I had such a project that was making about $15k/mo at its peak -- it was me and my wife, barring a couple of spot contributions from contractors. It depended on data from a sole data source, a Fortune 100 company, which eventually cut us off by sending a C&D threatening to sue under the CFAA, Copyright Act, and various other statutes. They claimed we breached the contract entered automatically by using their site, as…
Was there any possibility of agreeing a license for the data from the Fortune 100?
Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
121–130 of 165 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#122I had such a project that was making about $15k/mo at its peak -- it was me and my wife, barring a couple of spot contributions from contractors. It depended on data from a sole data source, a Fortune 100 company, which eventually cut us off by sending a C&D threatening to sue under the CFAA, Copyright Act, and various other statutes. They claimed we breached the contract entered automatically by using their site, as…
I usually don't do this, but couldn't you have the customers set up some sort of proxy to acquire the data from the F100? So give them a piece of software that they run on their local network to grab the data and configure your SaaS to point to the customer's site to get it. Perhaps you've considered this and it wouldn't work for some reason or another. But I thought I'd offer some unsolicited advice.
As much as I wanted my business to be able to live on, I wanted to stay out of prison more.
The only option would've been to abandon all US assets and essentially go into exile in a state where the law was more friendly and the F100 would have a harder time getting me shut down (and there are very few jurisdictions without a law substantially derived from the CFAA; the wording of the Telecommunications Act in many Commonwealth nations gives marginally more protection). I didn't think that was a very good option for a relatively small business, I wouldn't have been able to afford it at the time anyway, and it would've had meteoric impacts on my family, so I didn't do it.
On top of that, The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload have proven that the long arm of American corporatism knows no borders.
To their credit, however, Sweden did seem to hold out a long time. They had to be threatened with sanctions from the WTO in order to take down TPB. At that point, Sweden ignored their own law and pushed through a sham trial against TPB's proprietors, who went into exile in non-extradition countries, from which they were eventually stopped at border crossings and extradited to serve time in Sweden. Can't hide from Mickey Mouse.
The most ironic part of this is that the world's largest companies regularly violate the same rules with impunity. Google, for example, routinely and flagrantly violates the CFAA and the Copyright Act, going by the standards that are applied to everyone non-Google. However, Google has been sued over this and won, with their use specifically ruled fair, because they're Google -- and that's essentially the reasoning the judges give if you read the decisions, talking about how it's a "transformative use" that has changed the world, etc. etc. Judges have declined to apply the same logic in later rulings (Ticketmaster v. RMG), on the basis that the defendant was not Google.
The moral of the story appears to be break rules and get too big to fail fast, and then you can do whatever you want. If you don't big enough fast enough, you will be destroyed by a large company that's afraid of you.
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#123The harder part about running a solo SaaS company is building revenue takes _a very long time_, particularly if you're new at this. Most of my peers take ~18 months to hit the ~$10k revenue number that lets them durably transition to running the business as the full-time gig.
If you want to run a one-person shop which creates value substantially related to software, but you don't want to bite off the complexity of writing and selling a SaaS app for your first rodeo, I'd recommend a business model like productized consulting (the glide path to shipping a SaaS app!), selling infoproducts, or selling some sort of addon to an existing software ecosystem (WordPress, Shopify, etc).
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I went after the hair stylist market for three months as part of The Foundation. I quickly came to the realization that it was not a good market for the simple reason that the owners of hair saloons like to cut hair. Because of this they are very hard to get on the phone. One key for any potential SaaS market is to make sure you have a way to reach that market. Make sure they are on email or social media in large num…
Thanks. Yes, it's not enough for there to be a need. You also have to think about how you'll reach prospects. Stylists and salon owners aren't on the computer all day every day and they don't like to take phone calls from salespeople. They're very expensive and/or time-consuming to reach. A solo bootstrapper almost by definition has very little time or money, so salons are a very bad match for the capabilities of sol…
So, not sure if there ks a forum for salon owners, but if there's not, that's the first thing I'd look at building. And if there is, well, there's your marketing strategy. (At least a big component of it.)
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#125I built Jollyturns ( https://jollyturns.com ), a ski and snowboarding oriented business. I currently have a fairly extensive web site, and two mobile apps, on iOS and Android. I started with the iOS mobile app, I wanted something to show me on a ski resort's map where my friends are, and keep track of my skiing statistics. I tried finding a partner to work with, but that's pretty much impossible in Silicon Valley whe…
Have you tried to reach out to any of your local resorts with a marketing plan? I'm sure they'd love some integration into your app for trade: you promote them, they promote you.
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#126Running solo doing around $750k/year on a desktop app. The market is so huge and so many niches to filll. Make something you can sell for $50-300 with upgrades once in a while and set up a simple shop. It has never been easier to develop desktop software. If I was going to start this route today I'd 100% make an electron app and try to address and already large market that has stagnated or has shitty entrenched playe…
How do you sell? That's one of the annoying (and liberating) things about desktops, they don't have an app-store, so you have to run your own store (without reviews) and people have to trust that you're not going to sell them a virus.
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#127Not the same thing exactly, but I'm able to run 2 ecommerce sites with non-trivial sales volumes, by myself. The two biggest things that make this possible: a) Email support only, no telephone support (sales or post sales). Not everyone likes it, of course, but if you're determined to be a one man band, it's essential. b) Automation of every single thing you can. For you, it would be a different list, but I had to au…
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you sold any of your businesses before? If so, how did you seek out businesses to buy yours?
I haven't but am considering selling one of the products next year. I plan to go through a Broker. I had a soft offer in the $3 mil range from a big company for that real estate product I mentioned. They reached out to me. I pretty much blew it off because it was in a growth phase and I felt I could grow it more. 6 months later, the real estate market crashed and that product lost 50% of its revenue within a year. In…
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know support, especially good support, is a hard problem to solve. However have you explored documenting processes in extreme detail in order to outsource that part of the business? The upfront investment would be great, but the returns in time alone would seem worth it.
Certainly worth the time investment when i can get to it. My biggest problem at the moment is that I have no admin interface. I have to dive into the db to make fixes/changes for people. Once I get an admin panel built out I'll be able to bring on help easier. The other issue is that I actually get so much great info about my users needs from the support requests that I cant detach entirely.
Re: Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?
#130Running solo doing around $750k/year on a desktop app. The market is so huge and so many niches to filll. Make something you can sell for $50-300 with upgrades once in a while and set up a simple shop. It has never been easier to develop desktop software. If I was going to start this route today I'd 100% make an electron app and try to address and already large market that has stagnated or has shitty entrenched playe…
The traditional "sell once, offer paid upgrades" seems to be better suited for apps with a stable feature set, where you can take a year or two to produce the next major version. However, a more iterative approach to development doesn't work with this model very well.
The recently popular switch to subscriptions (Adobe, Office, 1Password, Jetbrains, YNAB, etc), while obviously every developer's wet dream, may not sit very well with customers, at least if there's no obvious service being offered (like e.g. Dropbox).