No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees • Hacker News Board

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#281

Post by mkingston » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:10 AM UTC

callmeed wrote: post #280

philipkiely wrote: post #15

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

> I make more than enough to afford proper health insurance on the open market. Everyone at Gumroad is paid very well and should be able to afford the same. This might be true for everyone at Gumroad , but I wouldn't be so sure. You also seem dismissive (probably unintentionally) of one of the biggest problems we have in the US right now: health care and insurance is ridiculously expensive–especially for people with…

In the USA ~17% of GDP appears to be spent on health care. I guess that skews fairly heavily toward elderly people, but 10% on health insurance for a family of four doesn't seem out of the realms of sanity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_h...

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#282

Post by petsormeat » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:17 AM UTC

callmeed wrote: post #280

philipkiely wrote: post #15

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

> I make more than enough to afford proper health insurance on the open market. Everyone at Gumroad is paid very well and should be able to afford the same. This might be true for everyone at Gumroad , but I wouldn't be so sure. You also seem dismissive (probably unintentionally) of one of the biggest problems we have in the US right now: health care and insurance is ridiculously expensive–especially for people with…

Same racket for anybody over 40, much less 50. I pay $750/month in premiums just for bronze-level coverage on my middle-aged self.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#283

Post by rablackburn » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

callmeed wrote: post #280

philipkiely wrote: post #15

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

> I make more than enough to afford proper health insurance on the open market. Everyone at Gumroad is paid very well and should be able to afford the same. This might be true for everyone at Gumroad , but I wouldn't be so sure. You also seem dismissive (probably unintentionally) of one of the biggest problems we have in the US right now: health care and insurance is ridiculously expensive–especially for people with…

> Imaging paying 10%+ of your salary just for health insurance

I decided to actually look at my budget from the last year and see how this compares to my costs.

In Australia I pay about ~28% of my salary in tax. 2% is for medicare, and I have private health insurance on top of that for roughly the same cost again (for dental, which isn't covered in our system because of dentists lobbying an exception back in the 80s). You still have to pay part of most costs in Australia, looking at my budget that's come out to about another ~1% of my income in the past year.

So I pay 5% of my salary for health services. It's pretty much inline with other costs like food and utilities. Doubling it to 10% would be doable, but it would suck.

It seems that the US system doubles the cost and the extra money serves as the very healthy profit margin of their private health industry. Keep in mind Australia manages to sustain a private health sector off that 5%, this isn't abolishing private health by any means.

A proper government health system could probably be even cheaper than the 5% I pay because the US has much better economies of scale. Not to mention the benefit of untying it from employment.

I'm not really making a point here, your comment just inspired me to compare the numbers and it sure is grim...

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#284

Post by DVassallo » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:24 AM UTC

callmeed wrote: post #280

philipkiely wrote: post #15

I work at Gumroad, mentioned in this article. Sometimes, I read things by CEOs about how a company works on the inside and I wonder if it really looks like that, or if it is a view from the top that doesn't reflect what it's really like. This article, with its discussions of the upsides and downsides, is accurate to my experience and my understanding of other people's experiences. For many people, Gumroad wouldn't be…

> I make more than enough to afford proper health insurance on the open market. Everyone at Gumroad is paid very well and should be able to afford the same. This might be true for everyone at Gumroad , but I wouldn't be so sure. You also seem dismissive (probably unintentionally) of one of the biggest problems we have in the US right now: health care and insurance is ridiculously expensive–especially for people with…

When I lived in Ireland I paid 51% of my income in taxes. Imagine that!

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#285

Post by spoonjim » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:27 AM UTC

I mean honestly this is the entrepreneurial feat of a century. Get your company VC funded to the point of hiring 23 employees. Build your name, do all your failing, learn everything about the market with VC money. Then throw the employees AND the VCs in the dumpster and keep the core asset for yourself, rebuilding it into a $11 million business with contractors, so that you don't have to worry about things like their healthcare plan or giving them equity. The execution is just over the top unbelievable.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#286

Post by biztos » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

sayrer wrote: post #259

sahillavingia wrote: post #20

Hey, #1 on Hacker News! I don't think that's happened since...I wrote Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company back in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105733 Thanks HN for being a part of my journey!

I thought that plan sounded pretty good, except for the health insurance part. Where do you get your health insurance?

I can't speak for the OP but, since you are a contractor and not an employee, wouldn't you get your health insurance in exactly the same place as all the other independent contractors do in your country?

[Edit to clarify because this is being downvoted: many countries require that independent contractors buy private health insurance. Germany, where I live, requires it. As I understand it the situation is similar, for different reasons, in the USA. So independent contractors are very often all in the same boat, insurance-wise, but that boat varies by country.]

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#287

Post by DVassallo » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

jb_s wrote: post #279

DVassallo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I own a SaaS business and also sell my own products on Gumroad itself. In fact, the latter was my biggest income source in 2020 — $282K sales last year: https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1333888186762678274

Respectfully - and I'm sure i'm just missing something - but I still don't actually understand what you do. The only thing I can see that makes you money is a subscription service to help people how make money on the Internet.

There’s a list of products on dvassallo.com. Lifetime revenue:

- $190K - Everyone can Build a Twitter Audience

- $125K - The Good Parts of AWS

- $15K - Profit and Loss

- $5K - Userbase

I also made $50K freelancing, $40K of those from Gumroad.

All started after Dec 2019.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#288

Post by stuxnet79 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:33 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #285

I mean honestly this is the entrepreneurial feat of a century. Get your company VC funded to the point of hiring 23 employees. Build your name, do all your failing, learn everything about the market with VC money. Then throw the employees AND the VCs in the dumpster and keep the core asset for yourself, rebuilding it into a $11 million business with contractors, so that you don't have to worry about things like their…

Agreed. Really inspiring story. I'm not as far along on my entrepreneurial dreams as the CEO but as a freelancer, I'd be interested in working at a firm with a similar set up as Gumroad. I'm very much a mercenary and I find it's hard to be honest about this while still maintaining a good working relationship with colleagues.

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#289

Post by DVassallo » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:35 AM UTC

asd9900 wrote: post #190

DVassallo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I own a SaaS business and also sell my own products on Gumroad itself. In fact, the latter was my biggest income source in 2020 — $282K sales last year: https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1333888186762678274

And you are not even 26? Congrats man, you made it :) That's more than I ever made in my life (close to 40).

I wish :) I’m 37, with 2 kids (6 and 3).

Re: No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees

#290

Post by biztos » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 12:37 AM UTC

simpixelated wrote: post #122

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you stay competitive with similar products without instituting deadlines?

I work for a small company (less than 10 employees) that follows a very similar working process. No deadlines, one (very short) weekly meeting. We don't try to stay competitive with similar products. That's impossible with VC funding flooding the market. What we do instead is focus on making our current customers happy. Everyone is involved in support. We follow up with customers when we do launch features they reque…

I'm glad to hear that works for you.

I'm a customer of several smallish (but bigger than 10 employees) services and if I'm paying something like $120/year for something even remotely useful, I'm not going to switch unless the competition solves a specific problem or I'm really mad at the current provider. In the former case I would at least have told support about my problem.

I do believe that there is "enough" money to be made solving real-world problems for people and treating them like humans so they aren't going to drop you like a hot rock at the first chance. I'm happy to see some voices confirming that in this thread.