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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?

#81

Post by dannyw »

batt4good wrote: post #78
csallen wrote: post #37

Ben Tossell of Makerpad. He made about $200k in the past year from a site that teaches others how to build interactive sites and apps without writing code. Lynne Tye of Key Values. She made about $400k in 2019 from a site that connects software engineers with companies that that share their intangible values, e.g. diverse team, good for parents, fast or slow-paced, etc. Robert James Gabriel of Helperbird. He struggle…

I'm still blown away that Key Values (as cool an idea as it is) manages to pull that kind of revenue. One thing I'd be curious to see is if the site actually can maintain revenue past year one?

Recruiting really, really pays.

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

#82

Post by Scott_Sanderson »

If successful means total benefit delivered to shareholders, then I consider my one-man company to be very successful.

Used to be a corporate attorney grinding high billable hours at big firm. Quit to start a solo law practice serving clients working with my favorite thing, cryptocurrencies.

I made $100k working about 30 hours per week from home. Drop off and pick up kids from local school on cargo bike. Take them to the park after school a few days a week (babysitter gets them other days). Client list is kept short to manage stress and avoid need to hire employees.

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

#83

Post by gnicholas »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #80
gnicholas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, would you be selling to K12 or higher ed? This could wrap into a "media literacy" package, which is taught in K12. My gut reaction is you would not want to position this as IP licensing if selling to schools. We do IP licensing to edtech/education companies, but our school offerings are all software/SaaS. I think schools would find the notion of IP licensing to be a mismatch, which would create frict…

Basic education, mainly. All levels except higher-Ed. Yes, the idea is to wrap it into digital literacy/citizenship modules that teachers could be using in their classes as complementary topics. I'm struggling to find the right way to position this as a service in which the client/user can work, edit, deliver the content or part of it without having commercial ownership over it, e.g. cannot resell my content to 3rd p…

Selling into education (especially K12) is tough, and many startups have died on that hill. The sales cycle is slow, budgets are limited (unless there's a specific line-item for what you're selling, which is possible since "digital/media literacy" is popular these days), and billing can be problematic.

If I were you, I'd find other companies that are already in the space, see what they offer and how they price/sell, and either mimic them or consider joining forces in some way.

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

#84

Post by rodolphoarruda »

quelsolaar wrote: post #73

I'm running MinistryOfFlat.com and I have made 7 figures this year. No investors or co workers. No marketing beyond my 2k twitter followers and a website. Solve a very specific and hard problem and the right people will find you.

What is UV? It's everywhere in the website.

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

#85

Post by quelsolaar »

ivalm wrote: post #77
quelsolaar wrote: post #73

I'm running MinistryOfFlat.com and I have made 7 figures this year. No investors or co workers. No marketing beyond my 2k twitter followers and a website. Solve a very specific and hard problem and the right people will find you.

That'a pretty cool work; I've worked with UV mapping a bit and if this works this is beast. Side note, the top/hero video crashed mid animation for me (chrome/win10/modern hardware); everything else works fine.

Thanks! There are a lot of things that I could improve on my website but I don't think any of it matters that much. There are a lot of people in the startup community talking about metrics, marketing and having the right color on the download button, but its all kind of BS. It matters on the margin, but what really matters is delivering for your customers. Spend your time making the core offering good and if you do it right people will come no matter how ugly your webpage is. Its like a restaurant with amazing food doesn't need a good location of fancy interior design, it will always be full.

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

#86

Post by chapium »

Scott_Sanderson wrote: post #82

If successful means total benefit delivered to shareholders, then I consider my one-man company to be very successful. Used to be a corporate attorney grinding high billable hours at big firm. Quit to start a solo law practice serving clients working with my favorite thing, cryptocurrencies. I made $100k working about 30 hours per week from home. Drop off and pick up kids from local school on cargo bike. Take them to…

I'm happy for your success, that sounds like a dream come true.

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

#87

Post by codesternews »

quelsolaar wrote: post #79
spectramax wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has to be one of the most astonishing and remarkable work I've ever seen in recent times. Holyshit. UV mapping is a royal pain in the ass and I can't believe it can just be automated away. Many big studios tried - from Houdini to Maxon to large open source projects like Blender. You deserve huge returns, kudos! All the best! Nit: you need a SSL cert on your website :)

Thank you very much! Its pretty good but its not even close to as good as the version I have in R&D.... SSL is coming, thanks for reminding me.

Could you tell us more about yourself and project. How would you able to do without any coworkers when many big companies tried.

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

#88

Post by quelsolaar »

rodolphoarruda wrote: post #84
quelsolaar wrote: post #73

I'm running MinistryOfFlat.com and I have made 7 figures this year. No investors or co workers. No marketing beyond my 2k twitter followers and a website. Solve a very specific and hard problem and the right people will find you.

What is UV? It's everywhere in the website.

When you do 3D graphics you first build a 3D shape and then you wrap an image around it to give it surface properties like color, reflectance, and transparency. In order to do this you need to "unwrap" the 3D shape so that it every XYZ point also exist in a 2D UV image space. This unwrapping step us usually done more or less by hand and is both tedious and time consuming.

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

#89

Post by iloveitaly »

Sidekiq makes ~1M/year in gross revenue. I believe the only full-time employee is the founder, and it doesn't sound like there are any material recurring expenses:

https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/016-mike-perham-of-side...

It's the most profitable one-man show I know of, although there's many that I've run into that ~500k, albeit with a much higher operational burden.

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

#90

Post by esotericn »

spottybanana wrote: post #19
101008 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, those number sound so high for a third world country that I can't help thinking that if I were in your situation I would give half of that salary (5k monthly) to my brother and father so they wouldn't have to worry about money again. Congratulations for being in that situation!

Coming from scandinavian welfare state, it is really difficult for me to understand why someone would give to their relatives some of their income. Especially if you earn it by working, and the reasoning being so that they don't have to worry about money = have less pressure to work. I don't want to judge anyone, just wanted to state that there is clearly quite a big cultural gap here. I don't know anyone around here…

Brit here. We have a welfare state (just about...), though it's getting pretty grim lately.

I've given a decent amount to family over the years. For the most part it's about a recognition of what people have done for me. My mother sacrificed significantly so that I could be the person I am today.

Not every country rewards work equivalently. In Sweden I see people working in supermarkets and petrol stations that still have decent lives. Norway is wealthier still.

That's not the case in Britain for the most part - we have much higher income inequality. Someone can work a full time job and still struggle, because the low end jobs pay biscuits.

(This is probably a significant contributor to the sticker shock I have when shopping in Scandinavia - the staff actually get paid...)

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