[HN Gopher] Mistakes to avoid to build a better 1-person business
___________________________________________________________________
Mistakes to avoid to build a better 1-person business
Author : Jthink
Score : 418 points
Date : 2023-06-22 12:43 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tinyempires.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (tinyempires.substack.com)
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I think most of this advise is very arbitrary. There are a
| million ways to make money. Choosing a small market vs. large
| market is not inherently better, targeting businesses is not
| inherently easier, and finding one customer who pays 10kEUR is
| not necessarily easier than finding a 1000 customers who pay
| 10EUR. It's just different.
|
| There are one person companies that are successful with either
| choices, and the decision which opportunities to pursue should
| depend on your talents, your personality, your experience.
|
| For example, I personally find it much easier to sell a cheap app
| to lots of people. I suck at selling big contracts to businesses.
| I only once managed to close a five figure contract, and that was
| a consulting job where I was basically an employee.
|
| But I'm not saying everyone should do the same. Figure out what
| you are good at, and do that.
| ilaksh wrote:
| > Think smaller markets with bigger budgets
|
| How do you find those and market to them? I actually am trying to
| make a ChatGPT plugin because people wouldn't pay for the website
| (partly because it didn't always work great, I am narrowing the
| focus) and I think this will be a captive audience.
|
| Based on this, I am thinking maybe I should change the
| description of the plugin (when I get it out) to something that
| will appeal to web design agencies rather than individuals.
| XCSme wrote:
| For me, the solution was simple: automate as much as possible and
| move most of the costs to the customer side (e.g. focus entirely
| on the self-hosted product instead of providing hosting myself
| and having to run and maintain servers for thousands of
| customers).
| Vixel wrote:
| I can totally relate to these tips. I used to do in-home computer
| service and I advertised on self made signs all around the city.
| Got a lot of calls but not a lot of conversions. The minute I put
| "Business Computer Service" on the signs, I got the same amount
| of calls and nearly every call was converted into an appointment.
| And now that they had a reliable computer person, they continued
| to call. I was able to raise my prices by 40%, hire a few
| employees, get some funding and eventually sell the business.
| I'll never forget how adding that one word was liked a magic
| trick.
| lapcat wrote:
| I find the article a bit strange. It seems to assume that an
| entrepreneur starts with the goal of having a 1-person business
| but has no other ideas whatsoever. That's not ideal.
|
| I have a 1-person business myself, and it seems to me that it
| starts with an idea and/or personal skills, the two of which are
| inherently related. There are things that I know, and things that
| I'm good at. The author advises you to target businesses, not
| consumers, and perhaps that's good advice in the abstract, for a
| generic person, but for me personally it feels like bad advice.
| B2B is not my area, not in my past experience, not what I know.
| The author says "The opportunities are endless", but that's a
| curse as well as a blessing. How are you, as a single person,
| going to make an impact, distinguish yourself from other
| businesses? You have to rely on your personal strengths, whatever
| those happen to be, even if they go against the author's generic
| advice.
|
| My own advice would be this: don't try to start a 1-person
| business unless you _need_ to. ;-) It 's extremely difficult.
| idlewords wrote:
| I think this kind of advice is more useful when it comes from
| someone whose business model has nothing to do with startup
| lifecoaching. Otherwise it has a tendency to get a little self-
| serving and divorced from useful experience.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's a point well-taken, but I went and read this post after
| reading this comment, and was surprised at how inoffensive the
| advice was: like, a lot of this would be very high on my list
| of most important advice to give (rates in particular).
|
| (Obviously we come at this from different directions!)
| idlewords wrote:
| That's kind of the point I'm groping towards, that the people
| who earn their living by giving advice tend to give great-
| sounding advice.
| scientaster2 wrote:
| Thoughts on this?
|
| > 4. Don't choose a large market
|
| I feel like there's also a case where the opposite is true, e.g.
| that there's already proof that businesses are willing to pay for
| solutions in the space. As long as you have a differentiating
| factor to the big players (ideally via something they couldn't
| easily shift to), my knee jerk reaction is that it's still not a
| bad call to launch in the space.
| detourdog wrote:
| I focus on very small markets with specific needs not met by
| industry norms. The problem I see today is that the big box
| stores are replacing what had previously been regional retail
| buyers.
|
| The homogenization of big box board rooms needs vs. Regional
| cultural needs has narrowed the manufacturing focus to the
| average. My theory is that just in time manufacturing will move
| to the "garage stage". The retail price of American high end
| refrigerators and stoves may not reflect the cost of materials
| and quality of thought that went into the object. My plan is to
| develop a platform of appliances that is more efficient than
| existing offerings but available in specific sizes. Think of it
| like ordering custom furniture. The result could be a
| refrigerator that fits the space exactly using the finish
| materials of choice.
|
| I have spent too many decades thinking about this but I have
| finally have my small run manufacturing facility (FabLab) set-
| up. I think it will be another 2 years before I get a product
| out the door.
|
| This is an epicenter of the thinking. I personally think they
| are overcomplicating some aspects. I'm sure at a school of
| higher learning it needs all times of overthinking.
|
| https://cba.mit.edu
| all2 wrote:
| Let's say I buy a condo with one of your made-to-fit
| appliances. Will you be available to refinishing it?
|
| Also, I'd love to hear more about your fabrication and design
| pipeline. This kind of work sounds utterly dreamy to me. I
| used to work in hardware as a SWE and loved the mix of
| programming and hardware work. I've also longed to start a
| business, but am somewhat at a loss as to what even to do.
| detourdog wrote:
| I haven't worked out all the details that is why I
| headquartered myself in an 8 unit mixed use studio
| apartment. My initial plan was to work out each appliances
| details in batches of 10. If something were to sell out I
| could make more. Once I got my CNC I realized I had
| outgrown my barn.... found an old model school. Spent all
| my development money to flip the plan. I would create 7
| Studio apartments to cover my expenses and act as my market
| testing.
|
| Currently I'm focused on my own 7 Apartments. Every big
| leap in living started by adding a new service to the
| kitchen.
|
| fire, running water, electricity,....
|
| Controlling the default installation for 8 kitchens should
| provide with a rare design freedom.
|
| Finally I think I will be writing manifestos on technology
| and design. I have set myself up to only need to produce
| artifacts.
|
| view.cogs.com
|
| I have been at it since the 90s. I have answers to your
| question but I dont want to get into it here.
| rco8786 wrote:
| I think both you and the author are kind of dancing around this
| point:
|
| It's fine to choose a large market, as long as you niche down
| your specific offering with a differentiating factor specific
| to that niche which, in effect, shrinks your market.
|
| A solo biz can't reasonably compete with Salesforce in the "B2B
| CRM" market. But a solo biz can prosper in the "B2B CRM for
| personal injury law offices with < 10 employees in the US", as
| a totally made up example.
| detourdog wrote:
| I see what you mean. I call that a small market because it is
| tightly defined niche.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I think he's saying large markets can cause you to scope creep
| as you want to reel in more and will need scaling which is
| usually difficult with one person business
| rfreytag wrote:
| If you target a niche in a large market then you are targeting
| a small market. Create serial MVPs targeting those niches until
| you find product-market fit.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _On the flip-side, you could just have 1 single B2B client
| paying $10k per month for a service and make 10x the amount, with
| lower running costs and no churn._
|
| Why does he assume there would be no churn? The churn would be
| binary and catastrophic if it happens.
|
| Separately, I've found some businesses are hesitant to do
| businesses with a small/solo startup because of the risk it
| entails. Some of them wanted me to put our code in escrow in case
| something happened to me personally. Some are just hesitant to
| business with a smallish startup, whom they figure might not
| exist next year. B2C customers don't seem to care about this as
| much.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| yea seriously.. 1 B2B client paying 10k/month is just a job
| with extra steps and all liabilities on you.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| Generally speaking, B2B involves contracts which guarantee
| business for a certain period of time. Churn won't be zero, but
| it's not going to happen on a whim, like a B2C Netflix
| subscription would. You can lock in 10K/mo for 12 months and
| have that guaranteed income, while 1000 users at $10/mo might
| churn every month.
|
| The hesitancy part you mentioned isn't really a churn thing but
| rather part of the sales cycle. One thing the author didn't
| mention is that B2B sales cycles are _really_ long. You can
| convert a B2C Netflix subscriber in 15 minutes, but it could
| take 6, 12, 18 months to convert a B2B customer into a paying
| contract.
|
| Technically, the author is correct in that B2B can lead to more
| stable businesses and less work overall, but the lengthy sales
| cycle can be draining in its own way, even if the end result
| winds up being "better" for the solo founder. (It could be
| worse, too, depending on contract terms!)
|
| In other words, I agree it was a poorly worded statement, but
| the author isn't totally wrong there, but they aren't totally
| right either. They oversimplified the advice, ignoring the
| complexities of B2B.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It is implied that this advice is specific to software. Half of
| this advice would not apply to a small business that produced
| things.
| samtho wrote:
| The advice in this article is fairly solid and has been said and
| done quite a lot. Like many general-business advice articles
| posted here, it does seem to lack substance or really any
| actionable advice, so here is some based on my own experience:
|
| A medium to very large company will spend $0.95 to save $1.00.
| Because of tax incentives and business performance metrics, any
| opportunity to grow for the future is usually capitalized on so
| all you have to do is find a pain point for a company and pledge
| to solve it cheaper than they can, which is usually through
| headcount.
|
| In fact, an easy way to find ideas (to the point where it kind of
| feels like a cheat code) is to see what companies in a given
| industry are constantly hiring for. If you can replace 10% of a
| job that companies pay $65,000 per year per head, you can pretty
| easily demand $6,500 or more. Unlike a W-2 employee, Your company
| does not cost your customer a full-time manager, nor does it
| increase administrative burden for HR, IT, or facilities, and
| does not incur costs such as benefits, payroll taxes, or
| accounting fees associated with personnel - which will
| undoubtedly be higher than the flat monthly or yearly line-item
| on the expense sheet that your business represents.
|
| Choose an industry, pick a pain point, build the product, price
| it according to what it costs, and sell to them. You typically
| won't find super interesting problems to solve here but it will
| be reliable as long as they don't build it themselves.
| nadam wrote:
| "Choose an industry, pick a pain point" This is solid advice,
| but for me it is very hard. I always found finding pain-points
| in an industry as an outsider (not working in the industry day-
| to-day) very hard. (Living in a relatively small and culturally
| isolated Eastern European country does not help either.)
|
| By the way the only industry I know well (from the inside, as
| software engineer) is "big software product development".
| Nowadays I invest a lot in public markets, so I learned a lot
| about other industries from an investment perspective, but it
| is not enough to find pain-points.
| samtho wrote:
| I agree that this is the hardest part, and you've pointed out
| the reason why developer tools seem to be over represented in
| startups. For this reason, I mentioned to check job listings
| and see what responsibilities they are looking to hire
| someone to take on.
|
| Just a personal thought (and please tell I'm wrong if this is
| not the case), I think Eastern Europe as market is ripe for
| good tech innovation. To my knowledge, it's not "behind" but
| products and services seem to reach there after being
| recycled from Western and Central European companies, with
| translations into local languages being spotty at best and
| nonexistent at worst. Someone who lives in a culturally-
| isolated place might have the upper hand at solving specific
| problems and being a native speaker of the local language
| would you give you the upper hand and no competition should
| you elect to write software to help that doesn't exist where
| you are. This could be especially true if you can find
| software that they wish they could use but is not translated
| into an language that makes it useful for them.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I always found finding pain-points in an industry as an
| outsider (not working in the industry day-to-day) very hard._
|
| This is a good place to lean on your network of friends that
| don't work in the same industry as you.
|
| And if you don't have those kinds of friends... it would be
| good to work on getting them. It's important for many many
| reasons to have a diverse social network.
| jmconfuzeus wrote:
| I'll add to that since this is Hacker News:
|
| If you're building a SaaS, don't use a front-end framework and
| tools like Tailwindcss. Instead, use a full-stack framework like
| Django or Rails and build your UI with Bootstrap.
|
| A lot of SaaS founders underestimate the importance of time to
| market. I worked on 2 projects where the founders wanted their
| apps built using the latest and greatest tech stack loved by
| silicon valley startups. Turns out, using the same tech stack as
| VC funded companies costs a fortune in terms of both time and
| money, so, you end up not shipping fast enough or not at all.
| projektfu wrote:
| For a 1-person business, I would add:
|
| Start from the beginning either automating things or farming them
| out if they're not your core business. Even if you have the
| skills at something, if you're not really supposed to be doing
| them, farm them out.
|
| This is why Stripe (and Braintree) is so successful, because they
| have automated a real pain points for many people. (For that
| matter, AWS, etc.) It's not that it's hard to use another
| provider, or that you can't get payments or billing for cheaper,
| but when it flows together automatically you don't need to worry
| about it. People who are up to their necks in business
| administrivia and are treading water have too many annoying
| responsibilities that they both don't enjoy and cannot squash. If
| you go down the path of needing to maintain your stuff all the
| time, every time those pieces do not work together perfectly is a
| stressful time for you, focusing on things when you should be
| focusing on your life or your business.
| detourdog wrote:
| I agree with everything but 3. Target business's not consumers. I
| find one rich person trying to solve a personal problem is much
| better to deal with than a business. This fits the think small
| better to my mind.
|
| The only issues is the individual has to understand what they are
| asking for and pay their bills. If they pay their bills their
| understanding of what they want is less important.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| AI is changing all this IMO... I have a 12 person team in India
| that is now as effective as a 24 person team in Silicon valley
| was. The playing field is being leveled in many ways.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Unless I am missing something, it would seem AI is available in
| both locations. I do not see how anything changed.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| To be fair, teams scale extremely poorly. I'd almost always
| expect a smaller team to be on par with or even outperform a
| larger team, even double in size.
|
| You get both steep diminishing returns from adding more devs,
| you also get additional overhead from needing more management.
| mtlynch wrote:
| I think the better version of these ideas is in Jason Cohen's
| classic "Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business" talk.[0, 1]
|
| The difference is that Jason Cohen's advice is based on personal
| experience growing four businesses to over $1M/yr in revenue. I'm
| not seeing what qualifies this author to give such broad,
| sweeping advice about bootstrapping.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw
|
| [1] https://mtlynch.io/notes/designing-the-ideal-bootstrapped-
| bu...
| jekude wrote:
| Can't +1 enough Jason Cohen's talk, it changed the way I think
| about business ventures as an engineer with aspirations to
| become an entrepreneur.
| scosman wrote:
| "If you were a goldfish, would you rather live in an ocean, or a
| garden pond? Probably the pond."
|
| When Goldfish are in larger bodies of water, they actually grow
| much faster and larger.
|
| I'm might replace "Don't choose a large market" with "Start with
| a targeted niche, but one that is able to expand to a related
| larger market later over time".
| matwood wrote:
| Most goldfish in a large body of water get eaten.
| Veuxdo wrote:
| "If you were a goldfish, would you rather live in an ocean, or
| a garden pond? Probably the pond."
|
| Definitely the pond, they're freshwater fish.
| autonomousErwin wrote:
| Aha but the salty water will make them anti-fragile. Embrace
| discomfort. Especially if you're a fish.
| mercurialsolo wrote:
| I would love to see an example of a scaled 1-person business. The
| idea is super-compelling in theory, but just the thought of
| everything involved. - Sales / Marketing - Product / Technology /
| Engineering - Support / Services (customization changes)
|
| all rolled up in one just seems like an incredible thing.
|
| I think this has to be 1-person businesses are usually service
| businesses - selling expertise. Would love to see real products
| which are live and run by 1-people businesses.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| https://www.designjoy.co/getstarted
|
| Brett @ designjoy is a 1-person business doing > $1MM/year
| revenue. He's on twitter (@designjoy) and had a good
| Indiehackers interview with Courtland from a couple years back.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| https://apolloapp.io/ is a great and relevant one; it's a full
| fledged app with monetization, back-end services, etc etc.
|
| Relevant because it'll likely shut down by the end of the month
| due to Reddit's mismanagement.
| mcsniff wrote:
| I run a 1-person business selling a physical product, with a
| companion app, and a static site for sales.
|
| It's "easy". Yes, there are some headaches, but I prefer end to
| end ownership. I run the entire thing, infrastructure, sales,
| design + engineering, manufacturing, support.
|
| I'm in a niche, but it is doable, I guarantee you that.
| theluketaylor wrote:
| The iOS and Android app stores likely hold the most examples of
| high scale one person businesses. Someone already mentioned
| Apollo. I'd add https://overcast.fm and https://david-smith.org
| (maker of many apps, including the wildly successful
| widgetsmith). There are plenty of other really successful apps
| that are just one person operations.
| balaji1 wrote:
| "Since 2008 I've launched 60 different apps." from
| https://david-smith.org/about/
|
| amazing!
| talkingtab wrote:
| To put this succinctly - never start craigslist.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Small teams can allow you to really focus on a tiny area where
| larger companies just won't bother to focus on. I think this is
| very sound advice from experience
| nomilk wrote:
| The examples of niche businesses at the end remind of a another
| niche example from Tim Ferriss's _4 Hour Work Week_
| (paraphrased):
|
| > A man created a low-budget how-to DVD for less than $200 and
| sold it to owners of storage facilities who wanted to install
| security systems. It's hard to get more niche than that. In 2001
| selling DVDs that cost $2.10 to duplicate for $95 a piece through
| trade magazines, he made several hundred thousand dollars with no
| employees.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like these are the key examples missing from the
| post. It's clear when you read that story that they're onto
| something, and it requires a niche and a little gusto.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Tim Ferriss is very good at downplaying the effort and costs
| that go into businesses. Good for inspiring people to try, bad
| for actually being transparent.
|
| In this example, the (claimed) $200 production cost and $2.10
| DVD cost are probably nothing relative to this large marketing
| cost:
|
| > piece through trade magazines
|
| The marketing costs and effort are conveniently omitted.
| j45 wrote:
| Producing video also can be a cost.
| Inhibit wrote:
| Yes. As per the original post above 200$. Advertising is
| what is omitted in the thumbnail estimate.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > The marketing costs and effort are conveniently omitted.
|
| I agree with you, but also somewhat disagree on the overall
| takeaway. Yes, of course you have to put more effort into it
| than just spending $200 NRE and $2.10 unit cost. The quiet
| part that really needs to be said out loud (way more than
| marketing costs and effort) is: find a niche with really
| great unit economics. When you've got a product with 10%
| margin, you have to manage all of those marketing costs very
| very carefully. When you've got a product with a raw 5000%
| margin, it matters way way less whether your CAC is even
| triple the raw manufacturing cost of the product.
| pryelluw wrote:
| The info is generally available. It is just old school and
| somewhat of a lost art.
|
| There's lists of publications by trade. You could buy ad
| space on multiple publications or individually. The model was
| $n per square inch of space.
|
| The trick was finding the lists. General business magazines
| used to have advertisements for companies that ran/owned the
| lists. So it was somewhat accessible to the general public.
|
| Cost was similar to how ad words are calculated. So the more
| niche you'd go the better chance you had of manageable costs
| (unless your niche was super expensive for some reason).
|
| Effort is relative. Once you knew how the marketing channels
| worked everything else was fairly straightforward. The ads
| that worked were just left on autopilot. There weren't
| redesigns or none of the shit that's done today. Ads were
| left alone. Tracking was even rather simple. You'd have a
| special code, phone number, or mailbox that tied the ad to
| the order. Simple stuff.
|
| You can replicate all of these today and still make a tidy
| sum. But you won't do it behind a computer. Gotta go out into
| the wild and talk with people about all kinds.
| matwood wrote:
| Back then marketing was easier - just throw something up on
| eBay. But there are some 'hidden' costs not discussed.
|
| I have a friend who did something similar back around the
| same time frame and he did pretty well. His niche was doing
| video tutorials on how to use new camera equipment. He needed
| to buy/own camera and video equipment. Luckily he already had
| it from is other endeavor as a photographer. He needed to
| have the skillset to the make and edit the video. Again, he
| had that from being a photographer. He ended up selling quite
| a lot of DVDs.
|
| So the moral is to find a niche that leverages a lot of what
| you already have/know.
| detourdog wrote:
| an even better business is selling printed pornography to
| people in prison that can't access the internet.
|
| Making money is easy.
| andyish wrote:
| Selling to businesses can be really hard. You can get stuck with
| ISO standards, data and server locations and SLAs. The lead time
| on sales can be many months, and there's a real chance it falls
| through.
|
| And on top of all that there's the strangest perception of value
| that can drastically change from person to person.
|
| Companies could happily pay thousands for access to data for a
| single brands segmentation, then baulk at the idea of paying $7
| per user for something like Slack that gets used many times a day
| by many people.
|
| and step 4, i'd do the opposite. Choose a MASSIVE market. It'll
| be easier to get customers.
| samtho wrote:
| There are plenty of opportunities for a business that don't
| require conforming to some standard. You also don't hear about
| the multitude of businesses that had no problem selling to
| other businesses, only the times where it didn't go as planned,
| i.e. who writes a blog post about a modestly successful
| business that does $1MM ARR with a 1-2 employee setup serving
| maybe 10-25 clients because they write a niche software
| integration that connects two different systems or some tiny
| internal tool that alleviates a pain point?
|
| Per-user pricing for companies works very well if you want to
| sell to small companies because they only need to pay for what
| they use. Counterintuitively, larger enterprises would rather
| pay more per user if they can be guaranteed of a fixed price
| for a given term. It makes it easier to budget.
| j45 wrote:
| These standards can largely be abstracted away by using a cloud
| that already does it for you.
|
| For example a good secret is using Azure. It seems more
| expensive until you notice it provides many security
| certifications.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Conversely, when you sell B2C, the value prop can be
| considerably more challenging ("I can build this myself!",
| "This is too expensive, can you provide a discount?", etc) vs
| B2B where the customer will happily pull a credit card out,
| spend $500, and thank you for the value provided.
| lobstrosity420 wrote:
| I don't think the article was saying to choose a market with
| few customers, of course you want costumers. Rather choose a
| market with few competitors.
| paxys wrote:
| So:
|
| - Have one customer pay you lots of money rather than many
| customers pay little money
|
| - Target businesses, don't serve end consumers directly
|
| - Find a small niche for yourself rather than try and do too much
|
| While all of it is valid advice, I think taken to the extreme
| it's basically saying - be an employee, not an entrepreneur.
| j45 wrote:
| The purpose of being an entrepreneur is creating a profit
| generating asset.
|
| How efficiently that profit is created is up to the individual
| entrepreneurs.
|
| With 10x multiples being paid for startups like this, it
| couldn't be further from being an employee. Those who are not
| profitable are more in a position of owning a job they can't
| quit because they're so invested in it they can't breathe or
| grow because the financial equation wasn't a high enough
| priority.
| hinkley wrote:
| And my advice to developers who are considering joining a small
| business or consulting firm:
|
| - Don't work for someone who has one customer that dominates
| their revenue.
|
| That company will always control the requirements, even if
| those requirements make the application a chore to get working
| for other customers. Also if there is ever a problem with how
| that customer is treating you personally, the company always
| always has to preserve the revenue from that customer. They
| will throw you under the bus.
|
| I did two contracting gigs in a row that were unpleasant. The
| first told me a pack of lies about advanced project management
| and architecture being their focus. The work was identical to
| any contract I've ever done, but the feeling of betrayal soured
| the entire experience. If they did anything to advocate for
| their employees, I didn't see it. The consequence of that is
| that it knocked my confidence, and I took an FTE position which
| was definitely "settling" and I've stayed at that position for
| far too long (though COVID played a role, I can't fully blame
| COVID).
|
| It's probably better if you work someplace that gets less than
| 30% of its revenue from any one customer, but 75% from its top
| 4. There are diminishing returns being pulled in many
| directions at once, yes, but there are serious dangers of being
| railroaded by an offer you can't refuse.
| dnndev wrote:
| I understand the article to say start with these things... that
| does not mean you have to stop there. Build an empire but start
| small.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > While all of it is valid advice, I think taken to the extreme
| it's basically saying - be an employee, not an entrepreneur.
|
| A lot of people get into this stuff because they can't hack it
| as hum drum employees.
| imtringued wrote:
| Only if you believe that you should only have one customer at a
| time.
| JustBreath wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| Ideally you'd use your first (few?) customers to create a
| solution that can be resold to other businesses.
|
| Any niche problem that larger businesses don't see as worth
| their time.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I think of this more as a consultant-type arrangement.
|
| You are not an "employee" because you can at-will change your
| asking price, take on other jobs, flex your hours, and work
| from wherever you like.
|
| An employee has none of those, while consultants have a bit
| more of those, and a B2B business probably has the most.
| flakeoil wrote:
| > you can at-will change your asking price
|
| Not really. Only if they are willing to pay more. And only if
| you have no fixed contract. ass an employee you can also ask
| for more at-will.
|
| > flex your hours
|
| As an employee you can often flex hours. As a consultant
| sometimes less as you have to deliver.
|
| > work from wherever you like
|
| Many employees can do that too. Some consultants have to work
| in the customers office.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I guess it would be better to say you can flex your annual
| hours and pay by adjusting your contract load. A family
| member has lived this way for 30 years, and has pretty
| great flexibility on the scale of a month, but not
| necessarily day to day.
| hinkley wrote:
| I suppose that's one of the advantages of being an
| intermittent contractor. The customer doesn't know why
| you're unavailable next Monday and Tuesday. It could be
| another customer, or it could be a trip to Yosemite.
| samtho wrote:
| I think OP's point here is that you, in general, have more
| flexibility as a free agent. The trade-off is that the
| nature of your work changes to include lead gen and
| salesmanship to initially get those jobs, and active
| relationship management, billing systems, and consistent
| output to maintain the jobs. It's a hustle you must partake
| in and not everyone is game for that.
| jdlshore wrote:
| That's not what the article says. You're being dismissive.
|
| I run a one-person business and its advice is spot on.
| paxys wrote:
| I have done this as well and completely disagree with the
| advice. The key to success as an entrepreneur is to build a
| product that can be endlessly replicated without too much
| extra cost. If you have a large company paying you a large
| amount of money, they expect that your product is built for
| them and not everyone else. So your job ends up being that of
| an employee or at best an external consultant. Which may
| still be valid, sure, but your business is never going to
| scale in the way you'd like.
| mozman wrote:
| Except 1099 vs W2 has significant tax advantages
| detourdog wrote:
| That is client management issue in my eyes. I prefer
| working with individuals. I find business often make
| political and erratic group decisions. This makes client
| management almost impossible. Any client large or small
| that understands what they are asking is a good client. I
| personally find dealing with individuals or coherent groups
| is the sweet spot.
|
| I'm also more or less done working specifically for others
| and I'm now pursuing a market that is measured in the 1s or
| maybe 10s if it's a real success.
| j45 wrote:
| Definitely a preference
|
| Finding a niche problem in B2B is effective if you have
| the B2B experience.
|
| Technical folks who have consulted are especially in a
| good spot for this.
| jdlshore wrote:
| The article does not say you should have one customer. It
| says you should choose a niche, target businesses, and aim
| for big dollars/small customer base rather than small
| dollars/big customer base.
| gitgud wrote:
| > _they expect that your product is built for them and not
| everyone else_
|
| Exactly, build a few custom products for clients, then when
| they're happy, build a platform to unify them, which will
| allow you to scale easily.
|
| A lot of companies try to do the platform first, which is
| harder to iterate and less appealing to client's who want
| customisation...
| hinkley wrote:
| The last B2B I did we built a product for a couple of
| "whales" and then struggled making money off of the long
| tail. They had such peculiar business rules we had to
| thread a needle to get our top three working. We had one
| team pull a RedHat on us, essentially forking the code to
| make big changes for other customers, and didn't tell us
| about it. When we started refactoring and rearchitecting to
| fix some of our biggest problems, we broke all of their
| stuff. Way to communicate guys.
|
| In the end it turned out the goal of the company was to
| sell it to deep pockets. Having prestigious customers is
| how you do that. But the employees including some of the
| salespeople thought we were trying to serve an entire
| global industry. If that had been the case we should have
| started with customers about 1 std below median size, and
| built momentum toward landing large customers.
|
| Because what happened is that we had contracts with the big
| companies we couldn't net a profit off of, and they liked
| to keep paying what they were already paying. If we were
| solid with mid sized customers first, we could have asked
| for more from the biggest ones because we were selling a
| mature product. Instead they bought a fixer upper and
| wanted to pay the same as we fixed issue and added tons of
| functionality.
| euix wrote:
| In my experience running your own business is all about
| relationships. The fact is someone with capital to spend can
| deploy it to anyone, so why should they deploy it to you? Are you
| their cousin? Did you go to the same school? Met at a mixer?
| Before there is even a discussion about what you know and what
| you can do, or what your product is there is the question of who
| you are.
|
| I have been doing some Data Science consulting on the side and
| last year we did some analytics work for a government lottery and
| that contract came to us because one of my partner's girlfriend
| had a relationship with the team who needed the work done.
| Otherwise you would never hear about any of this stuff that is
| constantly flying around in the airwaves.
|
| The problem with this advice is that it's not any advice. Saying
| business is about nepotism is unattractive and doesn't really
| help you, other then to say, either you are social and good at
| forming relationships or find a partner that is. And moreover,
| you can't sell this advice in a coaching class.
|
| If you aren't a social butterfly the only way is to build those
| relationships over a long period of time and create trust.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I worked in a bootstrapped startup for 10 years.
|
| When I left, my network was very narrow (industry focused).
|
| I did a hard reset and ended up first working at a YC company
| and then another SV VC backed startup.
|
| When this second startup pivoted they asked if I wanted to stay
| on or accelerate my vesting. I left because there was something
| else I wanted to build.
|
| But now being connected to this network, the founders of the
| company I left opened up 8-10 VC calls.
|
| Nothing changed about me, my capabilities, my skills, my
| knowledge. But being plugged in to this network definitely has
| benefits.
|
| The bias is obvious in the tech industry. Lots of companies get
| funded that aren't true VC scale businesses. I spoke with
| another YC founder that ended up folding his startup doing an
| open source product. I asked about his pitch to YC and how he
| framed his business model and he said he basically didn't have
| one.
|
| As much as we think tech is a meritocracy, there's a lot of
| bias, nepotism, and favoritism.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| That sounds like a narrow idea of what kind of businesses a
| person can start. If you target the general public with your
| offers, there is no nepotism or relationships involved. That's
| the beauty of an open society.
|
| All businesses started as small businesses, we tend to forget
| that.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > The problem with this advice is that it's not any advice
|
| It sounds like very good advice, or rather, information. If I
| believe this, a few decisions I might make are: (1) spend more
| time networking, and following up with people I've met, whether
| at conferences or local events, even if they are outside (2)
| recognize I have a handicap if I am not a social butterfly and
| think about ways to counteract it (or realize this as another
| factor working against me and decide not to start a business)
|
| I don't think you need to be a social butterfly to have a large
| network. I think you just have to show up to a lot of things.
| Which might feel like wasted time if you don't frame it this
| way.
| ryandvm wrote:
| This. I was one of the founders in a software development co-op
| and the unfortunate truth was that almost all of our work came
| from connections one of us previously had. The good news is
| that if you do good work, and we did, that web of connections
| grows exponentially. But yeah, it's hard to tell somebody just
| getting into it that it's all who you know, but it's true.
| frankc wrote:
| I think what ozim is trying to get across and I agree with,
| is that "it's who you know" does not imply that its just a
| good ol boys network for it's own sake. Working with people
| you know and trust is normal. There is no way you can suss
| out in an interview loop or a client meeting what you can
| from a recommendation from someone who has with direct
| knowledge through experience with that business partner or
| employee. Managing relationships is part of the job and part
| of career building. For the career part, I have found that
| just being competent and nice goes a long way, without having
| to do aggressive networking.
| ozim wrote:
| I think people jump into "nepotism" too quickly and usually I
| find people who jump to that - to be not to be really negative
| but still - <losers>.
|
| Building and keeping relationship * _is work*_ even with your
| wife or kids it is not given. Building and keeping business
| relationship is even more work when you have to convince
| someone you don 't know that you are worth something.
|
| I call out nepotism only if you can clearly see someone is
| hired and does nothing or has no experience or skills for what
| they were hired for.
|
| I got my friends/people I know hired to the company I work for,
| it was not walk in the park, I had to convince my friends that
| company is good place to work as they were highly skilled,
| which took me months ... guess what ... I had to spend also
| quite some time convincing managers that guy I propose will fit
| and then they still had to go through interviews and probation
| period.
|
| From the outside or other employees perspective it might have
| looked like "X got Y into the company because they know each
| other and X is on good terms with management", they did not see
| how much work it was to "get good terms with management", they
| did not see how much legwork and checking up on my friends if
| they are available took.
| closeparen wrote:
| Tech is culturally obsessed with those Moneyball edge cases
| where the metrics totally contradict intuition, where someone
| is objectively brilliant but overlooked. And with their
| complements, incompetent but charismatic frauds. Those cases
| are certainly interesting, but I think it kind of elides the
| much more boring reality: relationships and reputations are
| earned, the most common way to be respected is to actually be
| good, and the vouching of other professionals who've seen
| your competence and character in a variety of situations over
| time is a much stronger signal than a few hours of
| systematized interviewing or testing.
| comfypotato wrote:
| It's still an unjust system, and it's worthwhile to aspire
| to a system that is truly fair.
|
| Technological advancement is ultimately the only way to
| achieve a fair system where "systematized interview or
| testing" works as well as a relationship.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I think it's interesting you emphasized "losers", and even
| chose that word at all.
|
| What motivates you to disparage an entire group of people,
| because they (correctly, as you admit) point out that success
| doesn't depend on the relevant talent but on socializing?
| strawhatguy wrote:
| The 'loser' comment wasn't the best choice, true.
|
| It's also interesting that you separated 'relevant talent'
| from 'socializing', as if socializing is ever not relevant.
| People do have to at least know about you, and that indeed
| is a skill on its own.
| rvba wrote:
| Looks like that person build their company on nepotism -
| and it hurts them. Thus the projection that others are
| "losers".
| ozim wrote:
| I point out that success requires talent - I don't know how
| you read that differently.
|
| Most of the time losers claim that "if they would know the
| right people..." or point "he/she got a job only because
| they knew someone", well NO because knowing right people is
| only part of the work, one still needs to deliver and still
| needs to have relevant skills/talents.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Knowing the _wrong_ people doesn't make you a loser. You
| should rethink your wording or qualify loser with "losing
| the chance to get hired at a certain place".
|
| Not knowing _ozim_ and not getting hired at their company
| doesn't make you a loser.
| lliamander wrote:
| > Knowing the wrong people doesn't make you a loser. You
| should rethink your wording or qualify loser with "losing
| the chance to get hired at a certain place".
|
| You are misreading ozim.
|
| The claim is not that people without connections are
| losers. The claim is that people who _often make the
| accusation of nepotism_ generally are losers.
|
| In other words, untalented people will make the
| accusation of nepotism as ego defense to avoid
| confronting their own lack of skill.
| volkk wrote:
| its funny how mostly true this is if you take the
| converse. i have very rarely seen smart/successful people
| complain about others. they focus on themselves
| filoleg wrote:
| Knowing the "wrong people" (or not knowing the "right
| people") doesn't make one a loser. But discounting other
| people's skills just because they associated with the
| "right people" (in addition to having the skills) does.
| volkk wrote:
| i dont think this person is stating that knowing the
| wrong people makes you a loser. it's that complaining
| about others getting jobs or opportunities centered
| around "they only got that because they knew someone" is
| generally a sentiment shared by losers. its a strong
| take, and i don't know if i agree/disagree, but there
| does seem to be a general trend of people who are always
| complaining about external forces are the ones that don't
| tend to ever gain any success or move up.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > there does seem to be a general trend of people who are
| always complaining about external forces are the ones
| that don't tend to ever gain any success or move up
|
| This is true but on the flip side it also seems that some
| people who end up in privileged positions attribute 100%
| of success to themselves, and 0% to circumstances and
| external factors, which is just as bad
| ozim wrote:
| Yes - exactly that is what I mean in my way of thinking.
|
| It is not about people who didn't get specific job but it
| is about people complaining. "Normal people" even if they
| don't get some job are not complaining like that.
| hluska wrote:
| You're trying not to be negative but they're losers? If
| you're going to start a comment like that everything better
| be bang on. Unfortunately, you seem to be saying that
| nepotism is wrong..unless you do it then it's somehow fine
| because you're "special".
|
| What a low quality comment made even worse by the insult in
| the beginning.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| He has a point. People that are always calling out
| nepotism, or good looks, etc... typically also have an axe
| to grind and have some festering sour grapes.
|
| The situation outlined is true. It can take time to
| convince outsiders (friends), and time to convince insiders
| (the company, manager) that X and Y are a good fit.
|
| Hiring is not easy. Getting hired is not easy.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Me: "it might be poor choice of words but he has a point"
|
| HN: "REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
| filoleg wrote:
| Agreed, yeah.
|
| I don't want to start a flamewar with this controversial
| hot-button topic, but imo it is kind of similar to the
| whole incel culture. The kind of takes where they believe
| that women aren't interested in them because they are 5'9
| or because of them not having a square jawline or because
| of some perceived "chad" gatekeeping them, and totally
| not because of their own attitudes and behaviors.
|
| This is just missing forest for the trees. I am not
| saying that looks don't matter at all. But the sad part
| is that the heavy majority of those people look totally
| fine, and it is just their hyperfocus on their perceived
| deficiencies (and associated behaviors) that drives
| people away.
|
| Same here. No one denies that nepotism exists. But 9
| times out of 10 when I hear someone complaining about it,
| it boils down to "how dare they hire someone that they
| had any prior personal experience with and who they know
| for a fact is a great specialist due to the shared track
| record".
| waboremo wrote:
| I can understand why both your friends and the company
| struggled to respect your choices and required so much more
| legwork than normal, because man oh man you are quite bad
| with words!
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| This comment reads like a classic "X-ism doesn't exist
| because Y people have it hard too!"
|
| No one is saying that Y does not have it hard. The claim
| about X-ism is that people with X never even had the chance
| that Y did. In your case, sure, someone worked hard to
| convince their boss to hire their friend, but the people who
| don't have those connection (i.e. because they are from
| marginalized backgrounds/different country) just don't have a
| single chance of being hired, regardless of how qualified
| they are.
| lliamander wrote:
| > This comment reads like a classic "X-ism doesn't exist
| because Y people have it hard too!"
|
| The claim was not "nepotism doesn't exist". The claim was
| that "It isn't nepotism if the person hired through
| personal connections can actually do the job".
|
| Yes, people without personal connections have it harder,
| but the mere inequality exists does not mean the situation
| is unjust.
| comfypotato wrote:
| It's really all opinion. I would say the system here is
| unjust. (Life's not fair.)I wouldn't say that the
| relationship-hires are morally wrong (if the person hired
| is qualified).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In your case, sure, someone worked hard to convince their
| boss to hire their friend, but the people who don't have
| those connection (i.e. because they are from marginalized
| backgrounds/different country) just don't have a single
| chance of being hired, regardless of how qualified they
| are.
|
| This requires that every hire the boss ever made was based
| on an employee recommendation. That seems unlikely.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Relax the hyperbole (e.g. s/don't have a single
| chance/have a much smaller chance/), and it no longer
| requires that.
| [deleted]
| antod wrote:
| _> I got my friends /people I know hired to the company I
| work for, it was not walk in the park, I had to convince my
| friends that company is good place to work as they were
| highly skilled, which took me months ... guess what ... I had
| to spend also quite some time convincing managers that guy I
| propose will fit and then they still had to go through
| interviews and probation period._
|
| That sounds very far away from nepotism. Nepotism is giving
| relatives or friends the job without any qualifications
| and/or treating them different.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > The fact is someone with capital to spend can deploy it to
| anyone, so why should they deploy it to you?
|
| By that logic, people have big families, they have lots of
| friends. Why choose one family member or friend over another?
|
| > I have been doing some Data Science consulting
|
| I'm not trying to "gatekeep" here. Consulting is, for the most
| part, an ordinary employment relationship.
| taneq wrote:
| > The fact is someone with capital to spend can deploy it to
| anyone, so why should they deploy it to you?
|
| Observation 1: A corporation isn't a single entity, it's a
| stack of humans in a trench coat.
|
| Observation 2: Humans choose what's familiar and what's worked
| for them in the past.
|
| Observation 3: Humans usually get promoted based on their
| choices.
|
| Corollary: Make the people who engaged you look good, and
| they'll keep sending money your way.
| zeitseeing wrote:
| Great post! Like some of the other comments none of the points
| were really new to me, but it's good to read them again every now
| and again. I think focusing on B2B is always great advice for
| solo hackers.
|
| Personally I particularly struggle with charging too little.
| Especially early on you want to just get people use your product
| and it's tempting to lower prices to achieve this.
| dnndev wrote:
| Spot on great advice. The big picture is start small (niche, deep
| pockets) and then grow big (wide market, all price ranges). I see
| some comments assuming his advice is the end game for an
| entrepreneur, its just the start.
|
| I will add one note: dont waste money on marketing
| (google/facebook/etc... ads) when you start small, if you don't
| have connections that can give you projects/buy your product then
| pair up with someone who does.
| treelovinhippie wrote:
| [dead]
| JustBreath wrote:
| One issue with targeting a small market and trying to grow it is
| if your business relies on your truly innovative/unique/original
| idea IMMEDIATELY it will get copied either by the big guys or by
| other small fish who are more than willing to race you to the
| bottom on profits.
|
| You must build your business on something beyond an idea.
|
| Intellectual property, customer relationships, the brand,
| reputation, quality, luxury value, etc...
|
| It's trite but true: ideas are worthless, execution is
| everything.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| How to make a living, but not a fortune.
| kumarm wrote:
| Any advise whether 1-person business or well funded startup needs
| to be taken with grain of salt and check if it is really
| applicable for you.
|
| >>Target businesses. Not consumers
|
| I was a developer with decent sense of Product Management. Hated
| Management and Sales related activities. Apps in App Stores
| targeting consumers really worked out well for me. Having been
| running my business for 12 years+ profitably.
| tlogan wrote:
| I think number 3 and 4 are bad advices.
|
| Here is my reasoning:
|
| 3) Selling to businesses can be tough because you can't automate
| all tasks. For a one-person business, the key is to automate as
| much as possible.
|
| 4) Small businesses shouldn't worry about competition. In fact,
| big markets are great for small businesses because they offer a
| vast range of customer needs. Not everyone wants the same set of
| features in a product. So, you can create a version of an
| existing product, but with fewer features. You can even advertise
| it as being simpler. Alternatively, you could tailor your product
| to suit specific uses better.
|
| I'm not sure about 1) - scaling is easy for certain type of apps
| and services. It really depends.
| eschneider wrote:
| Scaling the service isn't the problem so much as scaling the
| customer acquisition.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Automate, and/or outsource.
| solofounder99 wrote:
| Most of what you do as a developer loses money.
|
| Your objective is not so much to write good code as finding a
| "sugar daddy", that is, businesses, to finance all the cool
| Python projects that make no money.
| dlisboa wrote:
| What about tackling a large-ish market but competing on price? As
| a small bootstrapped business, depending on the cost of the
| product, you just don't have too many costs.
|
| Small companies/single founders have much smaller overhead:
| there's no 50 person costly dev team on your payroll. So you get
| to offer a subset of the main competitor's product at a much
| lower price and still have high margin.
|
| It's something I've thought of: many companies I've worked for
| over the years bought expensive products that weren't necessarily
| too complicated or crucial, just did things we didn't want to do
| divert resources to do in-house.
|
| Yet the costs ballooned (usually $ per/user) and we kept those
| subscriptions for a while up until we figured a cheaper
| alternative. If the costs had not increased so much there'd be
| nothing to move off of, we'd have been happy forking over money.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Competing on price gives you the worst type of customers. If
| you can deal with that then you're good. It's like some weird
| glitch in the human psyche - instead of appreciating that they
| can get their product or service for a better price, they fell
| like they're being cheated and will start causing problems. I
| have no idea why it is like this. Maybe they're pissed off for
| having to buy the thing and that's why they were looking for
| the cheapest offer to begin with?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Bigger companies might have more people on payroll, but they
| are also serving more customers to generate more revenue, and
| the individuals on that payroll can do their tasks more
| efficiently because they can specialize and cooperate. There
| might be times when a bigger company is bloated, for example
| shortly after a merger, or complacent, perhaps refusing to take
| on business below a certain volume, but in general they can
| easily undercut small businesses via economies of scale.
| lapcat wrote:
| > As a small bootstrapped business, depending on the cost of
| the product, you just don't have too many costs.
|
| The cost is in acquiring customers, as mentioned by the
| article. "Sales and marketing are both major time drains and
| you can't spend all your time doing them." I would say money
| drains too. A small business can't "make it up in volume" like
| a big business can.
| dinvlad wrote:
| While difficult initially, a small business doesn't need as
| much volume though - you might "only" have a few customers,
| but that's gonna be enough to feed you and maybe your family.
|
| Plus, small business customers can stick around for longer,
| because you develop an authentic relationship with them,
| while delivering similar or better quality product at a
| fraction of the price of the big ones. I.e. you have an
| inherent edge, and it's more about quality than quantity,
| while the bigger ones simply can't afford that.
| lapcat wrote:
| > a small business doesn't need as much volume
|
| > a fraction of the price of the big ones
|
| These two things are inherently in conflict.
|
| low volume * low price = low income
| realjohng wrote:
| You can target consumers-- with enough eyeballs, run ads. I had a
| successful little Android game that ran for a few years.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Don't do 1-person businesses, period (if you can avoid it).
|
| It's not as glamorous nor profitable as Twitter hustle bros make
| it to be.
|
| Only do it if what you want to do happens to be doable as
| 1-person.
| [deleted]
| JustBreath wrote:
| I mean unless you are already wealthy what's the alternative?
|
| Basically you're saying "get a job."
| nextworddev wrote:
| No, I'm saying "consider getting a partner / cofounder"
| JustBreath wrote:
| That's fair.
|
| "Co-found a 2 person business" is much better advice than
| "don't start a 1 person business."
| cloverich wrote:
| Start a business with at least one other person, so you have
| support.
| danenania wrote:
| While this definitely makes a lot of things easier, you now
| need 2x the revenue to get to profitability, which makes
| bootstrapping harder.
| hamdouni wrote:
| TLDR; avoid big consumer market, target small b2b market
| nicbou wrote:
| I expected something more interesting, to be honest.
|
| For example, to be wary of obligations like being on-call,
| because if you're sick or need a vacation, no one is there to do
| them.
|
| Or to avoid overengineering tech, because you're the only user
| and you can fix quirks as needed.
|
| Or to learn to outsource things if it lets you focus on what
| matters.
|
| I don't know, anything that makes me feel like I wasn't tricked
| into hearing about what's promoted at the end of the page.
| OJFord wrote:
| This is exactly the kind of submission that I tend to be more
| interested in the comments than TFA. Or that I'd submit myself
| evem having not liked it so that I could (hopefully) get to
| read the comments.
|
| That is, people (like you - thanks!) are going to offer their
| own suggestions, and it's going to be more varied, more
| interesting, quite likely some bigger names or monetarily
| success stories, etc.
| waprin wrote:
| Since you're interested in more opinions I'll toss mine in as
| someone full time focused on building a one person software
| business.
|
| First, I think entrepreneurship is a bit like music genres.
| There's a lot of different styles. If you're trying to start
| a pop punk band, the guy in the successful jazz quartet
| probably has a lot of good advice , but also a lot of advice
| that's less relevant to your goals. It's good if you can
| filter between the two.
|
| I hang out in dvassalos discord which is filled with people
| trying to do 1 person business, about half SWEs and half
| creators / influencers. The creators seem to be crushing the
| SWEs. It's just way easier to build an info product people
| will pay for than an app people will pay for. The info
| products also have the advantage that , content creation is
| both the product and the marketing work. But in pure SaaS,
| product development and marketing are completely different.
|
| I'm working on a few different "bets" but the project I'm
| most optimistic about making money is www.livepokertheory.com
| . I still want to do SaaS since I'm a SWE at heart and think
| there's more long term upside. But this project is a hybrid
| info product/ SaaS since I'm creating content on how to
| understand game theory solvers and creating a SaaS to make it
| easier to study and retain the content.
|
| Poker is a niche I enjoy plus it's quasi-b2b since there's an
| ROI on the content.
|
| If you're looking for credibility I have very little as I've
| only made a bit. I had an iOS app that made a little more but
| it was too controversial (very unfairly so, but it was too
| much controversy to build a business around, it's in my post
| history here).
|
| But I've made a little plus I'm making money myself with my
| own content.
|
| I've been a little MIA on my blog and twitter but hoping to
| build in public a bit more once I get ducks in a row.
|
| Anyway, I think there are certain formulas and playbooks that
| get trotted out because they often work well. But they don't
| guarantee success nor do alternative playbooks guarantee
| failure. I think what's more important is to look at high
| level strategic reasons why certain playbooks exist and let
| the high level strategy guide you rather then rigid adherence
| to specific tactics (which, incidentally, is also good advice
| for understanding the articles on my poker blog).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > anything that makes me feel like I wasn't tricked into
| hearing about what's promoted at the end of the page
|
| That's why I read the comments here on HN first and decide
| whether to spend time reading TFA later. Chances are anything
| of substantial relevance will be directly quoted here. The
| discussion will probably be more interesting anyway.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Sounds like you should write a follow up article!
| nicbou wrote:
| Another one: don't follow every sensible idea while ignoring
| every other sensible idea in your backlog. Sometimes you just
| gotta do less...
| simultsop wrote:
| peer pressure at its finest
| balaji1 wrote:
| why not let him sell haha... rest of the article is decently
| written.
| pesfandiar wrote:
| I'd love to know how one gets out of being on-call, when almost
| all software systems need to be up 24/7.
| Destiner wrote:
| There are things that mostly just work (e.g. static content),
| and then there are things that require constant attention
| (infra, PaaS, tech heavy APIs).
| moffkalast wrote:
| Don't make SaaS systems then?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Or as I found out:
|
| Don't start something that requires physical labor - even if
| it's as low intensity as say 3D modeling - if you don't have a
| temp stand in available.
|
| If you get hurt, even a little, everything stops completely and
| you lose repeat business immediately
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| My side gigs almost always involve a little physical labor.
| Everyone writes code, but how many people do small-scale
| manufacturing of wood products?
|
| Its hard to compete with bigger shops, but selling on
| platforms like Etsy (so long as you are willing to bet on
| yourself) can be semi-lucrative.
|
| Running the numbers this morning since a friend asked, in the
| past 117 since I started my latest side-hustle selling wooden
| things, I've done 245 orders, selling 251 items for a total
| gross revenue of $5,612.19. It isn't retire to a private
| island money, but it covers the costs it is supposed to
| (mortgage & utilities). I usually let these hustles go a year
| before deciding to give up or invest more time and energy.
| cinntaile wrote:
| That's just part of being a 1-man show and not something you
| can really avoid. If you hurt your hands you can't write code
| either so it doesn't save you.
| sowbug wrote:
| I think it's more subtle than that. If you're in a service
| industry, and you can't serve, your cash flow stops. But if
| you're selling a product, then the product can keep
| generating income as long as it's valuable.
|
| Obviously, you can think of yourself as being in the
| service of building a product, but that doesn't nullify the
| distinction. In fact, it can strengthen it: devote your
| initial efforts to building the sellable part of the
| product, so that you can actually sell it as soon as
| possible.
|
| (This is the "capital" part of capitalism. Use labor to
| build capital, then profit off the capital.)
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