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Yep, and that's what I love about software. If you build and sell something on your own, pretty much everything is profit. You don't have that in many industries.


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That's not making money off software. That's making money off software AND business efforts.

I didn't say selling software, I said make a profit with a software, which needs to be functional and good enough for people to spend money on it

Do we work in the same business? Software almost always has incredible ROI.

As someone creating software in that industry, I agree. Although my team recently made a large dent via a selling a chunk of our software to an industry leader.

Everyone is writing software too, but that doesn't stop us from making money :)

You can have the best performing software in the world and it is still worth exactly nothing if you can't sell. The reality is that cheaply developed software that sells well is usually good business.

That's a pessimistic and limiting attitude, sir. Software is a great business because it's easy to copy; analogously, so is the web because of its scale. Most of the work goes into developing, setting up the system. The rest of the work goes into watching and maintaining it while you either build the next thing or sit on a beach. If the latter can be monetized, that's arguably a valid way of generating passive income.

You profit? That's what every other company that sells software does.

That's not developing software, that's selling it.

Of course it is. Software has a very high margin. You could get by with a skeleton staff, and make a nice profit.

That's why VC loves software, no billion dollar factories to build before you can start selling a product.

I have a different philosophy: before you can build something that people love, you need to build something that pays the bills.

Most software isn't loved; it's not even liked. But if it does the job, you can sell it and they will buy it.


Yeah, but what about us who are building software to make money?

If the software makes money for the business, it is an asset.

If everyone had to sell their own software themselves, a lot of good software would never be made. Don't discount the value of a curated marketplace.

I sell my own software.

and also selling that software

I think you misinterpreted my words. I mean, if you want to make money from software you should try to make money from the product you are building, not from services you (or everything else in theory) can give about the product.

So you can focus on your product and make it better and better.


You can also make a lot of money today by selling your manufacturing off and watching it relocate to China.

There's a balance between monetizing before the next quarterly earnings call and developing a real product.

I believe free software is an industry-wide sea change and any company that fails to adapt will go the way of the dinosaur.

I've also seen plenty of people try to argue that you can't make money on free software. I'd like to discuss it – anyone around here feel that way?

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