Joel Spolsky became the reluctant face of micro-ISVs

The workload

Joel Spolsky's essay, written as the foreword to Bob Walsh's book Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality and posted on his own site on 11 January 2006, gives a short checklist for someone about to start a one- or two-person software company: name the specific pain the product solves, find at least one other person who agrees the idea has merit, and set revenue expectations low for the first month. Spolsky states these as his own personal checklist, not as documented requirements; the essay's underlying task is convincing a reader to found what he calls, reluctantly, a 'startup software company.'

What the documents show

Spolsky's essay states, self-reported by name, that he 'don't even like the term MicroISV,' explaining that 'ISV,' Independent Software Vendor, is 'a made-up word, made up by Microsoft.' He wrote the piece because Bob Walsh's book had already made him, in his own words, 'the poster child for the MicroISV movement,' not because he claims to have invented the term. A later post on the same site, republished in Spolsky's WordPress archive, carries the identical foreword text and confirms his continuing identification as co-founder of Fog Creek Software. Both are the same self-reported opinion piece, not independent verification of what one-person software companies actually earn.

The operating cost

The essay states a specific, self-reported dollar figure: a new one-person product will earn 'about $364' in its first month 'if you do everything right,' or as little as $40 if priced too low, or $0 if priced too high. Spolsky presents this as a personal estimate drawn from talking to unnamed entrepreneurs, not as a tabulated study, and the essay does not name a sample size, a time period beyond 'the first month,' or a methodology. No unit cost of running the business, hosting, support hours, payment processing, appears anywhere in the piece; establishing one would require a separate, later source.

The stop condition

Spolsky's checklist gives an explicit stop condition before starting at all: don't begin if the product's pain, audience, and willingness to pay cannot be stated in one sentence, and don't begin alone if not one other person can be convinced the idea has merit. He gives no stop condition for winding down an underperforming micro-ISV already underway; the essay's revenue progression, doubling every 12 to 18 months, is offered as an optimistic projection, not a rule for when to quit, so any exit threshold here would be an editorial addition rather than the source's own guidance.

• Can the product's problem, audience, and willingness to pay be stated in one sentence?
• Is the $364-a-month estimate being read as a measured outcome or as one writer's 2006 guess?
• What would the first three months of actual hosting, support, and payment costs need to look like to test the essay's doubling claim?

The essay is worth reading as what it plainly is: a named author's personal opinion, written to introduce someone else's book, about a label he says he never wanted.