Persisting as a solo founder • Hacker News Board

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#121

Post by GordonS » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:21 PM UTC

bushido wrote: post #105

jahbrewski wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide any further advice on how to hire sales professionals? I'm starting to feel comfortable hiring tech roles, but hiring for sales still feels like a black box!

Sales can definitely feel like that. Without more context on your market, decision maker personas etc. the one piece of advise that I can give confidently is this: Start with Senior Sales Leadership. Ideally someone with experience in your target market. Reach out to a few individuals, in your network or on LinkedIn or similar. Ask them for advice, see the type of advice they provide. If you like them, ask them to re…

B2B sales is an area I'm going to need help with quite soon. Solo-bootstrapping a startup means that money can be tight though.

Do you think it would be possible to get part-time help using the approach you describe? Alternatively, do some sales professionals work on a commission-only basis?

Also, do you have any idea what typical commission is expected?

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#122

Post by PragmaticPulp » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:23 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #44

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even telling me that he himself only sleeps 2-3 hours per night just so that he can do more physics. It's always fascinating to see people make claims like this, despite all evidence showing that it's impossible to maintain. Some extreme genetic outliers may be able to sustain performance with around 5 hours of sleep per night, but no one is going to last very long on 2-3 hours per sleep each night.

How do you rule out if the professor is an extreme genetic outlier? Seems like the kind of place you’d expect to find such an outlier.

Extreme genetic outliers still need 5, maybe 4 hours of sleep to function.

Going all the way down to 2 hours of sleep is doable for short bursts, but it will catch up with even the genetic outliers before long.

Many of these people are just exaggerating for effect. If you have poor time management, poor accounting for where you spend your time, and an erratic sleep/wake schedule, it's easy to get confused about actual sleep durations. Some people also use stimulants excessively during the week and then crash on weekends, but they'll only tell you about the nights where they barely slept.

Some people learn to normalize sleep deprivation and coast on a diet of frequent naps. If you take 30-90 minute naps a couple times a day you can coast for a long time on 2-3 hours in bed at night, but you're still sleep deprived. Those weird polyphasic sleep schedules that claim to reduce your need for sleep are simply normalizing sleep deprivation and masking it with naps throughout the day.

Finally, there's a common phenomenon where people misperceive some of their sleep time as being awake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_state_misperception This is a common explanation when people claim they didn't sleep at all on a certain night. It's not uncommon for people to claim extreme insomnia, but then sleep 6+ hours as soon as their sleep is objectively monitored.

In short: You can't trust self-reported sleep times. Especially not when someone feels they have something to gain by claiming minimal sleep.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#123

Post by tomcat27 » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:27 PM UTC

It's always a pleasure to read one's clear and well written thoughts. Thank you!

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#124

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

dsbleia wrote: post #119

>I’ve reduced my information consumption to free up brain cycles. This is so important and not discussed very often. It's so easy to get caught up with the insane amount of information distractions. It is pivotal to narrow down your focus and attention on the really important things (deep work). Eliminate and minimize the pointless information hysteria. I've worked with people who claim they 'work 12-16 hour days'. Y…

[deleted]

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#125

Post by halfmatthalfcat » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

bushido wrote: post #79

jahbrewski wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment of #1, I would argue that sales are more important than marketing at this stage. You can spin your wheels “learning SEO” and “creating content” with very little tangible results. In the beginning, sales + product are just about all that matter.

Both can be important and it really comes down to who your customer is. For B2B (SME+) - Absolutely invest in Sales. Worth mentioning that it isn't too hard hiring seasoned sales professionals, with existing relationships who are trying to find their next career move etc. They'll often agree to a higher commission payout in-lieu of a base salary. This doubles up as a good way to get feedback from the market. For B2C…

What about D2C?

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#126

Post by lambdatronics » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:39 PM UTC

nscalf wrote: post #83

ilamont wrote: post #22

Solo founder here. 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 consul…

The toughest part of this is finding a product that people are willing to pay for. The sunk cost fallacy kicks in, and everyone doubles down on pushing the product and iterating until they finally have no choice but to admit failure. I think YC does a great job of getting people to ask what is the absolute least amount of work I can do to validate an idea. Can you send texts instead of build an app? Can you do it all…

>getting people to ask what is the absolute least amount of work I can do to validate an idea

This is even a problem in the sciences! Everyone wants to kick the can (getting feedback on their pet hypothesis from reality) down the road & play with their shiny, awesome tech/math in the meantime.

"The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." Thomas Huxley

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#127

Post by valuearb » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:41 PM UTC

One thing that appears to be missing from your blog post is evangelizing, you should spend a not insignificant amount of time contacting potential customers, partners, and employees and let them know what you are doing, your progress, etc. You will be surprised at how often people will pop up to offer help.

Of course posting your blog post here is a great example of evangelizing, so keep it up.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#128

Post by lambdatronics » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:45 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…

Hey, I'd be interested in your local trello. I was meaning to write a todo-app based on best psych best practices, especially only presenting the highest priority ( = urgent * important) item at any given time. I also wanted to add ordered sub-tasks, due-date, and time estimate features so that the urgency ramps up automatically as the remaining time to complete a task approaches the estimated length of the task.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#129

Post by ipnon » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

>It is sub-optimal to not have a coworker to bounce ideas off and rant about problems to. A lot of times it’s these conversations that help you gain clarity.

Corollary: The optimal communication outlet is your users. Your friends and coworkers might just tell you what you want to hear. Your users will tell you what they need from you in order to make your product.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#130

Post by tzahifadida » Sun, Aug 23, 2020, 6:01 PM UTC

I did this so many times, I lost count. Big mistake. First, get them to pay you for something you even do manually, then automate. Manual>Automate>Repeat

One advice I can give you is to learn an open-source project that you love and sell support for it. Then find out what is missing and what kind of product someone will pay for that would be commercially viable. Again, Manual>Automate>Repeat.

Hope this helps.