I run something that has been going for about 8 years. I can't seem to break the 6 figure level but I haven't done any marketing yet. I'm currently trying to get better at this.
Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
161–170 of 399 posts
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Coding is easy, marketing is hard" It took me over five years in this business to fully internalize this. Programmers (me included) often complain about clueless entrepreneurs in this business, but even more rare than a good programmer is a good entrepreneur, who can sell/market and turn code into money.
I disagree. Even if you make the best software ever, getting your first 100-1000 paid customers is hard. But if your software is good, and you have 1000+ paid users, paste that point, your product will market itself. Or you could just continue to sell to the customers you already have. And even the most clueless entrepreneur will make money.
Do you actually have the experience to match this statement or is this something you're just imagining based on the stories you hear?
For what it's worth: I pal around with a group of entrepreneurs and the #1 factor to success is sustained marketing and advertising.
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#163I do, I run a small video games company, making games that one person can make, like this one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 . I've posted about it here once before, but my 'thing' (if I have a thing) is that I do both the programming, but also the art side. Computer Science is my training, so I can do the software development, what is less common is that I also have some skill in painting, design, animati…
How do you make a game that can work on Mac and Win and Linux at the same time? What is the easiest way?
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Coding is easy, marketing is hard" It took me over five years in this business to fully internalize this. Programmers (me included) often complain about clueless entrepreneurs in this business, but even more rare than a good programmer is a good entrepreneur, who can sell/market and turn code into money.
Yes 1000x. Marketing & sales are way harder than coding and I feel it is not focused on enough in discussions about starting a business.
I don't usually toot my own horn, but I'm really good at marketing and wish I could just find a good local designer/developer combo to do a startup with. I'm really tired of working with remote freelancers that don't do exceptional work, or they start off doing good work, then drift off into mediocre work. Admittedly, I'm not good at managing people, I just want to find people that work well on their own.
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Very!) naive question: what were those 6k in legal bills for?
For me a few things: - Incorporating the company - Terms of Service - Some weird stuff to transfer the existing product "into" the company That's about it, but at ~400/hr it adds up quick haha.
:) I feel for you. I had similar shock when I wanted simple TOS and Privacy for software service.
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#166I do, I run a small video games company, making games that one person can make, like this one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 . I've posted about it here once before, but my 'thing' (if I have a thing) is that I do both the programming, but also the art side. Computer Science is my training, so I can do the software development, what is less common is that I also have some skill in painting, design, animati…
How do you make a game that can work on Mac and Win and Linux at the same time? What is the easiest way?
The easy way is to write it at a higher level, and let the abstraction handle the meat of it for you. The easiest way is just to use an engine, an existing array of tools and frameworks that manages the abstraction in such a manner that (for the most part) you just have to select the build target.
In this specific case, I used the Unity engine. I write in C#, and with Mono/OpenGL, Unity can build executables to various platforms, on (mostly) the same code.
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#167I do, I run a small video games company, making games that one person can make, like this one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 . I've posted about it here once before, but my 'thing' (if I have a thing) is that I do both the programming, but also the art side. Computer Science is my training, so I can do the software development, what is less common is that I also have some skill in painting, design, animati…
That's a cute little game, very nice work on the design! It feels super polished (both gameplay and aesthetically). If only I could be half that skilled with the art side... Have you considered translating it to other languages?
Thanks! I certainly have considered translating it, but at this stage I believe it's too late to be worth it. Not only is there the cost of translators, but in this instance there is an engineering cost as I made the classic mistake of baking the text all over the place, in binary level files, in json files, and hardcoded. Slicing it up and moving all the text into one place would take a while, especially as I'd want to guarantee not reducing stability.
If I could make a bet that adding, let's say, French, German and Chinese would cause... 700 more sales, I would probably bother, but I don't think this sort of feature 10 months after release would generate that.
I'm treating this more as a 'lesson learned', and approaching my next project with localisation in mind. Translating to a bunch of languages is one of my main goals.
A final thought; I love that in 2016 a lone developer can make a silly puzzle game about cats and sell it in 80+ countries. The internet!
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#168I'm a single founder of a B2B SAAS - took 3 years to get to 10K MRR. From Jan 1 of this year MRR has grown from 10K MRR to 27K MRR. Likely due to a combination of better product market fit, getting some very marquee name clients and price increases. Finally quit my full time gig in April - never looking back I hope!
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#169I've run http://www.hogbaysoftware.com as my full time job since late 2003. Except for a few years (2010 to 2013) I've been the only employee. Dates might be off by 1 or 2 years but here's an abbreviated history: - 10k first two years. - Growing somewhat steadily to 250k around 2010 - Revenue (this is period when I was working 3 others) grew to 350k) by 2013 - Crashed to 40k in 2014, 2015 after cutting bunch of apps…
Hey I really like your products. I was a big fan of WriteRoom, was always to come up with great ideas using it. Thanks, hope you will continue to make stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?
#170I'm a single founder. We do ~$150K / year in revenue right now. We did $15,000 in 2011 (our first year in business). $55,000 in 2012. $96,000 in 2013. $157,000 in 2014. Dropped to $133,000 in 2015, our first year of negative growth. From 2011 to mid-2014, I worked constantly to improve our basic product. But in 2014 I realized we'd never compete with the big guys in our industry, who do $10MM to $30MM / year. So I st…
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