[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Do you trust solo entrepreneurs?
Hello HN! [I'm a solo developer so this question is a bit personal
to me] Would knowing if the creator of a product is like me or
fully fledged organisation affect your likelihood of using any
software they create?
Author : chiscript
Score : 151 points
Date : 2022-06-30 09:53 UTC (13 hours ago)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| When does it even come up that you are a solo entrepreneur?
|
| If you need to communicate with your customers this way just to
| get any then you need a different line of work.
|
| Scrap every business idea you have until it rapidly iterates
| towards "users stumbling across an automated online service
| connected an automated payment processor" because thats what we
| do here
|
| If "rapid" and "ideas" dont happen for you, get a job
|
| and yeah, spinning up an LLC to shield any public records should
| be so ingrained in you that you never think about it
| timwaagh wrote:
| Personally I don't trust entrepreneurs whether solo or otherwise.
| They're solely motivated by greed. At least when it's an
| organisation you will not have to deal with them directly but
| with their underlings who might be less ambitious.
| dahart wrote:
| Totally depends, but if I'm acquiring or recommending software
| for my large corp employer, then likely yes solo dev could be a
| red flag. The primary issue is probably support bandwidth.
|
| If I'm trying things out at home, likely not. I already have lots
| of games and utilities that are solo dev work. A lot of us use
| OSS from GitHub done by solo devs.
|
| Also depends on the software. Anything financial or security or
| cloud based isn't a good idea to rely on one person. It matters
| how much I would rely on the software, how much risk there is,
| how much it would hurt to lose, and how much it cost. Games or
| paint programs or handy utilities, things like that I might be
| sad but not damaged if the solo dev software were to go away.
| timwaagh wrote:
| Well most software I buy are games and I usually don't like games
| produced by solo indy devs
| nunez wrote:
| As a person who prefers working solo as well, my only concerns
| would be:
|
| - their inability (or reluctance) in pivoting once they scale up
| (i.e. becoming an actual dictator instead of a benevolent one),
| and
|
| - their likelihood of prioritizing engineering over sales. I love
| building shit, but selling is key and selling is a completely
| separate beast
| chiscript wrote:
| Please don't get side-tracked by the content of my question.
|
| It was just meant to give a little bit of my perspective and how
| it might factor into the question overall.
| probolsky wrote:
| I use a platform that amazing and 10% the cost of competitors.
| But run by one dude. I've even asked him about the hit-by-a-bus
| scenario. He didn't have a good answer. My concern is always
| there.
|
| I've even discussed buying him out because it's such a worry.
| yakubin wrote:
| I'm using at least two products made by solo entrepeneurs:
| MailMate and Pinboard. Both are awesome. If anything, it's been
| my impression that the bigger the corp, the worse software they
| make (in an asymptotic progression, so I'm not saying that 5
| people will do worse than 1).
| rob_c wrote:
| This is like asking do I trust a loan shark. Yes some are
| probably just in it for a 10% return and will be on their way and
| some want your first born to work for them.
|
| As with borrowing any money or taking any investment. Do some
| research about the investor and if in doubt try to reach out to
| an independent expert for an opinion on an offer in principle. If
| they're offended you do this you probably don't want to risk
| working with them.
| anthony88 wrote:
| Note that one of the main start-up failure reason is cofounder
| conflict:
| https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/startup.google.co...
| dahart wrote:
| That's probably true, but note that an extremely often reason
| for conflict is money, and that it's harder to raise money and
| harder to make money solo. This is one of those things were
| there are multiple valid ways to categorize failure, and
| singling them out without context can be misleading.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| It depends on the nature of the dependency being taken.
|
| (Startups are roughly in the same bucket. As is Google X where X
| is less than 5 yo)
|
| If you are a pingdom clone then sure! I will easily be able to
| move to another pingdom clone.
|
| If you send my emails, I can move too bit with a bit more pain
| and maybe some spam reputation issues.
|
| If you organise all my teams work that is more of a headache to
| move off of.
|
| If you provide a very specific breeof cloud platform, like a
| Firebase clone, and I am coded up to the eyeballs with a tight
| coupling to your api, I would be way more wary. If you go down so
| do I for quite some time.
|
| But if your cloud is just a faster PostgreSQL then maybe that is
| not so bad.
| grumpymouse wrote:
| As well as the risk of relying on a business that fails, what
| happens if the business you're relying on succeeds?
|
| It feels like a lot of startups people discuss here are really
| just set up to give an 'exit' to investors through selling to a
| bigger company (at which point the product probably dies).
| tyronehed wrote:
| anonu wrote:
| Asking about trusting a solo entrepreneur or solo developer is
| not the right question. These points are irrelevant.
|
| What you need to show prospective clients is that your business
| is viable if you're not around: there's continuity and support.
| psyc wrote:
| Probably slightly less, I can't deny. But whether I trust someone
| will for the most part not have anything to do with whether they
| have a cofounder. However, I am not a VC or other investor.
| That's a different calculus.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| For me, it depends on the type of problem I'm trying to solve.
| Specifically, I ask _is it hard work or a difficult problem?_
| (see also [1], [2], and HN commentary at [3] from a short time
| ago).
|
| Hard work is something that a big corp can solve by throwing
| bodies at the problem. A proprietary data format or protocol but
| with an available, thorough specification (eg. a giant PDF from
| an international standard, an industrial protocol, and associated
| XML schema with a bunch of separate devices to talk to by just
| reading through thousands of pages of PDFs...). Another example
| of hard work is handling a high volume of support requests, just
| communicating to individual users might involve more hours in a
| single day than are available to a single user, and it might
| require supporting 3 shifts or 7 days a week, which a solo dev
| just can't do. These are tasks that a solo dev is likely to burn
| out on and which I would not entrust them with.
|
| On the other hand, a difficult problem is something that can be
| solved by a single contributor, but which often cannot be solved
| by throwing bodies at it. The output may be something as tiny as
| a few hundred lines of code that realize a single critical
| insight. That insight might synthesize a lot of complicated and
| inaccessible concepts available only to someone who is an expert
| in multiple fields and who has experience gained over many
| consecutive years of work in a single field. A company that can
| put 20 people with 1 year experience and 4 year degrees on the
| problem may not ever come to that synthesis. For example, I've
| had the opportunity to work on some complicated coordinate
| systems and GD&T mathematics for multi-axis CNC equipment; just
| communicating the requirements to even highly competent engineers
| unfamiliar with the problem is difficult, much less actually
| implementing the mathematics and software required to accomplish
| the task.
|
| Big organizations often make progress by, as the author of the
| linked post describes, following "Effective strategies [that]
| often consist of converting difficult problems into something
| that can be solved through hard work." But sometimes this analogy
| just doesn't exist. And often, the conversion process introduces
| leaky abstractions and waste. Really good big organizations
| realize this, and will farm out these tasks to solo
| contractors/entrepeneurs, work with research institutions, or
| (less popular lately) build internal 'think tanks' and R&D
| departments that can make progress on difficult problems, which
| the rest of the company can scale out with hard work.
|
| Conversely, solo entrepeneurs need to understand when and how to
| transition from working on difficult problems to scaling out and
| delegating hard work. I'm currently waiting on a support request
| with a guy who is really, really smart, and really productive,
| but as his company scaled out from building one really innovative
| machine that solved a difficult problem, to building and
| supporting 20 of them at locations throughout the state, to now
| when they have lots of sales engineers, a manufacturing
| department, some traveling technicians, and some 600 units at
| locations all over the world... he never managed to transition
| out of his keystone roll at the top of the software department.
| He's got an ever-growing backlog of engineering change orders
| that all fall back on him, and while highly successful and
| valued, he's really unhappy because he's just completely swamped.
|
| My advice is to carefully select what your product is and does.
| Is it something for which people would want to call in an expert?
| You'll be fine. Is it something for which they'd want frequent
| changes, extended hours of support, many years of operation, and
| that can be done by anyone with a modicum of competency? I'd
| rather find a bigger, more reliable company.
|
| [1] https://drmaciver.substack.com/p/difficult-problems-and-
| hard...
|
| [2] https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2022/06/22/Mental-Model-
| Diff...
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31845144
| yawnxyz wrote:
| considering even "real" companies drop the ball (and entire
| product features and customers) willy nilly (e.g. Twitter API,
| Brex ...) I don't really trust anyone -- always have a backup
| plan if a service goes away.
|
| Same thing with clients if you're a contractor -- don't rely on
| that client to pay 60%+ of your income -- you'll be in for a
| world of hurt if something happens with that relationship.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Depends on the software, naturally.
|
| If it's a self-contained desktop software, it's one thing.
|
| If it's a 24/7 online service, it's another.
|
| If the online component is optional or not critical, it's the
| third case.
| codingdave wrote:
| The question in the title would get a different answer than the
| question in your post.
|
| Do I trust solo entrepreneurs? Yes.
|
| Would I use their software within my organization? No. Or at
| least, not for anything critical. Not because I do not trust the
| person, but because life is crazy and that product's bus factor
| is too high.
| ushakov wrote:
| what if you can self-host the product?
|
| i found this to be a great way to sell my software
|
| i'd offer prospects a partner agency, which will do the
| hosting, while i'm building the product
|
| the customers get guarantees, while me and the agency share the
| profits
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| We need more info. Is it open source? If so, how's the
| community around it?
| ushakov wrote:
| open-source clients with proprietary backend
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In my case, the answer is "It depends."
|
| A lot of it depends upon _who_ the "solo entrepreneur" is.
|
| For example, there's a certain foulmouthed Finnish engineer, that
| has had a couple of "out of the ballpark" hits, that, when he
| first developed them, were pretty much "solo."
| rikkipitt wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat with two email-based SaaS products. People
| often ask, "what if?".
|
| I've considered writing up a worst case scenario plan or
| migration document to help with initial concerns that these apps
| will just go away.
|
| Are there any funds out there that offer their name as a form of
| backing to give customers increased confidence? I think a big
| name would help, not just the money itself.
|
| Thoughts?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Many large companies dealing with smaller companies add a
| clause to their contract enforcing that all code and deployment
| instructions go to a third party escrow and remains updated.
| They have the right to a non exclusive license to the code
| under certain circumstances. I've been on both sides of the
| agreement.
| scarface74 wrote:
| I was the dev lead for a medium size company where we depended on
| a software platform by a solo dev. We made up 60%+ of his
| revenue. We insisted as part of the contract that he put his code
| in escrow and that we had the right to a copy of the code under
| certain conditions.
|
| But no, I wouldn't as a person who hypothetically made buying
| decisions. It's the "IBM problem" that non dominant companies
| face. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM".
| mtmail wrote:
| Only once did we actively cancel a contract with a solo
| entrepreneur. It was a payment platform (on top of Stripe). We
| later learned (via Twitter photos) he also did a coast-to-coast
| camping van trip for several weeks. I think he was living in the
| van, too. All fine. But then during a customer complaint we
| couldn't get hold of him for days. Maybe in a national park
| without cellphone reception? It was too much of risk for us long-
| term.
| jansan wrote:
| I think this is the biggest issue with solo entrepreneurs.
| Nobody does support and keeps their business running when they
| are not available. This at the same time is one of the most
| stressful parts of being a solo entrepreneur. When I ran a one-
| man-show in the early 2000s I never had time to really take two
| days off. I needed to be online and at least reply to a few
| emails every day. Money was good, but there was no time to
| relax.
| vianneychevalie wrote:
| Was money good enough to finance a ticket triaging job when
| you're off? Is there a startup idea right there?
| p0nce wrote:
| My products have no copy protection so that you can use them /
| backup in the event I die. Besides that, the bias against "small"
| is so strong, that the end users just don't need to know how
| small the actual team is. Customers will, again and again, judge
| things differently depending on branding, and bigger brands tend
| to win out. Trust is also earned by being dependable, long-lived
| and focus on quality, and that's what "we" do. Saying you're solo
| can easily be an excuse for not competing.
| adrianthedev wrote:
| 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.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Those are the same questions we ask any smaller company we are
| thinking of integrating with. Depending on the cost of
| migrating off we may even ask to speak with some of their other
| clients.
| tmaly wrote:
| If it's open source, I tend to have a little more trust with solo
| entrepreneurs. I can see all the details of what they are
| selling.
|
| If it is not, then I look for things like reputation, reviews,
| testimonials. A good product alone will not always get a sale.
| The person has to trust you and your company.
| thargor90 wrote:
| I consider myself to be a solo developer/entrepreneur.
|
| Some tips to look like a small business (which is fine for most
| clients) instead of solo developer: * Get incorporated * Get
| "advisors" or "partners" that you can list, but do not actually
| do any work * Get freelancers that you can list, but only hire
| when required * Hire 1-2 part time students and let them answer
| calls or and do accounting/busy work
|
| Last but not least, just have a great product and customers will
| work around their due diligence processes ;-)
| tonyfader wrote:
| well, yes, i trust myself. It's not like anyone else has been
| using technology expertise to pay these bills for the last 20
| years...
| whizzter wrote:
| "It depends", there's both optics and trust.
|
| A single person is always a liability due to the "hit-by-a-bus"
| factor.
|
| The optics solution: Don't look like a single person, hide behind
| an LLC (in some countries you can look up the financials though
| so having money in it from consulting,etc is prob a good idea so
| it doesn't look vulnerable)
|
| A trust solution: You could mitigate it by having an open-
| sourcing pledge and/or other organizations that you list as
| support providers.
|
| This could be done in cooperation with other solo-developers that
| isn't competitors, list each others companies as support
| providers and give cursory introductions to them so they could
| take over or help customers in case of emergencies. This could
| also give a side-benefit of having a clear option to scale if one
| of you grow successful so onboarding would be quick. (Also in
| terms of marketing it'd give the perception of a bigger product
| if there are support providers there already)
| [deleted]
| ushakov wrote:
| +1 on cooperations
|
| if you have friends with established companies, you could ask
| them if they could be your "service partner"
|
| i've done this with my friends for ever now
|
| also note, that just like individual developers companies don't
| provide any guarantees unless there's a SLA in place
| scarface74 wrote:
| Hiding behind an LLC is no help. I'm going to ask for and
| verify references. I've been in the room enough times when it
| came to purchasing decisions.
| oblib wrote:
| I'm a solo founder. My ezInvoice app has been running for over 20
| years, and I have users that have been using it almost that long.
|
| After the first time when users call for help they know they're
| going to talk to me and that I'll go click by click with them to
| get them up to speed or reproduce the issue they're experiencing,
| and that I'll address any issues they run into.
|
| Truth is, I very seldom get calls for help, or bug reports, or
| suggestions for new features. I have a "News" page where I post
| what I'm working on, and a "Beta" app they can check out to test
| new features and check out design changes.
|
| I develop on an Mac Mini and mostly use BBEdit, Fetch, and
| Firefox/Brave. Over those 20 years I've had to call BBEdit and
| Fetch for help a few times and their support has always been top
| notch. I doubt they have many employees or get many support
| calls. Their software is mature and does what it's supposed to
| do.
|
| I've also tried to get support from Apple, Google, and Microsoft
| on occasion over the years and it's close to impossible to talk
| to anyone. The one time I talked to someone at Google about an
| Adwords account they were rude and worthless (that was close to
| 20 years ago). I don't recall ever talking to a person at the
| others, but I recall feeling lost when searching for help on
| their websites.
|
| I reported an issue to the Opera web browser folks earlier this
| year. They didn't respond at all. They did fix the issue, but
| never made any announcement about it. That bothered me enough to
| download Brave and I've been using it since to test my work. I
| don't know that they'd be any better, but I haven't had an issue
| with their browser to worry about.
|
| I have a "one strike and your out" approach to apps and services
| I use.
| zmxz wrote:
| If I can carry on with my business and use your software in the
| event in which you cease to exist, then yes.
|
| Cease to exist = any event that deletes you from the equation
| from bankrupcy to the worst case scenario - death.
|
| If you're the bus factor of 1, then I would never use your
| software (speaking from organisation POV).
|
| If there's a contingency in place, and your software solves the
| problem I have (speaking from organisation POV), then yes.
| dazhbog wrote:
| It's a matter of risk. No sane company would go for a single
| point of failure (if they knew about it).
|
| So with that said, just don't actively advertise that you're
| solo, and fake it until you make it.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I am a solo founder. Swinging for the fences.
|
| Well, like Scarface put it best, I don't trust him but what did
| he say?
|
| "I trust me."
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I trust myself as a solo entrepreneur :-)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Personally, I do but I believe a solo entrepreneur will have to
| work harder. Check out https://sindresorhus.com for instance. He
| makes simple and beautiful apps.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| In my time as a Product Manager for both tiny startups and giant
| corporations, (and indeed one little startup that became a giant)
| I've killed maybe 15 products and launched 6. During those days I
| was always amazed how few customers bothered to enquire where the
| particular product was in the product's lifecycle.
| timcavel wrote:
| talolard wrote:
| I built LightTag and eventually sold it. In my experience , at
| lower price points (<100 month) it's a none issue. If you can
| build a self serve funnel, get people in it and convert them no
| one will care if your 1 person or 100.
|
| Once you go up in price point it becomes a bigger issue, I had
| many deals die when they realized I was a 1 man show.
|
| That shouldn't stop you. If you close a 50k recurring deal once a
| year, that still adds up to a great income.
| zrail wrote:
| This is a topic that I've thought a ton about, from the
| perspective of being an entrepreneur. I have a full time job
| right now but even for side projects or any product that I may
| choose to sell in the future, I've decided that it's not going to
| have a service at it's core. If it has a service component it
| can't be in the critical path for the software to work. I.e. I
| might host a gem server or something for paying customers but not
| an API server.
|
| I just can't square my own working style, my need to do things
| outside of work, and my desire for ownership of the things I work
| on with the idea that I need to be on-call forever for a thing.
| It's just too much stress.
| ushakov wrote:
| don't be afraid i should say
|
| focus on the product first and foremost
|
| the key of attracting big companies really lies in your sales
| talent
| ajb wrote:
| Depends what for, of course. Something that needs 24-hour on
| call, obviously not - you have to sleep sometime. Realistically
| though in terms of 'solo' - exactly 1 employee - I won't know
| unless you tell me. I will be able to tell that you are a small
| company. I won't be able to tell that you don't have a co-
| founder. I might guess from linkedin, but not everyone has a
| linkedin account.
|
| What does make me suspicious are companies which don't identify
| themselves - no identifiable person or address.
|
| Otherwise it depends on what you are asking me to rely on you to
| do, and what are my options if you fail.
| masukomi wrote:
| > Would knowing if the creator of a product is like me or fully
| fledged organisation affect your likelihood of using any software
| they create?
|
| I use good software, that isn't written by bigots and doesn't
| support bigotry.
|
| I prefer good software from solo or small indie team developers
| because they tend to not only respond to feedback, but actually
| incorporate that feedback. I prefer it even more if their income
| is centered around their software because then making the app
| awesome and listening to users is core to them having food on the
| table and a roof on their heads, and that benefits me, the user,
| a lot.
|
| separately: your Ask HN question title is a _radically_ different
| question than the one in the body of your post. I trust solo
| developers exactly as much as i trust any other individual i
| don't know.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I just want to point out as the other side (a business
| considering a purchase) that being someone's customer is not at
| all equivalent to trusting them for partnership.
|
| Especially if the value of the deal is, say, $50/month (so 2nd
| lowest tier)
| xtiansimon wrote:
| IMHO a solo dev is like a privately owned business, like a baker.
| You're going to make choices which effect the product. Cost
| cutting will reflect your values. So I expect idiosyncratic
| policies to be in effect. Some you never encounter, because they
| don't effect the product. Some you learn of later and decide as a
| consumer if it's a deal breaker. Either way social pressure is on
| the business owner to serve customers and play fair. Failing
| these, you will lose customers and rightfully so.
|
| Now here's my thing about software. That baker, when you provide
| your PII and financial data to them they're using third party
| service. They're not _in_ the data, unless they want to be.
|
| Again, this is my opinion. I feel that when you're _in_ the data
| --making decisions about data flow, management, PII-- there is a
| moral and ethical danger a solo-developer can make bad decisions
| about a customer's data.
|
| That might be shocking idea, but just think about a savings and
| loan run by one person. You could get George Bailey, or Knuckles
| the Loan Shark.
| carvking wrote:
| Have a "open source upon death" clause ?
| HPsquared wrote:
| That could create something of a moral hazard.
| ecmascript wrote:
| Even if 90% would say no, there is at least 10% that would say
| yes and that would result in a lot of people.
|
| The reality is probably that most people don't think about if the
| product they're using is made by a solo dev or not. They only
| care if it solves their problem in an easy and nice way.
| z9znz wrote:
| Generally speaking, some big companies are less reliable
| providers of software than individuals.
|
| Google's long list of killed projects is a good example, but any
| large (especially publicly traded company) may kill a service if
| they decide the economics don't look good.
|
| You see this particularly when a large company grows by acquiring
| smaller companies, resulting in a stock price boost; but then a
| few quarters later there's a need to offset greater business
| failures by cutting costs, so some divisions or projects get
| axed.
|
| I would probably trust in this order:
|
| 1. small focused profitable company
|
| 2. large private profitable company
|
| 3. solo operator
|
| 4. large publicly traded company
| lagrange77 wrote:
| It also depends on the execution of the product incl. marketing
| efforts.
|
| I try to extract the level of passion the dev has in his product,
| because i do trust passionate creators.
| tzahifadida wrote:
| It is about perception. There are unicorns that started as solo.
| But, eventually they grew out of it. Weird though, there are so
| many shops out there run by solo people. They cook our food, they
| make critical stuff for us, but we don't scruitanize it. We let
| them into our homes :)
|
| So, this is just optics. Land and expand, for example, is a way
| to force their arm. If you are already there then they can cry
| about it or buy the enterprise plan :)
| buf wrote:
| I'm the sole developer of www.castingcall.club and
| www.closingcredits.com. About 1M people use these two products a
| year and I've ran them for about 7 years.
|
| While I have no plans of stopping working on them in the near
| term, I have listed that in the event of my death, an entrusted
| tech savvy person will take over these two companies.
|
| That said, all my users have no guarantee that I'll continue to
| work on these products, but that's true of just about any
| company. I think as a solo developer I have to earn the trust of
| users by building in public and being a partial public figure.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Casting Call sounds like a cool service and the clients really
| interesting.
|
| Just a word of rec. On mobile (Android/FF) the post titles are
| vertically stacked, which is tough to read for people. If you
| keep the text horizontally aligned and rotate 90 degrees (or
| dont and make horizontal) it'd make it easier to read.
|
| Edit: Just checked out Closing Credits too. Super cool work
| buf wrote:
| Thanks for the heads-up!
|
| Some of the site is just ancient and I'm doing a big rebuild
| right now. I've added a note to fix that. Cheers!
| [deleted]
| carvking wrote:
| Yeah - good point, many products have been discontinued by
| large tech companies.
|
| Google Reader the first that comes to mind.
| davidw wrote:
| 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.
| XCSme wrote:
| 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).
| nocommandline wrote:
| Yes, but it depends on the software.
|
| From a builder's POV, I also thought about this whenever I had
| ideas. Thoughts like - if I build this alone, will my customers
| be stuck or drastically affected if something happens to me? What
| will be the impact to my customers if I'm unreachable for a day
| or more (sick, traveling, etc).
|
| For me, if it's a utility tool or software where my data is on my
| system, then I'm more likely going to be okay if it was built by
| a solo developer (this is how I green-lit my current project -
| https://nocommandline.com).
|
| But if it's something where my data is on the cloud and/or the
| software is a key part of my workflow, then I would do some
| further analysis if I know it's a solo developer e.g. can I
| easily backup/extract my data, are there alternatives that I can
| easily move to, do I need to be able to reach support within a
| very short window (e.g. 6 hours). To be clear, this automatically
| doesn't mean I won't buy the software but the analysis will help
| me reach the decision. I have previously launched an idea that
| fell into this category but I provided the ability for users to
| export their data in JSON format from day 1 and I knew there were
| alternatives that users could move to with very little down-time
| gnicholas wrote:
| 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!
| barrysteve wrote:
| Solo devs are great for independent direct to customer apps. The
| kind of apps that should be a feature of the parent software or
| OS, or require an idealistic principle held in place to make it
| appealing for the audience.
|
| Once you factor in "survival of the tribe" or ultra-massive
| corps, the benefits of solo development can be overridden.
| ratel wrote:
| I'm a solo entrepreneur and have been for 20 years. Can I be
| trusted: Yes. Is that obvious to prospective clients? Not at all.
| So the question is how are you going to limit the risk for your
| clients when using your products? Have _business_ answers to the
| risk you are asking them take.
|
| Don't tell your prospects that all companies big and small can
| fail and don't use data to prove your point. It might all be
| true, but telling your prospects they are doomed whatever they
| decide is not getting you to a 'Yes'.
|
| In my case I have niche products that are still largely unique
| and don't have to compete with bigger organizations. A
| competition I would lose in a heartbeat if customers had the
| choice regardless of price or chances of success. I still make
| sure that I have a decent solution for the 'bus' argument and I
| am generous with supplying access to the code they need to keep
| their application running when I do get hit by bus, financials
| ruin or old age. At best I can say: It worked up till now.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| For that matter, how many solo devs pretend to be a corporation
| to be perceived as less risky than the solo show they truly are?
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Short answer no. I would only use this type of project for my own
| side projects.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| For your typical solo founder in their 30s, their odds of dying
| at any point over the next 10 years is something like 0.2%. And
| short of them dying, their business isn't going anywhere because
| keeping a SaaS startup online doesn't cost anything -- if you
| have the skills to do it yourself.
|
| Whereas the odds of a venture backed startup shutting down at any
| point over the next ten years is something like 30%.
|
| So from a risk perspective, it's literally over 100x more risky
| to use a software product made by a venture backed company than
| one from a solo founder.
|
| On all of my sales calls, I tell people that I'm bootstrapped and
| that I'm going to charge them extra so that I can reduce the risk
| to their business by staying bootstrapped, and I have yet to run
| into anyone who doesn't seem satisfied by that pricing strategy.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| This is a neat reply. I guess there could be other factors that
| would lead someone to stop their solo biz though...
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Sure. For context, this is for a new product that solves a
| real pain point, and for which there aren't any other
| solutions on the market. And it also doesn't really cost
| anything to integrate.
|
| If this weren't solving a pain point and if there were other
| alternatives on the market, then this positioning might not
| work as well. But building something where folks don't really
| have any better choice was also a purposeful decision.
| yread wrote:
| That's a good one. I tell them that if they are really worried
| we can for a price of course arrange access to the sources so
| that they can maintain it after I die/quit. My clients are not
| in IT so I'm not too worried about them starting a clone
| itsthecourier wrote:
| javajosh wrote:
| IANAA (I am not an actuary) but surely this can't be the entire
| computation. Death is only one reason a solo SaaS might fail.
| The real problem is mental noise, and the fact that large
| organizations have the positive side-effect of averaging out
| that noise to produce coherent, predictable actions. (The
| humanist wants to point out the "noise" is sentiment, artistry,
| beauty, and the coherent behavior is that of a profit-driven
| sociopath, but the point stands.)
|
| What I'm saying is that their chance of death is .2% but their
| chance of discovering Buddha, deciding to give up everything
| and become a monk, or meeting the woman of their dreams and
| going to live the simple life in Thailand, and so on, are much,
| much greater.
| dokein wrote:
| I don't think one needs to be an actuary to appreciate that
| comparing the mortality rate of solo founders with the
| failure rate of VC backed companies doesn't make sense.
|
| When he is asked to defend it, he clarifies that he's only
| talking about companies that solve a major pain point, have
| no other competitors, and a low cost of implementation.
| (Obviously the failure rate of VC-backed companies with
| amazing PMF and amazing operating margins is much lower than
| 30%!)
|
| His comment is the highest voted in this thread (assuming HN
| sorts that way) -- this is a classic example of 'this person
| says something I want to believe and has some numbers so I'll
| upvote it without even a rudimentary interrogation!'
| lazide wrote:
| We all believe what we need to, or something like that.
| ezekg wrote:
| I should hire you as my sales guy. I say this same thing often
| to leads that are worried about my bus factor of 1.
|
| Oddly, most of the time its other small businesses that are
| worried.
| codingdave wrote:
| If it is working for you, that is great, but...
|
| Death is not the only reason people quit working on a project.
| They could get a better offer, their family situation could
| change, they could get sick or injured, or they could simply
| get sick of it, just to name a few.
|
| Also, keeping a SaaS online does cost money. And those costs
| increase as you scale. If you are small enough that you can run
| on a free tier, you are too small for me to have confidence
| that you are sticking around.
| csomar wrote:
| I think that's why he's charging extra. If you are making a
| reasonable living from your bootstrapped SaaS, you'll
| probably keep at it.
| imdsm wrote:
| So long as you're profitable, the revenue should scale too,
| covering the costs. It's a different approach when you're a
| solopreneur as you won't be burning money to try to scale
| rapidly. That being said, there are other risks, like the
| service being acquired and assimilated, but we face that with
| all services we rely on really.
| mbostleman wrote:
| And also, keeping a SaaS online isn't the only effort
| involved in keeping it stable, useful, and relevant.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Unless they decide to turn it off, they would just stagnate
| in features.
|
| Regarding it costing money, yes, of course. But costs
| increases as users increase. If you're giving away your
| product for free, that's an issue. If you're charging, then I
| don't see the problem.
| chadash wrote:
| _> Also, keeping a SaaS online does cost money. And those
| costs increase as you scale. If you are small enough that you
| can run on a free tier, you are too small for me to have
| confidence that you are sticking around._
|
| Sure, it depends on what you are doing, but I imagine that
| for most paid SAAS models, the cost of cloud computing is a
| small fraction of what they bring in revenue. In many cases,
| so small as to be effectively $0. As an example, stack
| overflow gets hundreds of millions of visits a month, but is
| run on two physical servers (plus an additional two for
| backup). As a more personal example, I have a small SAAS side
| project and my server costs run me about 0.5% of my revenue
| (the rest is all profit other than the value of my time). I
| could probably get that down to 0.1% with some code
| refactoring, but even with the current code, I could easily
| 10x my number of subscribers and not increase server costs by
| even $0.01.
|
| To add to this, in my experience, the companies I've worked
| for have tons of extra capacity with their cloud services.
| For example, using t3.large vs t3.small instances at 4x the
| price indiscriminately. Why? Because server costs are just a
| rounding error compared to paying a bunch of $100k+ salaries.
| thsijustin wrote:
| Meanwhile 80% of the previous generations Fortune 500 are
| gone.
|
| Everything dies. This simple minded confidence game we
| require each other play to validate usefulness is getting
| old.
|
| You're one of seven billion humans who will die, one of
| millions of programmers to pick from to prop up trade of
| Daddy Dollars.
|
| You're not sticking around either and cannot prove your
| contributions were truly more valuable than anyone else's
| (models have been built to ascertain which human leadership
| traits and which technology make us more productive and all
| became too complex to understand).
|
| Don't blink though; keep pretending we're onto something with
| folksy anecdotes, and nostalgia for past wins.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > If you are small enough that you can run on a free tier,
| you are too small for me to have confidence that you are
| sticking around.
|
| There's a lot of truth in this. Particularly since the free
| tiers on most cloud providers are explicitly designed to suck
| you in, then raise the rates tremendously as you scale.
|
| A business that might be fine with 100 customers on the cloud
| could struggle mightily to cover the costs of dealing with
| 1000 customers on the same stack. The linear revenue growth
| doesn't match up to the insane cost increase as you go from
| "hobby project" to "small business" in the cloud.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| Can you provide examples where linear growth in resource
| consumption does not reflect on linear growth in clouds? So
| far all free tiers that I saw were trivial in cost savings
| and anything after free tier was pretty linear (or even big
| scales allowed to save something).
| horsawlarway wrote:
| > Can you provide examples where linear growth in
| resource consumption does not reflect on linear growth in
| clouds?
|
| Sure - you were hosting your DB just fine with 100
| customers using standard SSD, but now at 1000 you're
| blowing your IOPS budget and need to upgrade to premium
| SSD. The premium SSD costs twice what the standard SSD
| does for the same space - your usage will not have
| doubled.
|
| Or - god help you, you were hosting your db just fine
| with 100 customers using a small VM, and to avoid having
| to think about it, you've decided to move from a self-
| managed db on a VM to something like Cosmos DB. No growth
| in usage at all from you, but your costs are about to
| shoot way up.
|
| Or - I've added a customer in a region that has poor
| connectivity to my current region of choice - oops,
| setting up edge services closer to them is going to hurt.
| Now I'm sending data between regions, incurring all sorts
| of costs between services that I wasn't with a single
| region setup.
|
| ----
|
| My experience with the cloud (and I've been a heavy user
| of both Azure and AWS, not as much GCP) is this: There
| are bands of costs, within that band, costs will tend to
| grow linearly as you grow.
|
| The problem, is that you will outgrow the band you're in.
| There is a hard limit on something that you weren't
| thinking about (IOPS, for example) and once you hit that
| you have to jump to a different band with a new cost
| structure.
|
| Usually, that means increasing base spend by a large
| amount compared to usage, and then getting slightly
| better cost/use at the new higher base.
| jjav wrote:
| > If you are small enough that you can run on a free tier,
| you are too small for me to have confidence that you are
| sticking around.
|
| AWS has a free tier, so I wouldn't apply that rule too much.
| eternityforest wrote:
| For one reason or another software always needs maintenance. If
| I were literally keeping a business running solo, getting out
| would be near the top of my goals list.
| tnolet wrote:
| The "dying" of the company seems less relevant than the 1
| person company just not being able to deliver the level of
| service required to compete, be reliable (think support, on
| call) etc.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >keeping a SaaS startup online doesn't cost anything -- if you
| have the skills to do it yourself.
|
| It costs time (customer support, security updates,
| deprecations, third party api changes, etc, etc.) and time is a
| limited quantity for a person. Eventually other things are a
| better use of their time from either an economic point of view
| (other ventures, etc.) or a personal point of view (family,
| etc.).
| alcio wrote:
| > For your typical solo founder in their 30s, their odds of
| dying at any point over the next 10 years is something like
| 0.2%
|
| The real figure is more 2.1% (source:
| https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html)
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Fair, I was just going by the risk of fatal cardiovascular
| events: https://www.cvriskcalculator.com/
|
| I feel like the indie hacking lifestyle doesn't really
| attract people who are at high risk for most other common
| causes of death at that age, in the same way that, say,
| raising venture capital seems to be an attractive option for
| people already at risk of suicide or drug overdose.
| tdrgabi wrote:
| I'm confused, where does the 2.1% come from. It does look
| like 0.001795 which is 0.2% for a 30 year old in the source
| you linked
| cupofpython wrote:
| .001795 for year 30 = .998205 survival this year
|
| .001858 for year 31 = .998142
|
| ...
|
| .002482 for year 39 = .997518
|
| ---------------------
|
| .998205 x .998142 x ... x .997518 = .978997 survival rate
| over 10 years
|
| 1 - .978997 = .021003 chance of death = 2.1%
| vicek22 wrote:
| The number you read is for dying within the next year. The
| OP said within a decade.
| kevinpet wrote:
| OP also said "in their 30s" not "at 30". So I'd use 35-45
| rather than 30-40, which shifts it a bit.
| cupofpython wrote:
| Since I already have the spreadsheet built for my other
| comment:
|
| 30-39 is 2.1%
|
| 35-44 is 2.5%
|
| 40-49 is 3.3%
|
| ---------
|
| 30-49 is 5.3%
|
| Ranges are inclusive of entire year. 30-39 is 30th bday
| to 40th bday
| imdsm wrote:
| I don't like these numbers. I preferred the old numbers.
| formvoltron wrote:
| I guess most entrepreneurs are not dying from drugs or guns
| as they are simply too busy!
| ihaveajob wrote:
| Unintentional injury (likely mostly car crashes?) seems to
| be the leading cause for all age group up to age 44. Then
| come suicide/homicide which only start declining in the
| ranks in your 40s, probably because other causes (cancer,
| heart conditions) start to take over.
|
| I'm in my 40s and officially more likely to have my heart
| kill me, than myself.
|
| https://wisqars.cdc.gov/fatal-leading
| throwoutway wrote:
| Which is about the same rate that airlines lose luggage.
| (Unrelated comparison but analogies can help)
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I've experienced an airline losing my luggage, but I
| haven't experienced death yet.
|
| Maybe I'm immortal :)
| darkerside wrote:
| Literal survivorship bias :-D
| jerrre wrote:
| Maybe you've flewn more times than you lived from 30-40
| thfuran wrote:
| That's a fairly deceptive analogy though. Many people check
| baggage a lot more (or less) than once per year.
| dahart wrote:
| 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.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Death is not a once per year risk.
|
| It absolutely is in the context of a discussion of
| annualized mortality rates.
| dahart wrote:
| My point was a response to the statement that baggage
| checking happens more than once per year. Life also
| happens more than once per year, and in fact it happens
| more often than checking baggage, right?
|
| It's misleading to annualize these stats because the
| participation rates per hour and per day are very very
| different. This is why sports risk is usually calculated
| in participation hours and not annualized, to prevent
| such misleading comparisons.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You are comparing it with the risk of dying in an year.
| That is a once per year risk.
| dahart wrote:
| It's not a once per year risk, it's an average. And you
| agree that changing the choice of time window for
| averaging will dramatically change the results, don't
| you?
| dahart wrote:
| > the odds of a venture backed startup shutting down at any
| point over the next ten years is something like 30%.
|
| Where is this number from? Googling, I see numbers like 75% of
| venture backed startups failing [1] and 90% of all startups
| failing, most of that within the first year. The suggestion
| that 70% of venture startups live for at least a decade smells
| unlikely.
|
| [1]
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443720204578004...
|
| > from a risk perspective, it's literally over 100x more risky
| to use a software product made by a venture backed company than
| one from a solo founder.
|
| Yeah, no this is not even close to true (because, as many
| others have pointed out, death is not the primary risk to a
| solo founder, funding & motivation are). Unfunded startups fail
| at a higher rate than venture backed, from what I can find. YC
| funds solo founders, but advises trying to find a co-founder
| _because_ the risks are higher.
| https://www.ycombinator.com/library/7P-does-yc-fund-solo-fou...
| tedmiston wrote:
| Yeah, the 30% number is way off. The vast majority of
| startups die off. That percentage is likely 90-95%, maybe
| even 99%.
|
| If you include acquihired teams / sunsetted products, that
| number is even higher.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| >On all of my sales calls, I tell people that I'm bootstrapped
| and that I'm going to charge them extra so that I can reduce
| the risk to their business by staying bootstrapped, and I have
| yet to run into anyone who doesn't seem satisfied by that
| pricing strategy.
|
| What does this statement mean? Are you implying to your
| potential customers that charging them extra translates into
| profits to entice you to continue the business or that the
| efficiencies allow for business continuity services like
| providing the source code in escrow?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > What does this statement mean?
|
| That I'm not going to dump product on the market below cost
| to gain market share. Since even though doing that is
| obviously saves customers a little bit of money in the short
| term, in the long term the money raised to do that needs to
| be paid back ten fold, which ultimately comes out of their
| pockets.
|
| It's just much easier for a business to keep its interests
| aligned with its customers if there isn't some third party
| who is trying to extract money from both.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| You must have a pretty compelling product. Mind sharing?
| [deleted]
| grassmudhorse wrote:
| You're looking at the wrong metrics. The risk of using a solo-
| dev product is them losing interest and stopping support (or as
| someone else pointed out, not being able to deliver the
| required level of support).
|
| Both types of products also have a chance of being bought for
| cheap when they are failing, and at least kept alive on life
| support.
| akhmatova wrote:
| _Ut 's literally over 100x more risky_
|
| It's clearly not, due to what the sibling commenters have been
| staying (people discontinuing products for reasons other than
| dying, etc.) I get the gist of your point but this 100x number
| is not just hyperbole -- it's silly.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "Whereas the odds of a venture backed startup shutting down at
| any point over the next ten years is something like 30%."
|
| Citation needed. I worked in startups my entire life. I thought
| it was closer to 90+%.
| kapilkale wrote:
| 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...
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > 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 is
| uncommon. Usually if the product is actually important to a
| customer, they just pay to acquire the assets. And there is
| usually no reason for a solo founder not to take that deal if
| the alternative is just shutting down the business.
|
| For a venture backed business, maybe the lawyers decide there
| is too much legal risk or whatever. But for an indie hacker,
| that doesn't happen.
|
| We hear stories all the time of folks getting burned when
| venture backed startups shut down without giving people any
| time to switch to another product, or sometimes even to
| expert their data. When is the last time you heard about this
| happening from the paying customers of a solo founder?
| Literally never.
| dahart wrote:
| 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.
| benreesman wrote:
| Developing something of value, even if it's only a convincing
| prototype is relatively cheap these days.
|
| I think that if there's some traction on the market fit, a solo
| developer can build out enough of a value proposition to attract
| colleagues and investors to the point that institutional
| credibility kicks in.
|
| Would I bet my Fortune 500 company on a product that goes down if
| someone gets COVID? No.
|
| Would I be both personally interested and floating it past
| reputable angels if one person could live-demo something new?
|
| Bet your ass.
| dismantlethesun wrote:
| If it's a one time sale then it doesn't matter the size of the
| company selling. If it's a SaaS but for a commodity service then
| it similarly doesn't matter who is selling it, since there are
| other partners to work with if the one man shop goes out of
| business.
|
| It's only in the case of enterprise software or niche products
| that I wouldn't trust a one man shop.
| ergonaught wrote:
| If I gave it any thought at all, it would come down more to the
| type of software and your apparent business model.
|
| People making software, unless it's FOSS, that I can still use
| satisfactorily after you die, give up, go insane (I mean "enhance
| the user experience"), or get acquired by profit extractors who
| don't care, are in an extreme minority these days, so there's
| almost no reason to rely upon or trust "you" regardless. A
| solopreneur isn't necessarily riskier, and might even be less
| risky.
| jcadam wrote:
| I've tried a few solo SaaS endeavors that have not gone well. I
| think one of my biggest problems is self-inflicted scope creep :)
|
| Need to find something that I can build that
|
| 1. Does one thing well
|
| 2. Can get to an MVP quickly
|
| 3. People will pay to use
| KronisLV wrote:
| If the source code and/or precompiled binaries that aren't
| dependent on an external set of services (or even an OCI image)
| isn't available, then one has to assume that said software can
| become inaccessible at any given moment and remain that way.
|
| Sometimes, even if the authors stop development on a project like
| that but have provided said ways of actually self-hosting it, it
| can still be used even despite the technology being dead for a
| while, until a migration path to something else can be found.
|
| Corporations are likely to retire projects eventually, release
| new major breaking changes and deprecate old API versions, or get
| acquired and have degraded service after a decade or so.
| Individual developers are likely to have limited resources to
| allot to the project and limited capacity to maintain packages
| long term, with a few exceptions, as well as life circumstances
| or priorities shifting can have a way larger impact on the future
| of the project.
|
| Thus, using any non-open-source package carries longevity risks,
| using any SaaS solution that cannot be self-hosted presents even
| larger risks. Many people don't care though and will still gladly
| use either. Something along the lines of: "Why care about where
| this will be in 10 years if I'll be at a different company in a
| year, but want to solve this problem now?"
| rozenmd wrote:
| As a solo founder myself, yes.
|
| If you ask for a feature, they tend to actually go out of their
| way to help, instead of having it rot on the backlog for a
| decade.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| For random SAAS/utility things, no. For actual, core, software
| yeah absolutely.
|
| But theres a big difference between solo developer and "literally
| the only person that will ever be involved". If you are dealing
| with businesses then you need to act like a business. There needs
| to be contingency planning and availability. Another commenter
| gave their story of how one such dev didn't have support triage
| setup when they took a trip, and so the customer wasn't able to
| get in contact. Thats the stuff I'm talking about.
|
| In reality theres no reason to only have that redundancy during
| specific time periods (since you want to ensure they know what
| they are doing already at the point they are actually needed). So
| my suggestion is to walk the walk from the beginning. If this is
| the US, you should already be doing admin things like payment and
| ownership under some corporate structure already (LLC, Corp, etc)
| for numerous reasons. For the day to day stuff, I think it makes
| sense to bring on assistance on a regular basis. For instance,
| you can have a support person help out 1 day a week, or a few
| days a month, or whatever makes sense for your load. The
| important thing is that they are being involved before absolutely
| needed so that when they are needed its not something special.
| tnolet wrote:
| This is very true and rings close to home.
|
| I was a solo dev / sole entrepreneur for ~2 years, then raised.
| My product could be considered core. This meant that at about
| 1,5 years in I was basically unable to take a holiday (picture
| me sitting on the hotel bed during a family outing answering
| tickets, fixing infra).
|
| Having continuity, support etc. all are basics you need to have
| once serious customers join. Even more simple, you need code
| reviews! You need a second pair of brains / eyes to actually
| make things better. Edit: and don't forget on-call. Being on-
| call for 2 years straight is not good for almost everything in
| your personal life.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| I don't know how many cofounders there are for most startups.
| Unless if I am interested, I wouldn't even care to be honest. As
| long as your product helps me do something, why wouldn't I trust
| you?
| jasode wrote:
| _> affect your likelihood of using any software they create?_
|
| It depends on the type of software.
|
| "Yes" for utility software of narrow scope. I use scanner utility
| software called VueScan which was a solo developer (Ed Hamrick)
| until his son joined.[1] I also used RegexBuddy which I think is
| a solo dev.[2]
|
| But "No" for critical workflow software that requires proprietary
| opaque data formats such as a clone for Evernote or similar note-
| taking tool.
|
| Basically, it's a risk analysis of how much "investment" the user
| loses if the solo developer quits updating the software or goes
| bankrupt.
|
| [1] https://www.hamrick.com/about-vuescan.html
|
| [2] https://www.just-great-software.com/aboutjg.html
| bbarnett wrote:
| Your reasons make sense, and I'm sure I make similar choices.
|
| But most end users? They have zero idea, and would never think
| of such things.
|
| They'd just use an app store, or google for something, and
| click->install.
| srmarm wrote:
| 1) Assuming this is a SaaS or other software/web based offering I
| probably don't need to know if you're a solo entrepreneur or a
| multinational. So long as your website is professional you can
| easily appear to be at either end of the scale (and it's funny
| that you do often get solo's acting as big corp while big corp
| wants to appear botique). The point is you can brand your
| offering in a way that doesn't scream solo developer.
|
| 2) If what your offering is something that involves sensitive
| data, financial stuff or something I need to sell on to another
| company I'd probably be more inclined to go for a more corporate
| setup so if things go bad it's not going to reflect so badly on
| me.
|
| 3) I try to avoid getting locked in to anything so regardless of
| whether your solo or a corp I'd want to be confident that I'm
| able to continue if you/the corp drops dead.
|
| 4) As someone who has generally been a solo developer (although
| freelance rather than managing to get my own 'product' out there)
| I've seen first hand the +/- of this. On one hand my clients
| appreciate that they can pick up the phone or send an email and
| speak to me who has inside out knowledge of what they're talking
| about, I'll work my arse off because I've got a lot to lose.
| However that might be impacted by me having a bad day, a holiday,
| being sick, a new shiny project or just a general lack of
| motivation.
| taylodl wrote:
| 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 provide your source code, build tools,
| etc. - everything needed to re-create the distributed artifacts -
| to the escrow service and they verify that has been done. Should
| you go out of business or some other event in your sales contract
| is triggered the escrow company will provide those materials to
| your customer. My recommendation would be to find a reputable
| escrow company you like and utilize them. You can have them on
| the ready when you're creating your sales contract.
| bjacobt wrote:
| Do you have any recommendations for escrow companies?
| taylodl wrote:
| 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.
| conductr wrote:
| 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
| mellosouls wrote:
| I think the idea is that it is the professional thing to do
| if you intend having clients that your business' demise will
| cause issues for.
|
| ie. It shouldn't be at the suggestion or cost of a single
| customer, it is an accepted business cost to you.
| [deleted]
| taylodl wrote:
| Huge contract? Not really. Especially when many larger
| clients whom you'd love to have for a reference will demand
| it. Take care of it up-front and don't wait until you get
| into contract negotiation. If the client knows you don't have
| a software escrow service already in place they may ask for
| the moon. Head that off at the pass and have it ready to go
| from day one.
|
| In fact having it ready to go might help you clinch the deal.
| If you're part of an evaluation and you're ready to proceed
| and your competitor has to go and get this setup - you're
| more likely to get that business. Likewise if you're the
| competitor who's been caught with their pants down then
| you're more likely to lose that business. Every salesman I
| know is always looking for something to give them an edge for
| closing a deal!
| conductr wrote:
| But I don't have to please every client and don't have to
| jump through hoops for small dollars. It would depend on
| the product/market if this was the normal expectation then
| I'd find that out rather quickly and may decide
| differently. But I've never been asked for anything like
| this and would gladly just say no if it was a small dollar
| value at stake.
| ajot wrote:
| I (and probably most of us) use them everyday! Things like NTPd
| or OpenSSL have, for years, been developed by a single guy, as
| far as i can recall.
|
| Maybe you can use this as part of your pitch, "you already trust
| lots of solo devs for your software needs".
| lumost wrote:
| As a potential buyer, I would be concerned that a solo
| entrepreneur would get bored/leave/discontinue the service. This
| would typically lead me to prefer one-off purchases vs. ongoing
| SaaS offerings. This equation would change if my requirement is
| pretty ad-hoc to begin with, and I don't expect to require an
| ongoing service.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It depends on your motivations:
|
| If you have a laundry list of features and grand plans to do
| more, I'd avoid you like the plague. Reliable software is time
| consuming, and piling on more and more features tends to break
| corner cases.
|
| If your software is extremely simple, with a few well-defined use
| cases, _and it 's clear that you only spend 1/3rd of your time
| actually programming,_ I'd probably consider it. (And in this
| case, there's a good chance you'll hire contractors or employees
| when your company grows.)
|
| In the former case, (laundry list of features,) I'd conclude that
| you're a programmer who doesn't want a boss, and quality will
| probably suffer. In the latter case, I'd conclude that you're a
| businessman who happens to be selling software.
| ixtli wrote:
| No. For the same reason I don't trust VC backed startups that are
| scaling.
| ramimac wrote:
| I've enjoyed patio11's thoughts on this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21908638 and
| https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1211406333653798913
| dusted wrote:
| I've been a solo developer, and people have trusted me. However,
| I have always worked under an alternative type of contract: If I
| deliver, this is the fixed price. If I don't it's free.
|
| That way, the customer risks only the setback in time for the
| solution, they know what the cost is up front.
|
| I set the cost comfortably high, my hourly rate on average on
| those projects were more than 20x what I am earning at my current
| position.
|
| My customers were all happy, and probably still got off cheaper
| than if they'd hired a big pro consultancy firm.
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