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Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

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Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#181

Post by Toss8675309 »

cylinder wrote: post #152
Toss8675309 wrote: post #127

I'm a one man development and consulting shop and have been so for almost 12 years. My 2018 gross revenue was $600K and 2019 gross revenue will be about $780K. I'm an extremely efficient developer, a very good salesperson, and I'm an absolute fanatic about delivering high quality work on time . I don't presume to have any special knowledge but would love to find a way to help other devs/tech people do what I've done.

usually solo professionals like yourself will start a side business selling coaching, tools, lessons, guides etc to other practitioners. certainly have a huge base of developers out there who need help going out on their own and could use some coaching on the business and sales sides.

> certainly have a huge base of developers out there who need help going out on their own and could use some coaching on the business and sales sides.

Yeah? I was really planning to make a move in this direction in 2020. Another investment opportunity combined with imposter syndrome has put this on hold. Mostly imposter syndrome if I'm honest.

But...I should do this, work to help other devs move out of their employer's house and out on their own. It's as rough and shocking as those first few years outside of mom and dad's but man...if you can make it through the initial bits it's worth it.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#182

Post by codesternews »

gnicholas wrote: post #38

I run a one-person company [1] whose tech makes reading on screen easier/faster/more accessible. The B2C tools (iOS app and browser plugin) bring in 5 figures, but in 2019 the IP licensing took off. We have large educational clients that are integrating the tech because of its benefit for students (especially those with ADHD and dyslexia). IP licensing is great because it means I don't need to spend time building the…

Your ios app have very less reviews 20 and very low. Could you please explain how many downloads you re getting and how you are generating 5 figure.

Congrats!!

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#183

Post by codesternews »

Toss8675309 wrote: post #127

I'm a one man development and consulting shop and have been so for almost 12 years. My 2018 gross revenue was $600K and 2019 gross revenue will be about $780K. I'm an extremely efficient developer, a very good salesperson, and I'm an absolute fanatic about delivering high quality work on time . I don't presume to have any special knowledge but would love to find a way to help other devs/tech people do what I've done.

How you get your clients?

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#184

Post by Toss8675309 »

throwaway_29575 wrote: post #139
Toss8675309 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, thanks! I work in a niche of sorts, so the sales channel is 100% word-of-mouth referrals. My champions are executives that tend to move from one company to another every few years and usually bring me in when they've got a new gig. Also, each new company provides the opportunity to build new relationships with new people who themselves move on to new companies, and the cycle continues. :)

In the digital marketing space it's the ambitious marketing managers who move from company to company (and like to work with someone they know). My wife makes a point of keeping them happy. The issue is that in a competitive market it works both ways as every incoming manager will often have "a friend", so they have to be won over quickly to keep the account.

Man, been there. You have to act fast and aggressively to demonstrate that value that you've been providing to the incoming manager. And even then, you don't always win.

At the same time, once you reach a certain point, you can become choosy about who you work with. I maintain the client relationships I do because I like the people I work with. If someone new comes in, they're not value focused, they just want to bring in their guy no matter what, well, bummer, but attrition can't be completely avoided.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#185

Post by rhlsthrm »

Toss8675309 wrote: post #174
rhlsthrm wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a solid full stack developer and I feel like I have the time flexibility and ability to start a side consulting business. Do you have any tips to get started? How would you go from 0 to your first client?

Absolutely 0. Make sure your house is in financial order. If you are a habitual user of credit cards, have high monthly debt obligations, and no saving, before you even think about going out on your own, change that. 1. Audit your ability to estimate time and hit deadlines. Most developers are rubbish at knowing how long a project will take, even a small one. Make sure you can hit a deadline. This is more important a…

Hey this is really amazing advice, thanks a ton for sharing! I'll definitely reach out with more questions! Especially the time estimation part. Even during my day job I find I tend to underestimate. Over estimating is probably more desirable in this line of work.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#186

Post by stef25 »

rhlsthrm wrote: post #157
stanmancan wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made an API for myself in 2011 that I could consume at work. I made a site that lets people query it from a web app and docs on the API. Didn’t think anyone would actually use it though. Tossed an ad on it and forgot about it. The API has been rewritten a few times now, it gets over 300 million requests a month. All organic growth, I can’t take any credit for it because I honestly have done nothing to aid it. Only…

What's the API do if you don't mind sharing?

In his submissions on HN there's a link to macvendors.com

Pretty cool simple idea.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#187

Post by Toss8675309 »

rhlsthrm wrote: post #185
Toss8675309 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely 0. Make sure your house is in financial order. If you are a habitual user of credit cards, have high monthly debt obligations, and no saving, before you even think about going out on your own, change that. 1. Audit your ability to estimate time and hit deadlines. Most developers are rubbish at knowing how long a project will take, even a small one. Make sure you can hit a deadline. This is more important a…

Hey this is really amazing advice, thanks a ton for sharing! I'll definitely reach out with more questions! Especially the time estimation part. Even during my day job I find I tend to underestimate. Over estimating is probably more desirable in this line of work.

Yeah, time estimation is really tough. When I started I figured out I just needed to take my time estimate and double it. Then I got really analytical about it. Now I take my gut estimate and add 20%, but I've also gotten away from time-based billing into value-based estimating (that's a whole other very deep subject).

The "really analytical" phase wasn't too crazy by HN standards:

- Break the complete project in Pivotal Tracker down to stories no larger than 8 points

- Track the time spent on each story in Harvest

- Use that data to figure out how much time a given point score equated to, along with variance.

- Work to reduce the variance.

I should also say...I've been estimating software for, good god, I haven't done this math lately, 18 fucking years. Do anything repeatedly that long, your instincts become pretty solid.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#188

Post by stef25 »

stanmancan wrote: post #98
aerovistae wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "site with ads" is the one that really interests me. Can you give some details on that? What kind of site it is, how you grew traffic, what you use for ads? (Just AdWords?)

I made an API for myself in 2011 that I could consume at work. I made a site that lets people query it from a web app and docs on the API. Didn’t think anyone would actually use it though. Tossed an ad on it and forgot about it. The API has been rewritten a few times now, it gets over 300 million requests a month. All organic growth, I can’t take any credit for it because I honestly have done nothing to aid it. Only…

Adwords, as in you pay to advertise the site on Google?

I found your project since you previously posted it on HN and linked to it in an answer below (hope you don't mind, I'll remove it if you want).

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#189

Post by Toss8675309 »

codesternews wrote: post #183
Toss8675309 wrote: post #127

I'm a one man development and consulting shop and have been so for almost 12 years. My 2018 gross revenue was $600K and 2019 gross revenue will be about $780K. I'm an extremely efficient developer, a very good salesperson, and I'm an absolute fanatic about delivering high quality work on time . I don't presume to have any special knowledge but would love to find a way to help other devs/tech people do what I've done.

How you get your clients?

At this point, almost 12 years in, I've got what salespeople call "time in territory". I'm known to a small but always growing group of executives who change jobs every few years. Fortunately they see value in having me come in to their new company on a basic consult, and often these basic consults turn into more extensive projects.

In the beginning I worked my ass off, frequently for next to nothing, just to make connections, deliver quality work, and build experience. When I was getting started in 2003 this meant writing an ecommerce site for my girlfriend's employer, taking gigs on Rent-a-Coder, and doing small jobs for the employers of friends.

The biggest thing has been maintaining relationships with contacts. Stuff like the occasional email to say "hey, what's new with you" or "I'm going to be in your town, let's grab a beer." It's fun to stay in touch with people and be someone that takes an interest in them and their growth. Sometimes this leads to business, but that's just a by-product. The objective is to build good relationships, as cheesy as that sounds.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#190

Post by stef25 »

ktaylor wrote: post #178

A friend of mine runs a 1 person business. Well, technically, he does have an assistant who does his office admin and books. My friend has steady gross revenues of $6M a year. When I first met him about 8 years ago he was 26 and living at home with his parents. He once remarked on how much he appreciated his mother still doing his laundry and cooking for him and his father. I forgot to mention, he has extremely high…

Money is money but this kind of business really feels dirty.

It's kind of like parking cars in every $1 spot you can find and then charging people $500 to take that spot.

Also, developing traffic via SEO for 1000s of (parked?) domains most likely involves even dirtier techniques.

Kudos to him, he's achieved more than I ever will but if that was me I couldn't look people in the eye when telling them how I made my millions.

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