
Solo Founders: How do you do it? - rockstar9
I've been following the other discussion on how do you keep yourself emotionally efficient.<p>However, I'd to broaden the scope of discussion: How do you do it? Or in other words, how do you keep yourself motivated to keep doing a startup. I'm not talking about projects that you do on the side, while you have a full-time job or are in school. I'm talking about where your startup is your job, whether you have funding or not.<p>It seems specifically hard to get funding if you are going solo. How do you go about getting funding? It also seems harder making those first key hires.<p>Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go? Share the experience.
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cperciva
How do I get funding? I haven't -- I was introduced to one "angel" when I was
first getting started, but the draft MOU he put onto paper had almost nothing
in common with what we had discussed in person, and after that experience I
realized that I didn't really need funding. My costs are kept down by living
in my parents' basement, using a 4 year old laptop, not hiring anyone else to
help me out, and using Amazon Web Services instead of buying/renting discrete
servers (although I spent the first 15 months writing code on my laptop before
I got to the point of using AWS).

How do I keep myself motivated? The same way as multiple founders do, I guess
-- by telling people what I'm doing and knowing that they expect that I will
succeed. The fact that I turned down a six-figure job at Google to do this
also helps keep me motivated -- I need to succeed here in order to make up for
all the money I'm not earning at Google.

Why do I believe that this is the right way to go? I don't think it is, for
most people. I'm unusual both in terms of my clarity of vision and my
expertise in this particular area.

~~~
SwellJoe
Colin, don't forget to mention your Open Source credentials if you do decide
to raise money (if your OSS work is part of your startup, even better). It's
not going to impress every investor...but we've found more than a few that
recognize the value of someone that has built products used by millions of
people. It is, at the very least, proof of competence and ability to execute
on large projects.

~~~
cperciva
When people ask me why I think I can do this, the fact that I built and run
portsnap is something I often mention -- of course, 50k people using a free
service for updating FreeBSD is different from people paying me to store their
backups, but at least it demonstrates that I (a) can build a system which
scales into the TB/month range, and (b) am able to "make something which
people want". I also developed quite a few ideas while working on portsnap
which I'm now using in tarsnap... hence the similarity in naming. :-)

But you're quite right about people being impressed by open source credentials
-- I've had a few emails along the lines of "I only have a vague notion of
what you're doing with tarsnap, but I've seen enough of your FreeBSD work to
know that anything you do is likely to be good -- so let me know if you're
looking for investment". So far these have all gotten a polite "thanks, but
I'm not looking for funding right now" reply, of course.

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tom_rath
Day-to-day motivation is easy: My company is my job, if I don't work on it it
will fail, and there will be no one to blame for that but myself.

Work when you work. Rest when you rest. Play when you play. If you're too
unfocused to work, don't waste that time: Rest instead and put the hours in
when you're refreshed later.

Funding was easy enough: Set aside as much as you can each month and invest it
against the market index. In a few years you'll have a nest egg which can see
you through a good period of modest living without a single penny of revenue.
It really doesn't take a lot to support yourself if you focus on the
essentials, and knowing you've a good buffer to see you through to
profitability takes a lot of the pressure (and distraction) off of paying your
bills. Immodest living can come later -- you'll be too busy building up your
business to live rich anyhow.

Business ideas were a snap: They magically come while you're working for
others (and building up your nest egg for self-funding). Just pay attention to
your surroundings and identify where there are unmet needs (those can often be
measured by the volume of workplace profanity). Think on those and consider
solutions you might put together yourself.

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dazzawazza
As soon as I got a user I started to feel pressure to make their life easier,
the fact the first 10 users were my friends and relatives didn't matter. Once
you get users, you get feature requests, once you implement feature requests
they say "thank you - that's awesome", you smile and that powers you for a
week at least.

The trick is to pick the right feature requests that power you and empower
your users.

Good luck.

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nraynaud
I do it solo, I've no funding.

My base is this : I limit my investments to limit my break-even point.
Currently, I need about 1500€/mo of income to break even. I'm not shooting for
a 5x like VC's do. My next investment will probably be in graphic design
because I've got an ugliness problem.

But the motivation is clear : I don't want a boss to feed me anymore, I live
in a tiny town where (interesting) IT work doesn't exists, going back to the
big town far from the beach is a last resort option.

Why I don't recruit a team : I'm not a team player, and we will spend most of
the time dealing with my behavior and I'll get singled out in a short time.

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alex_c
I am not a solo founder, so I am not speaking from personal experience (well,
I am to an extent - I am a founder whose startup is my job, but I do have a
partner).

I would assume that motivation is a lot easier when the startup IS your job as
opposed to an evening/weekend project, even for a solo founder. Unless you're
already rich, chances are you're not doing it exclusively for fun - you're
doing it to earn a living somewhere down the road, so you're racing against
time. Even if you have savings, they won't last forever, and there is always
the opportunity cost ticking away in the background.

That's a lot of motivation, when there's no lifeline. You sink or swim, where
sinking likely means having to go back to a day job.

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paul9290
I am solo founder who a year & half ago started up. I hired a developer in
India to do the back-end, while I did/do the front end (US).

As for motivation.. the recognition received is a huge motivator; submit your
work to contests, tech events/presentations and what not. Also, I attend
weekly/monthly tech networking events and hear positivity in regards to my
work. That does not mean I hear HOORAY from everyone, but I retain the
positive and let that drive me. The negative I think should be listened to,
especially when it's constructive!

In regards to funding I did hear a few times, "we don't fund solo
startuppers," but perseverance pays and Im honored that I have angels backing
my work now! It took 17 months to get to this point! Although I did focus more
on development and less on seeking funding, so 17 months maybe a long time?

Im looking now for a LAMP developer in PA, NJ, MD area and so far that has
been challenging! Email me at paul9290 <at> yahoo.com if you interested in
learning more about the position (include links to you work).

Good luck and don't let the solo founder thing stop you from starting up! It
has changed my life for the better!

~~~
aykall
Paul, I would like to get a recommendation about your outsourcing in India.
Could you please contact me at thiagolg at gmail.com ?

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SwellJoe
My first business, which ran profitably for about 5 of its 7 years, was a solo
effort. I don't recommend it. Your definition of vacation changes, your number
of friends will plummet, and your health will probably suffer. I'm a bit of a
health nut and a vegetarian and that didn't change much, but I stopped cycling
--which was something I did heavily throughout my youth, through college and
up until the solo startup...I'm riding again now--and put on a few extraneous
pounds and had slightly high blood pressure.

It's certainly possible, and most of my mistakes were not related to being
solo (though I might have been able to think more clearly, and spend more time
on correcting strategy and the direction of the business, had I not been
abusing my body and mind by working for too many hours and under too much
stress). Raising money is certainly a problem in a solo effort, though I had a
couple of offers with my previous business (angel money, as well as a
relatively serious VC offer--but it was in 1999 when everybody and their
brother was getting money).

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maurycy
I have somewhat negative motivation. I just realized that most of moderately
rich people is not anyhow better than me. They're just people like me,
frequently even less prepared to manage the companies they have.

Of course, there's still luck involved. As Seneca says, "Luck is what happens
when preparation meets opportunity".

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epi0Bauqu
Self-funded.

 _How do you keep yourself motivated?_ I love what I am doing and believe in
its potential for success. It's that simple. Of course, there are ups and
downs, but that seems more along the lines of the other thread.

 _Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go?_ I think it is
very case by case. In this case, I'm lucky to be able to self-fund this stage.
And I'm not ruling out investment later on if there is a defined plan I want
to pursue that calls for it. At this stage, I don't need outside funding and I
can accomplish the rapid prototyping piece myself at a relatively fast pace. I
wouldn't have been opposed to a co-founder, but I didn't have the right one at
the time, and so I moved on it myself.

~~~
aswanson
Good to see you back, epiOBauqu, you were away for awhile.

~~~
epi0Bauqu
Thanks. Yeah, I didn't visit the site much for 6 months or so.

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Flemlord
I did my first startup as a solo founder and began to flag after 6 months.
Luckily I identified a good partner right around that time--a sales guy to
match my tech skills. I doubt the company would have gotten off the ground had
I continued alone.

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zkinion
Alot of people here are referring to fear of messing up and failing as a means
to gain motivation for a startup, whether its letting yourself down or letting
others down. I hope people don't get stress confused with actually working
hard. Yes, worrying about stuff can make you certainly work hard, but also
getting into a good frame of mind every day and getting into a "flow" of
completion of tasks works much better.

Running towards something good and being happy while your doing it works just
as good, if not better than running away from something bad and being stressed
at the same time.

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ericb
Well, funding is its own issue. On one of my previous startups, we wanted to
look at funding, but basically found that without connections and revenue in
boston, the number of team members didn't make much difference. The amount we
would have looked for fit right in with pg's missing funding niche article.

Keeping motivated has never been a problem for me, since this is _what I like
doing_ to a scary extent. The bigger problem is staying off HN.

Pros:

-No founder disagreements (what killed my last startup).

-No founders aren't carrying their weight

-No politics

-No debating decisions (this was endless in a previous startup)

-No differing visions

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carpo
I didn't get any external funding. At the moment I'm living on savings and my
wife's salary. Luckily I've had pretty good jobs for the last few years, and
managed to put a bit away, and also lucky that my Wife is fully supportive of
me doing this.... I think it would be impossible without that support.

I must say though, as cperciva said above, leaving a well paid job is very
motivational too. And the fact that I'm 34, have a mortgage and am about to
start a family ... there's no time to be unmotivated :)

~~~
cperciva
_as cperciva said above, leaving a well paid job is very motivational too_

To clarify, I didn't leave a well paid job at google -- I turned down a well
paying job offer at google. Had I started working for them, I suspect that I
would still be there.

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gscott
Make sure you are doing something that you can accomplish and have launched in
a 1 to 3 month window of time.

I went for something super complex and it taken me years to get a point where
everything is stable, it has enough features, and to where it is flexible
enough to create additional products on the same base of it. It has been a
hard road and I am battle scarred from it.

~~~
gruseom
_accomplish and have launched in a 1 to 3 month window of time_

Are you sure you're not taking a grass-is-greener perspective here? People say
this 3 month thing a lot, but I'm not sure it happens very often in practice.
Building a software product is hard.

~~~
gscott
One project I did about 3 years ago, a modeling portfolio site
<http://www.profolios.com/> took a little less then 3 months to make. It is
far out of date now, the marketing guy wasn't selling as much as he thought
and kept on demanding just an unlimited amount of programming. But in that
window of time I got a lot done, I still have the code for myself if I ever
want to do anything with it.

A single founder can push out a lot of code in a short amount of time. You
just really need to know exactly what you want and you need to know your
language good enough to not have to be learning it at the same time you are
using it.

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aswanson
_Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go?_

Because it's the only way I can envision living fully. Answering only to
myself. That is energizing enough.

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rokhayakebe
tell yourself that you "owe" it to the millions of users whose life you will
make a tiny bite easier/better. it is a mini-purpose. as far as funding i
suggest you find a co-founder. that will double your chances and reduce your
efforts in half.

