The One Change You Have To Make as a Solo Dev
Why your developer instincts work against you.
Hey there, Solo Dev 🧱
I know if I am doing good work at my job.
As a solo dev?
I'm not even sure I'm solving real problems.
Validation is simple on the job: does the code work? We even have (SHOULD HAVE, at least) tests to give us instant feedback. We control the variables.
Building my own product? Completely different game.
The way work is validated has changed completely.
Last week I talked about the fear of building in public. But there's something even more unsettling that I didn't mention: the validation you're seeking has fundamentally changed.
It's not "Is my code good?" anymore. It's "Will someone actually pay money for this thing I'm building?"
“Am I wasting my time?”
And that question is terrifying because all your developer instincts work against finding the answer.
Everything we’re used to doing for validation? It’s wrong.
As developers, we're trained to minimize uncertainty. Write tests. Handle edge cases. Build robust systems that work in every scenario.
But market validation? It's the opposite.
Market validation is about embracing uncertainty and being wrong publicly until you stumble onto something that works.
You have to show incomplete work to strangers. You have to ask uncomfortable questions like "What would you pay for this?" You have to build "good enough" instead of "perfect."
Every fiber of your developer brain screams against this approach.
And you’ll spend more time questioning if you’re solving a problem than actually solving it.
That’s what nobody tells you about the transition to solopreneurship.
You’ll have a crisis of validation. The uncertainty is too great to avoid it.
You need to constantly ask questions:
"Would you actually use this?"
"What's the most frustrating part of your current workflow?"
"If this existed tomorrow, what would you pay for it?"
These questions feel foreign when you're used to requirements documents and clearly defined acceptance criteria. They’re not technical questions. They’re human questions.
And they're the only questions that matter now.
But you’re still you’re gonna get humbled.
Realizing that your clever technical solution might be solving a problem nobody actually has? Humbling.
I spent weeks building things I thought were useful, only to discover that no one cared. The technical elegance I was proud of? Irrelevant. The edge cases I'd carefully handled? Well, without users it never even matters.
That's a hard pill to swallow when you're used to being valued for technical expertise.
And the impact of being wrong is often very different.
As a developer, being wrong usually means a bug report or a failed test. It’s fixable, contained.
As a builder, being wrong means you might have spent months building something nobody wants. The stakes feel higher because the feedback is more personal.
But here's what I'm learning: being wrong about market fit isn't failure. It's information.
Every "no" teaches you something about what people actually need. Every awkward pricing conversation reveals how much value you're really providing. Every user who doesn't convert shows you where your assumptions broke down.
Getting those “no” answers is the first step toward turning them to “yes”.
You have to adjust to the new loop.
I'm still adjusting to this reality myself.
Instead of "write code → test code → ship code," it's become: "Build hypothesis → test with users → learn from feedback → adjust hypothesis → repeat".
We’re no longer out here developing, We’re experimenting.
It's messier. It's more uncertain. It requires you to be comfortable with being wrong more often than you're right.
But it's also the only way to build something people actually want.
Being a solo dev changes your identity.
The hardest part isn't learning new skills. It's accepting that your identity has to evolve. You're not just a developer who builds things anymore.
You're someone who has to understand problems deeply enough to solve them for people you've never met.
The uncomfortable truth? You won't know the answer until you start asking others. But you’ll learn so much doing that.
See you next Saturday!
Rasmus