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Ask HN: Which companies work like Gumroad?

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Ask HN: Which companies work like Gumroad?

#1
I understand that it’s not for everyone, but I’m curious to see which companies work that way. Would love to give it a shot.

Edit: @Waterfowl posted the specifics:

this article about how gumroad works was at the top of the front page yesterday.

https://sahillavingia.com/work

discussion

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673275 reply

Re: Ask HN: Which companies work like Gumroad?

#6

Thanks for asking this. I recently took a job with $MEGACORP after 5 years with start ups. I forgot how much $MEGACORP likes meetings. I found myself thinking about how gumroad has no meetings. I asked myself the same question as the OP.

As long as I can Bill my hours, I don't care all that much.

I find smaller or more experimental companies to be much more unstable, and in my thirties I just want something stable and nice so I can save money and retire with a bit over a million in the bank at 40.

Just want to be done with it

Re: Ask HN: Which companies work like Gumroad?

#7
My startup, Haekka (https://haekka.com) functions similarly. We don’t deal with office politics and bullshit. We only have two FTEs (founders) and 3 contractors. We’re 100% remote and have no plans on not being remote. My previous company that I sold was remote for 7 years. I don’t believe in building software in an office.

We’re very transparent about our financial and business goals. My only scheduled meeting is a weekly dev sync that I do think is very helpful, but we don’t do daily standups or daily calls. All comms are done through Slack, GitHub PR comments and Linear comments.

I will likely be hiring a contract python (or full stack) dev in Q1 as well as a growth marketing position. Feel free to email me ryan@haekka.com

Re: Ask HN: Which companies work like Gumroad?

#8
I had the same question in mind when reading the other HN thread. I recently started doing contracting work and would like to try working with such a team.

Just thinking out loud here, but that may be a good target for a niche job board? That’s maybe already a thing.

Re: Ask HN: Which companies work like Gumroad?

#10
Userify (https://userify.com) is similar; meetings are rare (except probably with customers). Most communication occurs in one-on-ones, with a strong bias toward the minimum number of team members for any project.

Most team members are contractors, even those working on new top-secret products, which might be because the core team is small and based in Texas and most devs are geographically elsewhere. It does seem to take up some time to build trust on new commits, which is a bit discouraging at first, but reviews are usually within 24 hours. Pay is based on deliverables, not hourly or salaried, so you don't get paid for time spent learning or experimenting, but free training and classes.

The core team seems a bit old school and conservative in tech choices (not much in the way of k8s, for example), and there's not much in the way of "team" tools like you might expect for a geographically distributed team, which seems to slow things down a bit and reduce communication velocity, but they're very responsive (this might be because it's a smaller, security-focused company). Also a rather complex 10-page NDA.

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