I was a product person who was spending time not only coding but also doing market research. I reverse-engineered the competitors' solutions, studied their business models and marketing channels, and collected industry surveys and statistics.

I knew it was a sellable asset, not because 'my mom said so,' but because I recognized the underserved niche market and had already proven that the core of the business could not be built quickly.

All I needed to do was to add a GUI layer. And set up a landing page. And create a system for registration, license management, and payments... And I still needed to come up with a business model.

Ok, so there was a lot more to do, and as I was only working on it nights and weekends, it took almost a year. Finally, on the days when the world went into its first global lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was ready to launch my product to the public in one of the worst possible times. After a year, I had almost 100 customers. Another year later, more than 200. I signed a deal to sell the product to my main competitor the following year.

In the meantime, there were many decisions to make and areas to explore. I will write about them in separate articles, so feel free to follow me as I share my experiences of becoming a solopreneur. 

More articles on my journey selling my software:

• Picking the Right Business Model and Pricing

• Technical Difficulties

• Marketing and Selling Everywhere I Can

• Handling The Day To Day Business

• Building With the Exit In Mind