Since the Elixir ecosystem is great for getting applications up and running (and deployed) with relatively few devs, and since there is no abundance of vacancies usually, I started wondering:
How is your entrepreneurial spirits? Any ambitions? Experiences?
I’d love to work in a small team on something close to the heart (obvious maybe?) – that part of why I am interested in this question.
It all boils down to contacts, I found. Knowing people, having others spread the good word about you, and also hanging around with business people whom you might solve a problem for randomly.
I made 600 EUR a few years ago with a 3-line PHP code change and an advice how to asynchronously load JS on a front page of a website. I can’t have spent even 2 hours on the whole thing. Still experience that high every now and then when I remember it. 
Sounds like a great moment 
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Ever had an urge to start a b2c thing? Or b2b for that matter.
Yes but I don’t have millions in a trust fund so my financial tolerance towards a failed project is extremely low. When I accumulate some more leeway I would be down for starting something, and would definitely reach out to several people on this forum.
Too early for that right now though. Currently I’d just help somebody few hours a week.
I’m currently doing my second “side-hustle” project with elixir, my first one was a system I created for the crypto market using Elixir + Flutter. Basically my backend would run a bunch of technical analysis in real-time in all crypto markets available at Binance and allow users to subscribe to them or create their own.
If I recall correctly I was running more than one million combination of market, time-frame, technical analysis algorithm and inputs in a very small server.
The problem with that one is that I, unfortunately, live in Brazil, and after I was done with the project and ready to deploy it (took me around 2~3 years to finish it) I discovered that I can’t make any marketing related to crypto if my company is from Brazil, even if the marketing is for some other country, so without marketing, I couldn’t make the number of users increase the rate I wanted to make profitable and I had to close it.
After that I started another project in the area of education. It is a tool to help teachers that work with a lot of reports/feedbacks for their students. This one is written 100% in Elixir (Elixir/Ash/LiveView) and I think I will be ready to deploy it probably in about 1~2 months.
I feel that Elixir is an amazing platform to develop SaaS products, it is really fast to have something working and with quality code.
If you’d posted this a year ago I would have been interested. I’m after stable employment atm, though. Although there is always the chance I won’t find it and then will maybe be interested again 
It’s pretty brutal our there right now.
I started my own thing, supported by consulting. It is a lot of fun, eats up so much of your time but it is so nice being in charge and not having to ask anyone for anything, especially now I have a kid . It was a huuuge pay cut the first couple of years (lost about 70% income), though a fair chunk of that was spent away from work.
Elixir is great for it because it is actually enjoyable to write, you don’t want for much in the ecosystem and you can always just open up a port to something you or someone else has written in another language. Also, LiveView is a real time/sanity saver.
I’d love to hire but I don’t yet make enough off the software itself to do that. @sodapopcan seeing as you’re Canadian, would you be happy to work for minimum wage + tips? I remember making most of my money in tips when I lived there. It was a good time.
I’m hoping those days are loooooong behind me but you gotta do what you gotta do.
I think Elixir has bootstrapping built into its DNA 
You could say Elixir and Phoenix have become the life’s work of José and Chris, and that they did it not because some huge company was instructing them to but out of passion and a vision for something they believed in, something that could impact the lives of people in a meaningful way.
It’s one of the reasons why so many of us support them, and perhaps because we see a little bit of ourselves in them too. They are an inspiration to single person/small teams and those who want to change the world in ways where doing it on the fringes may be the only viable option - something we can do thanks to the power of Erlang, made accessible to us via Elixir and Phoenix (and everything else we have) through their influences from Ruby and Rails since that’s where many of us come from.
So yeah, I think there is definitely entrepreneurial spirit on the forum - tho I personally think we have transcended mere entrepreneurship because I think many of us believe in something greater, something where there is a principle higher than that of making money. I also think this is another reason why so many people love Elixir; it’s community in a much truer form.
How does one get tips if they’re a programmer? 
While my company did not start up with Elixir, we are now moving everything to it.
We will need one more Elixir dev later this year. So if you are not opposed to come to Aachen every once in a while, message me.
If you are gonna put up such a delayed job ad, you might as well also say whether the company would finance the occasional travel to Aachen. 
I’m not opposed to moving there. I’ll just need a visa (although I have a German name so maybe no one will notice). And a plane ticket. And a place to live. Oh, and to start being paid now. I’ll take it! I’m hired!
We do not have employees outside of germany right now, so I can’t say how that would be handled. If you are located in germany, you can offset the travel expenses against tax.
I share your perspective, I think Elixir can grow with individuals and smaller teams. Frameworks and educators should align with that. I’m going to make a project for it!
Yes. I’m working on “a thing”, where the ambition is both learning and financial. I’m transitioning out of 27 years of PHP dev, so the learning part is a large swath of the Elixir things (the language, Ecto, Phoenix and Phoenix adjacent stuff, the ML stuff, and likely oodles of libraries and new concepts along the way) as well as updating my UI skills (which stagnated in the mid 90s lol) and some business/marketing stuff. It’s a lot. It’s intended to remain a solo project for the foreseeable future.
Ambition is growing with every day. No real experience, except what @dimitarvp said, you need contacts.
For now I’m keeping the “secure income ™” but I’m dally with the idea to go full entrepeneur.
What are you all interested in? Things that you think of when daydreaming about building something new.
Let me give a personal example.
When I was a kid/teenager I used to write stories. I have become more interested in creative writing again. Not necessarily just the writing itself, but also how a community of writers and readers can benefit from what the internet, and tech more generally, have to offer.
I really like the tech side of being a web dev, but thinking about the value the web/tech can provide to a community is on my mind more and more. For example, for a community of writers and readers, but just as well for some other community.
There are many tech companies that claim some great goals, like connecting people in positive ways (for example listen to Mark Zuckerberg on Podcasts talk about this), but actually using these products has often disillusioned me. Other times some app or website really does provide value. Even if it is just a few creators on a platform, and not the platform altogether.
It’s a great feeling to be part of a community that shares excitement over something. And sometimes the only way to find that community is through the internet, since your interest might not be so wide spread.
I was surprised to find that even in 2024 it’s not that easy to find a healthy and happy community for any random topic.
Any thoughts?
By the way, another example personal interest is education. This is actually the field I have worked the most in.
Might need to wait for the hardware to catch-up here, but a decentralised internet would be a step in the right direction.
ATM the implementation of wide adhoc networking supported by personal devices acting as nodes, is not really facilitated by the wifi capabilities of smartphones, tablets etc.
I always wanted to improve all software in the medical field. I’ve seen first-hand old people struggle in hospitals and that makes me so sad, angry and wanting to do something that it’s really hard to describe then the feeling of helplessness because people who are not interested in the well-being of others will absolutely bury you under a mountain of procedures and regulations.
And I am pretty sure part of these procedures and regulations are VERY necessary – it’s about human lives after all. But from what I’ve seen it always seems like at least 80% of the rules are just bureaucracy that creates BS jobs so the headcount is high – which is apparently also linked to higher financing.
Corrupt self-feeding loop. 
I also always wanted to work on AI. And I mean true AI, not our current statistical programs. But that’s a lifetime pursuit and I am pretty sure nobody would pay my bills for my entire life for the 1% chance of me succeeding. I’ve made my peace with that fact as back as 19 years old (so 25 years ago) and was like “alright then, let’s be commercial, I don’t want to live off an academical wage” – and the rest is history.
You might consider starting another topic about that IMO, because it’s a huge tar pit and many of us would have a lot to say.
I’ll only limit myself to 3 paragraphs: I tried to discuss something Linux related on r/Linux and got absolutely crucified. Out of 200+ comments there were probably 3 people in total who genuinely engaged and tried to understand what seemed like a misunderstanding on my part – but was just everyone acting all high and mighty and not even explaining something they deem an obvious good practice (and when they explained it I laughed because it’s very far from a good practice but, people will be people; they were simply bullying a person who is not of their school of thought).
I ended up just deleting the account because 5 days later people were still stopping by just to insult, downvote, flag and report my post. I actually contacted the mods and explained that my question was genuine and I don’t understand the over-exaggerated negative reaction. You wanna know the mod’s answer?
“Agree with you man, and I’ve un-flagged your post. Just endure it, they’ll tire and stop.”
While that was nice to hear and a good validation – I wasn’t crazy. But again, it become way too negative so I just got rid of the account.
So yeah, this might be a factor: there are not too many old-school discussion boards (none that I know of anyway, and I know next to nothing so…) and too much negativity. Likely a lot of people being on Discord instead is a factor as well.
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