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

Can I ask an honest question respectfully? I don’t have a company or a startup. But I’ve always wanted to start one. So I’m always curious when I see a response like yours.

How do you sell first? There isn’t a product to show. How do you find Customers? Is it the philosophy that the customer doesn’t know better and you have to tell them what they need, all the while understanding what your capabilities are. Like undersell and overdeliver? I’m genuinely curious how you go about selling first.

Best if you avoid incorporation until you are forced to. If/when you incorporate, do so as a LLC or SCorp (allowing pass-through taxation). CCorps now have a flat 25% tax rate which will be a high double-taxation while you are trying to grow.

edit: assuming you are in the USA. If in a bureaucratic nightmare of a country then you should avoid incorporation until you are extremely profitable. My own experience in Thailand: I incorporated early and was forced to hire a full time bookkeeper plus about 1 month/year accountant contractor to handle the government red tape

That's my point. I don't have any "good" ideas because they're meaningless without the ability to execute. I know my limits, and I know that I can't tell if my ideas are good without intimately knowing the intended market.

There are certainly things that I suspect there would be a huge market for. That, I suppose, is my "good ideas" list (or, because I'm not an oracle, my "wish list").

I hate this advice so much. I've been burned as a developer so many times by people selling products that don't exist and then expecting the dev team to just make them happen by some arbitrary deadline. It's a garbage experience for pretty much everyone.

But I'm not going to argue against it right now. It's too deeply ingrained as startup wisdom to fight it. So instead, I'll offer this compromise: if you're going to sell first and build later, at least build some basic things up front that you are guaranteed to need and that most startups don't build until long after they should.

1. You already know what your programming language strengths and weaknesses are. You can make decisions for your first product iteration already. Are you going to start with a web app? You probably already know what language you want to use. Choose your frameworks, and choose frameworks that address the OWASP top 10 at least. If you are storing data, you have a responsibility--even as a sole founder--to take security seriously. You can think about that and make decisions while you are selling, so do it. You can also make a decision to not store data or store as little as possible and choose frameworks and plugins that help you do that.

2. Along the same lines, if software is involved you have to have a way to deploy it. Set up your DevOps pipeline. If you listened to the first point, you've got somewhere to start. Take your app framework and your plugins and set up a pipeline for deploying/rolling back/backing up/restoring the very basic "hello world" version of the app + plugins. Use a service if you aren't already into DevOps personally--most of these things have a free tier. If you are looking for a native app of some kind, navigate the platform's app store at least once so you know what you're in for. Or if it's cross-platform how you will get the latest version to your users. None of these decisions matter right now in terms of what decisions you make, just that you do make them and learn how to use things.

If you are going to commit to selling first and then building, you are already shortchanging the amount of time you have to deliver after the product is sold. If you haven't made any of these decisions, the time between when you make your first sale and when you deliver it is going to be absolute shit. Give yourself the ability to use that time 100% focused on building the product confidently because you already know how you're going to build it and how you're going to deliver it.

Not knowing what your business is, those are probably minor things you don't need a co-founder for. Just get an accountant/bookeeper on the financial side, you'll need on anyhow. Do some online reading about cookies and GDPR if you have concerns there and don't stress about it - nobodies going to hunt you down if you're very small fish. If you have serious money coming in you can have a more serious look into it - those issues are not fundamental.

If you need to hire people, open an office, write up contracts, deal with immigration lawyers, deal with tricky shareholder stuff, manage customer accounts ... then maybe you need someone to help.