
Persisting as a solo founder - vishnumohandas
https://vishnu.tech/posts/persistence/
======
dsbleia
>I’ve reduced my information consumption to free up brain cycles.

This is so important and not discussed very often. It's so easy to get caught
up with the insane amount of information distractions. It is pivotal to narrow
down your focus and attention on the really important things (deep work).
Eliminate and minimize the pointless information hysteria.

I've worked with people who claim they 'work 12-16 hour days'. Yet, watching
them work, they spend most of the day reading news articles and on Twitter. It
is easy to get caught up in all of this, and it gives an illusion that one is
"working" as it is very stimulating to your brain.

The only answer I've found to remaining positive about the world and staying
productive has been to ignore >90% of the information out there. Very little
news. No social media. I even ignore most of the things people say, unless I
know that they are knowledgeable on the topic. But I guess this is what HN is
for... One of the only places for decent information.

~~~
koolba
The most productive and successful individuals I know oscillate between multi
day 16+ hour sessions of hyper productivity and multi day sessions of total
procrastination.

It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series
of sprints.

~~~
loktarogar
Yep. Over the last two years i've been fortunate enough to have a lot of time
on my hands. In that time i've built 3 and a half successful products. 6 days
of (thinking mostly, some research) about what to do. 1 day of actually doing
it. It's so easy to spend that one day completely and productively - I already
know what i'm supposed to do, I just have to sit down and do it.

The 6 days (not always 6 - maybe more, maybe less) let me come up with and
throw out stupid ideas before i've coded them. By the time I come to build
something it's a carefully considered thing that'll actually be useful most of
the time.

It's not just feature ideas either, it's code design, data design, anything
that might be complicated enough that I used to spend multiple days
experimenting. It doesn't always work out, but when it doesn't, i've thought
it through enough that I have a head start on coming up with a better design.

~~~
alexellisuk
Want to share your 2.5 successful products built this way?

~~~
loktarogar
I'd rather not, only because they're in a market that relies on the good will
of the users (who usually think that people should build these things only
because they're passionate about it) and they kind of play off each other.
Nothing unethical, but i'd rather not link them together if I can help it.

------
ilamont
Solo founder here.

Make a product that people want _and are willing to pay for._

The product may be in what appears to be a crowded field. Identify niche
opportunities or cases where an established leader is doing a poor job.

It's fine to do some consulting on the side to pay the bills. Of course it
will take time away from the product you are building; just be able to
recognize when it's too much and scale back consulting or turn off the spigot
completely once product sales take off.

It's fine to work according to your own schedule and needs, not some idealized
'100 hours/week' VC fantasy schedule.

Investors don't care about you, they care about their returns. As you don't
fit the pattern of what they expect for a successful startup, they will either
ignore you or make very unreasonable demands - find a co-founder, work twice
as hard, follow this or that model. Ultimately, it's a waste of time at best,
a loss of control and failure at worst.

Once you have cashflow, offload certain business tasks to pros who can do it
better and cheaper than attempting it yourself. Hire when you have sufficient
cashflow + cushion.

Take pride in what you are building, the customers you attract, and the skills
you are learning.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> Make a product that people want and are willing to pay for.

Great point. The long-term survival of a business distills down to being able
to bring in more money than it costs you to produce a product. It's such a
simple concept, but it's easy to forget when you're swept up in the excitement
of coding and engineering an idea you're excited about.

Ironically, it's the most ambitious engineers who tend to make the mistake of
doing too much engineering work before trying to validate the product. I can't
count how many times I've signed up to follow ambitious engineers' startup
ventures that turn into years of highly-detailed marketing updates for
products that never seem to get any closer to materializing. These are the
startups that fizzle out 2-3 years later with blog posts blaming the industry,
the timing, the economy, or other external factors for their failure.

In reality, most of them could have determined their market fit, or lack
thereof, much faster by launching a smaller version early and iterating with
customer feedback.

~~~
captainmuon
> These are the startups that fizzle out 2-3 years later

Is that really the most common problem? I would probably be one of those
engineers (if I'd start a business) and I'm a lot more afraid to sell
something that doesn't exist yet than the other way around. Because now in
addition to your usual problems you have legal obligations to deliver a
product. I think this is one of the reasons for the crazy crunch culture of
many startups.

Instead of selling a fake MVP product it is probably more healthy to be
upfront to customers and let them pay for your development time like a
consultant... And then repeat the work faster for different customers until
you can spin the process out into a actual product.

In the case of the startups you describe I always imagine they have great
sales and marketing people but no actual product, and thus survive only until
the VC money dries up...

~~~
an_opabinia
> Is that really the most common problem?

The most common problem, if you're a really talented engineer, is that you
could work for a big company and be paid more in a single year than your
business will bring in for its entire lifetime.

Conversely what you really find is, the people running 20+ person companies
with tens of millions in investor money to bring in only $1m in revenue a year
- they lacked the talent, actually, to just make the money at a big company.
That you should start with the assumption that capitalism works, and that the
person doing this thing is not stupid but just shut out from a better
opportunity.

So maybe you're a really talented engineer but you are foreign so you'd need
an H1-B to work for Google. Or maybe you're a former product manager from
Microsoft who didn't quit, but was laid off, so you really can't just go and
make the money.

A transplant surgeon brings in about $1m in revenue per day for heart
transplants. There is no risk there, there is unlimited demand for heart
transplants. It's just extremely hard to become a transplant surgeon, it is
extremely competitive, much more competitive than making a website. While I'm
not suggesting every startup CEO is just a washed-out up-and-coming surgeon,
there is other stuff they may have washed out from broadly, like just medicine
itself, that led them to chase the worse economics of where they are.

~~~
indymike
So, you've got a choice: $200K/year at bigco, or $120K/year + a one time
payout of $2m when you sell your company in five year. Yes, slow and steady
can win the race, but last I looked, $200K x5 is $1m. The solo founder will
make $2.6m. Of course, there's no guarantee of any of this. The talented
engineer could be caught up in layoffs at bigco, and the founder could go out
of business or never sell. Usually, exits are done at a multiple of revenue,
so it is not uncommon to sell a small company with $600-700K/year of revenue
for 3-5x that amount.

BTW, raising tens of millions for one million in revenue doesn't happen that
often.

~~~
an_opabinia
Everyone I know who has worked at the top tech companies for 5 years has
earned considerably more than the entire startup's revenue. I wasn't ever
talking about the startup's equity value, but even if I was, they were earning
more than the equity value they would receive too.

------
superasn
Being a solo founder myself here are a few tips I would like to add:

1\. Solo founders are most often devs, which means they focus 90% of their
energy on dev and what little remains on marketing. Unfortunately this is a
easy trap to fall into and you should invest equal if not more time
doing/learning SEO, content marketing (which you've done here very
successfully btw) and building an audience.

2\. Making a product without any user feedback. You work 1 year on a product
and realize people don't get your idea. That's why it is essential to get
feedback every step of the way and your spouse doesn't count :D

3\. The good news is being a solo founder is no longer very unique thing.
There are hundreds of thousands of people who are doing this and hang out on
online communities like indiehackers, makerlog, etc.

4\. After trying out hundred tools I've found that nothing beats trello. To
each his own though but you really need a todo tool when working alone to keep
on track. I've actually written a local trello for myself with one twist - the
tool assigns me a task daily and as soon as mark it as complete it assigns me
the next item from the list. But at any moment there is never more than 1 item
on my "doing" list. It was because i was spending inordinate amount of time
bike-shedding when i don't have one single todo.

~~~
jahbrewski
While I agree with the sentiment of #1, I would argue that sales are more
important than marketing at this stage. You can spin your wheels “learning
SEO” and “creating content” with very little tangible results. In the
beginning, sales + product are just about all that matter.

~~~
bushido
Both can be important and it really comes down to who your customer is.

For B2B (SME+) - Absolutely invest in Sales. Worth mentioning that it isn't
too hard hiring seasoned sales professionals, with existing relationships who
are trying to find their next career move etc. They'll often agree to a higher
commission payout in-lieu of a base salary. This doubles up as a good way to
get feedback from the market.

For B2C or smaller B2B - Definitely invest in marketing and customer
experience if you would like the main driver behind your business to be
product-led growth or some form of a self-signup/self-onboarding.

~~~
jahbrewski
Could you provide any further advice on how to hire sales professionals? I'm
starting to feel comfortable hiring tech roles, but hiring for sales still
feels like a black box!

~~~
bushido
Sales can definitely feel like that. Without more context on your market,
decision maker personas etc. the one piece of advise that I can give
confidently is this:

Start with Senior Sales Leadership. Ideally someone with experience in your
target market.

Reach out to a few individuals, in your network or on LinkedIn or similar. Ask
them for advice, see the type of advice they provide. If you like them, ask
them to recommend someone – the hope is they recommend themselves.

~~~
GordonS
B2B sales is an area I'm going to need help with quite soon. Solo-
bootstrapping a startup means that money can be tight though.

Do you think it would be possible to get part-time help using the approach you
describe? Alternatively, do some sales professionals work on a commission-only
basis?

Also, do you have any idea what typical commission is expected?

~~~
bushido
On sales leaders: I personally know some sales leaders who mentor/advise other
start-up founders. This includes getting on some client calls.

However it's tricky, in that they wouldn't do it if there was a conflict of
interest of any kind, they'd be more likely to do it once they know these
people a bit more. There is also the WIIFM factor.

All that to say, it is possible to get help.

\--

On sales reps: As others have mentioned the biggest factor here will be how
long it takes to close a deal. If you have quick close cycles (typical in the
small to mid-market), a higher commission component or commission only is
possible.

Typically, I've seen commissions in B2B to be about 7-10% of Annual Contract
Value (ACV) for the first year. Mind you this is highly generalized, based on
my experience.

Most sales compensation plans aim for sales reps to earn 1x base as
commissions if they meet target. So a base of $60K, would result in $120K in
income if they performed.

Based on this you could try finding reps on 14-20% ACV on a commission only
basis, paid out on paid invoices.

To be candid, I wouldn't try doing commission-only positions for my own
ventures. That said it's worth a try if there are constraints that make it
hard to pay a base.

------
arthurofbabylon
For a solo founder, the bottom line is neither traction, recurring revenue,
nor monthly active users. The bottom line is emotional health/fitness.

For example, as a solo creator, anytime I resolve my single-biggest source of
stress I get in a flow producing my best work. I'm more open to looking at
problems from new angles.

Without the typical external structures, emotional fitness dictates
everything: ability to make decisions, ability to forecast, willingness to
learn a critical new skill/approach, persistence through challenges,
willingness to take risks, etc. Basically, if it matters, being
mentally/emotionally healthy fosters it.

I don't know if it's a saying, but it should be: Great products come from
great teams, whether that's a team of 1, 10, or 1000 people.

~~~
svantana
Exactly! Your business can be a threat to your emotional wellbeing, but your
emotions are definitely a threat to your business as well. If you're alone
then there's nobody to stop you from following your whims. It's very alluring
to do what you _want_ rather than what you _should_. A team has a sort of
inertia in that there's pressure to not let the others down, and changing
course requires that more than one person wants to do that.

I think solo founders (including myself) should ask themselves: why are you
solo? If you (like me) want co-founders but can't find any, maybe your idea
isn't so great. If you prefer to be alone then scouting customers may not be
your strength.

------
idm_guru
As a solo founder for 10+ years, what I can say is that all "rules" in
business are "rules of thumb"... Not laws. It's ok to be a solo founder...
Sometimes. Bounce ideas off your team instead of your co-founders. Make use of
mentors. There is a workaround for all your challenges. I also recommend
listening to podcasts with other founders. I host a podcast called "Open
Source Underdogs". Lots of good advice there for all founders... Even if
you're not working on open source. But there are plenty more. You need outside
ideas... Just seek them out.

Don't burn out your friends talking about your startup. It's not that they
aren't interested. But nobody needs a single vector relationship.

Also remember that VC's give tons of bad advice to founders. Or rather
founders tend to put VC's on a pedestal, and misinterpret what they are saying
as advice, when it is really just filter, convenient lies or lazy analysis. Be
hugely skeptical of anything VC's tell you, including "you need co-founders".

~~~
newsch
Looks like an interesting podcast! Unfortunately, my podcast client doesn't
load anything earlier than episode 22, and Spotify doesn't either - it looks
like the RSS feed doesn't contain the earlier episodes. Is that expected
behavior?

I was particularly surprised to learn that Moodle is open-source. I used it in
school before the world of software development and open-source was on my
radar.

~~~
galacticdessert
I managed to find playable early episodes here ->
[https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/open-source-
underdogs-o...](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/open-source-underdogs-
open-source-underdogs-n0_Zq8s4LbE/)

------
sahillavingia
Solo founder of Gumroad here. Highly recommended. It forced me to learn a lot
more about every aspect of building a business than I would have otherwise.

I'm also a fan of investing in solo founders: [https://shl.vc](https://shl.vc)

~~~
plumeria
Why does your LinkedIn says "Passed away 2018, do not contact"? Too much spam?

------
wenbin
Thanks for sharing this! @vishnumohandas I wish I could've seen more posts
like this when I started out ~3 years ago.

This is my 35th month as a sole founder. A few things I did to fight
"loneliness" as a sole founder:

1, Invested in productivity. Life is not easy, so you should treat yourself
well :) I spent time building scripts to make dev & ops easy. I rented a
WeWork desk (first 6 months), then upgraded to a private office (2 years),
then moved out wework (recent 6 months, due to covid-19). I bought SaaS
products from other companies - I like spending money to save time.

2, Make it easy for others to contact myself. I put my contact on every page
of my website [1]. The happiest moment of my day is always the time when I
talk to inbound emails from some strangers. Yes, there will be trolls, but
most people are nice & with good intention. Nowadays, I spend at least 1/3 of
my time reply emails everyday.

3, Share progress on the Internet. I write a monthly email newsletter to
report my progress [2] and some blogs to share my experience & thoughts [3],
which help me make some friends on the Internet :)

4, Meet people offline. Quite a few of my former coworkers are doing startups
now. We hanged out a lot pre-COVID-19.

5, Unfollow some people on social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook…) and avoid
seeing news from TechCrunch and other unhealthy VC-focused online media. Avoid
status game.

[1] [https://www.listennotes.com/](https://www.listennotes.com/)

[2] [http://listennotes.substack.com/](http://listennotes.substack.com/)

[3] [https://www.listennotes.com/blog/](https://www.listennotes.com/blog/)

------
osrec
I set up Bx ([https://usebx.com](https://usebx.com)) a solo founder/dev in
2017, after a fairly good career in finance (got to MD-level at a bulge
bracket bank front office in ~7 years, but was extremely unfulfilled despite
the decent money).

First few months were tough (no money, no customers), but things suddenly
clicked towards the end of 2018 and we got a fair few users. I even managed to
sell to a few corporate clients, which really bumped up the revenue. The
version from 2017 still serves as the core product today (with a few tweaks
for our corporate clients). Three years on, after receiving lots of feedback
from our users, we're getting ready to launch Bx 2.0 in the next few months. I
can honestly say, nothing has been more enjoyable than working on Bx, despite
the ups and downs.

I don't think I would have stuck it out for so long if I had a co-founder, as
I've generally not found many people I can work with for a prolonged period of
time. I think the most freeing thing about being a solo founder, is that you
can own your mistakes without having to be answerable to anyone.

To be honest, even in my finance job, I operated as a bit of a lone wolf on
the desk, so working solo just happens to suit me. I admit I am not the best
team player, but I am a good at delegating, dependable and back myself to get
difficult stuff done. I think those things are really important when you have
no one else to rely on or blame as a solo founder.

------
huzaif
Solo Founder.

I have done Meditation, gratitude journals and focused transitions. It all
helps.

However, for me the activity that helps the most is hard workouts early in the
morning. Once I get going, I am fighting against gravity and fatigue. I am no
longer thinking about my past, future or even the day. Just focused on the
moment.

I am in a similar boat as you OP. I am very happy on a daily basis, building
the product. I am also pretty financially stretched so that adds a level of
stress. I hope your product is a giant success.

~~~
katzgrau
It's amazing how overlooked exercise, eating well, and sleep can be. Sprinkle
a little gratitude in and you're mentally prepped for the day.

Been running my company for 8 years, and I take the same approach to the day.

------
vmception
> I quit my job in January 2020 to build a privacy friendly photo organizer

> what I had underestimated was the difficulty involved in finding a co-
> founder and how that would compound the difficulty involved in finding an
> investor

Whoops.

I just shelve ideas until the pieces align.

If my idea involves being able to get into certain rooms to be taken more
seriously because I have a co-founder, then I don't do that idea until I have
a co-founder, and do other ideas.

Look guys, your competition has a lot of ideas. A lot of viable ideas, and
this is not a coveted position, it just is. If your brain coincidentally
functions like that _once_ , it isn't a good enough reason to pursue it.

------
blindm
> Over time I’ve realized that action precedes motivation and procrastination
> precedes guilt

I group tasks into three categories:

1.) Stuff I don't want to do but really need to do. Get the most important
stuff over with so you don't need to feel the shame of procrastinating and you
will feel clearer too.

2.) Stuff I shouldn't be doing. Opening you Inbox first thing in the morning
is something you should /NOT/ be doing as a solo founder, aswell as checking
social media or news sites like Hackernews. Email (for me) is a TODO list
created by other people, and social media just wastes my day on mindless
trivia. It is not productive in any way and serves only to make the founders
of those social media companies richer, and you poorer.

If you must get your news, setup alerts for major events, or read the Current
Events[0] page on Wikipedia which I find to be unbiased and comprehensive.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

3.) Stuff I can delegate to others. For example, do you really need to write
blogposts yourself? There are plenty of good content marketers that can churn
out good quality blogposts for a fee and you don't necessarily need to be
blogging all by your lonesome. I can understand the need to write a personal
blogpost that others can't write, but most posts don't have to be personal
anecdotes, they can be technical and draw from different sources on the net.

------
semicolonandson
Been indie 10+ years (aged 23-34) and can definitely say that — once it works
out — the autonomy and independence make it an absolute dream lifestyle.

Some pointers and observations I've learned along the way.

1\. The hardest part of persisting is the emotional game. Improve your
motivation by doing things in a way that even a failure of your primary
business goal still leaves you in a better position career/skill-wise than
when you started. Also: figure out how to separate your identity from your
business, otherwise every tiny failure or criticism will sap your energy.

2\. For many — maybe most — products within reach of a solo founder, marketing
will take up at least as much time as development. Unlike programming,
marketing is shrouded in something not unlike the fog of war in RTS games. It
is highly exploratory and experimental in nature. But dealing with this
uncertainty carries its own intellectual appeal, one that you can learn to
embrace — or even enjoy.

3\. Outsource as much as can. If some work can be done for less than your
hourly rate as a freelancer, then, overall you're more efficient to code for
$$$ then pay someone to handle that part of your business.

4\. The technical skills that are most useful to a solo founder are more to do
with system design than programming languages and frameworks. You should focus
on things like data integrity, uptime, redundancy, error-tracking, rapid
response to production issues, integration testing, etc. rather than which
React.js state library is better.

5\. Get to know other solo-founders. I formed a monthly meetup with about ten
other people in a similar boat in my town and these sessions acted both as a
support network and as a way to get feedback on my (sometimes harebrained)
ideas.

I've a lot more to say on this topic and I go into way more depth in the
screencasts I post over at
[https://www.semicolonandsons.com/](https://www.semicolonandsons.com/)

------
gkoberger
As a single founder, I agree. The only advice I give anyone, ever, when
starting a company is to not do it alone.

Think about how much of a disadvantage you are, early on, when you have to
switch between tech and business. Longer term vision vs short term. Running a
product vs running a company. It's almost impossible.

That being said, you mentioned "how that would compound the difficulty
involved in finding an investor." The good news is after you get a bit of
success, this goes away. You can hire the things you're missing. Some things,
like having a cofounder, are an early signal that goes away once things go
well.

(If you ever need to talk, my email is in my bio)

~~~
not_a_moth
I think this is good advice only if you know someone who would be perfect as
cofounder who you have a long working relationship with.

Otherwise "get a cofounder to get a cofounder" can definitely ruin a project.
Am someone who went through 3 in one year, made it harder to change things,
strategize, and there was always some misalignment between product, sales, and
content. Find that I'm making significantly more progress as solo founder now.

------
Akcium
Don't know if it's relevant but I spent almost a year on "zombie startup" and
still is working on it.

I wrote about some techniques how to keep persistence for solo founders:
[https://medium.com/@victor.ponamariov/how-therapy-turned-
out...](https://medium.com/@victor.ponamariov/how-therapy-turned-out-to-be-my-
key-to-consistency-as-a-solo-founder-dbc48e1cbc9d)

~~~
dragstor
Interesting read! Friend sent the link to this article to me like a week ago.
Nice one.

------
eruci
Just like you, I quit my day job in my early 30s, and have not looked back
since. Have founded a dozen companies in the meantime and am currently having
the best financial year of my 15 year solo-founder career.

My advice is, hang in there. If you like what you are doing persist and adapt.
My best product thus far is an API I built to support my original business
plan. The original product I tried to build is long dead.

All the best. e.

~~~
pknerd
Dozens of companies or sites? Even sites, why did you make so many Ventures?
We're they affiliate sites?

~~~
eruci
I originally started [https://foodpages.ca](https://foodpages.ca) and
dinehere.us then built [https://geocode.ca](https://geocode.ca) to provide
local search functionality, then expanded worldwide with geocode.xyz and
3geonames.org, also got into collaborative fiction writing with fictionpad.com
and price comparison engines with comparify.xyz & askvini.com (which I sold on
flippa) and real estate aggregator sites (shitet.net and landhub.ca,
landhub.us).

Currently geocode.xyz and geocoder.ca are my most profitable businesses.

~~~
pknerd
Thanks for your kind reply. I might like to have some guidance for starting as
a solo founder. Is it possible to ask you a few questions via Email or
something? How may I contact you, provided if you are willing?

Thanks

~~~
eruci
Sure. eruci@geocode.xyz

------
foxhop
Great post, these strategies are very similar to mine. I've been bootstrapping
solo for 12 years while holding fulltime jobs and growing my family to 5. I'm
currently working on my 3rd project and as life throws more and more
distractions and negative thoughts emerge from my unconscious, having a
consistent plan like this is best way forward.

The main take away is goals, tasks, ideas, and random thoughts, you have to
get them out of your head and onto paper (digital or otherwise) and this could
be as unstructured as the thoughts themselves. They key is to materialize
internal thoughts externally, to capture the essence outside myself, and to
give myself room to work on that small task that will push me forward now.

------
tmilard
Many advantages as being solo. 1) If you fail, it only impacts you. Often
underated but important as in startup ventures, failure will be 80% of cases.
Solo : you hurt no one. 2) You can change path easily. To come to sucess, you
will inevitably change of directions (technically or on the clients you are
targeting, ect). I think Being alone is cool because you need no explanation.
So You can go fast.

Drawback : Social validation ! Of course, your friends, your familly, many
potential investors will not be friend at all with the idea of being alone
here. So yes, this is tough. It was for me.

Now, I see it more as a test : If you can accept that being alone for a while
is socially painfull but not that horrible, well go on : build your software,
full time or part-time if you have no more cash.

And think about it. How many people is needed to drive a car ? A Solo driver.

Solo mean YOU DRIVE the experiment --> This is good

------
keeptrying
Don't persist as a solo founder but do it if you have to.

I was a solo founder and at the end of my journey, I realized I would have
given up 25-50% of my company just to 1\. have someone else to talk to on a
daily basis 2\. have someone I could bounce ideas off, 3\. someone who could
have focused on the parts where I was bad (even if they didn't have that
skillset).

I would have done twice as much as solo founder.

Push yourself to find a co=founder. Invest 10% of your time in it. Have no
expectations. Slowly you'll get a nose for the kind of people you will want to
work with. Also you'll polish up your people skills which you'll need to raise
money and to run a sucessful business in the future.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further go with a team.
(There is no fast startup.)

~~~
cblconfederate
> I would have done twice as much as solo founder.

so in the end, you remained a solo founder?

~~~
keeptrying
I had a part-time cofounder in the end. He was really good and we buit and
launched app. Make 2k/month but I had to go back tot he workforce due to
family reasons - dad got sick.

------
NalNezumi
>To minimize the overhead of context switches, I split tasks into a tree of
checkpoints. Before taking a break I note down the next simplest checkpoint so
that when I get back to work there’s little friction to resume.

This reminds me of a trick I deployed while studying for an tedious exam back
in the college days, that worked super good at the time but I haven't tried it
since.

I used to have the problem to wander off in my thoughts unrelated to the
exam(task) at hand. It would often also be interesting thoughts: "well if X is
true as this course material claims what about Z? oh that remind me of Y! let
me just quickly google/wikipedia...." so letting the thought go was incredibly
hard.

The simple solution was to realize as quickly as possible when I fell in to
those thought pattern, write down _what_ started the thought, and what
associations propagated it. Then write down _where_ it stopped, and the
potential rest of the thought chain I could think of. All on one A4 paper that
I promised to review at the end of the day after the exam study. The mere
promise of reviewing it at the end of the day reduced the procrastination due
wandering off from approx 2-4 hours a day to 30min max.

Worked quite fine, and it was easy to see what thought were actually
interesting and demanded follow ups, and what was just useless (but enjoyable)
thought experiments.

It also helped to have the "Todo today list" A4 paper next to this "chain of
thought" paper while writing it down, to get back to the study quicker.

------
Sad_solopreneur
Friends

It's really hard to write this, but I'm sharing because I can see that I'm not
alone.

I've been working solo for a very long time. Working solo has taken a heavy
toll on me in many ways, both good and bad. I didn't want to work alone but
the people in my network only had excuses for why they wouldn't work together.
During the time that I've worked alone, competitors have entered the market,
thrived, and even successfully exited. It has been crushing for me knowing
that my vision and market were spot on accurate, and here I am watching others
succeed at what I knew was real a long time ago. Yet, they have taken a far
more risk averse approach, leaving the holy grail for someone like me. I
didn't want to work alone but I persist because working alone on this dream is
worth more than not working on it at all. Hope remains. Things are finally
changing this year, but it's because I've given up working alone without
trying to raise funding. My risk profile has changed during my solo career.
I'm not going to fail to fundraise because I'm solo, anymore. I'm bringing
strong, modern tech assets, expertise, and validated business strategy to the
table. I'm going to crush any reservations that investors will have about me
for being a solo founder. The fact that I'm solo is nothing more than one
person's excuse for not getting involved. Being solo was a legitimate concern
years ago, but it's not anymore. I don't need a founder. I'm a hardened
soldier who doesn't need a shoulder to cry on but rather CBT, exercise, and
sleep. I have enough love in my life to carry on, and am very fortunate for
that. Moving forward is a frightening experience, but I will remain no matter
the outcome. I accept my fate and will fight like hell to arc towards the
positive.

For the Dune fans: Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that
brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over
me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear’s
path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

------
thom
I apologise for the uncharitable reading, but this just sounds like you’ve
reduced your information consumption to free up brain cycles which you’ve just
reinvested into productivity porn instead of validating your business idea.

------
kyle_morris_
First company I started was solo, second company was with a co-founder.

My perspective is that this proverb is right on: _If you want to go fast, go
alone. If you want to go far, go together._

Having a cofounder completely changed my second company's trajectory. Having
someone who takes on the parts of the business where I am weak, and visa-
versa, has made a world of difference.

------
lonesword
I see that you worked for a FAANG - how much of your motivation for building
ente.io came from an insider view of how corporations leverage user data? In
other words, did your stint at a FAANG fuel your desire for a privacy friendly
photos alternative?

P.S: Native Malayalam speaker here - love the name "ente.io". Nannayi varatte
:)

------
l00sed
Reading this article, I feel really proud of the solo founder for having the
commitment, fortitude and skills to come as far as he has.

I can also relate to the need for focus and attention, but it saddens me to
see founders and passionate developers who think they need to cut off social
ties and events for their product to succeed. This isn't something that I like
to hear, but perhaps it can be effective for some.

My response, and my question, to solo founders and developers working on their
passion projects:

Do you use or know of any resources for finding good teammates? Do you have to
do it alone, or do you want to?

I've made a few friends on angel.co, but I think it would be great to have
some kind of resource that helps pair or facilitate partnerships for healthier
product development.

~~~
vishnumohandas
You could check out IndieHackers.com for other solopreneurs.

With respect to partnerships, I find it difficult to consider someone who I
have not built things with or shared emotional baggage with as a business
partner.

So if I had to approach this problem, I would pick an arbitrary problem and as
an experiment start building with the friends I find on such
platforms/communities to see how the working relationship evolves.

------
idlewords
A lot of this stuff is about feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, or
alienation. I think it's harmful to think of this as part of being a
"founder". It's hard out there right now.

Having contact with customers who pay you for something they find worthwhile,
rather than just pitching VCs for money to buld your, can reduce these
feelings of floating and inadequacy, and give you some human contact.

~~~
immy
It’s often part of being a “engineer founder”. You can go your whole career
having the market side taken care of by your employer and end up overconfident
about the business side.

------
xwdv
Although the author is persisting, I get the sense that he is forcing himself
to feel happy about what is essentially a zombie startup* (a photo organizer).

It shouldn’t feel hard or even lonely to be a solo founder. There’s so many
people you will have to interact with that are _not_ your co-founder. There’s
so many people you can share your feelings with that are _not_ your co-
founder. And having a co-founder is no guarantee you won’t be lonely; a
technical co-founder spends most his time heads down coding and a sales co-
founder spends most his time out making deals. Occasionally you may have
meetings about customer feedback and high level strategies but that’s about
it; the intent of the relationship is not to spend weekends hiking or riding
bikes together or other social activities. If you are feeling lonely the
source of that must be coming from other aspects of your life.

Most of the time the loneliness a founder feels comes from the fact that
almost no one that matters is enthusiastic about their idea, or at least not
enough to pay for it. It creates a mentality that it’s you against a world
that just doesn’t understand what you have to “offer”.

I hope he will realize this before too much time has been wasted.

Give this an upvote if you agree.

*edit: I wanted to elaborate on why this is a zombie startup in case people think I threw this out too casually. He calls his product a friendly privacy oriented photo organizer. First off, drop the word friendly, that’s a meaningless word when describing apps and usually just a way to say an application has some decent UX, which is expected by default anyway. Second, “privacy oriented” is a red flag unless your startup is deliberately targeting people who have something they feel they need to hide. This will do nothing to move the needle for most mass market consumers who already consume tons of products without any regard to privacy. A lot of your marketing will have to rely on first making people paranoid so they seek out a privacy focused product, which is kind of scummy. Third, what you’re left with is essentially a photo organizer, whose novelty is questionable in a world that has no lack of photo organization. There’s no way this will be a successful business at this rate. Sorry if you think otherwise, but feel free to justify why.

~~~
vishnumohandas
Hey, author here.

To reiterate, this really is the happiest I've been.

The initial few months were not smooth (as indicated by the article). Mostly
because was an expectation mismatch with respect to how comfortable I
believed/was made to believe life would be for an "ex-FAANG engineer" starting
up.

Also, the loneliness I felt was more about not having someone to rant to about
roadblocks or share small achievements with. This was something I had taken
for granted at work.

I wrote down this essay now after I felt that I was in a comfortable place,
and that there were learnings that could possibly benefit someone going
through a similar journey.

> a zombie startup

That's definitely the case now, and will be for a few more months. I've never
been a fan of "ship fast, apologize later". So while it's less exciting to
work on a product that's not live, it's something I'm okay with.

But thanks for your thoughts, I can see where you are coming from.

~~~
xwdv
You can be very happy working on zombie startups, but why do it? There’s so
many other things you can choose to work on that have the same potential
(zero) but might be even more fun and bring more happiness. I work on
emulators in my spare coding time knowing they’ll never be any kind of
business, but it’s fun. Just don’t keep working hoping the zombie will one day
come alive.

~~~
vishnumohandas
> why do it?

1\. I'm scratching my own itch. I wanted a privacy friendly alternative to
Google Photos to store and organize my memories, I couldn't find any that were
as convenient, so I'm building one.

2\. I have a clear path towards a public release, so I'm not worried about it
being a "zombie" forever. Some projects take longer to see the light of day,
and I'm okay with the delayed gratification.

~~~
tmilard
Yea, it's so easy to call any product someone builds a zomby startup'. Once
you are live and people do not continue to use your product, then only it
might be right to call it a zomby startup, but not before...

I am always quite surprised that many people think "yea, you always can build
a software in a few weeks. If not bah, not good'.

I think SOME softwares requires month if not years of building. Because there
are difficult technically. Those complicated softwares can be a game changer
in the field, because well, the technical entry is so hard. So let's see more
those softwares like perhaps future BIG success. Not just future 'obvious
failures'.

I think this makes sence.

------
serendipityrecs
Solo founder here.

\- I started a newsletter with progress updates to keep myself accountable but
found that as time goes on I haven't needed it as much

\- Motivation can be variable over time and you need to keep making progress
even on your down days. I think this is (one of the ways) where a co-founder
is super valuable, as you can motivate each other when one of you is down.

On the theory that this thread will be a honeypot for other solo founders: if
you're interested in potentially working together or just someone to bounce
ideas off of, shoot me an email (address in my profile)

------
lostsoul8282
I totally agree. This has been my life for the last year and it's been really
tough, but tips like this have really helped.

I spend alot of time thinking of decisions which is awesome and because I'm
solo I know I have to do everything I can to make sure it's the best choice.
To do this, I balance with as much research on each challenge as possible with
quite morning walks(with my dogs) and journaling where I talk myself through
ideas.

I've become a huge fan of journalling as a business tool and highly suggest it
for solo and non-solo leaders.

------
lukevp
It sounds like you have the motivation and persistence figured out. That’s
great! Have you read Lean Startup and done some customer research? Maybe I’m
wrong, but gut reaction to this app is that very few people would be willing
to pay for this. If someone is privacy conscious and anti-google, Apple has a
much better track record for privacy. I get multiple gigabytes of cloud backup
for free and can add on additional space very cheaply, and I trust them to
keep my data replicated and safe. The photo apps are also very robust and have
local AI and such. It seems like a hard sell, and that the people who
understand and care about end to end encryption could just set up a NextCloud
instance and get E2E encrypted backups in their native photo client, in
addition to office tools, general data storage, etc.

I wish you luck, and I sincerely say this to try and help you, but I think you
should stop adding features and start trying to convert people to paid to see
if they will.

~~~
gramakri
Nextcloud is really not a photo management solution though. The e2e support is
nextcloud is really not production quality. Do you use either of these for
your setup because I am happy to change my mind.

I use emby these days for managing photos and auto uploads.

~~~
subins2000
Nextcloud does have a photos addon :
[https://github.com/nextcloud/photos](https://github.com/nextcloud/photos)

how is it tho ?

~~~
mceachen
The fact that a number of my beta users came from nextcloud looking for an
alternative is telling.

------
rvn1045
Solo Founder here,

Ive tried a bunch of things to get myself into flow state over time -
meditation, exercise, journalling etc. they all help.

Recently I was trying to lose some weight and did a few 48 hour fasts. Holy
moly doing about 6 of them over a period of 20 days give me increased clarity
and focus for the next 30 days.

I'm planning on doing a few every month.

------
hermitcrab
I've been working as a solo indie developer since 2005. I think being solo has
advantages as well as disadvantages. So don't beat youself up about not having
a partner.

one of the keys, from my experience, is early feedback. Start showing your
product to people as soon as you have something that might be useful to
someone. No matter how imperfect it is. Do not wait until it is polished. I
wrote about that here: [https://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/07/if-you-
arent-embar...](https://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/07/if-you-arent-
embarrassed-by-v10-you-didnt-release-it-early-enough/)

------
halfmatthalfcat
Also a solo founder here.

The comment about going from dev to marketer is huge. I'm in that phase now
and it's pretty daunting. I've spent so much time obsessing about the product
and now that I finally have something...how do I get people to use it?

I just started brainstorming ideas and it's actually fun to start diving into
something I haven't had to think about before. Yes, daunting but so is
everything about being a solo founder. It's just another hurtle to jump.

If you're serious about your product and enjoy the solo founder journey,
you'll find comfort and stimulation in the new adventures that present
themselves to you.

~~~
ZephyrBlu
I think marketing it becomes a lot easier if you build with it in mind.

If you know what you're building will excite your target demographic, it's
super easy to market.

~~~
halfmatthalfcat
Easy in theory, however difficult in execution.

I'm D2C, so social media strategy, brand building and generally getting enough
volume to convert in order to sustain the product without a huge ad budget is
very tedious. Very much the long game to get people interested (probably over
the course of years unless you go viral and have good network effects).

~~~
hermitcrab
Yes, very true. When you read marketing books, it seems very obvious. But
trying to actually decide pricing, naming, positioning etc is a different
story.

------
srih4ri
I really hope your startup flies - can't wait for a world famous app with a
malayalam name. Aaha, anthass.

------
mark-ruwt
Solo founder, one-man-shop here--14 years in.

There's lots of great advice here, and I'll add getting in the habit of
sending out monthly update emails.

Pick a group of people (friends, family, maybe ex-colleagues) and once a month
summarize what you accomplished in the last month, what you want to accomplish
in the next month, and some goals you want to accomplish 4-6 months out.

One of the hardest part of going it alone is lacking perspective. Monthly
updates are a really helpful tool in keeping you oriented.

------
valuearb
One thing that appears to be missing from your blog post is evangelizing, you
should spend a not insignificant amount of time contacting potential
customers, partners, and employees and let them know what you are doing, your
progress, etc. You will be surprised at how often people will pop up to offer
help.

Of course posting your blog post here is a great example of evangelizing, so
keep it up.

------
ipnon
>It is sub-optimal to not have a coworker to bounce ideas off and rant about
problems to. A lot of times it’s these conversations that help you gain
clarity.

Corollary: The optimal communication outlet is your users. Your friends and
coworkers might just tell you what you want to hear. Your users will tell you
what they need from you in order to make your product.

------
rattray
Bit of a side note, but the author mentioned
[https://GitHub.audio](https://GitHub.audio), which I'm quite enjoying.
However, that site says it plays "string plucks" which I'm not sure I can
hear, or at least discern from "bell dings". Is it working properly?

~~~
xgenecloud
[https://GitHub.audio](https://GitHub.audio) was fun

------
kashgoudarzi
Question for the solo founders out there:

How much certainty or revenue did you have before quitting your job?

I’m in the common dilemma of not being able to leave my job because my
business isn’t making money. But my business isn't making money because I’m
working 10 hours a day for another company and don’t have time to work on my
business.

~~~
eruci
I had very little certainty of revenue when I quit my job, but I was quite
bored with it and got a $20k severance package on the way out. So I gave
myself 6 months before I had to look for another job.

------
ausjke
I worked in large companies where sometimes hundreds of engineers working on a
few products and took a long time to launch(hardware+software).

I led a team of a few engineers for two years to build network products from
bare-metal to UI in browser. two years that is.

now I work alone to build a product(software for hardware, I don't make the
hardware) and it's very difficult, I have so many coding work to do and it
just drive me tired, hiring others is not an option, I'm struggling to find
reason to keep going on, before returning back to consult or a permanent job,
neither I really enjoy these days.

on the hiring part, I probably can afford a few engineers overseas for a
while, the problem is that finding them taking so much time, and it's hard to
find good candidates when you're a little "start-up" with uncertain future,
been there done that.

yes I'm stuck.

------
earthtobishop
This is by far the best guide for solo founders:
[https://blog.gettamboo.com/the-epic-guide-to-
bootstrapping-a...](https://blog.gettamboo.com/the-epic-guide-to-
bootstrapping-a-saas-startup-from-scratch-by-yourself-
part-1-4d834e1df8c1?gi=2c392f6628ff)

------
nautilus12
I feel like there is alot of shade being thrown on partnering these days. The
unreality of solo founders is that you cant be antisocial and accomplish
something alone, having a partner is an excercise in trust, which is not
entirely a bad thing.

------
aagha
I've always been a proponent of being a solo founder, but a few years ago I
went down the path of starting my (current) business with two other co-
founders.

One I fired after a short while as he wasn't carrying his weight.

The remaining co-founder has been a God-send. In January, I was diagnosed with
late-stage cancer, and he took over the reins. He stepped up in a way I
couldn't have ever imagined. Days I was suffering from surgery pains or
(daily) chemo, he kept the ship afloat.

Everything OP says is correct, but one of the things my co-fonder gave me was
an unplanned plan for the unexpected.

Without my co-founder, I'm not sure we'd have survived.

------
mlacks
[https://github.audio/](https://github.audio/) is a game changer. one thing I
find hard about lo-fi channels is the sheer amount of visual/ mental noise to
break through in order to get the video/ station up and running on various
platforms.

One thing that I have taken to in my quest for zone-out material is to put
this type of music on a separate Hi-Res music player; I have a Sony A20
Walkman, Sony PHA-1A DAC / Amplifier, and Sony MDRV6 Studio Monitor Headphones
as my setup.

Github.audio is perfect for when I don't want to/ can't set all that up

~~~
noisy_boy
I've built a collection of lo-fi stuff (mainly off youtube) and the main
problem is unnecessary (IMHO) and/or depressing vocal cues (e.g. "I don't love
you anymore" on repeat, wtf!). Just cool clean lo-fi without the seldom needed
garnish is a very relaxing thing. Also, TIL github.audio - quite nice.

------
newera2016
Hi Vishnu,

Repeat founder here. But I always have same co-founder. Startup is an
emotional experience so my suggestion will be get someone passionate (not
money minded).

Can you pls also suggest starting guide for Naval's meditation challenge.

~~~
croh
He already posted twitter link. That's all. That is the guide.

------
pknerd
Some valuable tips. Thanks for sharing.

I have a question from community. Like many I have a routine of creating a to-
do list. Often times I end my day with guilt that I didn't do much despite of
finishing tasks. It also happens that if I am doing an important task, after X
mins I feel to give up and not fully engaged. While I feel this i start
feeling bad and try to fill the slot with another task which often makes me
unsatisfied and not happy. I feel I did not utilize my time. I don't know what
should I do.

------
xivzgrev
Why do you need VC funding? Plenty of people have bootstrapped businesses with
no outside funding. Don’t ask VCs to pay your paycheck - ask customers to.
Make something that’s worth paying for.

~~~
dumbfoundded
Some ideas have huge buy in. They're capital intensive and that's just the way
it is. Even for other ideas, sometimes it's nice to have founders not worried
if they're going to be homeless. Definitely tradeoffs on both approaches but I
can see the reason why some choose to pursue VC funding from the beginning.

~~~
tootahe45
A photo organizer is not capital intensive, unless of course you have a lot of
users and need more compute space or something.

~~~
dumbfoundded
That goes towards my second point. Everyone has living expenses. Not all
founders are in a position where they can afford to drop their income to $0
for extended periods of time.

------
ryeguy_24
Reading the last few lines of this and hearing that he’s the happiest he’s
ever been is interesting to me. Does anyone ever regret movement from job to
owner/founder? Seems like most don’t?

~~~
ackbar03
You do it knowing that it could be a terrible financial decision, cost at
least a year of your life minimum, and that 90 to 99% of new businesses fail.
Or at least you should know that. But you do it anyways.

So no, I think most don't regret it.

------
spiritplumber
I've been doing it for 10 years, it's been hard so far, but there have been
satisfactions. Some money was made, a few lives were saved. I'm not good at
getting attention (heh, that would help, wouldn't it?) but if people have
questions, I will answer them here.

[https://www.robots-everywhere.com/](https://www.robots-everywhere.com/)

------
tzahifadida
I did this so many times, I lost count. Big mistake. First, get them to pay
you for something you even do manually, then automate. Manual>Automate>Repeat

One advice I can give you is to learn an open-source project that you love and
sell support for it. Then find out what is missing and what kind of product
someone will pay for that would be commercially viable. Again,
Manual>Automate>Repeat.

Hope this helps.

------
jv22222
If anyone is feeling lonely as an indie founder and looking for an indie
founder Slack community where you can reach out and bounce ideas of other
founders in real time you can join the Nugget Slack community here:

[https://nugget.one/join](https://nugget.one/join)

Access to our Slack used to be paid but we've recently opened it up to
everyone.

~~~
pknerd
A few years back I was subscribed to newsletter, daily/weekly nuggets about
ideas with thorough research. Are you the same?

~~~
jv22222
Yes, the very same!

We have gradually iterated from that point toward training and community
because we've seen that has a much bigger impact on founder outcomes than
supplying ideas.

~~~
pknerd
Awesome I remember I had specifically created a Google label for your emails.
I was kind of disappointed you had quit sending and hide behind a paywall.

~~~
jv22222
BTW You can login now and search all 4,000+ ideas for free.

I guess I could set up a daily random idea email if you wanted. But I couldn’t
guarantee the quality of said idea :)

------
aphroz
You can theorize as much as you want, at the end some are successful and some
are not, each one will tell you they know why. none of them will do. Luck has
a lot to do with it, but work hard in doing something you believe in and if it
becomes successful, good for you, but this should not be your first objective.
Struggle is underrated.

------
vishnu_ks
Hello Vishnu, I see that you are from Kerala! We have a very active online
maker community in Kerala which regularly launches products in HN, PH. Some of
them has been accepted to YC as well. I think you should defintely join it!
You can DM @keralaph in Twitter for adding you to the WhatsApp group.

------
nottorp
> While not all of them genuinely care, some do, and these conversations force
> me to reflect on how well I’m doing what I’m doing.

The act of describing what you're doing clearly enough that a 3rd party can
make sense of it already helps, no matter who your conversation target is and
how much they care.

------
aerovistae
I find my biggest holdup is designing UI. I'm not a designer so while I can
implement it, it usually looks a bit meh in terms of colors and layout. This
costs me a lot of time because without a clear image of what it looks like, I
find I don't know exactly what I'm building.

~~~
kyawzazaw
How about trying to hire out a UI designer?

------
ultrasounder
ente (/ɛn'tɛ/ meaning: mine): In South Indian Language, Malayalam Ente means
mine, which I presume is the OP's mother tongue. I agree with all that is
being said here, but would like to add one more. Thats just based on my own
experience. Please for the love of God, don't quit Your day job while You
build, validate and find Post-Launch PMF(Product-Market fit). Its not just the
financial Security that comes with us, but as a solo-builder/founder the,
feedback/implement cycle is very long and can be soul crushing. If You had a
contract/Freelance or even a F.T. job that keeps Your mind busy during those
idle periods of lull, You will be able to stay motivated.

------
jack_riminton
I'm also on the same journey and it all rings true.

I'd like to learn more about their strategy for fund raising, as I'd guess
most people going down this path would be tending more towards the
bootstrap/indie hacking/rev generating end of the spectrum

------
egghese
Hey Vishnu, Congrats for your progress with your product. And also best of
luck for all things ahead! Noticed the name is "ente" couldn't notice the
similarity with Malayalam "ente" meaning mine.

------
newera2016
Hi Vishnu,

Repeat founder here. I always do with same co-founder. Startup is an emotional
exp. My recommendation is to get a co-founder who is passionate and not in for
money.

Also, can you pls post Naval's meditations starting guide?

Thanks

------
pawurb
Fellow solo founder here. Your landing page uses the same bango music as mine
:) [https://abot.app/](https://abot.app/)

------
avipars
Another solo founder...

There are benefits to working alone (insert Mr. Incredible Meme here)

No need to worry about salary or splitting the company. You can pivot really
easily and you have 100% control of decisions.

------
codecamper
Looks good, but I don't understand how you can compete with Google & Apple
with a photo organizer app.

You may want to use Flutter or similar tool so you don't have to write it
twice.

~~~
vishnumohandas
The aim isn’t to compete with the companies at large. But to provide an
alternative for users who (like me) care both about privacy and convenience
when it comes to the niche space of photo storage. The size of the audience
might be small, but I’m optimistic about it being large enough for me to
sustain this as a small business.

And yes, I am using Flutter to build the mobile apps. It does come with its
own set of problems that I have to bang my head against, but I can’t complain
as it’s saving me quite a bit of effort.

~~~
amjd
Firstly, great work on the your product. It already looks quite polished!

Could you point out what problems you faced with Flutter? I ask because I'm
planning to use it to build an app.

------
abhay07
Resonate with the meditation habit. Glad that meditation is becoming main
stream and not something that only spiritual people do.

Everyone should try meditation atleast once.

------
morenoh149
Glad to see others talking about being a solo founder. I run a virtual meetup
for fellow solo founders. We share the notes at solofounders.substack.com

------
czarss
In a similar journey. Failing because of burnout will be silly. True. You are
doing good. Kudos to you. Keep sharing.

------
Wump
> Over time I’ve realized that action precedes motivation

Interesting insight. Usually we think of it the other way around.

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mjrbrennan
Found this true of everything, and yet I continue to procrastinate. For
example I write fiction. The absolute hardest part is just starting to write.
Once I start I have no problem whatsoever to keep going.

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kensai
"Ente" means duck in German; always check what things mean in other languages
as well!

~~~
james_s_tayler
How many languages should you check?

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tomcat27
It's always a pleasure to read one's clear and well written thoughts. Thank
you!

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dxbydt
Is there a Slack channel or forum where solo founders hang out & share
progress ?

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andygauge
New startup idea co-founder as a service. Who's in?

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saleeh
I can relate ente in Malayalam ️️

