I'm working for the best boss in the world!

Myself!

Starting up is difficult to grasp for some people, for example my parents. They seem to think, from the empirical evidence and what they see me doing and (so far) achieving: "so, being self-employed must basically mean to live on a level of bare subsistence in terms of earnings while refusing state benefits (but accepting the occasional parental financial support) and working through most of the waking hours instead of a nice comfy eight-hour day, three or four nice comfy weeks of holiday a year, in a nice comfy office, with a nice comfy car and the conveniences only a proper day job can offer."

I haven't quite managed to explain effectively to them what this is all about. Now I have finally found a good explanation of why software entrepreneurs work the way they work, by a guy just nick-named a guy over at The Business of Software:

If you are a programmer, then you work for pay.  If you are a business owner, you work for equity.  It's always the assumption that the business owner adds more value, and the programmer is a commodity to just build out the great idea of the business person.  But that is not really the case.  It takes a lot of money to build a product, 100's of thousands usually.

That is why we programmers can make microISV's.  We have the ability to build the product ourselves, saving those 100's of thousands in money, and instead investing sweat equity.  Then we teach ourselves marketing and sales.

 

Well said!