Building a Business First Mindset as a Software Developer

I’ve been working professionally as a software engineer for over 3.5 years. On weekends, I’ve been building prototypes, mostly as a way to learn how to turn an idea into something real, explore a new technology or solve my own problem.

But now that going from idea to a bare-bones V0 has become drastically easier, the more important question is:

What’s actually worth building?

So before jumping into code, I’m forcing myself to answer a few hard questions:

- What clear problem or pain point is being solved? (Focus on the problem before the solution.)

- Who exactly is experiencing this pain? (Who are we building for?)

- Is it a problem people are willing to pay to solve? (How deep and urgent is the pain?)

- Can customers be acquired profitably? (Is the cost of acquisition lower than the value they bring?) The goal of this exercise is simple:

A mindset shift → From writing code to building a product to building a business.

This may seem rudimentary, but definitely a great starting point in developing shift in thinking.