Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 119 posts

Re: Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?

#101

Post by obayesshelton »

davidamoroso wrote: post #100

Not impossible, but the asymmetry is brutal. You can ship anything in weeks, and nobody will find it. The thing nobody tells you up front: "build it and they will come" was true in 2005 and hasn't been true since 2015. Distribution is the whole game. Every product idea should be evaluated partly on "can I distribute this without buying ads," because most solo devs can't sustain paid acquisition and paid acquisition w…

This is so relevant for me at the moment.

Built a product about 12 months ago, pivoted slightly about 6 months ago.

Had some decent traffic but it has been a serious grind.

I'm doing a few more tweaks to the product then I am going to leave it running in the background for a while.

I need to build something that solved a real genuine problem

Re: Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?

#102

Post by csomar »

> This leads me to believe that most people either get lucky and then apply a framework in retrospect to justify their luck

Bingo. It's much easier to get a new product started when there is little or no competition. Clients can be tolerating (like early days of Crypto or now the early days of AI). But once a market is mature, clients are very unlikely to accept your service (even for free!), if it seems risky let alone incomplete.

> or they simply don't tell the whole truth.

You hit another nail. No one is going to tell you what dark/grey/shady actions they took to get where they are. YC call it "naughty" founders.

> but maybe the truth is that it does not take 7 months, but 7 years?

Another nail. Bare some exceptions, most businesses take years to build. A product will take years of polishing to become mature enough to be used.

Re: Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?

#104

Post by bruce511 »

0xmattf wrote: post #40

I don't think it's impossible, but absolutely incredibly difficult. I tried everything. Shopify stores, blogs (even owned a #1 tech blog), local job boards, global job boards, dating sites (which were shut down due to payment providers refusing to service these types of sites), various SaaS sites, etc. Nothing made any real money. I don't know if it's just me - perhaps I'm just not meant to succeed here - but I'm sti…

>> The process is fun. Abandon the idea of making money, and it becomes more enjoyable.

100% this. Some things you do in life are for money. Other things are for fun. Turning fun into money usually removes the fun part.

We have a word for this, it's called "hobby" and somewhere along the line it acquired negative connotations. But in fact a hobiest has the ability to spend lots of time perfecting their skill.

A long time ago, if you wanted the best craftsmanship you went to an amateur not a professional. The amateur had time to make things perfect. (John Harrison spent years making a single clock) whereas the professional had to make money, so was forced to compromise.

Yes, you can turn your hobby into money, but it will remove the fun part. It will require lots of extra stuff (marketing, support etc) which all erodes the fun part. Plus the pressure of release requires compromising perfection.

If you think going this route makes your job into "fun" then think again. Yes, you'll still enjoy the coding part, but its an ever shrinking part.

So I think you've done the right thing. Stick to this as soon hobby, not your job. And I mean that in the most positive way.

Re: Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?

#105

Post by bruce511 »

davidamoroso wrote: post #100

Not impossible, but the asymmetry is brutal. You can ship anything in weeks, and nobody will find it. The thing nobody tells you up front: "build it and they will come" was true in 2005 and hasn't been true since 2015. Distribution is the whole game. Every product idea should be evaluated partly on "can I distribute this without buying ads," because most solo devs can't sustain paid acquisition and paid acquisition w…

>> build it and they will come" was true in 2005 and hasn't been true since 2015.

It wasn't true in 2005. It wasn't true in 1995. It's never been true.

I joined a fledgling industry in the mid 90s. There were some established names. (Established in those days meant your ad appeared in a trade magazine a couple times a year.) My offering was good, maybe even very good. I advertised in the same places and sales were ok. (Without the advertising it would have been nil.)

I started traveling to do in-person demos at conferences, user groups and so on. Sales rocketed up, and stayed up. I won simply by taking the time to market a different way. By meeting prospective customers in person. In many ways they responded to the marketing effort, not the product.

Obviously today marketing channels are different. But the approach is the same. Marketing matters. And the mouse trap thing? It was never true.

Re: Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?

#107

Post by ezekg »

> Maybe the truth is that it does not take 7 months, but 7 years?

Yes, that is the truth. I run a business solo and it takes a long time to get to the point where you're making decent income, because running a business has its own costs, and those costs scale as you scale, so it never feels like "enough" until it finally does. I personally do believe in the whole "build and they will come" bit, but the 'coming' part is on the order of years, not weeks or months, and it's a slow linear trickle, not an exponential curve like the talking heads like to tout. Of course, you do have to build something people actually want, and something those people will actually pay for, but your number one goal should simply be Don't Die. Live long enough so that people know you exist, carve out a little niche for yourself, and fight for that linear trickle until it's "enough."

Post reply on HN