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Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

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Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#31

Post by franciscop »

blowski wrote: post #5
franciscop wrote: post #2

Do you inlclude freelancers/contractors? I got started recently

To count as a startup you need a product. If you're freelancing or contracting or consulting, you are the means of production but the product belongs to whoever hires you.

I know, I'm not claiming to be a startup. I am asking if the "/" in the title means AND or if it means OR.

Also, from this: "By company, I mean something that generates (or is intending to generate) revenues"

Nowhere it says "only startups" or "with a product", so I'm just asking if it's a question specifically for one person startups or for one person companies.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#33

Post by jventura »

I'm running a single person company at http://flatangle.com/, where I provide traditional astrology software and services.

Last week I've made available my latest web app (http://elements.flatangle.com/) but I also sell traditional astrology reports at http://flatangle.com/products/reports/.

The business costs are pretty low, but since I'm not very good at marketing, my revenue is also still quite low. I'm doing this fulltime, along with freelancing to have some cashflow..

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#34

Post by nhorob67 »

I launched a suite of farm business software tools 3 weeks ago at http://harvestprofit.com. 8 customers and approx $8k ARR so far.

Price point is high enough where it's not likely a quick purchase but too low for an inside sales team. I'm working hard on content marketing to build trust in the market place to drive user growth while keeping my team small (just me so far)

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#35

Post by JohnnyConatus »

beagle3 wrote: post #26
malux85 wrote: post #8

Yes, forex trading using deep learning, media monitoring two startups, both profitable I built, support and run them all myself (though everything is automated)

Which venue do you trade forex in? I have either personal or 2nd hand horror stories from every platform I've heard of so far - once you get profitable, they start penalizing or just throw you out -- though my experience is 6 years old and may no longer be relevant.

Also curious.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#36

Post by hnjake »

zkhalique wrote: post #21

YCombinator told us that we are essentially a single-founder company, based on our equity split. You can see our growth straight on our website: http://qbix.com/groups and http://qbix.com/calendar Revenues per user are increasing slightly with each product version, but we haven't released a big game-changer yet.

Quick tip add the controls (volume control ect) to your youtube videos. It's a pain not being able to control volume.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#37

Post by uhtred »

stevesearer wrote: post #10

I started https://officesnapshots.com as a side project 9 years ago and it has been my full-time work for the last ~4 years. If you don't count the cost of me, it has always been profitable as the business costs itself are pretty low. I had zero business goals at the beginning and now it is probably the most popular site in its niche (office design). The thing most people are interested in here is that I moved from u…

Great idea and a nice site. I love it's simplicity, and the ads don't piss me off, which is a first. They load with the page rather than 2 seconds later, so I don't notice them in a negative way, and as you say they feel appropriate and relevant rather than trying to sell me cat toys or tents.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#38

Post by joshontheweb »

grx wrote: post #20
joshontheweb wrote: post #15

I'm running https://zencastr.com as a solo founder. It isn't profitable because I haven't moved to paid plans yet. I haven't had any time to focus on marketing yet really but I get a steady stream of signups each day. So far around 10,000 hours have been recorded using the service.

I know people dislike when I comment on this, but your page is empty when visited with disabled Javascript. So please, if you ever consider putting some more work into it deliver a static info page when JS is disabled! And btw, when I enabled it (Noscript) the page loaded forever and again did not show anything - but I guess you may get some more visits now that you've linked it here.

Yeah, I hear you. The problem is that its only me and there are literally one hundred other higher priority tasks I need to work on. I will give that one a bump though :)

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#40

Post by dhruvkar »

franciscop wrote: post #31
blowski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To count as a startup you need a product. If you're freelancing or contracting or consulting, you are the means of production but the product belongs to whoever hires you.

I know, I'm not claiming to be a startup. I am asking if the "/" in the title means AND or if it means OR. Also, from this: "By company, I mean something that generates (or is intending to generate) revenues" Nowhere it says "only startups" or "with a product", so I'm just asking if it's a question specifically for one person startups or for one person companies.

I'd be interested to hear from you.

I think freelancers fall into a grey area because while there are freelancers that treat their work as a business with the intent of scaling/automation/removing themselves as much as possible from admin tasks, there are also others that treat it very much like a high-paying job, without commitments.

Share if it feels it applies to you.

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