Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

The prototype was custom pages on a Wordpress site (pretty slow to load, especially on phones, not easily scalable, etc), the new one's a .NET-based site, loads instantly on any device, and when I watch the server load, I can see that this thing will live happily on even a low-end VPS for a long, long time to come (lot of traffic growth so far, no increase in load!).

Keeping technical debt low is good, money's a higher priority. It's a business. That never really hit me before. :)

If yes, then that's it, you're done. Take the money, give 'em the thing, and do it again. :)

For books, for getting a start in marketing, I like "Guerrilla marketing in 30 days".

Biggest shift, though, is just mindset; going out and talking to people again and again until you learn what matters to them. It takes a lot of time, and when you're not used to it, it feels like it takes way more time than you're actually putting into it. Eventually you do learn, this is what these people have in common (they're members of some industry, field, hobby, affinity group), this is where they go (online, offline, in-town, conferences), this is how they like to be marketed to (online ads, postcards, in-person events, etc). Just takes time and effort, more than anything. Pretend you're learning a language, and assume it'll take that long to get conversational. :)

For others reading - we have hundreds of examples like this - single person companies that have grown inside the Atlassian ecosystem.

From people like Bob Swift, who grew his company and was then acquired, to companies like Gliffy and Balsamiq Mockups who built multi-dozen person companies on the back of the Atlassian ecosystem.

Get started here: https://developer.atlassian.com/index.html

I didn't start off hiring employees. In the beginning I did everything myself (programming, marketing, customer support, accounting, etc.). A year in I hired my first customer support employee and throughout the years employee count fluctuated from just a couple to 13 at most. Many of which were part-time and worked remote. I have also had offices throughout the years but now focus totally on remote. I don't like the burden of an office.

I think my #1 tip for a newbie would be to look for something niche that solves a pain point or allows your customer to make or save money. For example: if your customer can spend $10/mo on your software and make or save $30/mo from that, you will have no problem getting & keeping customers.

#2. Don't focus on becoming a unicorn. You can make some serious money and build a very comfortable life running a $300k to $1m dollar business, and your chances of succeeding at that are much greater.

#3. Look for things outside of tech. There are so many problems to solve in small businesses. Many will say there is no money to make with small businesses. My response to that is re-read #2.

#4. Learn everything you can about advertising. Get really good at it and be willing to spend money on advertising.

#5. Be willing to kill something off quickly if it doesn't make money. Test your market early to make sure people will pay for it. I have made the mistake of not doing this and I have lost a lot of money because of it. Now, I need to be able to see a positive ROI on my spend within 3 to 4 months. So if I spent $100 to acquire a customer, I want to be able to get that back + more within 3 to 4 months. I know this timeline is probably really short for a VC funded company, but I have always been bootstrapped so don't have the luxury of risking a longer time-frame for return.

If you have a high bounce rate, you might want to show the user a demo of how the product works.