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Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

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Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#71

Post by slim »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #66
al_borland wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A co-worker of mine visited French Polynesia a few years ago. He mentioned most of the restaurants simply close up shop when they feel they’ve made enough money for the day. Not great for someone looking to get dinner, but I’m sure it makes life much better and less stressful for the owner and employees. They know to get by they need to make $X/day. If they hit it by 1pm, cool, half day.

Wonder if they also run out of ingredients? Seems like a nice way to simplify operations if you don’t ever end up with waste.

Yes, most probably this. The grocery list is retro planned from the wages of the employees. So when they served the last dish, they earned their salary, they split the money and close the restaurant

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#72

Post by riku_iki »

danenania wrote: post #24

Currently I'm building Plandex[1], a terminal-based AI coding tool, solo (though I hope to build a team around it in the future if I can swing it) and I'm also running EnvKey[2], a secrets management saas, as a sole operator. You don't really stay completely sane, but you can get better at it. You have to get used to the feeling that you can never keep up or do enough. You just do the best you can and learn to live w…

Are your businesses revenue positive?.

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#73

Post by danenania »

riku_iki wrote: post #72
danenania wrote: post #24

Currently I'm building Plandex[1], a terminal-based AI coding tool, solo (though I hope to build a team around it in the future if I can swing it) and I'm also running EnvKey[2], a secrets management saas, as a sole operator. You don't really stay completely sane, but you can get better at it. You have to get used to the feeling that you can never keep up or do enough. You just do the best you can and learn to live w…

Are your businesses revenue positive?.

EnvKey is. I just started Plandex and am not charging for it yet.

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#74

Post by dangus »

lukan wrote: post #29
jonas21 wrote: post #21

Don't nickle and dime yourself on tools that save you time. If there's a SaaS offering that can reduce your workload, just pay for it (unless it's a truly ridiculous amount). Every so often there's a post on HN where a someone lists their income and expenses and the comments are always full of things like "why are you paying $100/year for Notion when you can just use org-mode for free?" Don't listen to them. Your tim…

"Your time is worth more than any reasonable subscription fee. " Sure, but what do I do, if that service just closes tomorrow? Or they change the fee to "unreasonable" (after they gained control of the market). A SaaS would have to be way better than any offline tool, I could use 10 years from now in this shape. But in general yes, don't skimp and loose time, when there is a working alternative.

Then you migrate to another tool. It’s not a big deal.

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#75

Post by cweagans »

lukan wrote: post #29
jonas21 wrote: post #21

Don't nickle and dime yourself on tools that save you time. If there's a SaaS offering that can reduce your workload, just pay for it (unless it's a truly ridiculous amount). Every so often there's a post on HN where a someone lists their income and expenses and the comments are always full of things like "why are you paying $100/year for Notion when you can just use org-mode for free?" Don't listen to them. Your tim…

"Your time is worth more than any reasonable subscription fee. " Sure, but what do I do, if that service just closes tomorrow? Or they change the fee to "unreasonable" (after they gained control of the market). A SaaS would have to be way better than any offline tool, I could use 10 years from now in this shape. But in general yes, don't skimp and loose time, when there is a working alternative.

Solve today's problems today. Solve tomorrow's problems tomorrow.

If Notion announces a shutdown at some point, you can export your content and import it somewhere else. The amount of time it takes to do that later won't be that big of a deal.

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#76

Post by riku_iki »

bmitc wrote: post #40

What do you all have as your actual product? I feel that's the toughest part: having a product that can be easily maintained by one person yet still gain and retain customers.

There are actually two parts here: product(design and engineering) and gaining customers(marketing). Second part is much harder for some people(like me).

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#77

Post by interstice »

mavili wrote: post #32
interstice wrote: post #30

Unsure if this is healthy - but after 12 years it’s by almost completely compartmentalising my mind, and focusing on one thing at a time. Started that habit as a freelancer and it’s probably saved me from burnout multiple times. These days I feel like my attention is like a lighthouse, I’ll do a half day of finances here - clear my inbox there, a full week on some deadline, etc. its kind of finding a flow. needless t…

What you're describing is the Get Things Done (GTD) method. Have you read the book from David Allen? With that note, I higly recommend the book to OP!

I have heard of but not read, this is just a collection of hard won coping strategies!

I will say it has some downsides, though - I feel pretty fragmented outside of work.

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#78

Post by [deleted] »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #66
al_borland wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A co-worker of mine visited French Polynesia a few years ago. He mentioned most of the restaurants simply close up shop when they feel they’ve made enough money for the day. Not great for someone looking to get dinner, but I’m sure it makes life much better and less stressful for the owner and employees. They know to get by they need to make $X/day. If they hit it by 1pm, cool, half day.

Wonder if they also run out of ingredients? Seems like a nice way to simplify operations if you don’t ever end up with waste.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#79

Post by riku_iki »

uptown wrote: post #17
carlosjobim wrote: post #12

Don't do accounting or taxes for your company. There are two ways you can do that.

The second way eventually fills your calendar with meetings with the IRS.

I am wondering if there is some simple way to do taxes for SaaS company in turbotax or something similar, everything(payroll, expenses, revenue) should be very simple?..

Re: Ask HN: One-person companies—how do you manage it all and stay sane?

#80

Post by ivylee »

I think the best thing about running solo is I can control my own timeline and goals. I am working on multiple projects [1][2][3][4]. Every day I write down a short list of what I want to achieve on my note-taking app LogSeq[5], and I try to finish the list. Alternating projects and the nature of work (development/research/marketing) change my rhythm and keep me learning and feeling energized.

[1]: https://www.ycverify.com [2]: https://www.signalstalk.com [3]: https://contentcredentialsapi.studioxolo.com [4]: https://www.airexif.com [5]: https://logseq.com

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