Ask HN: Tips for Solopreneur?

1. It's definitely not a red flag. Solopreneurs can be successful and grow businesses to non-trivial levels of revenue and income. I myself went that path, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I'd even argue, being solo should be the default option rather than an alternative.

2. There are 3 phases for your business:

   - Verifying product-market fit (this includes getting at least 1 paying customer)
   - Finding a way to get a more or less stable stream of new customers
   - Building up an organization

3. Running online business from a small town is a dream many chase :) At some point you will need lawyers and accountants, you will have to figure out how to deal with them remotely (that shouldn't be hard).

4. Marketing will become one of the hardest parts of your business once you verify product-market fit. Have at least a newsletter and a referral program - they cost little but work.

Designers know what will help them when they see it. They don’t need sold on things that make their job easier, the way good dev tools don’t need to sell/convince developers to use them. They provide an obvious value, and people want them because of the value they can see and use firsthand. If you have to talk someone into using a dev tool or design tool over multiple emails and madmen style nights on the town, you’re trying to convince someone to see value in something with no obvious value. People don’t need marketing or convincing to buy things they see clear benefit from. Designers are a rare type who might not know what they are missing or what exactly they need, but when they see it in front of them, if it helps them, they will instantly want it and not need to be sold on it. If there is no interest from even 5 designers I’d say it’s not going to scale out to a good conversion rate. Designers are a rare type where I would argue it only takes 3-5 to say nope to know you’re not hitting any real pain point. A plugin that automates tedious photoshop workflows sells itself. Immediate value is right in a demo. Nobody has to wine and dine people on that. Just my opinion.

Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you are getting a lot of money and probably a great case study for your marketing material. On the other hand, you are probably going to be asked to move your product in a direction you wouldn't have otherwise taken it. Sometimes that's great, sometimes you're just a contract software engineer for much less money than you'd get doing that explicitly. You can be wary or you can be excited, every case is different.

Rollout clauses can help with this.

For instance, don't draw up a contract blindly, mandate an install base and training as part of the package, and that contractually, it must be installed, training complete, and in process for X number of days, and in that time period requests are limited to direct support (IE, actual bugs or user questions). You should be meeting with users as much as possible during this time, if you can. Make it clear that you only want and will listen to their feedback and make changes in that respect.

Then, schedule a meeting with the users at the end of the specified period, to get a sum of all the positives and negatives of the product, and have a separate with management about whats next, what your roadmap with them looks like (if applicable) etc.

This keeps the relationship in control in a positive way, usually for everyone.

I've seen clauses like this before in enterprise contracts. If you can everyone to agree to it, they turn those fears into assets real quick, and helps manage the burdensome spam of support requests for X or Y feature.

Hi.

1) I am same as you, I like to work alone. Working with another is irritating, to say the least. I always think I can move faster when I don't have to communicate with anybody else.

But. Doing business is less about doing stuff well and more about avoiding really stupid shit. Having other people to work with and especially a cofounder is one of the best ways to get feedback for really stupid stuff you could do.

It is all about reducing the time and cost between when you become wrong and when you stop being wrong. For some reason it is very hard to do it on your own.

2. Don't set milestones. Understand the problem you are trying to solve for your customers. Do your best solution of the problem, the best way you can. The customers are just validation of your idea -- if they come you might be onto something and if they are not coming you are doing something wrong.

3. No. It is up to you. If you are asking this question you haven't thought this solopreneurship thing yet. The whole point of doing it solo is to be able to make those decisions yourself.

4. The best way is to make a good product/service. The customers will come. Don't focus on the customers, focus on the best service you can. The more customers you have the harder it will be to focus on the service, so cherish the ability to move fast while you have no/few customers yet.

5. You want to slowly build it up. Financing is a hack that should only be used by people with experience -- not you, at least not yet.

Your goal for your first business should be to avoid getting killed financially (don't get into debt!). As long as you do that, you have ability to iterate. Most of successful people I know have started multiple businesses before they finally succeeded. That assumes ability to start another business after the first one fails. Bankruptcy will very likely put an end to your career as an enterpreneur.

Also, slowly building it up gives you time necessary to learn, to transform yourself. And build a product. It takes time to think all those things and integrate it into your experience and trying to hack it will just leave you woefully unprepared.

Also, when you get financing it suddenly puts a timer on your business. It puts a pressure that makes it difficult to focus and make your own decisions. Everything from now on is a compromise. And, at least in my mind, this conflicts with trying to build the best product you can.

Also, when you get financing, the cost of that financing will depend on how risky the investment is (I am kind of expert when it comes to risk). You don't give loans for nothing, you want to earn some money. And the riskier the investment, the more you want to earn. And as a first business with an unexperienced founder, running solo, you are as risky as it can be. If you ever get somebody to invest money in your business it will necessarily come at an exorbitant price and you are also very possibly get abused by somebody with much more experience than you.