Daniel Crenna

Code Soloist #2: Your lover has to love it

The short version: If your significant other doesn’t love your idea, you should find another one (a note to the hardcore: I’m talking about the idea).

I’m also not talking about that pre-adulthood kind of love for everything you do, but a genuine interest in what you’re proposing to offer the world. Even better would be that your other has a genuine use for the product or service when it’s completed.

Here’s why: essentially until the project is finished, this thing is taking deposits directly out of the relationship bank (unless you’re able to hit your stride in the hour or two a day that are stuffed between the cracks at dusk and dawn, in which case, I applaud you) even before any currency is spent. There’s the obvious time you’re not spending together, and the missing mad money, but then there’s the countless handfuls of inattentiveness, or the extra pile or two of laundry, that accumulate as you get consumed in the details.

Selling your idea to your other is great practice for sharpening your vision, but more importantly, a successful sale increases the chances that it will have an impact in the non-technical universe (read: most of it). This lends some much needed enthusiasm for something that will strain your relationship if it isn’t carefully managed.

Code Soloist is for single-person software development companies that are trying to start something big with their bare hands. In it, I try to impart whatever I’ve learned, for better or worse, doing the same thing badly.