HIBP's M&A process & Troy's hurdles in running HIBP highlights two fundamental points of friction in running a single person company.
Reg. Value of a single person company.
>This was another really unexpected part of the experience - how people perceived me personally and put a value on my brand.
May be Troy really didn't expect that only person running an entity to be bought would be valued, sometimes even higher than the product/service itself; but it also needs to be understood that the company which is willing to buy an entity for a single person is undertaking an extraordinarily huge risk due to the Bus factor.
Reg. Compliances of a Business when running as a single person.
>I still manually verified every breach, hand edited every logo of a pwned company, issued (and chased) every invoice, did the tax returns and prepared the business activity statements.
At-least Troy seems to be located in a jurisdiction with straight forward business regulations. May be, most of the compliances could be automated.
There are countries out there where companies, even if run by a single person needs to comply with literally hundreds of regulations, with a new one popping up each month all to benefit the corrupt bureaucracy i.e. If you want to comply every regulation there, you still need to bribe. But the system and people who help with such regulations(auditing, lawyers) favour those who don't comply just because of larger bribes! So, even if you automate every other part of our business, you cannot automate out of corrupt bureaucracy.
M&A is one of the fundamental hurdles in a single person company, although there are other advantages such as freedom, cost-benefit etc.[1]
[1]https://hitstartup.com/being-single-founder-vs-having-co-fou...