

On being a single founder for 7 years - apolymath
http://www.markentingh.com/home/entry+on-being-a-single-founder-for-7-years

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filvdg
Mark, nice project,but don't be scared that the product is not completely
finished ... it will never be ...

your most important next steps are now get customers , get customers and get
customers ....

so

\- remove the "closed beta" tag

\- have a graphic designer give it a 2013 layout

\- put up an price page

\- buy some adwords to start doing live user testing

\- start optimizing the sales funnel

~~~
dualogy
> have a graphic designer give it a 2013 layout

20x this. Or, switch to Bootstrap: instantly have numerous gorgeous pre-fab
themes at your disposal, plus an infinite number of web designers who will
have an easier time customizing and theming to your and/or your users' needs.

~~~
jabbernotty
>> have a graphic designer give it a 2013 layout

> 20x this.

That page looks great to me. Can you give me an example of a '2013 layout'?

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andrewljohnson
This is truly a case of should have launched quicker, if this is really about
a business.

It sounds more like a guy has been wandering around the world, living what is
surely a very interesting nomadic existence, hacking up a storm, rather than
building a business though.

JavaScript like scripting language? Custom markup? Beta for 5 years? This
doesn't sound like the path to profits to me.

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dave_sullivan
I've noticed there seems to be two definitions of a solo founder.

1) Single hacker trying to build a business and the product at the same time
by themselves. They do everything, by themselves.

2) A business where there is a single founder with all the equity. They have
employees and those employees are paid with currency.

In the case of 1, I think it's a very hard road. Most software is built by
more than one person, and most businesses must involve more than one person.
You can of course make pretty good money off of freelancing, but building a
business around a product is tough. Of course, not impossible.

In the case of 2, you need to be willing to "put your money where your mouth
is" because you'll need to pay people. And even then, if you see any success
and want to grow faster, you probably won't be the only shareholder for long.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon alone, but they're a public company now so there are
lots of shareholders. However, it is interesting to look at eg Sergei Brin's
net worth as a ratio of Google's market cap versus the same for Bezos and
Amazon. Not splitting equity in the beginning makes a big difference later on
if everything goes according to plan (which it rarely does, but hey).

The OP probably falls into definition #1

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GuiA
> However, it is interesting to look at eg Sergei Brin's net worth as ratio of
> market cap compared to Bezos.

Saving everyone some Googling :)

\-----

\- Google market cap: $260.45B

\- Sergey Brin's net worth: $22.8B

\- Ratio: 0.087

\-----

\- Amazon's market cap: $124.03B

\- Jeff Bezos' net worth: $23.3B

\- Ratio: 0.187

~~~
SatvikBeri
Wow...both companies are roughly the same age (Google is 14, Amazon 17), and
the one that had two founders is worth about twice as much as the one with one
founder, which makes the net worths of the founders nearly identical. That's a
freaky coincidence.

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astar
"This whole time, I worked on the platform source code. I feature-creeped for
at least 5 years. I didn't have much of a portfolio to show for it either. "

Congrats on persevering for that long but I almost think this is a case
example of the downside to being a single founder...no one to rein in your
feature creep time.

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Pyramids
This is definitely inspiring, and it looks like Mark has developed a very
viable SaaS platform if the right demographic is targeted.

With that being said, I would suggest that he seriously consider a pivot in
his marketing strategy due to competition which has emerged during his product
development; Webs, Weebly and Squarespace come to mind. I would say at this
point, small brick and mortar businesses are the most viable market target for
a product like this.

Additionally, it might be worth investing a small sum to recreate the UXD, or
at minimum reduce the use of gradients and move toward a more simplistic
approach graphically. The center gradient overload is almost migraine
inducing.

Other than that, I truly hope he's successful with the amount of work and
personal funds which he's put in.

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devgutt
Too complicated for an average user, too simple for a
developer/designer...sorry, doesn't sound good for me. This said, in your
shoes, I'd probably try to find a very specific niche, or maybe to turn into a
service for instantly hot page creation, like 1 short-lived pages, or
something like that...my 2 cents

~~~
loceng
I think it's a bit short-sighted of a comment you're making. It doesn't need
much work to make it simpler, nor to make it more advanced for a
developer/designer.

~~~
apolymath
if you look at the blog post again, I added more screenshots of the back end
dashboard. The platform is more advanced than you think. Designers can use a
server-side markup language to handle custom skinning of web page content &
UI, along with half a dozen other advanced core features. complex applications
that can be installed, tableless responsive design, editable web design
template for every web site with built-in source-code editor, javascript-like
server-side/client-side scripting language, 3rd party widgets, google
analytics, near-live-editing of web pages, DNS management.

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nivstein
I have to say that at least from standpoint, this seems to be pretty heroic
(to use quite a strong word) and kind of inspiring! To be able to believe in
and forge ahead working on something you believe in. Regardless of the end
result my own sense is that the at the end of the day the writer Mark can
really be proud of his accomplishment.

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mkreef
I tried it, but I get

Server Error in '/' Application. Object reference not set to an instance of an
object.

at <http://www.rennder.com/compelling-web-site-footer/>

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imperialdrive
I had to read this article in Opera using view-source... tldr but I'm assuming
this guy failed and I'm not surprised based on his blog code being such an
awful mess... better luck next time

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s3curityx
it's nice to see something that could be left as a side project evolving into
a functional and hopefully successful product. Good luck! Did you switch
programming languages in the process?

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apolymath
I didn't switch server-side languages, but I started from scratch 2 years
later, in the beginning of 2008. I had developed my own Flash based AJAX
system I called AFLJAX before then, and was using ASP.net 2.0, then started a
new project with ASP.net 3.5, Microsoft AJAX and update panels.

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super-serial
Reminds me of a pic I sent my programmer friend after not seeing him for 6
months... <http://oi47.tinypic.com/2utk9b7.jpg>

