Ask HN: Becoming a successful solopreneur
3 comments
This is what I do as well, so I'll chime in with a few more upsides. (Honestly, I haven't yet found any downsides to bootstrapping vs. going the VC route, so I can't list any).
As a single founder, you get the maximum leverage out of being good at what you do. The ratio of deadwood at your company is either zero or one, so as long as you are in fact genuinely good at building things, you can get things built a lot faster than you'd ever expect to see at a larger company.
You also get maximum control over what you're building. No cramming in dumb features that don't fit because somebody in marketing decided they might be a good idea. No stepping on anybody's feelings by cutting a feature they wanted or abandoning their vision for what the product should do.
And of course you get to play on the whole stack. You get to make the schema changes for that new feature, as well as the back end, layout, and all the fiddly javascript bits. And you get to market that feature and handle customer support for it and play Social Media Coordinator. Racking servers, conference calls with Fortune 500 CEOs, it's all your job.
Best of all, you get to decide how much of your life this thing is going to take up. If you're the kind of guy that needs to pour 80 hour weeks into his baby, sacrifice all his free time, lose his girlfriend, and live 100% for his business, then cool. You get to be that guy. Or if you're more of a "roll out of bed at 10am, check HN over coffee, spend a couple hours on a feature then head out to the mountains because the sun's out" kind of guy, then cool too. You can be that guy instead.
Whichever path you take, chances are you'll find your way to profitability at some point. And when you do, those profits all flow directly into your bank account. Granted, your "impact" might be "limited" in as much as you might never become a billionaire. But hey, a few hundred grand a year will buy a lot of beer.
And since it's really hard to set things up in a small SaaS business so that they consume more than a small fraction of your time once the basic product is out the door, you'll have lots of free time to contemplate where and how to consume said beer.
All the best!
As a single founder, you get the maximum leverage out of being good at what you do. The ratio of deadwood at your company is either zero or one, so as long as you are in fact genuinely good at building things, you can get things built a lot faster than you'd ever expect to see at a larger company.
You also get maximum control over what you're building. No cramming in dumb features that don't fit because somebody in marketing decided they might be a good idea. No stepping on anybody's feelings by cutting a feature they wanted or abandoning their vision for what the product should do.
And of course you get to play on the whole stack. You get to make the schema changes for that new feature, as well as the back end, layout, and all the fiddly javascript bits. And you get to market that feature and handle customer support for it and play Social Media Coordinator. Racking servers, conference calls with Fortune 500 CEOs, it's all your job.
Best of all, you get to decide how much of your life this thing is going to take up. If you're the kind of guy that needs to pour 80 hour weeks into his baby, sacrifice all his free time, lose his girlfriend, and live 100% for his business, then cool. You get to be that guy. Or if you're more of a "roll out of bed at 10am, check HN over coffee, spend a couple hours on a feature then head out to the mountains because the sun's out" kind of guy, then cool too. You can be that guy instead.
Whichever path you take, chances are you'll find your way to profitability at some point. And when you do, those profits all flow directly into your bank account. Granted, your "impact" might be "limited" in as much as you might never become a billionaire. But hey, a few hundred grand a year will buy a lot of beer.
And since it's really hard to set things up in a small SaaS business so that they consume more than a small fraction of your time once the basic product is out the door, you'll have lots of free time to contemplate where and how to consume said beer.
All the best!
So I can't call myself a solopreneur at this time, but I am a solo-founder that started as a solopreneur. All the things that are good about being a solopreneur are pretty compelling, but there are some serious downsides too.
One of the most prominent to me is the lack of ability to have people around to challenge you, your ideas etc. And for me, being the smartest (or only) guy in the room is never a way to get the best idea when you have the final say on said idea. Which for me generally meant I spent more time trying to find multiple ideas/solutions so I could weigh their options. Having a team around that could be done in a couple of hours because people think differently, by yourself its tougher and takes longer if you are honest with yourself.
As a solopreneur you rely on clients more to give you feedback to help mitigate my last point, and done right that can be super powerful, but if you get one client that can tip the scale too much by being too much of your revenue then they can put you out of business quickly. This is simply because you will feel obligated to keep them happy and so they will be forcing your hand more than you would like and you keep deluding yourself with I'll do it this time... With a team even a large client will get more of a balance because the team is talking to multiple clients, but when its you by yourself it is harder to manage.
There are a ton of other things I could mention, but no matter, I wouldn't say being solo vs a team is better or worse, just different with different challenges and benefits. You just have to weigh them to see what is right for you. And I would not say that there is less stress being solo, it is just stress of a different nature, e.g. you aren't responsible for other peoples income just your own, but you still have all the client and engineering stresses except they are all on you whether its 3am or 10am.
One of the most prominent to me is the lack of ability to have people around to challenge you, your ideas etc. And for me, being the smartest (or only) guy in the room is never a way to get the best idea when you have the final say on said idea. Which for me generally meant I spent more time trying to find multiple ideas/solutions so I could weigh their options. Having a team around that could be done in a couple of hours because people think differently, by yourself its tougher and takes longer if you are honest with yourself.
As a solopreneur you rely on clients more to give you feedback to help mitigate my last point, and done right that can be super powerful, but if you get one client that can tip the scale too much by being too much of your revenue then they can put you out of business quickly. This is simply because you will feel obligated to keep them happy and so they will be forcing your hand more than you would like and you keep deluding yourself with I'll do it this time... With a team even a large client will get more of a balance because the team is talking to multiple clients, but when its you by yourself it is harder to manage.
There are a ton of other things I could mention, but no matter, I wouldn't say being solo vs a team is better or worse, just different with different challenges and benefits. You just have to weigh them to see what is right for you. And I would not say that there is less stress being solo, it is just stress of a different nature, e.g. you aren't responsible for other peoples income just your own, but you still have all the client and engineering stresses except they are all on you whether its 3am or 10am.
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Patrick McKenzie:
http://www.kalzumeus.com/
Dan Grossman
http://www.awio.com
Although they occasionally deal with contractors, they are one man shops. There are benefits and costs to do this.
It really limits your "impact" and how much money you can make...however there is a lot less stress involved.
Would you want to be a successful solopreneur or do you feel the traditional startup is the right path?