New startup idea co-founder as a service. Who's in?
Persisting as a solo founder
201–210 of 263 posts
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sales without marketing isn't the best strategy, it literally turns you into a one man[selling machine where everything is based on your time. Marketing develops channels of customers.
Well, you sort of described the position I'm in :) Given that, do you have any recommendations for developing channels of customers? I haven't really hired for marketing before - what should I be looking for in that role?
The reply below hits all of the important areas.
From my experiences over the last year I would say there are too many channels that require so much work to reach a point where your reach matters. So unless you have a team I focus on one channel. If you pick youtube learn to create effective videos and use other social channels to reenforce the youtube content by posting on fb, ig about your new videos.
But that's just general advise trying to cast a big nest. The more effective channels usually come from being part of an existing community (think reddit forum or website forum or facebook group) and offering a product that fixes what people want.
As for hiring. Hire someone who has done marketing before or hire someone who is part of a community you want to be in who is usually doing a lot of unpaided work to make the community better.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#203If anyone is feeling lonely as an indie founder and looking for an indie founder Slack community where you can reach out and bounce ideas of other founders in real time you can join the Nugget Slack community here:
Access to our Slack used to be paid but we've recently opened it up to everyone.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been on that little sleep for months. It takes away from any clear thought. Very unproductive. Not something anyone should do on purpose.
Why are you on it? Covid insomnia?
I had a bad reaction to a 10 day cipro prescription a few years ago and it felt like getting hit by lightening. So many things returned to normal but being able to sleep for more than 4 1/2 hours, was not one of them.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sales can definitely feel like that. Without more context on your market, decision maker personas etc. the one piece of advise that I can give confidently is this: Start with Senior Sales Leadership. Ideally someone with experience in your target market. Reach out to a few individuals, in your network or on LinkedIn or similar. Ask them for advice, see the type of advice they provide. If you like them, ask them to re…
B2B sales is an area I'm going to need help with quite soon. Solo-bootstrapping a startup means that money can be tight though. Do you think it would be possible to get part-time help using the approach you describe? Alternatively, do some sales professionals work on a commission-only basis? Also, do you have any idea what typical commission is expected?
On sales leaders:
I personally know some sales leaders who mentor/advise other start-up founders. This includes getting on some client calls.
However it's tricky, in that they wouldn't do it if there was a conflict of interest of any kind, they'd be more likely to do it once they know these people a bit more. There is also the WIIFM factor.
All that to say, it is possible to get help.
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On sales reps: As others have mentioned the biggest factor here will be how long it takes to close a deal. If you have quick close cycles (typical in the small to mid-market), a higher commission component or commission only is possible.
Typically, I've seen commissions in B2B to be about 7-10% of Annual Contract Value (ACV) for the first year. Mind you this is highly generalized, based on my experience.
Most sales compensation plans aim for sales reps to earn 1x base as commissions if they meet target. So a base of $60K, would result in $120K in income if they performed.
Based on this you could try finding reps on 14-20% ACV on a commission only basis, paid out on paid invoices.
To be candid, I wouldn't try doing commission-only positions for my own ventures. That said it's worth a try if there are constraints that make it hard to pay a base.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree with the sentiment of #1, I would argue that sales are more important than marketing at this stage. You can spin your wheels “learning SEO” and “creating content” with very little tangible results. In the beginning, sales + product are just about all that matter.
At what point does sales end and marketing begins?
In b2b neither ends.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> These are the startups that fizzle out 2-3 years later Is that really the most common problem? I would probably be one of those engineers (if I'd start a business) and I'm a lot more afraid to sell something that doesn't exist yet than the other way around. Because now in addition to your usual problems you have legal obligations to deliver a product. I think this is one of the reasons for the crazy crunch culture…
> Is that really the most common problem? The most common problem, if you're a really talented engineer, is that you could work for a big company and be paid more in a single year than your business will bring in for its entire lifetime. Conversely what you really find is, the people running 20+ person companies with tens of millions in investor money to bring in only $1m in revenue a year - they lacked the talent, a…
I think it's often more about personality than talent or money. Founders tend to be the kind of people that hate the idea of being a cog (even a very well paid cog) in a big machine. People often start companies not because they can't get a good job, but because they can't stand working on other people's ideas when they've got a head full of their own.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#208>I’ve reduced my information consumption to free up brain cycles. This is so important and not discussed very often. It's so easy to get caught up with the insane amount of information distractions. It is pivotal to narrow down your focus and attention on the really important things (deep work). Eliminate and minimize the pointless information hysteria. I've worked with people who claim they 'work 12-16 hour days'. Y…
Even the best information has the same effect (maybe worse). If you’re reading this, you may have a problem (I do).
Possibly you have cause and effect backwards. What if the act of ‘thinking’ that you have a problem leads to the heightened distractibility?
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#209>I’ve reduced my information consumption to free up brain cycles. This is so important and not discussed very often. It's so easy to get caught up with the insane amount of information distractions. It is pivotal to narrow down your focus and attention on the really important things (deep work). Eliminate and minimize the pointless information hysteria. I've worked with people who claim they 'work 12-16 hour days'. Y…
I'm trying to build something which tackles this problem. The idea would be delegating the decision of what you consume to an algorithm (that you can control), and you'll be delivered a subset of news/content daily. Basically a giant filter through which you consume the firehouse of FB/reddit. Although it works for me, I've no idea how practical this is on a wider scale. Would you use something like that?
I am looking forward to more details on this.
I also think that allowing the user to track the changes made to this algorithm along with some metrics ( like how much time user spent on topics, time wasted etc) would provide a helpful feedback loop.
Re: Persisting as a solo founder
#210Solo founder here. Make a product that people want and are willing to pay for. The product may be in what appears to be a crowded field. Identify niche opportunities or cases where an established leader is doing a poor job. It's fine to do some consulting on the side to pay the bills. Of course it will take time away from the product you are building; just be able to recognize when it's too much and scale back consul…
The toughest part of this is finding a product that people are willing to pay for. The sunk cost fallacy kicks in, and everyone doubles down on pushing the product and iterating until they finally have no choice but to admit failure. I think YC does a great job of getting people to ask what is the absolute least amount of work I can do to validate an idea. Can you send texts instead of build an app? Can you do it all…
100% disagree.
People good at this “know it when they see it” on the “finding a product that people are willing to pay for”. They don’t find this part hard.
What is hard is keeping mistakes/ignorance marginally less fatal than the ground you gain in your successes... forever.