
1-man startups  - nivi
http://venturehacks.com/articles/1-man-startups
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bdcravens
Bit of a bait-y title. Not about 1-person startups, but how the team members
at AngelList all have high levels of autonomy and how the culture at AL
facilitates that.

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soneca
Totally misleading title (good choice for AL, bad for HN). I am myself a 1-man
startup and it is hard to get any good advice other than "don't be a 1-man
startup". Well, I am. And I am pretty sure is the right choice for me for now.
I don't want to get in an accelerator, I don't want VC money, I don't need to
correspond to anyone expectations about what makes me more likely to succeed.
I just want advice on how to improve my chances being a 1-man startup.

Well, so I share my experience for those who came to this post thinking the
same thing as I did. An obvious statement is that 1-man startup is not a
1-man's work. I outsourced design and engineering (code to developers,
infrastructure to Microsoft Azure). Mostly I am responsible for customer
development, product management and growth marketing.

But this year I quit my job in order to learn how to code (simultaneously
HTML/CSS, javascript and C#/.NET) and be able to better take charge of my
startup. Still, I am talking to two developers (a junior and a senior) to work
by the hour, with the expectation to become a full-time member of the team -
as a freelancer-mode experience period that, if successfull, become co-founder
or Director/VP of Engineering.

My to-do list is long, dynamic and diversified. It is not that hard to keep
changing hats, but it is extreme hard to know when to and to which hat change.
What is my priority? I have no idea. Talk to early adopters, fix some
spceficic bugs, A/B tests on design, handle twitter account, learn how to
code, better develop my vision, the product roadmap, etc.

One thing I learned is that complete development outsourcing is a mistake. It
is expensive and hard to manage. I wish I had the freelance-as-a-test-to-co-
founder approach much sooner. Other lesson (opinion) is that the "learn to
code" advice is prioritary to "don't be a 1-man team".

I would love to read more advice out there on how to be a better 1-man
startup. Don't bother telling me the best option is not to be.

~~~
trevelyan
If you want advice from a fellow single founder, mine is not to give out
equity. Keep full control and full flexibility. You will save lawyers fees and
will do better in the long run. Focus on covering costs and grow from there.

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airnomad
A little bit offtopic, but I really don't get why anyone should care about
"how to make successfull company" tips from VCs? VCs are probably better then
you at detecting possible winner whey they see one. They also should know a
thing or two about traits of successful companies.

But if they really know how to make one, they would do just that. Last time I
checked, making a successful company is way more profitable then investing
other people's money in one.

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SatvikBeri
Let's say the average startup has a 10% chance of succeeding. An investor-
mentor who could groom startups to raise that chance to 20% would be
considered a genius and contribute a lot of expected value. But the investor's
expected utility would be much higher by coaching and investing in multiple
companies than by trying to start their own.

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rokhayakebe
Can you guys list your one-man startup here?

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saravk
I'am working on Kettik, a blogging + content/services monetization platform
for travellers. The landing page is pretty bare (on purpose) so i'll link to a
user profile page (mine) which should give you a better overview of the site.

<http://www.kettik.com/meet/saravk>

It started as hobby when i quit my job couple of years back and wanted to
travel the world & blog about it. I set out wanting to become a travel
photographer but instead i found myself spending more time on the site,
learning on the go and hacking it together bit by bit (this the first & only
website i've ever built).

Now it has come to a point where i believe i could turn it into a viable
startup. But the transition from a 1-man hobby/startup to a proper business
seems to be quite a daunting prospect, especially since i hail from an
environment with little or no startup culture.

~~~
bhauer
Looks nice. Are you perhaps using a symbol font that's not loading for me? I'm
getting unicode placeholders in many places in the page.

~~~
saravk
I'am using Font Awesome (<http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/>).
Thanks for the heads up i'll look into the issue, luckily its occurring for me
as well on Firefox, so should be easy to fix (hopefully :)

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31reasons
The idea is interesting and can work when employee count is small. but when it
grows to hundreds or thousands, someone will have to take roles of managing
those 1-startups or form groups.

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togasystems
I really like this idea. I was just wondering to myself, how one can teach
themselves entrepreneurship much in the way people learn how to code. Using
method at AngelList, you can quickly iterate, get feedback quickly and
probably the best lesson of them all, Fail. Founding a startup in its present
form involves putting all of your eggs into one basket and failing can have a
large consequence. Practice makes perfect.

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alexdevkar
Interesting idea. I would guess that this idea, like many good things at
startups, will be have to change when you get to 20 or 30 people. Correct?

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trevor99
This is great. My favorite part is that you have internal "support services"
to help with design/refactoring, etc.

