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Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

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Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#191

Post by dmritard96 »

shostack wrote: post #100
Frondo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this times a ten thousand. It took me years to unlearn all of the "marketing is all bullshit" attitudes I grew up with. Whole different set of skills to learn, and not like, say, imperative->FP. Much harder.

As a senior marketer who has to combat this myth frequently, thank you. Modern day marketing is a complex orchestration of many parts that are often highly technical. Further, the discipline as a whole has some incredibly hard unsolved problems when it comes to measurement and analytics (attribution and viewability I'm looking at you). If anyone has a product with initial traction but is unsure of where to go next, f…

Hi @shostack. We (https://flair.co) are a team of engineers and looking for feedback on the marketing side. We have some nice preorders and shipped our first few units a few days ago. We will have brick and morter presence in the next few months but our online strategy has largely been focused on reddit. Looking to do more FB ads etc but curious about tactics for identifying copy/images/audience most effectively. Also curious where to look for a marketing hire and how to best structure compensation (main advice I have seen is emphasis on commission). Any thoughts? Also happy to chat offline if you need more detail.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#192

Post by SwellJoe »

kevindeasis wrote: post #183
SwellJoe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y Combinator has funded lot of single founder compnies. So, Y Combinator seems like it might be the Y Combinator for single founder companies. pg has said it's a negative, and it really is. The likelihood of a single founder company growing huge is smaller than if there's small team at the start, for all sorts of reasons (which pg and others have written about). But, if you've built something awesome, YC isn't going…

Really? Dropbox is the only company that I know of and when Dropbox started in Ycombinator they were already a two-man team? I'm really interested in knowing the other companies that were only funded as a single founder company

There have been quite a few of them.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=single+founder+y+combinator+compan...

Again, it's definitely a strike against you in the selection process (as it probably should be...I've started a company solo and I've started a company with a co-founder...the latter is clearly better), but it's not a deal-breaker.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#193

Post by justsaysmthng »

pieterhg wrote: post #171

I'm a single founder, I'm nearing $400k/y revenue. It started a side project on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222 and then grew over the last 2 years. 2014: ~$50k 2015: ~$200k 2016: ~$400k Also traffic also doubled every year, so revenue is tied pretty closely too that! This also includes about $7k/m from my remote jobs site which is also tied to Nomad List: http://remoteok.io . It's now a cost of li…

I've just spend 30 minutes examining the cities on your site.

Great work !

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#194

Post by drharby »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #122

I do, I run a small video games company, making games that one person can make, like this one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 . I've posted about it here once before, but my 'thing' (if I have a thing) is that I do both the programming, but also the art side. Computer Science is my training, so I can do the software development, what is less common is that I also have some skill in painting, design, animati…

TODO: follow-up for brainpicking session

EDIT: in the spirit of proper forum etiquette, I will add to the conversation.

Currently spent 4 months 'funemployed' and aggressively pursued my side project full time, a side-scrolling action platformer. I became rather quick to pick up the necessary art skillset and have demo-ed my alpha at local venues. It's received solid praise regarding fundamentals and playability - peoiple just want 'more polish' to give them a reason to buy it and play.

Subsequently networked and found an audio engineer who I've found to fit my needs. I cannot stress how hard it was to find one i liked, which kinda justified my decision to pay him a dec. amount.

Total nominal expenses thus far: 12k

considering I own vice renting, a good portion of that is tax deductible so really it's a net expense of 10K, plus the added benefit of flexibility and pursuing passion.

If I were to sell > 2k units, I would seriously consider a campaign of 1 game a year on the side, as I feel I have a grasp on the process. I still aim to be a moonlight dev vice full-time, for risk-mitigation and life reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#195

Post by stevesearer »

kevindeasis wrote: post #187
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…

I like this, it's really really cool. I have some questions. Who puts content in your site? Who placed content in the site at the beginning, just yourself? How did you learn how to host your own ads? Btw, which office design do you like the most?

The first advert was in 2007 and was probably just some html in the theme sidebar. Now I use an ad plugin for WordPress to handle the mechanics of it.

My favorite office is mine because it is well-suited to my needs :)

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#196

Post by drharby »

desireco42 wrote: post #163
DizzyDoo wrote: post #122

I do, I run a small video games company, making games that one person can make, like this one: http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900 . I've posted about it here once before, but my 'thing' (if I have a thing) is that I do both the programming, but also the art side. Computer Science is my training, so I can do the software development, what is less common is that I also have some skill in painting, design, animati…

How do you make a game that can work on Mac and Win and Linux at the same time? What is the easiest way?

I hear xamarin's toolset compiles to multiple platforms, if you know csharp. kinda the route im going for my game.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#197

Post by tjholowaychuk »

matchagaucho wrote: post #159

Some numbers on my single-person company: Market: Add-on tools/plugins/components for enterprise software platforms. Customers: ~30 Growth rate: Adding about 1 new customer per month Revenue: $550K ($300K product / $250K consulting) Gross profit margin: 80% Costs are basically hosting, occasional marketing campaigns, some offshore development, and various SaaS subscriptions to operate the business. The product often…

That's my goal as well, as long as I can make a comfortable living, hack on a bunch of stuff from nice places all over the world I'll be more than happy!

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#198

Post by kfrz »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #49

I'm attempting to run a side project / business. I'm launching it this month (it's been slowly gaining in sign-ups prior to release which is a good sign in my opinion). It's https://www.simex.io/ , a personal assistant you can give tasks to over email, sms and other protocols in the future. So no growth (unless you account my 50 sign-ups in the past 2 weeks, much higher than my sign-ups at the beginning of June when…

Just signed up. Can't wait to start talking to HAL

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#199

Post by pieterhg »

kevindeasis wrote: post #180
pieterhg wrote: post #171

I'm a single founder, I'm nearing $400k/y revenue. It started a side project on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222 and then grew over the last 2 years. 2014: ~$50k 2015: ~$200k 2016: ~$400k Also traffic also doubled every year, so revenue is tied pretty closely too that! This also includes about $7k/m from my remote jobs site which is also tied to Nomad List: http://remoteok.io . It's now a cost of li…

Great job man! You've mentioned something about automating. Can you tell me more about it and which you've decided to not use? As for competition, how do you specifically handle this?

I've automated mostly everything from getting weather data, to soon giving people refunds, to soon ad sales.

I mostly try to ignore competition and stubbornly make what I would like to use myself. It helps that I am a "nomad" myself, so I know kinda what they need.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#200

Post by pieterhg »

Bromskloss wrote: post #173
pieterhg wrote: post #171

I'm a single founder, I'm nearing $400k/y revenue. It started a side project on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107222 and then grew over the last 2 years. 2014: ~$50k 2015: ~$200k 2016: ~$400k Also traffic also doubled every year, so revenue is tied pretty closely too that! This also includes about $7k/m from my remote jobs site which is also tied to Nomad List: http://remoteok.io . It's now a cost of li…

I didn't even know that that site had a source of revenue. Where does it come from?

It's mostly from memberships (click Join) and some ads
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