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

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

#231

Post by foobiekr »

zawazzi wrote: post #194
foobiekr wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason to consider not going solo is that some experienced engineers will consider it a black mark - here's a guy who either believes he can do it all -or- is too greedy/control-freaky to share; this is someone who didn't meet someone better than themselves in their career or simply couldn't recognize that fact. The few solo founders I have personally dealt with have fit that description exactly.

I think it would be a distinct recruitment advantage not to have a cofounder. You could reallocate equity you would have given to a cofounder, to early employees. Cofounder or no, money talks.

Maybe it’s my different experience and age, but I definitely nudge people away from solo startups using the examples I’m referring to as concrete examples when talking live to friends.

Reality is no one is so good that having another voice in the room isn’t usually an advantage for the leaf nodes. There are plenty of people who believe they are, though.

I will say this only applies to more traditional startups - seeking funding, hiring a team. It’s different when the solo entrepreneur builds and sells and then is hiring to augment the company. Not sure I would join that either but it is different.

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

#232

Post by phonon »

throwaway_chan wrote: post #135
throwaway_chan wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I even thought of that idea, but this mean getting my parents involved which i don't want to. I have zero idea how laws and business work. I have nonissue with code , because i have all of it. And i am thinking about deploying them as my own business.

I just want to do this project that i dreamed about.

Pay off the family friend, and have them sign a full release. Otherwise, you run the risk of investing huge amounts of effort and time into the business, and then finally,when it is successful, he comes out of the woodwork and asks for 50% of it.

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

#233

Post by wuliwong »

satvikpendem wrote: post #150
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…

I'm creating an open source todo list + calendar webapp ( https://getartemis.app , source at https://github.com/satvikpendem/artemis ) made by just me, and I can tell you how I approached the problem. The video you see on the front page does not exist in code, it is simply a prototype designed with Figma ( https://figma.com ) and animated with Principle ( https://principleformac.com ). I created the landing page and…

Thanks for posting this. I am at a very similar place with startups where I am attempting to stop just paying lip service to lean startup ideas. I'm going to look into the tools you mentioned.

BTW, the last startup I worked at we were building a really cool "timeline" interface using react. I see you are using Vue but we still might have some interesting discussions. I found some really fun/difficult product and technical problems with developing that type of interface.

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

#234

Post by wuliwong »

ramtatatam wrote: post #124
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…

I joined a startup a few years ago and I did see this in action. The founder was such a believer in his vision he would go to whatever door he managed to get through and was selling them his mock-ups. He is not technical but he has go a good eye to UI and also had great idea. When I joined him (I'm technical with no eye to UI and not very good at human relations) he already had customers aligned (no product yet) and…

I've worked at a couple startups where we would speak MVP with our lips but our actions did not follow our words. None of them were ultimately successful.

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

#235

Post by lucasverra »

burtonator wrote: post #198
gameguy43 wrote: post #103

You don't have to have superpowers. You just have to have some product sense, some engineering chops, and the ability to take 6 months off (not everyone can afford this, and that sucks) to build the thing and see if you can get people to look at it and buy it. You'll learn all the other stuff along the way (taxes, marketing, and eventually: hiring). Just give it a shot. If you run out of savings and have to go back t…

I'm trying to launch a startup now... https://getpolarized.io/ What I've been mostly focusing on is product market fit and growth. I think I have the product market fit down but the growth aspect is what's challenging me right now. I don't want to just buy growth now as I'm not convinced (yet) that our user base will actually pay. Additionally, I have to figure out a way to get a steady supply of new users through so…

i just posted on IH this question about wanting to find something like this..you might be my saviour?

[1] Ask HN : Get Pocket + Notes , does it exist ?

>Hey there community. Im tired of saving stuff to read later without activating it. I wish to get deeper in my workflow and "read and take notes" on what i save for later. If no note is taken, that's a signal of no interest My ideal workflow would be :

[1]https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/ask-hn-get-pocket-notes-d...

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

#236

Post by nimz »

huhtenberg wrote: post #40
zwetan wrote: post #27

ideas have no values, implementation does the very same idea could be implemented in different ways, some would work, some other would fail the only way to be sure is to build it and ship it, eg. "does my implementation provide value to customers or not?" it does not have to be big, it does not have to be perfect, it does not have to be complete (avoid the features creep), but the implementation itself or the product…

> ideas have no values Fully fleshed and well-justified ideas worth hell of a lot.

That is certainly possible. However, the trick here is hidden in your saying the idea is "fully fleshed." Our temptation often is to fully flesh ideas either in our own imagination, with our friends, or with internet research. If instead you actually flesh out ideas by speaking to customers, building prototypes and testing them, gathering real user data, and even actual sales data, then definitely yes that idea could be worth a ton. But if this idea is fully fleshed out like in a research paper where you've spent 24 hours in a library, then your case is much harder to make.

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

#237

Post by nyrulez »

g10r wrote: post #159
loandigger wrote: post #126

900 hours. That's my rule. It takes 900 hours of concentrated effort in brainstorming, building, tweaking, disillusionment, trashing it all, starting over, brainstorming some more, building, tweaking, demoing, networking and THEN selling before you'll even have the faintest idea as whether this can be a viable company. Put in the time and you'll see.

arbitrary number + that's what, a couple months? That's nothing.

Some one else mentioned 9 months above. I am amazed at these "10,000 hours" type of rules for doing a project or startup.

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

#238

Post by huhtenberg »

smt88 wrote: post #189
huhtenberg wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Properly explored idea is basically a business plan backed by a market research. Clearly as worthless as a random morning coffee brainfart.

It seems like you're being sarcastic, but you're exactly right. Investors don't give people money for plans and research because they don't mean anything. It's easy to make a plan or find a hypothetical market. The only people who get money without customers are founders with huge exits on their resume already.

All three of your statements are wrong.

Especially the last one.

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

#239

Post by crucialfelix »

iscrewyou wrote: post #112
warent wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this except switch the order. First, start selling. Then start building. It is so easy to waste so much time building something nobody wants, and you won't know until it's too late if you try to sell it afterward. Selling first will inform your decisions on what to build.

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…

Selling isn't just the monetary transaction. It's research, outreach, CRM, pipeline, working on the descriptions, marketing text, blog posts.

All of these things can be done while making the product and will inform the production process.

But.. I need to take my own advice. Too easy to retreat to building. Or passively reading and thinking that is market research.

That's my safety zone, hidden away from scrutiny and judgement.

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

#240

Post by ahackernewsuser »

From my experience, there's a massive intangible difference between a co-founder and an early stage employee. Get as far as you can without using equity, so that when you do use equity, you have a clearer sense of what you will get from it. When you want other big-picture decision makers, get co-founders. When you want x, y, and z mostly outcomes, hire employees. If you can't afford employees, could you get further and raise funds first? I've had amazing high equity employees and not so amazing ones. But with a small group of pseudo co-founders, things like firing, raises, pivots, etc. naturally become more political than they might otherwise.

It's cliche but think of this as dating except you're about to adopt a kid. When you start going steady with someone, it's critical to have a boundary between yourself as a parent and the other person as a (perhaps-temporary) parental figure. If one day you find someone who would raise your child even better than you could by yourself, or at least would make you happy and you trust fully in their judgment and values (even if not 100% same as yours), you get married. But you can still raise a great kid as a single parent.

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