Evan Carmichael says a software company needs two things: a complete skill set beyond coding (leadership, sales, marketing, strategy) and a clear purpose. He joined a biotech software startup without technical skills but handled business development and PR while founders coded. They landed NASA and Johnson & Johnson as customers before selling the company.
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How to build a successful software company? So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Ahmed, who wrote in to say, "Hello Evan, I'm a student from computer science and I love computers and IT. I wish to do something in this field. In the video you mentioned the software company, could you please tell me something about it or how to do business as a software developer? Thanks a lot, Evan." I'm in. This is a great question, and a lot of people wanna get into software. And to build a successful software company, you need two things. You need to have the skillset needed to build a company, and you need to have a purpose that everybody's rallying around. So what you have here now is you have some skills, right? You're programming, you're a software developer, you have all the IT skills. So you have some of the skills that you need to build a business. What you need to do to be successful is to have all of the other skills around you, right? You need the leadership, you need the sales, you need the marketing, you need the customer support skills, you need the strategy, all the things needed to build a business. And you may be weak on those. You may have an interest in learning those things and getting better at them, or you may think, you know what, I have no interest in that stuff. I just want to cut code and build awesome software. So to build a successful company, you need that complete rounded skill set, and it may involve bringing on other people who have those skills to complement you. The second thing you need is The purpose, like what are you here to do? What is your company all about? What kind of amazing software do you want to build? And having a clear purpose will make it easier for you to stay motivated, but also easy to attract like-minded people with complementary skill sets, right? So if you're going to be the developer and you need somebody to do the sales and marketing, why am I going to come and work with you? It's because you're standing for something important, right? You're— the purpose of your business is important. You're going to be adding a lot of value to people's lives, you're going to be changing the world somehow. So understanding that clear purpose makes it easy to attract the people around you who have complementary skill sets and believe in the same thing. Okay, so again, you need to have the right skill sets on your team, and you need to have the core purpose everybody can rally around. So my background, the first company I had, the first real company that took off and did well, was was a biotechnology software company, and I joined— I wasn't one of the founders, I joined as an owner later on— and the two founders had created a great piece of software, and what I loved about it was that it was doing good. It was research software to help scientists, and the software is being used to try to find cures for cancer and AIDS and diabetes. Important stuff, right? I wanted to feel When I was in university, I wanted to feel— I still do— but I wanted to feel like I was doing something important, right? The work I was doing was meaningful and I was having a positive impact on the world somehow. That's what I wanted to feel. And so I love that about this company. I had zero background in computers, zero background in software. I sucked at science. It was my worst subject in high school and I dropped it as soon as I could. So now to be, you know, an owner in a scientific software company is almost a joke. I'm sure my science teachers would have laughed at me and said there's no no way that's even possible. That wasn't the skill set I was bringing, right? I was bringing the business development, the PR, the marketing, the strategy, that stuff. And I believed in what the company stood for. So combined, we were able to build a successful company. We were able to get NASA, Johnson Johnson, big companies on board in over 30 countries and blow this company up in a short amount of time and then get acquired. That's what makes a difference. It's not just having one skill, it's having that skill, surrounding yourself with complementary people, and standing for something important, having a key purpose of driving all of you forward. That's how you build a successful software company. Belief. For those of you watching, like the video, you can support me by clicking on the link in the description. Leave a comment, let me know what you think, let me know if you have any questions. And if you want to see more videos like this, you can click on my face. To subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
