Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

indiehackers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#71

Post by madiathomas »

ultrasounder wrote: post #24
onion2k wrote: post #8

Marketing and sales. As awful as that sounds to many people it just isn't enough to build an amazing product, write great code, or design something beautiful. You need to be able to get out there and tell people it exists in order to succeed. Without that ability your startup will fail. In fact, in my experience at least, far more companies fail because they couldn't reach customers than fail because they couldn't bu…

I am hearing that a fledgling startup needs to "Sell First" and then build it- They Will come. Any ideas on how I should balance the concept of the idea and the actual MVP that I would market to my early adopter customers? Thanks in advance for any insights.

I always try to find at least one client who has a problem I want to solve and ask them to fund development of version 1. If no-one is ready to pay for development of version 1, it is a sign that I don't have a market and shouldn't waste time developing. So far, I have developed two profitable products using this strategy. Even if it doesn't work, at least you were paid for your efforts.

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#72

Post by Data_Junkie »

You can learn in two ways, somebody can communicate( share, tell, write) the truth to you, or you can do an experiment. People in a Capitalistic society are rarely taught to do experiments, because what is learned by experiment cannot be controlled. Knowing how, when and why to do the experiment is what separates those who can create from the group that can only do what they are told.

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#73

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

The obvious one that people seem to forget is persistance. The ability to get from 0 to a company that serves a purpose takes a lot of work and grit.

I think that ultimately a true believe that you can do it is what gets you there. A few people are able to believe that of themself, we see it as eragance, but I think that over time we can build our confidante by building bigger and bigger projects successfully. We can then use those past accomplishment as inspiration every time we have dought about where we are going in the future.

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#74

Post by Phrenzy »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #64
GhettoMaestro wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 5. If you are one of two founders: Don't have sexual intercourse with the wife of the other founder of the company. He will find out and because you have 50/50 shares in the company, everyone needs to pick a side. This destroys the company. This sounds juicy...

It's surprisingly common and you really don't want to get involved in any way.

Unless you are a divorce lawyer.

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#75

Post by louisswiss »

solatic wrote: post #70
louisswiss wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep - A willingness to hire slower and fire earlier would be much better advice.

Part of the issue is that there isn't a single correct way to hire somebody. Your hiring process must be able to adapt to a given candidate's circumstances. For example, say that you met somebody who is already working somewhere, and through the course of networking you understand that they're not happy where they currently are but they're not actively looking for new work either. If you decide that you'd like to poa…

Common advice is you only have to be good at either hiring slowly or firing early.

Google, for example, was apparently very good at hiring (slowly) - at least in their early days. So it didn't matter that they were (are?) terrible at firing.

Facebook was the opposite AFAIK. It didn't matter that they hired too soon and too many of the 'wrong' people - because they were good at letting them go before it did too much damage to the business.

On balance, I'd rather be good at hiring than firing, as it seems to be much more fair on employees.

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#77

Post by techsin101 »

orasis wrote: post #53
kareemm wrote: post #7

I'm running Savio[1], which is my fourth small internet company I've run since 2007 (the previous three were sold). At the risk of sounding cliche, the three skills that have been most valuable are: 1. The ability to build software that meaningfully solves a customer's problem 2. The ability to reach people who have the problem my software solves 3. The persistence to grind until we have a decent product and can regu…

#2 is so much harder than people think.

#2 is v hard, I can confirm that. Infact it should be the first thing to be solved

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#78

Post by kumartanmay »

edoceo wrote: post #36
kumartanmay wrote: post #6

Do such checkpoints really help in the long term? An athlete begins to learn by doing and then watching others. There's no playbook there, he just begins by playing an abridged version of the pro. A highly successful athlete is the one understands his game on his own and not following what the sporting greats before him did. I believe ambitious journeys are a process of self-discovery. If there is anything that helps…

Have to have checkpoints and goals. Everything you're doing is an experiment to increase revenue/velocity. So measure, frequently and correct.

You are right but one doesn't need a checklist or a threshold for skills to be an entrepreneur. My argument on comparison with athletes was that we all learn on the go - no one is perfectly fit for any job until one starts doing it.

Re: What skills are most crucial for running small internet companies?

#79

Post by superasn »

adventured wrote: post #54
trpc wrote: post #12

the skill of shamelessly shilling for yourself on HN, Reddit, Twitter, IH and PH all day long, everyday until you make it.

> the skill of shamelessly shilling ... all day long, everyday until you make it. It's one of the most important comments in the thread. Not only is it an acquired skill (selling), it's bonded to an extraordinarily valuable character trait: perseverance. A lot of people can't do the necessary sales to drive their product/platform/service because they either can't absorb the hits from doors being constantly shut in th…

This reply resonates so much with me. I think it takes years of experience to understand something like this (at least it took me a long time).

I too started from this thinking that promoting is shilling, but it's not. Every successful company in the world does it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with promoting your product or yourself as long as you're not breaking the rules.

I think it's the part of geek culture that misunderstands selling as shilling, which is probably the reason why so many good but small startups fail. They just don't sell enough.

It's the same ideology that charging for a product or service is bad somehow. I remember that a blog that reviewed a website of mine (a movie making software in 2007) was all gaga over the product but as soon as we went from free to paid, it put us in a special section called "website hall of shame". Just because we decided to charge something for a product which users were making money off.

I takes a lot of skill to sell, get rejected and hear 99 Nos for that single Yes and sometimes that's the only thing missing between a win and a loss.

Post reply on HN