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Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

news.ycombinator.com

201–210 of 399 posts

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#201

I started Apex a few months ago, first product is a little uptime monitor built on AWS Lambda: http://apex.sh/ping/ . Almost 2000 users already, not quite paying for itself since I have a free plan but it's almost breaking even at least haha. That said legal bills alone were ~6k, so it'll take a while to recoup that. Long-term plan is to have a bunch of products like this which are low maintenance, as long as they're…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, our bill without the terms was just about $1500. The terms, privacy, and eula killed us.

I just wrote the TOS myself and run my site as a sole proprietor. $0 in legal bills.

On top of that, there's lots of free templates and even real TOS's that can pretty much be copied verbatim. Will possibly have been made by better lawyers, too, if it's a big company TOS.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#203

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 stuff! How did you build the community around NomadList early on?

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#204

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 stuff! How did you build the community around NomadList early on?

I built the site, but then I thought, omg I'm going to lose all these users once they leave.

So I added a MailChimp email box, then a chat group, a forum and kept making more for them. That's how people kept coming back and finally paying money.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#205
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm visiting the site without javascript (using noscript) I get a blank page. Please add a error message that javascript is required.

How do you use the internet in 2016 without JavaScript?

I use NoScript for security reasons. I find that I usually only have to turn on 1 or 2 scripts to get the content on the site to show. If even that as many show it without scripts. It's a tiny percentage, often using fancy crap underneath, that absolutely require JavaScript to even see static content. I don't loose much ignoring them but gain plenty in security, loading speed, and battery savings.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#206
post #102

Just hit $1 million/year in sales :) About 20 years ago wrote a scratch-my-itch B2B desktop software for Windows. Side project for 10 years which is how long it took to reach about $120K to make the switch to full time. Added features and increased price accordingly. Hired a few more people. Growth is slow but steady. Yearly renewable support contracts are the secret. Coding is easy, marketing is hard. Persistence, p…

> Using throwaway so customers don't find this comment. Not sure about your customers, but if I was a customer of some product I'd be happy to know they're are doing well :)

I think it is more the fact that he is a single founder (and one man band by the sounds of it) that s/he wants to hide. Business customers are not happy to buy from a business with a single person risk.

Personally in this market having a business run by a single person is probably these risky than a small team since the chance of bankruptcy is less.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#207
post #198

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

Ha thanks :)

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#208

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…

Thanks for sharing. Immediately thought of NomadList when I saw this post.

> keeping it while lots of competitors (including funded ones) keep coming in again and again and try to copy everything you did but do it better

My current project https://remotebase.io borrowed a lot from NomadList. While it's not successful yet, I can see what you mean.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ouch! That is really high for just that. Must have been some really one-off stuff for the transfer. Edit to add: I guess it really isn't that high at that rate. It made me curious as to what we paid for similar services at the same rate so I had to go check. Ours came in at just about $4000. The TOS/EULA/privacy policy are what ate into ours.

> The TOS/EULA/privacy policy I wonder if there are existing freely available legal policies that would work for any SaaS startup? Sort of like how I can just slap a standard GPL license on my software, and then come back later and offer commercial licenses?

Our attorney, at least, had fairly decent templates for all. For the privacy policy it was a matter of seconds to finish that up. As for the TOS/EULA that was the time consumer. These tend to be more specific, or at least contain specific clauses, that apply only to the SaaS they are intended for. While many of the clauses are cut/paste, there are sections that are more specific. Our attorney time wasn't spent necessarily on the writing, as much as it was ensuring that all the bases were covered. He asked us a lot of questions and this was the time consuming part. I am sure some of those questions could be streamlined into a template. On the other hand, he knows that if a question does come up, we are going to come to him, and wants to ensure his butt is covered if something were to happen.

Re: Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

#210
post #102

Just hit $1 million/year in sales :) About 20 years ago wrote a scratch-my-itch B2B desktop software for Windows. Side project for 10 years which is how long it took to reach about $120K to make the switch to full time. Added features and increased price accordingly. Hired a few more people. Growth is slow but steady. Yearly renewable support contracts are the secret. Coding is easy, marketing is hard. Persistence, p…

> Using throwaway so customers don't find this comment. Not sure about your customers, but if I was a customer of some product I'd be happy to know they're are doing well :)

He is doing B2B sales.

It is wise to hide his small size from companies he sells to. I have seen countless stories that large companies act like bullies and take advantage of small companies on a routine basis.

That may not be what he was thinking. But it is in his own best interest.

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