Ask HN: How to found a company as a single founder?

Sounds like my girlfriend. :P

Naw, but I guess that's technically two people.

What if cannot code to the level needed to get an MVP?

Sure, by real faces I mean pitching your product to people directly. Not necessarily over the Internet but in person. This is a step that is often missed by a lot of tech people wannabe entrepreneurs (including myself). We think the Internet is a magic place where you can launch anything from your bedroom and reach millions of people if you use the right marketing strategy (ads on youtube, cold emails, viral strategy, gamification, etc). I call this the scaling phase. You can't scale nothing. If you have zero user and zero customer, what do you want to scale?

So step zero consist on acquiring your first customer/user. This is usually when having a non-tech co-founder or someone who's good at selling would make a huge difference. We always bypass this step of acquiring the first customers, it's only when you build something and ship it that you hit a wall. You will not rank in google at first, no one will ever mention your name and the only queries you'll get on your SaaS or whatever product you have will come from your own IP. That's what I'm talking about. You just launched, now what?

So you need to go out there and "manually" pitch your product to people. Introduce yourself, tell your story, prove people what you've built is what they want. You would usually fail capturing the needs at first because of a lack of interaction with your targeted users, you will build something that isn't exactly what they want. So you need to quickly adapt to that early feedback, which is why going out there and trying out your MVP or prototype very quickly is a key to success. This is what I mean by "people need to see real faces". You could pitch your product to your mom, friends, potential users, potential partners who could help you move to the next step, etc.

The best way to find out "how to found a company as a single founder" is to give it a shot. You'll basically collect all the answers to your question.

Solo founder here. I've experienced several group size startups in the past 10+ years, and ultimately arrived to the conclusion that solo founder is the best option if you're cut out for it. As a solo founder you need to be a jack of all trades, master of none. Constantly experimenting, learning, and open to criticism.

I've been apart of large co-founder group (4+) which I don't recommend at all. Once our company went above 50-60 people the co-founder relationship just imploded and after 100+ employees, none of the co-founder were apart of the company and it eventually shut down by the investors who took over.

I've also had a co-founder where we tried but eventually had separation of idea and roadmap but the toll of the pressure was too much. You not only have to care deeply about the project but also the other co-founder and if one side is more into "glory" of a startup founder, then you're in a failing relationship.

As an eventual solo founder, I realized the size and ambitions of the "startup" are extremely important. Small ideas are ok but might not be exciting enough and big projects are nearly impossible to pull off. Figuring out how to recruit contractors and split the work load to achieve MVP is the trick.

Important tools and mindset you need to master: 1- Jobs to be done (JTBD) 2- Objectives and Key Results (OKR) 3- Sales pitch (not just a pitch deck or executive summary) 4- UX and technical skills (aka: jack of all trades) 5- People management (not just project/product management) 6- Open to criticism (nobody wants to tell you your baby is ugly, you have to assure them they can be honest with you and you'd want to hear the brutally honest feedback) 7- Go to market strategy (value props and business model) 8- Network effects 9- Time management 10- Business, legal, accounting, payroll and taxes

Simply put, if you are starting off alone, you need more money. I can think of two women I've worked with who were outstanding project managers, and who could step up to the role of COO. Neither of them have enough spare cash to endure the craziness of founding a startup, but both of them could play the role of June Martino, if I could pay them, and that is basically what you need if you are a solo founder. I would look to hire someone like that right away.