[HN Gopher] Solopreneurs Are Changing the Face of the Economy
___________________________________________________________________
Solopreneurs Are Changing the Face of the Economy
Author : webmaven
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-04-02 15:45 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.entrepreneur.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.entrepreneur.com)
| oldstrangers wrote:
| I think the real shift is in "productizing" yourself (if you're
| able to). I created https://gloutir.com, a subscription service
| for design and development. It costs a company roughly 1.2-1.4x
| an employees actual salary to keep them on the payroll. So a
| $47,000 a year employee actually costs that company about
| $65,800. Productizing myself, you can afford to pay me MORE than
| $47,000 a year, while still paying out less than you would for a
| regular employee. Plus, I can work for multiple companies at
| once.
|
| This all sounds like glorified freelancing, and it basically is,
| but the fixed monthly rates are more preferable for everyone
| involved vs billable hours.
| attilaperez wrote:
| Really slick website, love it. When you talk about "we" is that
| the royal "we"?
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Haha thank you, and yes basically! It's too weird to say "I"
| a lot for me.
| akeck wrote:
| As someone in the US, I'd be a solopreneur in a moment, if the
| healthcare situation didn't suck. At this point in my life, it
| suits me better than being an employee. Things are better post-
| ACA than pre-ACA, but still not all that great - especially if
| you live in a state that's not ACA friendly.
| mathgladiator wrote:
| One of the reasons that I'm a "solopreneurs" is that I have no
| real desire to manage people for a few years. Honestly, I hate
| being an employee.
|
| I'm also embracing a wanton desire to be playful rather than an
| effective market strategy. For example, my latest pathology is
| that I'm building my own datastore for my service. I'm preparing
| to launch it as I audit my few users' usage. In a "bias towards
| getting to the market" sense, this is an awful approach.
|
| However, I'm having fun and making strides on a few defining
| dimensions.
|
| It could be said that I'm building a lifestyle business, but I
| don't believe so. Instead, I'm defining the foundation for a
| robust and long lived infrastructure game. If you believe the
| future is bigger than the present, then the markets will only get
| more exotic and bigger. There will be more room, and more
| customers that need to be serviced.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about owning a business vs. working for a
| corporation. I retired last month and the bulk of my retirement
| comes from working for a few companies that paid me very well, in
| some cases their stock was a good deal, and in some cases I had
| time set aside for my own research.
|
| That said, there can be a lot of BS involved working for other
| people, and some of the happiest people I know have their own
| business.
|
| Here in the USA, despite really low unemployment numbers, the
| divide between people who are well off and people who just get by
| is widening and more people are falling into something that looks
| more like poverty than a solid middle class lifestyle. In the
| future, it seems to me that to be well off you either need to
| have specific skills that corporations value or you need to own a
| viable business.
|
| This is difficult for me to say because I have always valued free
| time (in the last 45 years I have probably averaged working about
| 26 to 30 hours a week), in modern times I would recommend having
| a side gig and a job. Go for maximum flexibility.
| ilamont wrote:
| I'm skeptical of the hard definitions that arise around
| "entrepreneurship" which can become dogmatic and exclusionary,
| like we once saw with investors and some accelerators insisting
| that you were either a "startup" (a real entrepreneur hitting for
| the fences!) or a "lifestyle business" (not serious, and little
| more than a hobby).
|
| I see this article trying to create a similar dynamic, with
| "Solopreneur" being the new "lifestyle business" ( _" While the
| entrepreneur is looking to create a major enterprise, a
| solopreneur wants to create their enterprise alone ... to
| redefine their work-life balance or find purpose in starting
| something uniquely their own."_)
|
| Regardless, when people from the startup world use the term
| "lifestyle business" or "solopreneur" or "small business" or
| whatever to describe real businesses that aren't pure tech, have
| solo founders, don't take VC money, don't intend to scale to a
| billion users, or whatever other qualities are not worthy of
| investor consideration, I find it condescending and misguided.
| cbreynoldson wrote:
| I think people, by nature, tend to bucket others into a set of
| a few archetypes because it is easier to process the world this
| way. Most of it is out of ignorance - humans are always trying
| to conceptualize their lives in ways that can be understood,
| manipulated, and talked about.
|
| It is a shame that companies are passed up because they don't
| fit perfectly into one of a few categories. This is partially
| why research institutions and research-based companies are
| often overlooked or micromanaged.
| caseyf7 wrote:
| All you can do is prove them wrong. When you do, you won't care
| what they call it and then you can turn them down.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Ugh, I couldn't get through half of this article without throwing
| up in my mouth a little.
|
| Look, I'm a huge fan and believer in the benefits of
| entrepreneurship, but can we stop pretending like more than a
| small fraction of these "solopreneurs" (I hate that word, I guess
| if it's French it sounds cooler than "self employed") will be
| making more than an Uber driver?
|
| We are moving much more towards a "Hollywood" style economy,
| where a few superstars gobble up the majority of income and
| capital, while everyone else working at Starbucks dreams they'll
| "make it big" one day before half of them end up in porn. What
| is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic
| system that benefits the masses.
|
| I don't mean to be so negative, but these ridiculous "rah rah"
| articles that obfuscate the true nature of what is going on
| infuriate me.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That is still huge. Mostly these are ordinary people pursuing
| their interests and sharing. The profits may be modest, but are
| on the same scale as employment they are qualified for and with
| much better fit and volatility.
| SpaceInvader wrote:
| I'd say it's mostly a matter of energy and time you wish to put
| into becoming a successful entrepreneur. My experience tells me
| that first two-three years is a grind, then you can loosen that
| regime a bit, depending on what you want to achieve. If you're
| ok with making more (like x1.5 - 2.0 times more) than when
| employed you can relax and settle on 8-10h a day, if not - real
| benefits come later, but I think you'll need to hire somebody
| anyways.
| adventured wrote:
| > What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable
| economic system that benefits the masses.
|
| Median income hasn't eroded. Real unemployment is again nearing
| historic lows. Median wealth hasn't eroded.
|
| US median wealth remains higher than Germany or Sweden. Which,
| if you buy into the propaganda about the US (vs eg German
| worker protections and or Sweden's social safety net), that
| outcome should be impossible.
|
| And for the US that's all despite one of the greatest
| demographic changes in world history, in which the US middle
| class has been massively shifted by an influx of low education,
| impoverished third world immigrants (which is the opposite
| approach of most affluent nations; for example Canada or
| Australia, they hyper restrict immigration based on scoring
| systems meant to keep poor people largely out, focusing instead
| of highly qualified immigrants that can immediately contribute
| to the welfare state tax base).
|
| The fact is, the US has done extraordinarily well against that
| demographic change backdrop when it comes to the middle class
| and median figures. And this factor - dramatic demographic
| shift for the US middle class and median - is almost
| universally and intentionally ignored in the name of propaganda
| points.
|
| It turns out that if you flood a country with tens of millions
| of poor people that don't speak the primary language, it might
| downward drag on the figures you see in the middle class and
| median (ie it pushes downward on all of that until the recent
| immigrants have enough time to adjust and gain positioning in
| society: gain education, gain income, gain wealth, establish
| careers, leading progress into second or third generations).
|
| It can take generations for someone moving to a new culture,
| with little formal education, without the ability to speak the
| primary language, with no job or wealth supporting them, to get
| anywhere.
|
| Want to see this effect in action? Look at the median white
| household wealth and income figures, today vs 1970 / 1980 /
| 1990. In 1980 the US was around 5%-6% hispanic for example, the
| middle class was almost exclusively white. Today the US middle
| class is increasingly hispanic, and that trend will continue
| aggressively for decades to come. Now do the right thing and
| account for that when talking about how well the US middle
| class has done over the last 30 or 50 years (it's not the same
| demographic, it's not the same group of people, it has
| changed).
|
| If you move from Honduras to the US in 1993, previously living
| a third world lifestyle with minimum formal education and no
| ability to speak English; and then you lift yourself to the
| level of the US middle class by the 2010s, how do you account
| for showing that radical improvement in the US figures as it
| pertains to the middle class, if all it shows in the US figures
| is supposed stagnation (when what has really happened is the
| prior middle class demographic has moved upward, while formerly
| poor hispanics have moved in to the US middle class slot)?
|
| If you don't account for the epic scale demographic shift, then
| what you're proposing is hyper misleading.
| cinntaile wrote:
| > US median wealth remains higher than Germany or Sweden.
| Which, if you buy into the propaganda about the US (vs eg
| German worker protections and or Sweden's social safety net),
| that outcome should be impossible.
|
| Are you comparing absolute numbers here? Are they really
| comparable?
| rozenmd wrote:
| Here in France they actually call it auto-entrepreneur, funnily
| enough (self-entrepreneur)
| mescaline wrote:
| You do sound negative, but I understand where you are coming
| from. I can't speak for the other soloers, but this solo affair
| over here is going to make WAY more than an Uber driver. Hell,
| I may make more than Uber itself.
|
| That's the power of positive thought and focused attention.
| That attention nets positive feedback. _I_ did this. Nobody
| else. Well, except for that bit Joe did. Thanks Joe.
|
| Remember, anything is possible at Zombo.com.
| g8oz wrote:
| Yes and we need better language and analogies to talk about the
| non-superstars in these "new" economic arrangements. Gig
| economy workers being directed by an API Ala Uber/delivery apps
| are analogous to landless laborers in developing economies.
| Those with a virtual "stall" on someone else's platform
| (Etsy/Youtube/mobile app stores) are reminiscent of
| sharecroppers.
| [deleted]
| hklgny wrote:
| You do sound negative and it doesn't seem like a useful
| negativity. The world consolidating into so few companies is
| new, and any attempt at smaller more self sufficient businesses
| seems to me like a good thing.
|
| Who cares if they make the equivalent of an Uber driver. Making
| that money not driving for Uber adds variety to the economy and
| we all win as a result.
|
| It's like opening a modern day corner store. Sure they all look
| similar, but it's ownership and it matters and the people doing
| it should be proud of themselves.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I've been saying this for ages, but as consolidation and
| increasing commercial rent continnues to erode local businesses,
| the "mom-n-pop shop" concept is growing online.
|
| People are selling custom wares on Etsy/Shopify, running a
| Youtube/Twitch channel, becoming Amazon FBA vendors, etc. A big
| difference is that both expenses and revenue are lower, and
| people are usually dependent on one or multiple big corpo
| platforms for customer discovery and continued success.
| attilaperez wrote:
| The AWSification of small business is going to have interesting
| results down the road. I couldn't imagine the hair pulling that
| Etsy sellers and Youtube creators must go through day-to-day.
| Having a monolith hand that feeds you, doesn't even perceive
| you, and couldn't care a bit about you dictate your financial
| present and future sounds unnerving.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-02 23:02 UTC)