Hey Sahil, I remember you from way back (TalkFreelance days - Sam Granger)! Really awesome & interesting to see how you've grown Gumroad to what it is today, impressive!
No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
131–140 of 543 posts
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#132Let me understand this. Gumroad raises $8m from VCs, isn't able to grow fast enough, so the VCs agree to give up any claim on the company. Sahil fires all of the employees, hires a cheap contracting firm and some of the employees back as part-time contractors. The company now does $11m in revenue, most of which is profit and Sahil keeps. That's amazing. For Sahil. Not so great if you were one of his investors or form…
Their revenue is a bit misleading since most of it goes to CC processing fees. This tweet says net profit was 214k in 2019: https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 Probably triple that this year with the Covid bounce. So obviously doing well for himself, but not quite as good as you think.
From the Tweet, from Sahil (CEO) himself:
Gumroad, Inc in 2019:
Revenue: $5M (up 46% YOY)
Gross profit: $1.7M (up 68% YOY)
Net profit: $214K
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#133Let me understand this. Gumroad raises $8m from VCs, isn't able to grow fast enough, so the VCs agree to give up any claim on the company. Sahil fires all of the employees, hires a cheap contracting firm and some of the employees back as part-time contractors. The company now does $11m in revenue, most of which is profit and Sahil keeps. That's amazing. For Sahil. Not so great if you were one of his investors or form…
If this negatively affects any former employees that's terrible but are we supposed to feel bad for VCs? There have been other stories like this where the HN response is "Won't somebody think of the VCs!" and I just can't do it. They're adults and business people, they'll live.
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Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're all contractors, not employees, so it's just a different rate depending on the number of hours you bill. Your advice is sound in general of course, I just doubt that any jurisdiction that accepts them as contractors will have a problem with that detail.
Being contractors isn't always a shield from some of these laws. Check with a lawyer and https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd
I think the trick is that contractors don't work full time at Gumroad so that they can have other projects. In Switzerland for example you are self-employed only if you have several clients and are autonomous. It seems that it is easier for Gumroad contractors to fulfill these requirements.
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#135In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…
Totally agree. Due to COVID most of my company worked only 4 days per week last year. The improvement in quality of life was amazing and productivity didn’t drop noticeably.
There was a time when 6 days per week were normal. People thought the world would go under if people worked only 5 days but things were ok. The same will happen with 4 day weeks. Once people get used to it it will be hard to imagine working more.
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#136I'm genuinely curious what Gumroad Creators are selling. Is it 95% porn revenue, with a veneer of ebooks and videos? Or is there actually a sizable market for other digital goods?
All kinds of legitimate things are sold on Gumroad. I created BudgetSheet ( https://www.budgetsheet.net ), which I sell subscriptions to via Gumroad. It's ramping up slow, but this year it broke $1k ARR. My goal is to 3x that this year.
Income Proof: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wzatabooj5hocug/Screen%20Shot%2020...
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but they idea that there is a single "thing" called process and some places have it and some don't is just dangerously misleading. Is that what I said? No. I got into computers because I dislike people: leave me alone and let me work.
Surely, you have a process that you follow in your own work though? There are formal codified processes and there are informal tribal ones. Often when I hear people have disdain for processes, it’s usually they don’t like someone else’s process. Unfortunately, standardized processes tend to become more necessary as systems get more complicated in order to ensure an operation becomes fault tolerant by not being relian…
> Surely, you have a process that you follow in your own work though?
Personally, no. I have spent enough time at enough organizations to simply adapt to whatever they do. But if I want to write some code I just do that. I might toss in testing or whatever for bigger projects, but it’s all ad hock.
Processes are about repeatability, but for personal projects you can customize based on more specific goals. If I want speed, accuracy, or whatever I am going do made different choices. I am even going to change things up based on whatever mood I am in at the time.
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#138I work at a similar company (less than 10 employees, no deadlines, (almost) no meetings), but unlike Gumroad we actually have health insurance, 401K with matching, donation matching, etc. So it is possible to to have "freedom" without laying everyone off and removing all benefits. You can read more about it here: https://simpixelated.com/two-year-work-retrospective
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#139In years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It absolutely blows my mind that 99% of office roles are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? I'd be more than happy to work a job for 80% salary for 4 days per week... So much so, I'm about to launch a website lis…
The bigger issue to me is that there's no diversification of risk. If your company goes under, you lose 100% of your income all at once. From that perspective, it'd be a lot more rational to work say ten jobs at a single time. You're never at serious risk of losing more than 30% of your paycheck in any short period. You could even get smart and balance your portfolio of jobs between pro and counter-cyclical industrie…
We'd need to radically change the system with which education happens to make this real, otherwise teachers and the infrastructure of teachers (administrators, social workers, counselors, janitors, IT people, etc) would still need that workweek + parents who have to follow that workweek.
Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their revenue is a bit misleading since most of it goes to CC processing fees. This tweet says net profit was 214k in 2019: https://twitter.com/shl/status/1215673023472140289 Probably triple that this year with the Covid bounce. So obviously doing well for himself, but not quite as good as you think.
From the Tweet, from Sahil (CEO) himself: Gumroad, Inc in 2019: Revenue: $5M (up 46% YOY) Gross profit: $1.7M (up 68% YOY) Net profit: $214K I not familiar enough with the Gumroad model to understand why how the creators made $73M in 2019, but Gumroad revenue was only $5M.
Gumroad likely only takes a small cut on each transaction (so about 6% in this case?).