171–180 of 263 posts
Solo founder of Gumroad here. Highly recommended. It forced me to learn a lot more about every aspect of building a business than I would have otherwise. I'm also a fan of investing in solo founders: https://shl.vc
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Make a product that people want and are willing to pay for. Great point. The long-term survival of a business distills down to being able to bring in more money than it costs you to produce a product. It's such a simple concept, but it's easy to forget when you're swept up in the excitement of coding and engineering an idea you're excited about. Ironically, it's the most ambitious engineers who tend to make the mis…
The more simple your MVP can be, the more indicative it is that you have a market. If you need to build for years to release something [1], it's less likely that you're addressing a real need. The best products can start dead simple, even ugly, but still solve the problem. [1] Deep tech is the obvious exception here.
>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…
It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series of sprints.
>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…
I'm trying to build something which tackles this problem. The idea would be delegating the decision of what you consume to an algorithm (that you can control), and you'll be delivered a subset of news/content daily. Basically a giant filter through which you consume the firehouse of FB/reddit. Although it works for me, I've no idea how practical this is on a wider scale. Would you use something like that?
I spend alot of time thinking of decisions which is awesome and because I'm solo I know I have to do everything I can to make sure it's the best choice. To do this, I balance with as much research on each challenge as possible with quite morning walks(with my dogs) and journaling where I talk myself through ideas.
I've become a huge fan of journalling as a business tool and highly suggest it for solo and non-solo leaders.
>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…
>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…
The most productive and successful individuals I know oscillate between multi day 16+ hour sessions of hyper productivity and multi day sessions of total procrastination. It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series of sprints.
My sprint is not now, my sprint starts later.
The sprint toward my spirit starts now. Reading this comment, reflecting this thought. And another is below.
Upvote the comments that you can relate to and see what bubbles up
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is great advice. I remember when I was an undergraduate physics student, looking forward to grad school and idolizing all the famous physicists. My adviser, who was not the most soft and cuddly type of guy, always pushed this type of hyper-alpha stuff on me, even telling me that he himself only sleeps 2-3 hours per night just so that he can do more physics. It really does damage to you and your self imag…
> 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.
On another note, I can't be the only person who finds this kind of bragging to just fail to register, or even to backfire. Am I meant to be impressed by how poorly they've arranged their weekly routine in terms of work/life balance?
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…
One things that I realized is that what happens to your business tells more about what _market_ you are in, that it tells about yourself as a founder. A great entrepreneur in a bad market will still have a bad outcome, and vice versa. Like a program is not about the programmer, a business is not "about" its founding member(s).
So a good advice you don't hear often could be "start in an easy market".
>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…