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I found the following book to be quite a good tool with practical advice for the proposed approach: http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching-...
I think many entrepreneurs are less interested in building Billion dollar companies and are more seeking freedom from suppressive corporate jobs.
But when the only narrative you see is mega startups it starts to seem like that's the only worthwhile path to entrepreneurship. Small business sounds like your Mom's flower shop - lame. So you have to find a co-founder and raise VC and pick a huge market, and work on your pitch deck, etc. etc.
Reality is having a couple million a year business can really lead to a fantastic lifestyle if done properly.
I'm leaning this way now myself, after previously believing that co-founders were essential and prior to that being dubious about their value. Two things I've seen kill startups are bad cofounder relationships, and Venture Capitalists. Almost 50-50, with VCs in the lead because they cause a lot of the bad co-founder relationships. The person you are likely to make your cofounder should probably be your first employee…
There's a well-founded point of view that this is not a good thing for a strong marriage.
PG context of a startup is a company that has the potential to make it into a leading stock market index. Anything else is considered a "life style" business and not within YC or most other VC's scope of interest for funding.
A cofounder just makes some things easier; you have someone that's available 24/7 to talk about ideas and implementation. When it's just you it feels a little easier to give up unfortunately.
The closest things i've found for solo-support:
a) micropreneur academy ($50/mo-in 2009- but all solo software folks)
b) mastermind groups
Other Suggestions?
The author is talking about bootstrapped businesses. There are many niches where a well run business can earn revenue of $100,000-$500,000 per year, and be ably run by a single person. These niches do require upkeep, but they are not so likely to be invaded by major competitors or large companies. The returns are too small. However, the returns are excellent for a single founder.
It is also true that it's easier to scale such a business than it used to be. So there is probably more bootstrapping potential than before, especially as more people move online and there are therefore more niches to fill.
But this approach also rules out many types of businesses, and with rare exceptions it rules out larger revenue streams. These are among the trade offs.
"If you’re unable to convince friends to start a business with you, PG says it’s a vote of no confidence. But, what if you’re like me and you don’t have a lot of entrepreneurial friends? Or, maybe you do, but they don’t want to work on your ideas? It doesn’t really matter what your friends think of your ideas or you in regards to starting a business–the votes that count come in the form of paying customers. Since it’…
PG wrote that in 2006. Market forces and opportunities around startups have changed astronomically in the past 9 years. It was probably harder for 2 people to start a "growth" business in 2006 than it is for 1 person today.
Today we have a "stack" that automates a lot of the grunt work: ZenPayroll, Clerky, Stripe, etc. A single founder can just set up a business and run it using these services to do a lot of stuff that was once manual.
I personally think the single-arity is near. (Title for a blog post I never wrote.) The single-arity will be when we have the first one person "unicorn." It won't stay one person forever, but pretty soon we will see an example of one founder -- working as the only full time employee -- building something with astronomical growth.
On one hand it's pretty cool, and on the other hand it speaks to the degree to which we've created a winner take all economy with an insane hockey stick compensation distribution.
PG context of a startup is a company that has the potential to make it into a leading stock market index. Anything else is considered a "life style" business and not within YC or most other VC's scope of interest for funding.
My response whenever I hear the "life style" label is to ask who's life style are we talking about? For me, the only difference is that in the traditional VC startup case it is the life style of the VCs that is being enhanced.