

Successful Solo Startup Founders - yoyo
http://www.softwaresmitten.com/2013/01/09/10-successful-solo-startup-founders/

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DocSavage
The first years of PlentyOfFish is the best example I've seen of a very
successful solo founder in a software-driven business. And by successful, I
mean "makes up to $10 million a year on Google ads working only two hours a
day." Markus Frind wrote all the initial code himself. He handled the
website's servers by himself until it reached a very large size. It's still
the best example of a single programmer scaling a website using scale up
versus scale out principles:

<http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture>

It is inspiring.

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gatsby
Agreed. It's linked at the bottom of the HS piece, but I really recommend
checking out Max Chafkin's Inc. piece on Markus if you haven't already:

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-
rol...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rolling-
in.html)

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Lightbody
I've founded two companies by myself, both "exited".

The first resulted in maybe 2X return on the opportunity cost of taking no
salary for a year. It was a 1 man shop the entire time until Gomez (now
Compuware) saved my butt :)

The second was far from something that would make TechCrunch, but life
changing nonetheless. At the time of acquisition (by Neustar), the company was
break-even and there were 3 people in total.

I don't regret doing either of them by any means, but I will _never_ again
start a company by myself. While there are certainly many examples of success
like these (and even my own) to point to, it was incredibly stressful and
lonely most of the time.

I will do another startup, but I want there to be 2-3 cofounders next time or
I won't do it. Having someone else to ride out the highs and lows with you is
really, really helpful.

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jwwest
> Starting a company is an emotional roller-coaster which becomes much easier
> when you have someone to share the experiences with

This is the argument I hate the most. It's up to you how much of a roller
coaster something truly is. For example, I can start a successful side
business selling apps. At first, it doesn't pull in much money, but after I
work with it for a few years I can hire my first employee, then another, then
another. The entire pace of growth is entirely up to you in most types of
entrepreneurship with the most notable exception of the VC model which focuses
on growth over sustainability.

My gripe with the "startup crowd" is that all companies are viewed with the
same lens as the hyper-growth VC-backed category. Even the word "startup" has
been co-opted and made synonymous to this type. Looks like folks want to co-
opt the entire concept of company to mean this too.

~~~
mlinsey
If you've done this, you've been an extremely fortunate outlier. The people I
know who have done "a successful side business selling apps" have had just as
many emotional highs and lows as friends who have done venture-backed
companies. The problems can be even more acute when you consider that founders
who elect to go that route usually cannot quit their day job until the company
has started to take off, adding another large source of stress that they have
to balance with everything else.

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hello_newman
Though not a "start up" in the sense of how we use the word now, I can think
of a couple people who have started solo before as well:

1\. Donald Trump: say what you want about him, but the man knows how to make
money. I am sure his father helped him, but his first commercial building that
launched him to wealth was done by himself.

2\. Hugh Hefner: got tired of his job, and started the first "gentlemans"
magazine.

3\. Joe Coulombe: started a chain of grocery stores in the LA area. Later
became Trader Joes.

4\. Andrew Carnegie: one of the richest people who ever lived. He was helped
by people certainly (traditional educations weren't as popular back then, but
he started working in railroads young and was helped by his boss, Thomas
Scott, who was the founder of The Pennsylvania Railroad Company) but he made
his money by himself.

5\. Howard Schultz: Went on a trip to Italy and fell in love with Italian
coffee and the coffee shop atmosphere. So inpired by what he saw in Italy he
came back and opened up a coffee shop which later turned into Starbucks.

6\. Tony Hsieh: started his first company, Link Exchange, by himself. Once the
company got going he brought in a college friend. Sold to Microsoft for 265MM,
later founded Zappos.

7\. Sara Blakely: mentioned in comments on the article, but she was frustrated
by her panty hose that rode up her legs and wanted something to slim her in
her favorite jeans (apparently a common girl problem). Took her 5k savings,
started knocking on manufactures doors, hacked her way into a meeting with a
Neiman Marcus buyer and became one of the few women billionaires.

8\. Mark Hughes: from a disrupted childhood and born to a single mother who
later passed and was later raised from grandparents, he got involved in the
MLM business. After one of the companies he was working for went under, he
started Herbalife.

I could go on and on, but the point I'm trying to make and what others seems
to say, is if you think you can handle your shit and are passionate enough
about your idea, go ahead and start a company by yourself. More equity for
you, and once you get going you can always find other people to help you out.

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aviswanathan
I think the press plays way too much of an emphasis on founders. The early
team (first 5-10 members) form the basis of an organization, more so than just
the founder. Obviously, the founder sets the tone for the company, but the
first team members either affirm it or shift it.

~~~
dsl
I was just about to comment the same thing. Being in the first few employees
at my last few companies, I often vetoed solo founders. Most of the time for
the betterment of the company.

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michaelpinto
I'm wondering if solo founders aren't really the rule rather than the
exception in business? I think the tech industry values this going back to the
heritage of Hewlett-Packard, but if you look at other industries it just isn't
the case.

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dear
I wonder how many of those multi-founder companies were in practice single
founder. If a cofounder contributes most of the important ideas, makes most of
the important decisions and has controlling share in the company, I don't
think that qualifies as multi-founders. They are just de facto single founder
with multiple early employees that owns equity.

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joshmlewis
Yeah, that's a good point. If I had a enough money I could hire a few smart
devs at market price to make what I wanted. Even bounce ideas off of them, but
I'd still the single founder.

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dear
Agreed. The question should really be "Successful de facto solo startup
founders".

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richeyrw
I'd love to see a chart that broke down startups (successful or otherwise) by
number of founders. Anyone know of such a report?

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joshmlewis
I've heard of some analytics being done but I can't remember any resource.
Maybe you could scrape crunchbase or something to get it? There aren't a whole
lot of startup directories out there.

