Persisting as a solo founder • Hacker News Board

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#11

Post by vishnumohandas » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #5

vishnumohandas wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, author here. To reiterate, this really is the happiest I've been. The initial few months were not smooth (as indicated by the article). Mostly because was an expectation mismatch with respect to how comfortable I believed/was made to believe life would be for an "ex-FAANG engineer" starting up. Also, the loneliness I felt was more about not having someone to rant to about roadblocks or share small achievements w…

You can be very happy working on zombie startups, but why do it? There’s so many other things you can choose to work on that have the same potential (zero) but might be even more fun and bring more happiness. I work on emulators in my spare coding time knowing they’ll never be any kind of business, but it’s fun. Just don’t keep working hoping the zombie will one day come alive.

> why do it?

1. I'm scratching my own itch. I wanted a privacy friendly alternative to Google Photos to store and organize my memories, I couldn't find any that were as convenient, so I'm building one.

2. I have a clear path towards a public release, so I'm not worried about it being a "zombie" forever. Some projects take longer to see the light of day, and I'm okay with the delayed gratification.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#12

Post by p0d » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #2

Although the author is persisting, I get the sense that he is forcing himself to feel happy about what is essentially a zombie startup* (a photo organizer). It shouldn’t feel hard or even lonely to be a solo founder. There’s so many people you will have to interact with that are not your co-founder. There’s so many people you can share your feelings with that are not your co-founder. And having a co-founder is no gua…

As solo founders we can easily decieve ourselves. That is take on a dodgey narrative to explain our slow progress or failure. In my case I set some magical goals...I think these goals were me setting myself up to fail. If I didn't have x mrr within 6 months then it can't have been my fault because I really, really wanted it to happen.

I'm 9 months in to having given up my job and have taken on some consulting work. Time will tell if the business grows or if I go freelance/employee.

I'm living in day by day land now rather than fantasy land.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#13

Post by idm_guru » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #2

Although the author is persisting, I get the sense that he is forcing himself to feel happy about what is essentially a zombie startup* (a photo organizer). It shouldn’t feel hard or even lonely to be a solo founder. There’s so many people you will have to interact with that are not your co-founder. There’s so many people you can share your feelings with that are not your co-founder. And having a co-founder is no gua…

Note: the definition of an entrepreneur is someone who doesn't listen to advice (some of it good). This dude says you're startup is "zombie"... Well, he might be right, but if you see an opportunity there... That's what makes you smart. And in 10 years if you're successful, the same people who said your idea was bad will be saying it was obvious.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#14

Post by lukevp » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

It sounds like you have the motivation and persistence figured out. That’s great! Have you read Lean Startup and done some customer research? Maybe I’m wrong, but gut reaction to this app is that very few people would be willing to pay for this. If someone is privacy conscious and anti-google, Apple has a much better track record for privacy. I get multiple gigabytes of cloud backup for free and can add on additional space very cheaply, and I trust them to keep my data replicated and safe. The photo apps are also very robust and have local AI and such. It seems like a hard sell, and that the people who understand and care about end to end encryption could just set up a NextCloud instance and get E2E encrypted backups in their native photo client, in addition to office tools, general data storage, etc.

I wish you luck, and I sincerely say this to try and help you, but I think you should stop adding features and start trying to convert people to paid to see if they will.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#15

Post by vishnumohandas » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

senojretep356 wrote: post #7

xwdv wrote: post #2

Although the author is persisting, I get the sense that he is forcing himself to feel happy about what is essentially a zombie startup* (a photo organizer). It shouldn’t feel hard or even lonely to be a solo founder. There’s so many people you will have to interact with that are not your co-founder. There’s so many people you can share your feelings with that are not your co-founder. And having a co-founder is no gua…

I agree with most of this although I think if you do privacy well there is a core of people willing to pay so yes your market is much smaller but still potentially valuable. My issue really is with taking 7 months to build and not shipping anything. I see the authors comment that he's not a fan of ship fast and apologise later but surely you can put a beta out there even if it's just for feedback from the indie hacke…

> taking 7 months to build and not shipping anything

So I spent the first couple of months chasing an on-premise alternative to photo storage[1]. Then I realized that the product was difficult to sell, and required a substantial investment of capital so I pivoted to an E2EE alternative on the cloud. I also spent a non-trivial amount of time trying to raise investment, which I regret at this point.

> how long are you going to spend before actually testing that out?

If things don't go terribly wrong, the project should be up for beta testing in early October.

[1]: https://orma.in

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#16

Post by ryeguy_24 » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

Reading the last few lines of this and hearing that he’s the happiest he’s ever been is interesting to me. Does anyone ever regret movement from job to owner/founder? Seems like most don’t?

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#17

Post by rattray » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:28 PM UTC

Bit of a side note, but the author mentioned https://GitHub.audio, which I'm quite enjoying. However, that site says it plays "string plucks" which I'm not sure I can hear, or at least discern from "bell dings". Is it working properly?

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#18

Post by serendipityrecs » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

Solo founder here.

- I started a newsletter with progress updates to keep myself accountable but found that as time goes on I haven't needed it as much

- Motivation can be variable over time and you need to keep making progress even on your down days. I think this is (one of the ways) where a co-founder is super valuable, as you can motivate each other when one of you is down.

On the theory that this thread will be a honeypot for other solo founders: if you're interested in potentially working together or just someone to bounce ideas off of, shoot me an email (address in my profile)

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#19

Post by JohnStrangeII » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #10

Being a solo founder myself here are a few tips I would like to add: 1. Solo founders are most often devs, which means they focus 90% of their energy on dev and what little remains on marketing. Unfortunately this is a easy trap to fall into and you should invest equal if not more time doing/learning SEO, content marketing (which you've done here very successfully btw) and building an audience. 2. Making a product wi…

I have a question about this. Is SEO really still relevant and necessary? Is it really effective?

I've been wondering about this for a while. It seems to me that everybody is doing it anyway, and that in the end what counts is that many pages link to your page. Meanwhile, search engines heavily penalize certain "optimizations".

If you have a page that loads instantly and contains all the standard meta tags and keywords, does additional SEO really make a difference? Are there really any "tricks" that work?

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#20

Post by ackbar03 » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

ryeguy_24 wrote: post #16

Reading the last few lines of this and hearing that he’s the happiest he’s ever been is interesting to me. Does anyone ever regret movement from job to owner/founder? Seems like most don’t?

You do it knowing that it could be a terrible financial decision, cost at least a year of your life minimum, and that 90 to 99% of new businesses fail. Or at least you should know that. But you do it anyways.

So no, I think most don't regret it.