21–30 of 263 posts
I'd like to learn more about their strategy for fund raising, as I'd guess most people going down this path would be tending more towards the bootstrap/indie hacking/rev generating end of the spectrum
Make a product that people want and are willing to pay for.
The product may be in what appears to be a crowded field. Identify niche opportunities or cases where an established leader is doing a poor job.
It's fine to do some consulting on the side to pay the bills. Of course it will take time away from the product you are building; just be able to recognize when it's too much and scale back consulting or turn off the spigot completely once product sales take off.
It's fine to work according to your own schedule and needs, not some idealized '100 hours/week' VC fantasy schedule.
Investors don't care about you, they care about their returns. As you don't fit the pattern of what they expect for a successful startup, they will either ignore you or make very unreasonable demands - find a co-founder, work twice as hard, follow this or that model. Ultimately, it's a waste of time at best, a loss of control and failure at worst.
Once you have cashflow, offload certain business tasks to pros who can do it better and cheaper than attempting it yourself. Hire when you have sufficient cashflow + cushion.
Take pride in what you are building, the customers you attract, and the skills you are learning.
As a solo founder for 10+ years, what I can say is that all "rules" in business are "rules of thumb"... Not laws. It's ok to be a solo founder... Sometimes. Bounce ideas off your team instead of your co-founders. Make use of mentors. There is a workaround for all your challenges. I also recommend listening to podcasts with other founders. I host a podcast called "Open Source Underdogs". Lots of good advice there for…
This is not the same as ‘good’ advice, and will often be diametrically opposed to it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I am always quite surprised that many people think "yea, you always can build a software in a few weeks. If not bah, not good'.
I think SOME softwares requires month if not years of building. Because there are difficult technically. Those complicated softwares can be a game changer in the field, because well, the technical entry is so hard. So let's see more those softwares like perhaps future BIG success. Not just future 'obvious failures'.
I think this makes sence.
The comment about going from dev to marketer is huge. I'm in that phase now and it's pretty daunting. I've spent so much time obsessing about the product and now that I finally have something...how do I get people to use it?
I just started brainstorming ideas and it's actually fun to start diving into something I haven't had to think about before. Yes, daunting but so is everything about being a solo founder. It's just another hurtle to jump.
If you're serious about your product and enjoy the solo founder journey, you'll find comfort and stimulation in the new adventures that present themselves to you.
The main take away is goals, tasks, ideas, and random thoughts, you have to get them out of your head and onto paper (digital or otherwise) and this could be as unstructured as the thoughts themselves. They key is to materialize internal thoughts externally, to capture the essence outside myself, and to give myself room to work on that small task that will push me forward now.
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…
The way I see it is that product development should still come first, but marketing and building an audience should be tied into that process instead of being an afterthought.
When you're building the product out initially there's just so much shit to do, I think if you don't dedicate most of your time to building it takes too long to get anything done.
Perhaps I'm biased as I'm trying to juggle a full-time job and building my product. I barely have enough time to build stuff, let alone get distracted with things like SEO.
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…
> people who understand and care about end to end encryption could just set up a NextCloud instance
This is the exact problem I'd like to solve. It worries me that currently only the tech savvy can afford privacy. I'd like to take a shot at making privacy accessible to a larger audience. Something along the lines of what ProtonMail is doing to GMail.
Of course I might fail at attracting enough attention for this to be a viable "startup", but I would have still built something me and my family can safely use. Also there would be learnings along the way, and I'll just move on to building something else. :)
> what I had underestimated was the difficulty involved in finding a co-founder and how that would compound the difficulty involved in finding an investor
Whoops.
I just shelve ideas until the pieces align.
If my idea involves being able to get into certain rooms to be taken more seriously because I have a co-founder, then I don't do that idea until I have a co-founder, and do other ideas.
Look guys, your competition has a lot of ideas. A lot of viable ideas, and this is not a coveted position, it just is. If your brain coincidentally functions like that once, it isn't a good enough reason to pursue it.