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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?

#91

Post by muzani »

mamcx wrote: post #36

The major trick, IMHO, is not to grow. While a "normal" startup is focused on growing! growing! growing! a small company should instead think like a physical restaurant: "I have 10 tables * 4 seats. 4 waiters. Operate Lu-Fri 10 am - 6 pm. I can serve only up to 40 customers max per hour. My income will never be bigger than 40* Average meal. My income needs to be at minimum Costs + 3% profits". Then you see you have t…

Most growth is exponential until they hit a limit.

Startups are a kind of lifehack. It's probably easier to serve a million people with 7 engineers than it is to serve 3000 people with one engineer-PM-sales guy. Eventually the guy with the giant company grabs the customers of that little guy or acquires them.

So I think it's very tempting to go large. The trick is finding something with low limits. I call it deep sea ideas. Just go deep enough, outside of shark territory. A shark in the deep sea would implode. Things like specialist CRMs and funnels are classic. But I did diet apps and essential oil apps; VCs won't go near those but the market throws money at it.

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

#92

Post by farseer »

mamcx wrote: post #36

The major trick, IMHO, is not to grow. While a "normal" startup is focused on growing! growing! growing! a small company should instead think like a physical restaurant: "I have 10 tables * 4 seats. 4 waiters. Operate Lu-Fri 10 am - 6 pm. I can serve only up to 40 customers max per hour. My income will never be bigger than 40* Average meal. My income needs to be at minimum Costs + 3% profits". Then you see you have t…

This will not work for SaaS in most cases. Someone will copy your idea and with VC money grow more features and customers than you, forcing you into a tighter small niche if not oblivion. Restaurants have a captive market in terms of location and maximum number of competitors in the immediate vicinity. A web startup does not.

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

#94

Post by dangus »

lukan wrote: post #88
dangus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When the data is in an standartized format, that just works with another tool sure. But with many SaaS you are lucky if you even get your data out. And then importing it into omething else sadly is very much a big deal in many cases.

That’s why you’re picky about tool choice in the first place.

Using Notion as an example, your entire workspace can be exported in standard formats.

https://www.notion.so/help/export-your-content

It’s not zero effort to migrate, but for a small business migration should be both rare and not so bad.

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

#95

Post by ddmf »

I managed until I didn't, and the admin was what got me in the end - 10 years later I was diagnosed with adhd so I could at least forgive myself for being so absolutely awful with record keeping.

Back in the day though I used outlook calendar entries as the basis for my billing as I used windows mobile on a motorola flip and had sbs2003 running exchange with a custom app that would read the calendar entries and let me assign to a customer and create an order - once I had a number of orders I could create an invoice and send via email.

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

#96

Post by newaccount74 »

farseer wrote: post #92
mamcx wrote: post #36

The major trick, IMHO, is not to grow. While a "normal" startup is focused on growing! growing! growing! a small company should instead think like a physical restaurant: "I have 10 tables * 4 seats. 4 waiters. Operate Lu-Fri 10 am - 6 pm. I can serve only up to 40 customers max per hour. My income will never be bigger than 40* Average meal. My income needs to be at minimum Costs + 3% profits". Then you see you have t…

This will not work for SaaS in most cases. Someone will copy your idea and with VC money grow more features and customers than you, forcing you into a tighter small niche if not oblivion. Restaurants have a captive market in terms of location and maximum number of competitors in the immediate vicinity. A web startup does not.

Yeah, that happened to me too. But it doesn't matter.

The internet is big enough for multiple players, and niches that are too small for VC money can still be very profitable opportunities for solo entreprenurs.

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

#97

Post by tabacitu »

I am going through the same thing myself right now. After eight years of running this small product, I’ve gotten to the point where the revenue hasn’t increased significantly, but the complexity of Admin work has increased exponentially.

I plan to make it this year’s theme to simplify. For me that means:

- automating or delegating all recurring tasks;

- eliminating all processes that have become complex but are not worth it;

Eg:

- I plan to move from Stripe to Paddle (MoR) because I don’t want to deal with EU taxes anymore; we’ve save me a few hours every month + A few hundred dollars on accounting;

- we gave an affiliate program that isn’t working out great; i plan to cut it;

- we have a referral program… same, cut it;

- we have a public email address, cut it;

- etc.

In addition, what’s worked for me so far is day-theming. Mon & Tue are for admin and management. Wed-Fri are creative - I don’t even open my inbox some days. I checked recently, the world is not on fire.

P.S. One of the automation tools I use it https://recurrr.com - saves me a few hours every month. Not a lot. But enough to have kept it alive for the past 7 years (under a different name).

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

#98

Post by tweezy »

golergka wrote: post #42
mamcx wrote: post #36

The major trick, IMHO, is not to grow. While a "normal" startup is focused on growing! growing! growing! a small company should instead think like a physical restaurant: "I have 10 tables * 4 seats. 4 waiters. Operate Lu-Fri 10 am - 6 pm. I can serve only up to 40 customers max per hour. My income will never be bigger than 40* Average meal. My income needs to be at minimum Costs + 3% profits". Then you see you have t…

Wouldn't a real restaurant increase the sitting area, open a second location or increase prices if it had more clients than it could serve?

I think the analogy still works in this scenario, though. Like once you've grown so much that your at capacity in your current setup, THEN you can invest in growing your business.

For this restaurant this adding a new room or a new location in another town.

For a solo founder, this might be when you finally start hiring to free up your time for other tasks.

It's not necessarily never grow. It's about growing on your own terms when you can afford to do so.

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

#99

Post by orev »

golergka wrote: post #85
orev wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s an option, yes. But for many it isn’t. The building isn’t owned by them. Or there’s no available space next door to expand into. Or the capital cost of remodeling that new section is too high. Or the profit margins are so small they can’t justify the cost. Or they’re already maxed out on loans and can’t afford more.

> Or the profit margins are so small they can’t justify the cost. You mean the cost increase? I'm afraid I don't understand. Who would you need to justify the cost to, the clients? They don't know anything about your profit margins, and they don't really need any justification.

Operating the restaurant at the current size might not provide enough revenue to pay for the expansion costs (more rent, renovation of the space, etc.).

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

#100

Post by AustinCodeMonki »

Best advice I can offer is know your limits and that requires knowing how and when to say "No". Others have mentioned raising rates, and that works to a degree, but ultimately you have to be able to say "No" when your capacity is maxed out.
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