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

Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 243 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#221

Post by imhoguy »

dizzydes wrote: post #39
gooftop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advice makes sense, but isnt it a bit of chicken-and-egg? How do you sell something you haven't built? (or is it really .. build a little, or enough to illustrate; then 'sell' to validate and seek market fit; and then finally truly build?)

Or, even better, build a minimal MVP (1-2 weeks dev time) and use this to attract attention and get feedback.

Ok, but such quick MVP should have some secret sauce - ideally introduce a complexity with a special dependency, otherwise nothing stops a potential lead to take the idea and implement it with someone else.

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#222

Post by karatefylla »

kowdermeister wrote: post #47
tvjunky wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, plus, just start. There are lots of things you won't know, always. You'll need to dig in and figure out what you need to know. Outsourcing is a good option for things if you have the money. However, you need to understand what you're paying for.

"just start", sounds like a minefield if you want to take money from day zero.

To clear the minefield someone has to step on them basically. Fortunately these mines won't kill you and you will learn how to disarm them as you walk through the minefield.

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#223

Post by rozhok »

TadaScientist wrote: post #74
jelling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solo founder here. Same advice with the caveat that 98% of people should never be solo founders - you must be able to code and sell - but even if you can you should still get a partner if they double your speed.

What if cannot code to the level needed to get an MVP?

Hire someone who can.

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#224

Post by borplk »

WalterSear wrote: post #140
iscrewyou wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask an honest question respectfully? I don’t have a company or a startup. But I’ve always wanted to start one. So I’m always curious when I see a response like yours. How do you sell first? There isn’t a product to show. How do you find Customers? Is it the philosophy that the customer doesn’t know better and you have to tell them what they need, all the while understanding what your capabilities are. Like unde…

It only works for some kind of products and some kind of buyers, obviously. You can't sell someone a can of tomatoes based on a demo. But, if the value you can provide is immediately obvious to the customer, rather than an incremental improvement on their existing situation, then you can get them to express interest before you have a finished product to provide them with.

exactly. most products don't exist in a vacuum.

"sell first" works if you have such a unique solution/value such that for the customer it's a "either this demo or nothing" situation. that's exceedingly rare.

most of the time there's a healthy large existing set of solutions serving the same market so it's difficult to justify using something new.

even if you have some unique selling points they may not be strong enough or they may be canceled out by the lack of other features and maturity of your new product vs existing established ones.

for example let's say your product is a customer support software. how do you "sell first" when there are so many mature existing companies solving the same problem?

how long will it take you to reach the same capabilities, support, security, reliability of existing solutions?

are your differentiating points really strong enough that someone's going to say "screw Zendesk I'm going to try this random new one-man product because they have this feature X"?

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#225

Post by borplk »

fernandotakai wrote: post #35
gooftop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advice makes sense, but isnt it a bit of chicken-and-egg? How do you sell something you haven't built? (or is it really .. build a little, or enough to illustrate; then 'sell' to validate and seek market fit; and then finally truly build?)

for me, at least, it feels like "selling first" means getting product feedback first. so, setup a landing page with a "send us our email so we can tell you when our tool is read!" form and see if it attracts people.

realistically this only works for unique products there are so many alternatives for EVERYTHING that most people will just move on to something that is ready today instead.

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#226

Post by postsantum »

overcast wrote: post #166
postsantum wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if they are connected somehow, but a website with a very similar name http://levels.fyi with FAANG salaries information makes you quistion your choices about being an indie developer

It's not realistic that the vast majority of people can expected to be hired, or move to those places, let alone achieve those salary levels. I would be amazed if even 1% of applicants actually got hired. You have 5x greater chance of being accepted at Stanford. There is a tremendous bias on HN, because those people that have, frequent here.

"Everyone thinks they’re hiring the top 1%"

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#227

Post by ykevinator »

If your idea is in software, write a plan and write specs. Then put together a budget and hire someone to build it. Set a threshold for failure and one for further investment. Don't put the cart before the horse, write planning docs and budgets. Draw sketches. Do all the brain dump work and commit to a hard scope, out everything else in the back log. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#228

Post by leavjenn »

par wrote: post #180

I am the sole founder and developer of Meta Meme ( https://metameme.app ). I built it for a couple of years as a side project, and recently went full time on it. It's been growing slowly over the past couple years but really started picking up last summer. I'm not going to lie, it's been really difficult. There were a lot of times when I'd just be so exhausted or worn down but kept working on it. And I thought everyt…

Hi, checked the Android version Meta Meme app. One suggestion: split it into arm and x86 version for the the ffmpeg lib to reduce the apk size. Each of them is 9MB which is not a small number.

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#229

Post by overcast »

postsantum wrote: post #226
overcast wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not realistic that the vast majority of people can expected to be hired, or move to those places, let alone achieve those salary levels. I would be amazed if even 1% of applicants actually got hired. You have 5x greater chance of being accepted at Stanford. There is a tremendous bias on HN, because those people that have, frequent here.

"Everyone thinks they’re hiring the top 1%" https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/

They might not be hiring the top 1%, but they are only hiring 1% of the people who apply.

Re: Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

#230

Post by hnnh44 »

chrismorgan wrote: post #217
sh87 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people who ride horses, a faster horse is the only sensible next step. That quote quite succinctly points out a bunch of human behaviors. Just ask the next person you meet about their solution on high rent, bad traffic, etc. to get a sense of what I'm talking about.

Move out into the country. It’s lovely.

A better solution is to live IN the city and get rid of the car entirely.
Post reply on HN