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Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

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Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#61

Post by didgetmaster »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #53
didgetmaster wrote: post #11

It seems to me that every great tech company needs two things to get off the ground. A product that actually works well and execution on the business side. Few people have the skills to do both of these things well. Apple got started with the two Steves (Jobs and Wozniak). One built the first couple of computer designs. The other was a sales and marketing genius. If you have a product that is possible to launch in ju…

You need a third thing, which is the ability to "sell" what you're doing to some combination of customers/users, investors, and people you want to hire.

Absolutely. I have had a few hundred people tell me that they think the technology is amazing and can't believe how fast it is; but so far only a few paying customers and no investors (other than myself) yet. Bootstrapping is hard.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#62

Post by didgetmaster »

freedomben wrote: post #27
matchagaucho wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers selling to Developers is the exception. There are many talented Sales/Marketing people. But few who can effectively target Developers. The Authors path of bootstrapping via open source is a known tactic/strategy. Ultimately growth will require directly approaching other Developers with a commercial proposal.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Developers are extremely difficult to market to if you're not a developer yourself. It can be done, but very few sales/marketing people will be successful unless they have much experience in it. The reason why is that developers break all the rules you learn in marketing departments and schools. What works with normal people will not just be ineffective on devs but will ac…

As a developer, I take exception to your insinuation that developers are not 'normal' people. :)

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#63

Post by didgetmaster »

qvrjuec wrote: post #56

I love the curmudgeonly comment on the blog post: > A "solo founder" should be too busy with real work to be writing articles like this. Amazing that they couldn't understand the article's marketing value

A solo founder has many things on their plate, but should never pass up an opportunity to raise awareness for their product; especially if it has progressed to what they think is MVP status. Newsletters, blogs, and sites like HN are great places to start 'getting the word out'.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#64

Post by nickstinemates »

e1g wrote: post #40
navaneethpk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a social circle to intro investors > with negligible traction Disagreeing to these two points. The traction from HN & ProductHunt launch was good that ToolJet got 1000+ stars on GitHub in under 8 hours. The intros were made mostly by great open-source founders who were totally strangers at the time who discovered the project mostly from HN.

"GitHub stars", like "the number of downloads", is a weak signal, rarely meaningful in traction talks unless there's nothing more substantial to discuss. Traction indicators for a low-code platform would be revenue, number of paid users, number of apps deployed/updated with ToolJet, number of different people using ToolJet apps, the volume of data captured/processed per week, etc.

for 1.5m, any signal is important to build a story. all of the things you list are important, but typically only in later stages.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#65

Post by bfung »

navaneethpk wrote: post #37
matchagaucho wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Founder" is not a title you can add casually under US law. It's determined at the time of incorporation and stock issuance. QSBS, and other legal structures, do not allow transferability of "Founder" to follow-on Investors and employees.

I might be wrong here but "Founder" is just a title and it has nothing to do with law or investors. Adding another "Director"/"Officer" requires some paperwork though.

You’re correct. I’m not a lawyer, but went through doing own startup:

It varies in incorporation requirements by state, but most only require 2 titles positions - a President and a Treasurer (the “Officers”)

Adding or removing a Director, as in “Board of Directors”, requires amendment to the Corporation’s bylaws, which should state how many seats there are.

Aside from those titles/roles, all the “C” prefixed titles are made up. Usually, one C level person is the President, another the treasurer. Co-founders are usually on the board of directors. Many times, a single person can be on the board, a co-founder, and ceo.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#66

Post by rubenfiszel »

bcjordan wrote: post #54
rubenfiszel wrote: post #16

Just want to add, I followed pretty much the same path with Windmill [1], which is also in the developer tool space, and also open-source. Built everything solo for 5 months. I thought it would be impossible to get into YC, it is not and I was fortunate enough to join YC on the latest batch, on my first try [2]. Getting into YC changed the course of the company, increased many orders of magnitude my ambition and made…

Off-topic but have to say OSS Pipedream is something I've wanted to see for so long. Definitely checking that out!

Thanks! and let us know what you think, we are still rapidly iterating (to the point where the landing page and video is quite obsolete)

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#67

Post by RcrdBrt »

rubenfiszel wrote: post #66
bcjordan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic but have to say OSS Pipedream is something I've wanted to see for so long. Definitely checking that out!

Thanks! and let us know what you think, we are still rapidly iterating (to the point where the landing page and video is quite obsolete)

Hi Ruben!

Great to see Windmill advancements

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#68

Post by NetOpWibby »

didgetmaster wrote: post #22
NetOpWibby wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link to your project (if it has a site)?

https://www.Didgets.com Here is a short demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ScBd-71OLQ

Neat! I see a market for this; devs who have inherited a mess of a project and want a low-stress way of managing data.

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#69

Post by malux85 »

rubenfiszel wrote: post #16

Just want to add, I followed pretty much the same path with Windmill [1], which is also in the developer tool space, and also open-source. Built everything solo for 5 months. I thought it would be impossible to get into YC, it is not and I was fortunate enough to join YC on the latest batch, on my first try [2]. Getting into YC changed the course of the company, increased many orders of magnitude my ambition and made…

Congrats on getting into YC!

I’m the Solo Founder of https://atomictessellator.com, also applied to YC this batch

(Actively looking for co-founder), wish me luck!

Re: Solo founder dilemma; CEO or CTO?

#70

Post by superzamp »

qvrjuec wrote: post #56

I love the curmudgeonly comment on the blog post: > A "solo founder" should be too busy with real work to be writing articles like this. Amazing that they couldn't understand the article's marketing value

And probably clarity of thought value for the author as well, I've found that writing is usually the best way to clear your thoughts and identify potential remaining blind spots in scenarios like this.
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