
Things they don’t teach you running a business by yourself - mrskitch
https://docs.browserless.io/blog/2018/08/01/running-an-indie-business.html
======
sivers
A great book on this subject is “Start Small Stay Small” by Rob Walling :
[https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall](https://sivers.org/book/StartSmallStaySmall)

Rob was running ten simultaneous businesses by himself, (and he has a few
kids), diligently managing and tracking his time to run each one as
efficiently as possible, and tracking it to make it easy to sell the business
to someone some day with a specific intruction manual and estimate of how much
time it would take to run that business.

~~~
r0fl
Sivers book summaries are the best! Thanks for making them available for the
public. I have avoided a few duds by using your list and gone to listen to
some great audio books because the notes intrigued me. One of my favorite
bookmarks in my browser

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girzel
After ten years of muddling through, I'm finally coming to the conclusion that
I was never meant to run a business. By this point, the mere thought that I
might give this up and work for a company that would pay me a regular salary
and provide health insurance, where I would have colleagues who would support
me and take care of all the things I'm no good at... just imagining that
scenario brings tears of relief to my eyes.

I'm not a programmer: I work in publishing, promoting Chinese literature in
English. I am supposed to split my time between actual translation and
editing, and running projects to promote our books and publishing consulting
jobs. Project management is horrible; continually worrying about the direction
of the company is horrible; four and a half hours of writing emails in the
morning is horrible. I am supposed to be spending half my time translating and
editing, but it doesn't happen. I am desperate to fuck off with a book and a
dictionary into a quiet room and work, but there's an endless number of
niggling details to take care of.

If it doesn't give you a high, don't do it. If it takes your high away, DON'T
DO IT.

~~~
toast_coder
I'm desperate to start a business. Over 20 years of working in lead software
dev positions and understand the grind that occurs in almost all
organizations.

The counter point to your 'horribles', is that the support level you get
inside organizations doesn't match the increase expections of a team, and that
on larger teams the general level of aptitude approaches average. Occasionally
having to work with people who are down right bad at their job. The very
effect you espoused of 'company that would...' do all these things for you
draws in alot of people who see it the same, and work it like, well, a job
(not a calling, or career, or personal investment).

I don't think there is anything wrong with that. A regular wage from a company
making money is a good thing, but a strong part of my being believes that I
could be successful doing it on my own, and do it to the point of it being
art.

Different people at different times in their lives might be more or less
suited to one path or another. While i sympathize with the stress you might
feel running a business i think there is alot of stress in working for an
employer. The people not feeling stress inside companies are people who are
coasting. When you're coasting, the part of your being that manifests itself
as your work ethic, and professional skill dies a little every day.

~~~
girzel
Thanks for this. I think my current feeling is definitely a bit "grass is
greener", and I'm overestimating how much help a larger company structure
would provide. But I can't help thinking: running a company requires about
nine different skill-sets/areas of expertise, and who has all those? If the
job also involves time spent deep-diving into particular work (and literature
is even more absorbing than coding), I don't see how one individual could
balance the two.

But it's nice to see someone (presumably at a similar stage of life) heading
in my direction from the other side. :)

~~~
ak39
girzel,

You have to “cheat”. Cheating is when you build your side project/business
while employed. Some can arrange this but many simply can’t. I chose to quit a
lucrative, somewhat stable consulting gig and with reliance on savings to
start an independent software provider service in the same field. Boy did I
learn about the same skills shortage spoken about in this thread and the
article! The emotional rollercoaster point is so true. If you cannot regulate
your emotions (basically become a stoic), it will hurt no end.

It’s been 5 years since I started and I have only managed one enterprise sale
(that sale itself took me two years to sign). Been hobbling along in zero
growth purgatory since. If this client cancels I am fucked.

It is easier to imagine a life of zero responsibility and drastically reduced
stress and anxiety. It’s a fantasy for me now imagining myself “cruising”
(another poster’s word) at a full time job. I am 45 now and jokingly imagine
myself unemployable. I wouldn’t last a day being microanaged.

My autonomy is important to me. My autonomy gives me full control over how I
develop my craft on my own schedule.

When asked by people how things are going, it’s always “fine! Great! All
good!” (But the ruse is only as thin or thick as my skin)!

~~~
Drdrdrq
> I am 45 now and jokingly imagine myself unemployable.

You are not, far from it. Running your own business has taught you many
lessons which will come _very_ handy when looking for a job. At least that's
my experience.

~~~
lowercased
> Running your own business has taught you many lessons which will come very
> handy when looking for a job.

I imagine it's very dependent on what you do, what your skills are, and what
type of industry you're in (and, finally, who is interviewing you). I've done
my own software dev/consulting for a decade now and am possibly unemployable
(or, at least, for most positions). "Standard" dev jobs - I've interviewed for
some, and may be intimidating to some (and yeah, I realize this may be a full-
of-shit self-aggrandizement view of myself too). For a decade, when coming in
to a project, I'm typically given a wide range of access to multiple people,
and a wide variety of information, to help make the best decisions possible.
I've interviewed for "development jobs", and the environments are typically
the opposite - info lockdown, do the assigned tasks, etc.

I've been in those situations, and watched as companies go under because of
bad decisions, and can't easily deal with not having more info access to
understand the decisions/directions (even if I don't agree with them, seeing
the bigger picture can help me accept, or... start to look elsewhere).

So... yeah, the GP (and myself) may not be completely unemployable, but the
sorts of 'jobs' where someone wants the sort of experience someone has running
their own business... they aren't as plentiful, and often don't get advertised
(and likely aren't going to be the sort of thing body-shop recruiters are
going to be reaching out to you about). (and age is no doubt a factor as well
- I'm north of 40 and think 'employability' is thinner than it was for me 15
years ago).

~~~
Drdrdrq
I agree that being employed as a regular developer gets harder and harder with
age and with experience outside of dev world, but at the same time you are
getting better and better at positions which require more business skills,
like team lead (if your tech skills are still good enough) / product manager /
CTO / tech cofounder / ... There are many companies that don't know they need
this kind of person, and it might be difficult to find a match. But once
you're in, you can make a huge difference with this skill set.

~~~
lowercased
> There are many companies that don't know they need this kind of person, and
> it might be difficult to find a match.

that sounds like a different angle of saying what I was saying. if a company
doesn't know they have a need for what my skills are, i'm less likely to
employed by them. if the majority of companies in an area also don't know they
have a need for my skills, i'm less employable (or perhaps unemployable) in a
particular area.

i've gotten way too good at seeing roadblocks well before other people do, and
the roadblocks are almost always nontechnical. This can be taken as 'having a
negative attitude', but it's just pragmatism born out of experience (yes,
understood, my delivery/tone may play a part in this, but sometimes I'm just
the guy saying something that someone above me doesn't want to hear). As an
external consultant, you're brought in to be able to say those hard things
that people perhaps can't say for themselves. As an employee... you're
potentially "toxic".

------
yoshamano
Maybe it's because I'm a rural Michigander, or maybe it's because I'm 35.
Whatever the case may be, whenever I read a line such as, "It goes by many
names: boot-strapped, solo-founded, self-funded, indie-hackers...etc... and
it's pretty hot right now!" I have a visceral reaction. Around here that's
just owning a business. No one cares about how it's structured or how it's
funded. Trying to quantify your business to others in such ways is so much
window dressing.

That being said, the rest of the article was a nice read.

~~~
mrskitch
Definitely. Even the term "startup" is overloaded. Simpler terminology, like
you mentioned, would go a long way to make newcomers feel more welcome.

Thanks for the kind words!

------
poulsbohemian
Being an exec in someone else's business and running my own show, the hardest
things have been the most basic: 1) Managing people. 2) Collecting from
clients. 3) Finding and cultivating clients for the long run.

It's that simple. What's interesting is, I don't recall ever touching on those
issues with any depth in my undergrad business classes. Sure we studied "best
practices" in hiring, managing, layoffs, etc, but that's very different than
the day-to-day of building a team from scratch and getting people to produce
at their best level. Likewise, I took a lot of financial management and
accounting classes, but that's totally different from some jerk customer who
decides they just don't want to pay their bill out of spite, forcing you to
litigate, where the dollar amount represents potentially months of payroll.
There are so many things like this that are _basic business_ and yet until
you've been there, it's hard to really know how to prepare for it or build the
skills for it.

~~~
mediaman
I agree.

I never did an MBA, but have talked with a lot of people who did. Collections,
financing (not the high falutin' corporate finance they teach, or corporate
accounting, but small business finance: small business loan mechanics,
covenants, banks versus ABLs versus factoring vs equipment leases), basic
labor regs, how to sell, how not to underprice, how to discover customers'
"real problems", how to manage performance, how to deal with an otherwise good
employee going through personal problems, how to write a good job posting that
doesn't read like it was written by an HR drone, etc are all things that don't
seem to be commonly covered subjects.

The only solution seems to be to go do all those things and make the mistakes,
but I think much of it could be accelerated through good training.

------
matchagaucho
Another great learning opportunity is to look at the millions of other small
businesses around you.

The coffee shop you're sitting in to write code... the proprietor has:

    
    
      * Payroll expenses
      * Marketing, Sales, Promotion
      * Rent
      * Recruiting
      * Supply chain
      * Inventory and storage
      * Utility bills
      * Legal entity structure
      * Accounting / taxes
    

Fundamentally, all small businesses have the same core challenges. Indie
software shops are not much different.

~~~
paulkon
How many of these could be outsourced to trusted third parties?

~~~
bisRepetita
None. I exaggerate a bit. I don't mean to be negative, but you always need to
monitor, check, manage. Employees or third parties. In my experience, you
never "outsource your worries", you just manage them better. Third parties
execute what you want them to execute.

------
erikrothoff
One thing I learned that after a while it gets super easy to convince yourself
that just 15 minutes of playing outdated online FPS games is OK, then 2 hours
later you're still playing, and nobody is there to say "What the hell?". Is
this normal?

~~~
3pt14159
If you want to play when you feel like playing and work when you feel like
working you need to be ok with working at 8pm on a Saturday. Otherwise you
won't get anything done.

Also, exercise more. I swear I get more time out of exercise for my business
than I put in.

~~~
got2surf
Exactly - you have to hold yourself accountable for working hours, or hold
yourself accountable for getting the work done.

Agree on the exercise as well - no matter what time I go to the gym, my "best"
working part of the day seems to come afterwards.

------
yread
The rollercoaster is real and I somehow haven't expected it even after
diligently reading HN for years. I'm afraid that if I have to go back to
normal work it won't feel like life anymore and will be terribly boring

~~~
poulsbohemian
Spot on. The seasonality and ups /downs of even well-established small
businesses is exhausting. I've met way too many execs / owners of $10-2MM
businesses where 99.9% of that is riding on 1 or 2 clients. Scary.

------
eksemplar
Every one of those things are exactly what they teach you in every one of
these articles, isn’t it?

What they don’t teach you is how to register a company, how to obtain
trademarks or patents, how to do your taxes, what to deduct. How to follow
laws you probably haven’t ever heard of. How to hire your first workers, or
how to manage them. How to hire your first manager. How to do budgets, how to
do pay checks, well how to do finances in general.

I mean, it’s a good article, it’s just exactly the same as all the others.

~~~
jasonkester
I have, on occasion, contributed to the pile of "these articles" that you
speak of, and I might suggest that the reason your things get skipped is that
they're not particularly relevant. But just in case:

1.) Register the company: (optional) 1 hour finding and filling the "Sole
Proprietor" form for your state. Or just don't bother.

2.) Trademarks and Patents: Completely unneccessary. 15 years in, I have none
of these for any of my businesses.

3.) Taxes: Turbotax, click through whatever "business" one they guide you
through and deduct what it says to deduct.

4.) Mystery Foreign Laws: Ignore them completely. If the European Cookie Popup
Enforcement Division ever knocks on your door, follow their instructions.
Until then, sweat things that actually matter for your business.

5-10.) Employee Stuff: Don't hire employees. As a one man shop, you'll find
you can pull most stuff off yourself. Again, 15 years in, I've probably only
paid 2 or 3 freelancers for short gigs outside my area of expertise. Their
fees go in the appropriate box on Turbotax above, and never hit the threshold
to need 1099s or anything silly like that.

So I think the important takeaway is that most people tend to worry way too
much about all the little administrative details. And it's a shame, because
all that can do is scare you off.

If you ignore all that stuff, and assume it doesn't apply to you, chances are
it never will. Or at least by the time it ever _does_ , you'll already be up
and running, with money in the bank you can use to address it.

Best of luck!

------
redisman
I'd like to add:

-Learn how taxes work or get an accountant

-You won't be able to afford health insurance for your family (in the US)

~~~
irlib
But why?

Family plan on coveredca site costs about $13k/year. Or even less if your
business is not yet profitable enough.

------
aaavl2821
I read an interesting comment either here or on IH the other day about the
difference in emotional investment when you're running your own business vs
working for someone else.

It was something along the lines of "why is it so easy to take feedback on
your work from a boss, but when the same feedback comes from a customer it is
so much more personal. at work its a lot easier to ship something that's good
enough, but for some reason everything has to be perfect when you're working
for yourself"

I totally butchered the quote, and wish i could attribute it properly, but i
thought it was a valuable perspective

------
dgudkov
One of the biggest issues when running a bootstrapped company is retaining
focus. There are so many cool features that can be added, but so little
resources to implement them. Spending time on something that is not really
needed pushes the point of profitability further and further. Basically, the
goal is not to make a product that "doesn't suck" because it's not possible.
The goal is to find the most optimal way to make it suck less.

This is true for funded startups as well, but a bootstrapped business has a
way smaller error margin for wrong product management.

------
graeme
Great summary of of the challenges involved!

Small bit of feedback on your site: I run a business, and am not a programmer.
I use a programmer. I can't tell if this is something would use, or not.

You probably don't want to optimize around this use case, but I was looking
for a single line that might say "business owner who employe a programmer?
Click here to see if this would be useful for you" \--> leads to a description
of how browserless helps my programmer

~~~
Drdrdrq
Unless you know it would help you (as a manager), I would advise you let the
programmer pick his own tools. You can still check with other programmers if
his choices make sense, but be careful if acting on this information. Just
make sure he uses some sort of CVS (Git is most common nowadays), other than
that... any competent programmer should know about these things, and it is
more likely that he finds out about them from their peers.

~~~
graeme
Well, that’s the thing, I don’t know enough about the service to know if it
is:

* Something useful for my _organization_ even if my programmer leaves, or

* something useful for a programmer personally

Me and my programmer do talk about stuff to be used by my organization. Which
is mainly just him in tech terms, but i want everything documented to mitigate
bus factor. So we talk generally about tools. Also if it’s a paid thing,
that’s he’s using for working on my stuff, then I would pay for it.

------
madman2890
I started a company in south america (American here), and navigating the legal
system has been the most life sucking thing ever. The idea was simple enough,
but the execution from a legal perspective was something I was completely
unprepared for. Also did this completely alone...That being said, the hard
part is done ;)

~~~
mrskitch
It took me at least several weeks to get an idea of what the legal landscape
even looks like, and what/whom I needed to engage. Definitely could be easier,
and in its own way it is a gate-keeping mechanism I feel.

------
projektfu
For me, it's not that they didn't teach me, it's just that there are so many
lessons you have to learn yourself through experience. It's hard to teach how
to select, train and keep good employees, how to recognize toxic ones early
and fire them, and how to deal with employees who are not bad but not great.
It's hard to learn how to pace yourself while also growing the business. You
can be taught communication skills but it's like learning a instrument, you
need deliberate practice to succeed.

------
mrskitch
Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for the discussion here. One of my
favorite parts of Hacker News is reading through comments and challenging
beliefs I've held, and absorbing new ones. Lots for me to think about, and
hopefully the community as well. Cheers!

------
cbluth
Yo Joel, super rad to see you here. I'll check out browserless

~~~
mrskitch
Cobin! Wish you were still around PDX, really miss hanging out :) Let me know
when you're back and we'll get 808 again!

~~~
cbluth
Good times, miss you, man

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Thanks for this, as a founder myself I completley agree with the ‘Be a
customer of your product’ point. Spot on!

------
fgheorghe
We needed to know more reasons on why not to open a business. Tell us more
about how hard it is. !(It helps)

~~~
mrskitch
:) This is something I've been thinking about as well. I'll have to write up
something more details and "when not to" as it's just as hard to pin down as
"when you should." Thanks for chiming in!

------
suleman11
Yeah... pretty much right.... !!!!!

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suleman11
Thanks

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hkon
If by they you mean bloggers, I think you are mistaken.

