Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

tik.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 70 posts

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#61

Post by foobar_ »

idlewords wrote: post #15

After running a thing by myself for nearly ten years, I would say the most important factor is anxiety management. People experience anxiety very differently, so it's hard to give advice, but without some way of dealing with and reducing this stress it is not possible to run a solo business for a sustained period of time. Some examples of what can make you anxious working solo: * A "lumpy" income stream that is hard…

Sometimes I think bookmarking in pointless. I have way too many ~10k and to find the right one I go back to googling. Now If I had a way to capture my entire browsing history it would be interesting I guess.

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#63

Post by graeme »

Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #49
graeme wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. I think any single founder should bear this in mind. Note that depending on scale and industry, you can design around this to an extent. My company largely runs automatically. I mostly work on growing it. I have a contract programmer and support rep who handle stuff. Requires very little day to day input from me. Don't get me wrong. If I became quadrapeligic, things would gradually break. But depending on…

> of course, this bars you from some industries or business models. Not just that, there are numerous other variables. e.g. The environment,I started my company in India when there was no definition for a startup, so my startup was no different than a Billion dollar corporation from the eyes of the government. So, as a single founder I spent much of my initial years trying to learn all compliances & adhering to them(…

Oh yeah, that wasn't a criticism of you. Just wanted to leave that for single founders to think about as they structure their businesses.

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#64

Post by tonyedgecombe »

jwr wrote: post #41
proy24 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solo founder is such a loaded term. Every freelancer, dropshipper, consultant is also a solo-founder. it's just not as glamorous as building a venture backed product.

No, a solo founder is someone who starts a new product business. That is very different from consulting, freelancing, etc, where you sell your time.

Did you just make that rule up?

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#65

Post by nyrulez »

thedragonline wrote: post #58
ru999gol wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

frontend in python?

I'm guessing the tkinter tooling that comes with Python.

Correct me if I'm wrong but tkinter is only for Desktop GUI I think. I am talking about the new search engine we are creating at coinquanta.com. That's indeed in Python - it's a bold experiment for us but drastically cuts down our development time. We'll write a blog post about our experience and tech stack soon enough.

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#66

Post by nyrulez »

ru999gol wrote: post #44
nyrulez wrote: post #32

This resonated well with me - thank you for the article! I jumped into the fray late last year full time and it's been the most exciting (and nerve-racking) few months of my life. As the author says, I feel like I am learning new things, growing personally (and making mistakes) at 10x the speed! (and I live in Jersey City too) I would say the hardest part for me is balancing time between building and outreach. It's a…

frontend in python?

See my reply below :)

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#67

Post by nyrulez »

todd3834 wrote: post #60
nyrulez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find the "right" co-founder? Or it doesn't really matter as long as you trust them and they are good enough? I have had some folks in my network offer to join as "co-founders" but it's been tricky to figure out if I should just go for it because "co-founders are awesome".

That’s a great question. I don’t think there is one perfect answer. However I would suggest that you find someone whom you’ve worked with at some point so you know if you work together well. If you don’t have previous experience working with a potential co-founder then I would suggest you try hiring them for a short project to get a sense. Or even better start something new with them so you’re both equally invested a…

Thanks - it's been tricky to say "no" and it feels weird to ask them to do a trial before. I think it depends on them as they might feel they are not "good enough" and it requires a certain level of maturity to realize trials are good for both of us.

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#68

Post by ryanwaggoner »

sk5t wrote: post #54
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other person might feel the same way: “in the end I did most of the work of getting actual paying customers, the other cofounder just wrote some code...next time I’ll just hire someone to do the coding” Not saying you should do things any differently than planned next time, but we coders have an outsized view of our value sometimes. You can pretty easily hire someone to write code if you have the cash. But being…

> You can pretty easily hire someone to write code if you have the cash Perhaps if you have quite a gigantic pile of cash. In most cases, trying to outsource your company's core product development is a recipe for very severe disappointment. The technical cofounder's role is to understand absolutely as much about the business as possible, and constantly integrate that evolving knowledge into the product. It's not rea…

Yes, but all that is just as true for the role of actually getting someone to fork over money. Witness the huge graveyard of interesting ideas built by talented engineers who can’t sell or market to save their lives.

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#69

Post by ryanwaggoner »

mamitas wrote: post #47
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other person might feel the same way: “in the end I did most of the work of getting actual paying customers, the other cofounder just wrote some code...next time I’ll just hire someone to do the coding” Not saying you should do things any differently than planned next time, but we coders have an outsized view of our value sometimes. You can pretty easily hire someone to write code if you have the cash. But being…

Moot point - well obviously the other person would feel differently - who wouldn't? Although that argument only works if you stereotype things completely. On one side we have a savvy outspoken salesman and on the other a shy introvert coder. And each thinks the other is completely replaceable. Kind of black/white don't you think? Thats sort of the VC mental model i.e. the mantra that more people in the team makes it…

I think that was my point, though poorly made. Hiring someone to just do that negligible bit of sales and marketing seems a little dismissive, and much harder in practice than someone might think. Better to stick with a cofounder or develop those skills yourself.

Re: What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

#70

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

graeme wrote: post #63
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> of course, this bars you from some industries or business models. Not just that, there are numerous other variables. e.g. The environment,I started my company in India when there was no definition for a startup, so my startup was no different than a Billion dollar corporation from the eyes of the government. So, as a single founder I spent much of my initial years trying to learn all compliances & adhering to them(…

Oh yeah, that wasn't a criticism of you. Just wanted to leave that for single founders to think about as they structure their businesses.

I wouldn't mind a criticism either, just wanted to bring up startup environment issues & to factor in when deciding sole founder vs otherwise.

Edit : Tried to be succinct.

Post reply on HN