11–20 of 164 posts
Once you factor in "survival of the tribe" or ultra-massive corps, the benefits of solo development can be overridden.
"It depends", there's both optics and trust. A single person is always a liability due to the "hit-by-a-bus" factor. The optics solution: Don't look like a single person, hide behind an LLC (in some countries you can look up the financials though so having money in it from consulting,etc is prob a good idea so it doesn't look vulnerable) A trust solution: You could mitigate it by having an open-sourcing pledge and/or…
if you have friends with established companies, you could ask them if they could be your “service partner”
i’ve done this with my friends for ever now
also note, that just like individual developers companies don’t provide any guarantees unless there’s a SLA in place
Whereas the odds of a venture backed startup shutting down at any point over the next ten years is something like 30%.
So from a risk perspective, it's literally over 100x more risky to use a software product made by a venture backed company than one from a solo founder.
On all of my sales calls, I tell people that I'm bootstrapped and that I'm going to charge them extra so that I can reduce the risk to their business by staying bootstrapped, and I have yet to run into anyone who doesn't seem satisfied by that pricing strategy.
I think that if there’s some traction on the market fit, a solo developer can build out enough of a value proposition to attract colleagues and investors to the point that institutional credibility kicks in.
Would I bet my Fortune 500 company on a product that goes down if someone gets COVID? No.
Would I be both personally interested and floating it past reputable angels if one person could live-demo something new?
Bet your ass.
It depends on the type of software.
"Yes" for utility software of narrow scope. I use scanner utility software called VueScan which was a solo developer (Ed Hamrick) until his son joined.[1] I also used RegexBuddy which I think is a solo dev.[2]
But "No" for critical workflow software that requires proprietary opaque data formats such as a clone for Evernote or similar note-taking tool.
Basically, it's a risk analysis of how much "investment" the user loses if the solo developer quits updating the software or goes bankrupt.
>affect your likelihood of using any software they create? It depends on the type of software. "Yes" for utility software of narrow scope. I use scanner utility software called VueScan which was a solo developer (Ed Hamrick) until his son joined.[1] I also used RegexBuddy which I think is a solo dev.[2] But "No" for critical workflow software that requires proprietary opaque data formats such as a clone for Evernote…
But most end users? They have zero idea, and would never think of such things.
They'd just use an app store, or google for something, and click->install.
For your typical solo founder in their 30s, their odds of dying at any point over the next 10 years is something like 0.2%. And short of them dying, their business isn't going anywhere because keeping a SaaS startup online doesn't cost anything -- if you have the skills to do it yourself. Whereas the odds of a venture backed startup shutting down at any point over the next ten years is something like 30%. So from a r…
If it's a self-contained desktop software, it's one thing.
If it's a 24/7 online service, it's another.
If the online component is optional or not critical, it's the third case.