
What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder - thakobyan
https://tik.dev/lessons-learned
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todd3834
Thanks for sharing! I have spent a lot of time as a solo founder and I’ve
spent time as a co-founder. I thought it might be helpful to contrast my
experiences.

As a solo founder I found that the highs were muted and the lows were
amplified. This likely won’t be true for everyone but this was very true for
me.

As a solo founder I often felt like I had no idea if I was working on the
right thing because there are so many things that need to be done. Being able
to divide and conquer is a great feeling.

I’ve read that statistically your chances of succeeding are higher as a co-
founder. This idea can really get in your head if your having a rough week.

As a co-founder you might sometimes feel like you are carrying all of the
weight and others are benefiting more from your hard work. Don’t worry, the
next time you get sick they will carry on for you. It goes both ways. Not
everyone will put out the same effort every day but hopefully it averages out.

Personally I’m a very social person even though I sometimes feel like an
introvert. Just because you can live life alone doesn’t mean it is the best
choice for everyone. Now that I’m married and have a daughter I can’t imagine
how lonely I would be if I had to go back to experiencing life alone.
Similarly, working with people who you care about to some degree can be a
great reward and motivator.

Everyone is different and solo founders can be successful. For me, having
experienced both, I will find a friend to join me on my journies from now on.

~~~
proy24
Solo founder is such a loaded term. Every freelancer, dropshipper, consultant
is also a solo-founder. it's just not as glamorous as building a venture
backed product.

~~~
jwr
No, a solo founder is someone who starts a new product business. That is very
different from consulting, freelancing, etc, where you sell your time.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Did you just make that rule up?

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idlewords
After running a thing by myself for nearly ten years, I would say the most
important factor is anxiety management. People experience anxiety very
differently, so it's hard to give advice, but without some way of dealing with
and reducing this stress it is not possible to run a solo business for a
sustained period of time.

Some examples of what can make you anxious working solo:

* A "lumpy" income stream that is hard to model or predict

* The feeling of being on call 24/7

* Having to make a large capital outlay or hire an expensive professional like a lawyer

* Seeing a well-funded competitor appear and start hiring

Anxiety is an odd meta-problem in that if you worry about it, you just make it
worse, but some strategy for long-term coping is necessary.

~~~
jwr
> anxiety management

This.

I am a solo founder and anxiety begins to be a major problem for me (starts to
result in observable real-life issues like insomnia). I've just realized that
I need to find a way to deal with it, or there could be trouble ahead.

Stress and anxiety are there even if your business is doing "well" (as in,
profitable and growing). There is always more work than you can handle, you
are always afraid of a bigger competitor ruining things for you, and you
always worry that customers will suddenly start churning one day.

I've been looking for a group of solo-entrepreneurs to exchange experiences.
This article resonated with me. It's helpful to even know that others
experience the same problems.

~~~
tedmcory77
I cannot upvote this enough. I've found that exercise helps; both from being
healthier but also because I'm so tired I sleep through the night instead of
waking up and being unable to get back to sleep.

While running I focus on form as a way of meditation. Eventually my mind will
wander onto other topics; being unable to actually put my hands onto a keyword
or whiteboard helps.

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Abishek_Muthian
I ran my company successfully as a single founder for 5 years, till one day I
was told I would become a quadriplegic & I had to close my company as there's
no other executive to take care of it.

I had Facebook Fb Start accelerated product with 2,50,000 customers , any
company expressing interest in acquiring my product wanted me to work for
them; which wasn't possible as I was recovering from surgery.

Being single founder has it's merit, but when things go south with your health
or anything personal; you'll loose your company.

I used to despise YCombinator's co-founder requirement, now I advice everyone
to get a co-founder before they start their operations.

~~~
graeme
Good point. I think any single founder should bear this in mind.

Note that depending on scale and industry, you can design around this to an
extent. My company largely runs automatically. I mostly work on growing it. I
have a contract programmer and support rep who handle stuff. Requires very
little day to day input from me.

Don't get me wrong. If I became quadrapeligic, things would gradually break.
But depending on time required away, I could have someone come and take input
from me on some decisions, stop some functions, etc

I got this from the 4 hour workweek, which is an excellent guide for anyone
who wants to make a solo business based on systems.

I do know the system works incidentally: there have been periods where for 1-2
months I did almost nothing. Just coming out of one due to a concussion that
knocked me out of work. The business grew nonetheless, though I have a backlog
of some things to take care of.

So, if you are starting a solo business, you have a bus factor of 1. You
should consider the design of it, and what happens if you become unable to
work on it.

Of course, this bars you from some industries or business models.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
> of course, this bars you from some industries or business models.

Not just that, there are numerous other variables. e.g. The environment,I
started my company in India when there was no definition for a startup, so my
startup was no different than a Billion dollar corporation from the eyes of
the government.

So, as a single founder I spent much of my initial years trying to learn all
compliances & adhering to them(there are dozen new ones every month); while
the product development went un-interrupted through the developers (whom I
personally trained) & via automated systems.

Startups in a better environment had a competitive advantage of having to
focus only on their company's growth even when being a single founder.

~~~
graeme
Oh yeah, that wasn't a criticism of you. Just wanted to leave that for single
founders to think about as they structure their businesses.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
I wouldn't mind a criticism either, just wanted to bring up startup
environment issues & to factor in when deciding sole founder vs otherwise.

Edit : Tried to be succinct.

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api
I've been a solo founder for some time. By far the toughest thing for me has
been the cognitive load.

I don't mean raw time. I generally have enough time to get done what I need to
get done. I'm talking about the sheer number of different things I have to
think about and pay attention to. It's more about mental clutter and
management of it than time management, at least for my own case.

Burnout can be an issue too and can come from cognitive load and also not
having as many peers to give support and energy. It's easy to get down and
lose motivation.

Overall I'd say: multiple founders with good chemistry > solo founder >
multiple founders with bad chemistry or conflict. I always put being a solo
founder on a list of weaknesses, but the thing is that everyone and every
team/venture has a list of weaknesses and part of succeeding is recognizing
yours and trying to work around them.

Strategies I've found include maintaining time/energy boundaries (e.g. not
working weekends unless something is on fire), delegating where possible,
managing scope creep (I've had problems with this one!), and looking at it as
a marathon rather than a sprint and thinking in terms of endurance. Getting
exercise, eating healthy, and trying to get enough sleep help too as with
anything requiring one to be fit.

~~~
PerfectElement
I'm a solo-founder too and I agree that cognitive load is the biggest problem,
even working less than 40 hours/week.

I've been on this for 4 years and I feel like my personality has changed due
to the fact that my brain can't dedicate reasonable resources to anything
other than running the business. I used to have several interests (musical
instruments, travel, film, photography) and now I can only afford to care
about business and family. The only things I can talk about are related to
business or child-rearing.

What keeps me going is that I should be able to retire at least 20 years
sooner than I would by working a regular 9 to 5 job, so I'll have plenty of
time to dedicate to other interests.

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therealwardo
I've been working on a project with a couple people that I don't get a lot of
value from as co-founders right now because they aren't designers or
engineers. They are trying to help us define the set of requirements given
their relationships in the industry, but they have not really done product
work before. I keep telling myself how valuable they will be once we launch
because they will bring customers. Echoed by the author here:

"When you start a project, you always think that finishing and launching your
project is the hardest part. However, after the launch you realize that the
most difficult part is just ahead."

Any recommendations for how to handle this kind of co-founder situation?

I'm thinking about working with them to define equity incentives on both
sides, but I'm short on other ideas for how to make things feel well balanced
in the short term given our unbalanced skill sets.

~~~
aj24
one thing they could and should be doing is enabling those conversations with
potential customers right now so you can validate the product/features you're
building as well as have them be ready/aware to use your product when you do
launch.

~~~
benjaminwootton
Agree with this. Your domain experts should already be inputting into the
product and bringing early adopters to the table to help you build the right
product. You development for X months whilst they wait for the product to be
fully baked is the wrong way to go about it.

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nyrulez
This resonated well with me - thank you for the article! I jumped into the
fray late last year full time and it's been the most exciting (and nerve-
racking) few months of my life. As the author says, I feel like I am learning
new things, growing personally (and making mistakes) at 10x the speed! (and I
live in Jersey City too)

I would say the hardest part for me is balancing time between building and
outreach. It's always concerning to build stuff mindlessly without having a
tight user loop, but in the beginning it's really hard to wear multiple hats
and figure out how to do both. I wish I had a great co-founder who could
handle the outreach and audience part, but that's probably like wishing for a
genie.

If anyone invests in crypto or stocks at all, feel free to check them out
[0][1] - I am always looking for feedback (I haven't publicly "launched" yet
but am close).

Fun fact: everything here is in Python, both frontend and backend.

[0]: [https://coinquanta.com](https://coinquanta.com)

[1]: [https://stockquanta.com](https://stockquanta.com) (only landing page)

~~~
ru999gol
frontend in python?

~~~
thedragonline
I'm guessing the tkinter tooling that comes with Python.

~~~
nyrulez
Correct me if I'm wrong but tkinter is only for Desktop GUI I think. I am
talking about the new search engine we are creating at coinquanta.com. That's
indeed in Python - it's a bold experiment for us but drastically cuts down our
development time. We'll write a blog post about our experience and tech stack
soon enough.

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mamitas
On the flip side (to most of the comments here) I've done 2 failed startups as
a cofounder and feel that things might have gone better if I just did it solo.

Both of these were with people I knew for a while and initially had good
chemistry with - but it ended up going sour over ultimately product/idea
differences (both over 3 year stretches). I feel I did most of the work anyway
(development work in a deep tech startup) and the sales/business partner
basically just walked away with the biggest clients (since they were the face
of the company as far as the client was concerned).

The next startup I do, I'll just pay for sales/consulting with cash, rather
than cofounder equity.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
The other person might feel the same way: “in the end I did most of the work
of getting actual paying customers, the other cofounder just wrote some
code...next time I’ll just hire someone to do the coding”

Not saying you should do things any differently than planned next time, but we
coders have an outsized view of our value sometimes. You can pretty easily
hire someone to write code if you have the cash. But being able to bring in
actual cash for a brand new product (especially one that doesn’t exist yet) is
actually pretty rare.

I’m a coder myself, but if I could wave a magic wand and make myself an
awesome sales person instead, I’m not sure what I’d do. I’d sit and
contemplate that wand for a long time.

~~~
mamitas
Moot point - well obviously the other person would feel differently - who
wouldn't?

Although that argument only works if you stereotype things completely. On one
side we have a savvy outspoken salesman and on the other a shy introvert
coder. And each thinks the other is completely replaceable. Kind of
black/white don't you think?

Thats sort of the VC mental model i.e. the mantra that more people in the team
makes it more likely that the startup has the entire skillset needed to create
a successful business. On the other hand - one of the top reasons for startups
failing is cofounder disputes. So difficult to say - are more founders less or
more risky? :)

Most serial founders I know are actually pretty good at multiple things -
experience and endless pitches will often do that to you.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I think that was my point, though poorly made. Hiring someone to just do that
negligible bit of sales and marketing seems a little dismissive, and much
harder in practice than someone might think. Better to stick with a cofounder
or develop those skills yourself.

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bszupnick
> The communication cost of making decisions and shipping something is
> extremely low.

I'm sure everyone is a little different in this regard, but for me, having
someone to make a decision with is something I really cherish. I'm a very
optimistic person who dreams big, so having a partner who can poke holes and
challenge my decisions has always helped me along the way.

> Do not invest too much time early on designing the perfect pricing model for
> your product.

As someone on the cusp of launching a side-project/wanna funded startup, I
really loved this. I've recently caught myself trying to attain perfection
instead of 'ship and adapt', and this is a great manifestation of that to be
aware of.

Thanks for the great article!

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jasonwen
A lot of solid advice. I’m surprised you learned so much in just your first
year. It took me way longer for certain things to realize. Thanks for sharing!

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unwind
Meta: the word "Year" is duplicated in the title, that would be great to have
the mods edit. Thanks.

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loriverkutya
Since it is hugged to death, alternative link: [https://medium.com/swlh/what-
i-learned-in-my-first-year-year...](https://medium.com/swlh/what-i-learned-in-
my-first-year-year-as-a-solo-founder-efeb845da1f9)

~~~
idlewords
Why is a text post on a marquee publishing site having trouble handling a
modest spike in traffic?

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avip
What does "net revenue" stand for? Is that profit?

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TAForObvReasons
Net revenue is usually top line (sales - COGS), while net profit is bottom
line, and in-between are various adjustments like taxes

~~~
sokoloff
Net revenue is gross revenue minus certain costs (discounts & refunds), but
does not subtract COGS.

What parent comment describes is more akin to EBIDTA.

