Solo Founders: How do you do it?

[rockstar9]

I've been following the other discussion on how do you keep yourself emotionally efficient.

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.

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.

Why do you guys believe that this is the right way to go? Share the experience.

[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 → cperciva]

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 → SwellJoe]

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.

[carterschonwald → cperciva]

good luck colin!

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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 → paul9290]

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

[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).

[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".

[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 → epi0Bauqu]

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

[epi0Bauqu → aswanson]

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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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 → carpo]

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.

[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 → gscott]

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 → gruseom]

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.

[carpo → gruseom]

Its definitely hard, but being a single founder myself, something like this really helps keep me focused. Ive been working by myself since the start of the year, and gave myself a deadline of 3 months to have something i could launch.

I finally setup my site on the production servers this week, and am in the process of testing it with some friends and making small changes. I think ill be ready to go more public with my site in a week or two ... so i'm a bit later than my initial goal ... but without that 3 month figure pushing me on, i think it would have been even harder.

[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.

[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.