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Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#111

Post by dahart »

Alex3917 wrote: post #83
kapilkale wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the 100x valid? The odds of a founder dying vs. the chances of a company shutting down seem not apples-to-apples I would guess there are many cases of solo founders shutting down their business other than founder death...

> I would guess there are many cases of solo founders shutting down their business other than founder death... Sure, but it really only makes sense to consider cases where: A) The business has paying customers B) It's very important to the customers that this product remain available C) The founder is unwilling to give or license the source code to those customers In practice, all three of these factors being present…

You’re comparing apples to calculators. Solo founders go out of business literally all the time, every day. I’ve definitely heard of solo devs canceling. It’s also like the entire reputation of the KickStarter experience, pay a solo dev to do something, get nothing in return aside from a bunch of hopeful emails followed by silence or a sorry.

Software created by solo devs is used by many times fewer people, therefore it’s zero surprise that the total number of displaced customers is lower. You need to calculate the percentages, not hold up anecdotes of not having any rumors.

I don’t see how (C) can reasonably factor into any statistics. I’d love to hear how often you think this matters, but I’m extremely skeptical that shutting down a solo business and giving source to customers has happened enough times to even talk about relative to the number of times that hasn’t happened. I’d like to hear about when giving source to paying customers is even helpful. Depends highly on what kind of software we’re talking about, and depends highly on what kind of customers, but assuming that paying customers can generally do anything with source code seems like a really, really big assumption.

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#112

Post by bjacobt »

taylodl wrote: post #110

I treat solo entrepreneurs the same way I treat small companies that have a high probability of not remaining in business in five years: a risk. A risk doesn't mean I'm not going to do business with you, it simply means I have something needing to be mitigated. Typically I mitigate that risk via the use of an escrow service. If you're not familiar with escrow services they are a mutually trusted 3rd party. You provid…

Do you have any recommendations for escrow companies?

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#113

Post by gnicholas »

This is definitely a question I get, both because people are worried I might go out of business (less of a concern now that my company is more well-known), and because they're worried I might get acquired (more of a concern as the company's profile is growing).

It's possible to use the latter concern in your favor — let people prepay for longer periods for guaranteed access, if they're they're worried about this. It's a good sign!

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#114

Post by adrianthedev »

As a solo developer I get asked a lot on sales calls "How many paying customers do you have?"/"Are there paying customers?" and other similar questions to evaluate the size of my business.

I guess it's fine. It's natural to know the partner you're about to take on has the incentive to continue developing their business and still have an "alive" product in the future.

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#115

Post by davidw »

I think it depends on who you're selling to.

If you're selling to big companies that consider what you do some kind of critical component, they might care.

If you're selling to end users or other businesses, they likely don't care at all.

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#116

Post by XCSme »

I have been, for about 10 years, the solo developer of https://www.uxwizz.com and there are both individuals and companies that trust projects built or ran by a single person.

I think what makes it easier in my case is that the product is self-hosted, so the clients don't have to rely on me to keep things running, plus they always have access to their data and product, even if I disappear.

Furthermore, I make sure to only release builds/publish updates that are not broken and that I am available in the days following a big release.

That being said, there have been many cases where companies (usually on the bigger side) decided not to work together because of my small company size and associated risks (but this mostly happened when discussing special uses-cases or partnerships, not when simply wanting to purchase and use the product as is).

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#117

Post by taylodl »

bjacobt wrote: post #112
taylodl wrote: post #110

I treat solo entrepreneurs the same way I treat small companies that have a high probability of not remaining in business in five years: a risk. A risk doesn't mean I'm not going to do business with you, it simply means I have something needing to be mitigated. Typically I mitigate that risk via the use of an escrow service. If you're not familiar with escrow services they are a mutually trusted 3rd party. You provid…

Do you have any recommendations for escrow companies?

I don't. When I last worked for a start up someone else took care of the software escrowing and I don't remember which service we used. Now that I'm on the other side of that transaction I leave it to our procurement group to evaluate the software escrow service.

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#118

Post by thfuran »

dahart wrote: post #89
thfuran wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fairly deceptive analogy though. Many people check baggage a lot more (or less) than once per year.

That’s exactly the opposite of why it’s an unrelated analogy (which was stated). People live days of their lives far more often than they check baggage. Death is not a once per year risk. The risk of losing luggage per day or per hour of traveling is much higher than the risk of dying per hour/day of living.

>Death is not a once per year risk.

It absolutely is in the context of a discussion of annualized mortality rates.

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#119

Post by marcosdumay »

dahart wrote: post #89
thfuran wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fairly deceptive analogy though. Many people check baggage a lot more (or less) than once per year.

That’s exactly the opposite of why it’s an unrelated analogy (which was stated). People live days of their lives far more often than they check baggage. Death is not a once per year risk. The risk of losing luggage per day or per hour of traveling is much higher than the risk of dying per hour/day of living.

You are comparing it with the risk of dying in an year. That is a once per year risk.

Re: Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?

#120

Post by conductr »

taylodl wrote: post #110

I treat solo entrepreneurs the same way I treat small companies that have a high probability of not remaining in business in five years: a risk. A risk doesn't mean I'm not going to do business with you, it simply means I have something needing to be mitigated. Typically I mitigate that risk via the use of an escrow service. If you're not familiar with escrow services they are a mutually trusted 3rd party. You provid…

This must be a huge contract otherwise I'd just charge you an insane premium if you asked me to do that, such a PITA
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