Ask HN: Solo founders, what do you struggle with the most? - pixelfeeder
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swalsh
I just quit my job to start a company. #1 problem is sales.

Seriously, I knew marketing would be important, and sales would be important
when I started this thing... but I really didn't realize that when I quit,
what I actually was doing was making a job change from "really pretty good
engineer to full time sales guy".

I'm trying to do b2b software, which has a much different buying process. It's
been quite a learning process, I've had to learn how to prospect, how to cold
call (cold calling is frightening if you're an introverted engineer!!) how to
actually drill into peoples pain points, how to avoid objection handling, how
to find the decision makers. It's not easy.

As a senior engineer, i'd never had partner up with a junior sales guy, but
for some reason I thought learning it myself was a good idea.

~~~
ajmurmann
Are there any resources you've found helpful to get better at sales?

~~~
swalsh
I'm not an expert :D

but what seems to be working for me, taking a lot of notes, looking back at
failures for where I can learn. I try to do research on the prospect before I
call. I think honestly trying to help the customer (and not just sell your
solution) is important too.

There's no replacement for practice... but in terms of books. "Spin Selling"
by Neil Rackham was pretty good, and Dale Carnegies "How to win friends and
Influence people" is a staple everyone should read.

------
tyingq
Saying no to customers. I finally figured out that being more militant about
per-customer customization was better in the long run. We have A, B, and C
now. If none of them work for you, then here's a list of my competitors that
can do bespoke work for you.

Of course, that's only good advice for specific situations. In my case, I'm
small, not interested in rapid growth, and am focused on being low risk. I
won't be rich anytime soon, but this approach keeps the hours down, and still
maintains enough revenue to live like I want to.

~~~
stagbeetle
Aren't you leaving money on the table?

Depending on how expensive your service is, bespoke could be a nice "extra."

~~~
tyingq
In my case, yes, I'm leaving money on the table. The bespoke work isn't
compatible with the "Solo founders" bit.

I could take on debt, hire, and do it. There's money there. Because of the
customization though, the margins are lower. Exactly how much lower, I don't
really know.

I'm not currently willing to take the risk.

------
miiiiiike
I actually love being a solo founder.

I've worked with friends and strangers as co-founders. Even if you set the bar
for a successful collaboration suuuuuuper low, you're going to be surprised by
how many people will just flat out trip over it.

If I need help with something, as a solo founder, I pay a professional to come
in and take care of it. They either do a good job or they don't. If they do, I
call them again for the next job. If they don't, I make sure that I pay their
invoice as soon as I receive it and move on to the next person.

Co-founders are way more complicated.

Most people who haven't started/grown a project before only have a vague sense
about what starting a company means. Most can't seem to get beyond the fantasy
of "not having a boss" while others may prioritize their own short-term gains
over the _potential_ long-term payoffs for the group/company if the
opportunity presents itself.

As a solo founder I'm committed and I have a vested interest in the success of
my company. If I have co-founders they may or may not be as invested as me or
our incentives may not be perfectly aligned. Massive issues.

If you have the perfect friends to start a company with that's great! Do that!
If you don't, don't stress out too much about being solo or try to turn
someone into a co-founder that you shouldn't.

Just get your thing working.

~~~
it_learnses
Hi there, I need some advice please. How do you find professionals? I am not
very good at front-end design, so would much rather hire someone on contract,
but I am not sure how to go about finding someone reliable, who will do a
decent job.

~~~
miiiiiike
I usually ask someone who does what I need done really well (someone that I
know I can't afford) for a reference: "J, who's the best most reliable person
that I can afford?"

------
matwood
A lot of people are saying sales, but the meta problem as a solo founder is if
you're not working nothing is happening. Even just one other person lets one
of you do sales, and the product keeps getting built.

~~~
lazypenguin
This is an underrated comment -- it's a silent stressor. Need to take the day
off for personal reasons? Company grinds to an absolute halt. Therefore, any
moment you're not working becomes a stressful period of - "I should be
working".

------
jeffy
Isolation: It's hard not being around others from a social perspective. When
you have no coworkers to vent to, celebrate with, or collaborate with, you get
higher highs and lower lows since everything is internal.

Accountability: You're the boss and the employee, it can be really difficult
to force your 'boss' self to do things your 'employee' self doesn't want to do
(eg support, sales, refactoring, etc)

Sales: This has already been mentioned, but the hardest part for me is that
you need to be pretty passionate about it to be successful.

Problem Solving: Sometimes you just cant "get" something, and talking through
the problem aloud to someone can give you new ideas/solutions you hadn't even
considered. You don't know what you don't know.

~~~
juancampa
> and talking through the problem aloud to someone can give you new
> ideas/solutions you hadn't even considered

I have found that you can also do this by talking out loud _as if_ you were
talking to someone. You won't get the other person's perspective but for some
reason your brain becomes more critical of its own thoughts

------
colinbartlett
Definitely marketing. Even though my product is targeted at people just like
me - software engineers, start ups, dev ops, etc.... I still have no idea how
to reach those people, how to market to them, how to promote my product.

~~~
tyingq
Sounds like there's a start up idea in there somewhere for a controlled, non-
sleazy, affiliate marketing service. Some way to connect tech-heavy/marketing-
light founders with freelance people that can sell.

~~~
swalsh
There's a million of them, the problem is I usually can't afford them :(

~~~
tyingq
The ones I'm familiar with have issues with:

\- control/visibility: being able to select who does the selling, seeing their
track record first, ability to stop misleading ads, etc

\- niche expertise: Lots of people can sell consumer oriented widgets. Harder
to find a service that can sell to a specific niche (small retail businesses,
developers, etc)

\- a straightforward interface. Something maybe like toptal.com, but for
salespeople.

------
bshimmin
Invoicing. I sell a product that customers use on many of their own projects,
and each project of theirs means one invoice for me. I can solve some of this
with automation, and I _will_ get around to doing this, but it will remain
hard to keep on top of even then because the nature of the thing I'm selling
relies on the customer to validate that the tally is correct before I send the
invoice.

(I also have the opposite problem when the customers actually pay, because
they often batch many invoices together into one payment, which makes
reconciliation surprisingly difficult. I wrote a little script in Python to
make that easier - sort of along the lines of "Given this total, which of
these invoices could potentially satisfy it?" \- but it's still frustrating.)

If the business continues to grow, I anticipate hiring someone to take care of
this aspect for me in its entirety, because it's demonstrably a poor usage of
my time, and I derive zero pleasure from it.

~~~
Cyph0n
Why not hire a remote "secretary" to take care of this for you?

~~~
bshimmin
Yes, I've sort of half-heartedly considered this, without really exploring the
idea very fully. Can you - or anyone else - recommend such a service? All they
would really need to do is reach out to customers to check tallies on their
projects and to see if they're finished, and then to generate invoices for
said projects if they are. I guess this really isn't a difficult task!

~~~
curiousphil
My company recently signed up with Intelligent Office to handle our phones.
It's been over a month now and we are really pleased with their service. They
are pretty flexible on what they will/can handle. I believe they are
franchised and we are using the Boise, ID franchise which is the next town
over from us. It's always the same three girls that answer the phones for us
and they do a great job of sounding like they are right in our office. They
even joined one of our Slack channels so they can check in on who is available
and such for incoming calls. When I went to meet them before signing up they
told me they also handle customer returns for a high end mobile phone case
company out of California, so I have no doubt you could train them on your
invoicing process.

Edit: Adding URL!
[https://www.intelligentoffice.com](https://www.intelligentoffice.com)

~~~
bshimmin
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check them out (and thanks for the other
responses too)!

------
CryoLogic
As someone building a highly technical distributed platform, I have found that
the amount of time put into engineering prevents me from dedicating large sums
of time to marketing and other efforts.

Typical run of the mill "hackathon" style startups that can be built in a week
or two will have different issues.

------
malux85
Keeping up with demand, though automation is helping a lot.

Time wasters - people who want endless meetings and never commit. Having Tech
partners is helping with this a lot though

~~~
codegeek
"People who want endless meetings and never commit"

This is definitely a big issue being solo. Funny thing is that most of these
folks who want endless demos and meetings are the ones whose signup rate is
lower in my experience.

~~~
malux85
Yeah agreed - from what I've found if somebody isn't willing to commit after 2
meetings, then it's not gonna happen. I always leave the door open and keep
things positive though, sometimes they come back :)

~~~
codegeek
exactly right. 2 times is my ceiling as well. I actually have a guy who still
emails us after 2 years asking if we have added any "new features". But he
wouldn't just sign up and try it out, lol. But you are right. Always be polite
and leave the door open for anyone. Unless they are rude to you. Those types,
I tell them to f' off (not literally though).

------
elijahparker
Support & email. It's hard for me to switch modes between writing code and
answering email. My solution is to do just one or the other for a day at time
to avoid too much loss in efficiency for either.

~~~
eappleby
I write code on weekends and after-hours. I've found that in order to build
trust with clients and stay on top of new opportunities, I need to be
responsive to emails. Product development is a little slower, but since I
coded the entire platform, it takes relatively little time to roll out
updates. As for work/life balance, I work from home with my wife and daughters
and regularly take off an hour here or there. Not for everyone, but this works
for me.

------
epynonymous
my biggest problem with being a solo founder is being able to bounce ideas off
others. Obviously I talk to my friends and family, but it's a different ball
game because they're not really immersed in this as I am, so the advice is
usually too generic. I need someone to keep me honest and bat ideas around
back and forth with who have full context and passion.

my project is here:

[https://madsportslab.com](https://madsportslab.com)

------
dbla
I think many of these problems are general start-up problems. I've tried to
start several companies as a solo founder and the unique challenge to going it
alone that I've found is dealing with the ups and downs. When you have another
partner you get some natural balance. Someone to pump you up when things
aren't going well and someone to set realistic expectations when you think
nothing could go wrong.

------
simonebrunozzi
I will quit my job in a few days.

There are two opportunities I am pursuing. One is to be a CTO in a nascent
startup foundry; I would be co-founding, in a way, but there is one main
person leading the initiative and therefore it wouldn't be a "solo founder"
type of thing. It might happen. I am not going to talk about this one now.

The second opportunity/idea, however, is something I would do by myself for
now, as a solo founder. It is about solving the problems that current cities
have, by eventually being able to build a new city in a better way. Yes:
taking a piece of land, and building a new city there, from scratch. Hopefully
not too far away from existing hospitals, airports, schools, but far away
enough that there is a lot of room to build new stuff. I would like this place
to be sustainable, affordable, and a great place to live.

Every time I say this, I realize how nearly impossible this sounds. I have
read a ton, wrote a ton, studied a ton, and spoke to several people, some of
which could be good co-founding candidates, but none of which has shown
interest in joining me as a founder.

I feel that the problem is evident, and I see a few serious "struggles" for me
right now:

1) I am alone. Nobody to share the burden with. Being a solo founder, being
alone feels harder, because you regularly have "down" moments and nobody is
there to cheer you up.

2) The task feels unsurmountable. I fully realize how difficult it is to
"eventually" build a new city; there are so many barriers, so many delays, so
many friction points.

It still feels unsormountable, despite there seem to be a huge market for a
radical new way to "interpret" city living, both for existing cities, and for
new ones. There's going to be 60 million more "citizens" in the US in the
coming decades, which means "demand" for new places to live (either in
existing cities, or new ones) is strong. Worldwide that number is 1.5B more
people living in cities by 2030 (or 2035?).

3) I am working on an idea that has is massively capital intensive - and I am
not a billionaire. Convincing people to invest in this is going to be insanely
hard.

4) Last, but not least, personal life is not too easy at the moment; I have no
really hard issue to handle, but I am not the happiest guy on Earth either.

I could go on forever, but... I feel this is enough color to give you an idea.

~~~
williamstein
Just to encourage you, starting a new city that survives shouldn't seem
impossible because it has literally been done successfully tens of thousands
of times: every town on the map is a working example to prove it.

------
god_bless_texas
I'm not a solo founder now, but I have been twice before. Unless you're really
good at getting into a network of people who are entrepreneurial, it's tough
to get good constructive debate around a feature or even your project in
general. Cofounders bring the luxury of debate so that hopefully you waste
less time.

------
GBiT
We have a huge problem with invoicing. We have this problem right now for like
2 years and it struggles us to scale. We sell services. We have about 40 of
them and with every customer we sign agreement with different pricing on same
services, due to B2B nature. We have some recurring services and some
additional depending on usage. It is hard to write invoices every month for
us, because we can't find right billing solution.

We are looking for something like this: Then we sign agreement with customer,
we create template/profile with prices and services on billing system. Then we
provide services, we just add/register quantity to that template/profile. At
the end of month system writes invoice with recurring service and added
additional not recurring services to invoice. It means one invoice for
recurring and not recurring services.

~~~
ofek
[https://stripe.com/subscriptions](https://stripe.com/subscriptions)

------
MattyMc
Allocating time between sales activities and product development to optimize
growth and retention.

I've brought on some part-time help for the sales end, but ultimately the
difficult factors to balance are:

    
    
      - My desire to grow as quickly as possible.
      - I'd like to retain all of my clients.
      - I want to have a very high client satisfaction. 
    

We have had a few complaints/suggestions from our user base, and like all of
you we have had some feature requests. These need to be addressed, but it's
also a solid MVP and very sellable. Determining whether and how to invest my
time in product vs growth is an ongoing challenge.

------
codegeek
Other than the usual stuff people already mentioned, one of my issues has been
the ability to switch off. I know that the idea of doing your own thing is to
give you control over how you spend your time but boy I was wrong (being a
solo founder).

Sure, you can automate the hell out of things. But when that email from a
client comes (which it will), you have to decide what to do.

Honestly, being solo is great only if you intend to build a business that is
almost 100% automated but I am realizing there is no such thing.

Of course, I would not give this up for anything else because I love being in
charge of my own stuff but that also means I have to always be switched on.

------
louprado
Once you have sales and moderate growth you may lose the courage to continue
growing and improving the company. Every decision has downside risk and the
effort required keeps growing with each milestone. Without a co-founder or
investors for motivation, it is easy to spend your time working like a low-
level employee instead of a leader.

Knowing your goals and then spending time every day on the highest value,
highest impact tasks is _the_ job of a founder. This sentiment is captured in
Brian Tracy's audiobook "Eat that Frog" which I highly recommend.

------
netman21
Taxes are by far the biggest problem. It is so hard to set aside 33% of every
dollar taken in and send it off to the IRS every quarter. Every month you must
decide between paying the mortgage or paying the IRS. Once you fall behind
penalties and interest just pile up. Eventually there are liens on your house
so you cannot even refinance. The more you make the more you owe.

~~~
curiousphil
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you only pay taxes on profits right? Hopefully
you are maximizing the amount of your mortgage that you can write off assuming
you work out of your home.

------
TechHawk
Fear of vulnerability, my term for perfectionism. While external things like
marketing and invoicing can be a challenge, the biggest challenge is, and
always will be, your view of yourself and the world. This is were success and
failure ultimately come from.

------
bsvalley
Everything - since you have to cut corners and can't be involved %100 into
each and every single task, you have to work extremely fast in order to make
it look like it's moving slow. And of course you can't go faster than slow.

------
dgudkov
I can't say that I struggle with something because I'm a _solo_ founder. Just
regular company lifecycle challenges. Year ago it was product/market fit. Now
it's marketing.

~~~
infinite8s
Any tips on how did you find product/market fit? EasyMorph looks like a really
nice product!

------
jcslzr
its ironic that most of the problems are related with too much demand, my
biggest problem has always been customers, I have never started something
where my problems were too much customers, I guess I have to get better at
picking what to do

------
homakov
Marketing. Having a fresh look from outside. Not knowing anything except how
to build the product.

------
p0nce
Reaching niche users in a cost-effective way.

~~~
scardine
The secret is specialization.

One beginner mistake I did was positioning myself as a generalist. I
reluctantly started to accept the advice of positioning myself as a specialist
a couple years ago and now I want to go back in time and punch the former me
in the face. It really works: it is easier to find work and I get better
clients.

Last year was my best income ever despite the crisis in Brazil.

Reading list:

1) Breaking the Time Barrier (free ebook)
[https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-
barrier](https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier)

2) The Single Founder Handbook (not free but worth it)
[http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/](http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/)

3) The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (read for free online)
[http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-
manifesto/](http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/)

~~~
p0nce
Thanks for recommendations. Are your clients consumers or businesses though?

~~~
scardine
Businesses.

------
bambax
Marketing.

------
crablar
Hearing other solo founders complain.

If you work in technology and are lucky enough to find yourself in a position
where you can actually start a company you are on permanent vacation compared
to most of the world.

