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Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#271

Post by curo »

I'm bootstrapping https://www.crone.ai and making a small amount of money.

I've bootstrapped a few companies. B2B apps are easier since you can do custom work for business clients while you perfect your software.

Crone AI is much harder. It's my first edtech consumer app. It's been live for 3 months and we've made $1,500 so far (lol).

My previous business startups made $200k ARR and $1M ARR. Iterating on consumer apps is more fun and you can still extrapolate growth from small numbers.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#272

Post by darajava »

bart7782 wrote: post #229
darajava wrote: post #129

I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.

I could not find any pricing options on your website. In order to find how much your service would cost, i needed to create an account and also download the app. You also did not specify which features would be locked behind a paywall. Can you be more transparent about this? I like to know what i'm getting myself into before i start using a product.

Such a good point, I never thought of that and think it would add credibility to the product too. 90% of traffic comes from the app store and the pricing is shown there on Google and Apple, most people never see the landing page, but I think this would be good to add.

PS it’s about $30 for a year and $6 for a month (depending on your state/country)

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#273

Post by philip1209 »

sixQuarks wrote: post #219
philip1209 wrote: post #2

I've been self-employed for the last ~18 months. In the past I started two VC-backed startups, then was a PM at some later-stage companies before returning to entrepreneurship. This time around, I'm building a solo "digital product studio" [1] instead of a startup. So, I'm staying one person, haven't raised money, and have multiple revenue-generating products. Product revenue doesn't cover my costs yet, so I do occas…

What is a creative residence?

Kind of like a structured professional sabbatical / workcation with a built-in community and some events. (I paid for it, to be clear.)

Here's a video one of the residents made about the program I did:

https://vimeo.com/350701368

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#274

Post by darajava »

plants wrote: post #241
darajava wrote: post #129

I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.

This is such a good idea, I wish I’d thought of it. I have trouble maintaining consistency in journaling, but this makes it a heck of a lot easier. I just signed up - good luck!

Thanks very much for signing up! Any issues, questions, or ideas please contact me-you can directly email me from the app.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#275

Post by V-2 »

jacquesm wrote: post #112
V-2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see why a company couldn't have one long-term customer. It's not unusual eg. in the building sector (where large construction projects, not unlike software projects, can take years to complete). Another common example is MDs - quite a lot of private doctor's offices are contracted by the National Health Fund, basically providing their services for the public healthcare that way. Clearly having multiple custom…

> I can't see why a company couldn't have one long-term customer. Let's hope you won't find out why that's a very bad idea. > Clearly having multiple customers isn't a reasonable requirement for a small company. On the contrary, it's a must. > Software engineering isn't like private residential plumbing - "sink drain unclogged, next please!" :) That's a strawman. Sorry, but if you have just one customer and you're de…

> > I can't see why a company couldn't have one long-term customer.

> Let's hope you won't find out why that's a very bad idea.

The way you phrased it feels needlessly patronizing (perhaps unintentionally), but more importantly, it does not really address my comment.

I wasn't arguing if it is a good idea or not. I was responding to the argument that having multiple customers is necessary to be regarded as "truly" self-employed in the eyes of the taxman. My point is that it's not uncommon nor unusual for a small company to be invoicing only a single customer. Hence my examples. Whether it is safe business-wise is another story.

> If at the end of the year you've only sent invoices to a single customer then you are simply at risk. You need multiple customers to be stable and secure. Two is better than one and three is really the minimum.

Noone denies that having diversified sources of income is (other things being equal) the safer option. But the subject was legal recognition, not optimal business strategies.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#276

Post by darajava »

jamesmurdza wrote: post #193
darajava wrote: post #129

I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.

Congrats—That is awesome! Curious, how long did it take you to get your first customer?

It happened very soon after launch actually, maybe a few days. Because the name essentially is a search term, people were able to find it right away

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#277

Post by pilom »

I teach whitewater kayaking and swiftwater rescue with my company https://whitewaterworkshop.com. I started doing it on nights and weekends around a full time tech job and then when COVID hit, demand for outdoor activities skyrocketed so I went full time with it.

I worked in tech for about 15 years where I paid off my student loans very aggressively, then once those were done I started pushing the same amount of money into retirement and savings accounts. My wife and I have no kids and were probably putting $50k+/year away. Turns out if you do that for 15 years, you end up with enough money to never need to worry about rent or health insurance again and you can choose what you want to do that is more fun. For me that was instructing and leading epic multi-week rafting trips like the Grand Canyon 3 times, the Maranon River in Peru, and the Alsek River in Alaska.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#278

Post by jeanlucas »

mauvehaus wrote: post #254

I am a self-employed furniture maker. I'm that guy who somewhat infamously no longer builds software[0]. About a year ago I moved my operations from a makerspace to my own shop. That's come with its ups and downs. On the one hand, I know which idiot last used a tool: me. On the other, I would no longer see other humans besides my wife most weeks. To keep sane I also work one day a week at a bike shop fixing bikes. It…

I still find your comment hilarious

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#279

Post by darajava »

jjackson5324 wrote: post #170
darajava wrote: post #129

I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.

That's really amazing. You should start doing some marketing to accelerate the growth! If you don't mind, can you share how much you're currently able to make from this?

Thanks very much! I’d like to learn more about marketing to help me grow it. It’s hard to put an exact figure on it because it’s essentially growing every day which i’m so happy about, but recently it’s become just enough to sustain me. Perhaps at an entry level software engineering position

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

#280

Post by dbrueck »

Self-employed since 2009 (can't believe it's been that long). Started out doing dev-for-hire work with a friend: web sites and mobile apps mostly. Along the way we built up a "war chest" to self-fund something of our own, then grew it up and sold it off. Rinse, repeat. Currently we have a small company (10 people) in the VR sector.

Self-employment is definitely not for everyone, but I love the freedom and flexibility. It'd kill me to go back.

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