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Ask HN: Is it possible to remain anonymous and run a successful business?
20 points by highwayman47 on Dec 3, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 24 comments
I have no desire for fame and I don't like "putting my name out there".

But I still want to run a business. My strategy would be to eventually get a partner who could eventually "be the face of the business" but I'd still have to build it up.

Is it possible to do any remain anonymous - maybe I use pseudonym?




I was anonymous within my business for quite some time (~$X,XXX,XXX/ARR). It got to the point where my demos/sales calls would begin to question why they can't find anything about me online, for instance, "Why should my business trust you? I can't find anything about you?".

At a certain point I had come to a realization that things operate a certain way for 99% of people and companies and being contrarian doesn't help. If you want to win you need to play their game and that may mean having a public presence and playing on their playing field (that field may be LinkedIn, Github and other common fields).

I will say you don't have to become an influencer asshat which is what I want to avoid at all costs. You don't need to be "famous" and build a following of any kind. I focus my time on networking and building trust within my domain.


Do you mean you want to keep your personal life private, or do you mean you don't want to "be the face of the business" in terms of sales, biz dev, etc?

Anyone running a business or even on the exec team of a business needs to have sales / customer-facing skills. Within a startup / early stage business this is even more the case, as you are representing the entirety of the business.

If you are more concerned about personal / family privacy - user _448 nails it, in that a public persona is generated - or not. There are countless business owners across the country raking in millions each year while remaining completely anonymous.

If you just want to remain "anonymous" in terms of your connection on official documents related to the business, have a lawyer register the company, use their address as your official registration with the state, have them be the recipient of tax / registration correspondence, etc.


"I have no desire for fame"

Good. Tell me how many business owners you really know who are clearing 1M+ a year for themselves other than a few on the internet that show off ? The answer is: not many or hardly any. So you are overthinking the fame part. You won't be as famous as you think you will be just because you run a successful business (Source: I run a reasonably successful business and I am a nobody)

So the question really is: What is your motivation behind remaining anonymous ?


> I have no desire for fame and I don't like "putting my name out there".

You are thinking it wrong. The "fame" you are thinking about is not auto-generated. It is cultivated. There are millions of businesses across the world that are billion-dollar businesses, and yet you don't know about them. It is a choice whether to be in public or be private. No one really cares unless you make a conscious effort to put yourself in the public eye.

There are both advantages and disadvantages of being private and public.

> My strategy would be to eventually get a partner who could eventually "be the face of the business" but I'd still have to build it up.

Be careful what you wish for. If someone else is the face of your business, it will become very difficult for you to run the business. It will be very painful for you afterwards.


Hm there are quadrillions dollars of market cap in $1B companies that we don't know about? I'm not sure about that one, personally. Curious where you find such numbers.


Yes, you can do a double anonymous LLC. Essentially it's an anonymous LLC that points at another anonymous LLC. They cost about 300 USD per LLC, there are law services online that will set it up for you with minimum effort.

Note: This just protects you from Joe Consumer. The IRS and with some effort the police will also know who you are.

https://cindysfloridallc.com/Anonymous-LLC


There are many states that offer some form of this. In my opinion New Mexico is the be the best for anonymity. Another contender is Wyoming. Also, do you really want your business to be out of Florida? Starting in 2024 you have to report your ownership to the Feds.

https://cindysnewmexicollcs.com/


Yes it is possible and many do. If you would know about them it would mean they were doing a bad job. I call it the principle of NO ADVERTISING TO WALK. You see a lot of ads for cars because someone actively earns from selling cars. You don't see as many ads for walking because no-one makes money out of you just walking.

It seems comments here focus on DON'T DO THAT rather than how to do that. I'll let you know how to walk that direction. It's better you will find out on your own if you wanted to keep going there or if it's not for you in the end.

1) Bootstrapped startups are easier to make anonymous. Raising money is actually all about pitching to events in public while bootstrapped startups don't require that.

2) Sales VS Marketing In companies with few big customers using Sales there will be face to face. Still your customers might know you but you can avoid youtube.com/recorded webinars. Some companies don't do sales but marketing with Content & SEO which doesn't require you being seen.

3) Written Content with pseudonym Writers had pseudonyms for a long time. You can pick one and stick with it.

4) Even in Sales in larger companies you don't meet with the CEO/C** Even if your company requires Sales people don't expect to speak with a C**.

5) Do not advertise online on Crunchbase/Linkedin your CEO/C** or founder position. Just write your employed position title of what you do at the company like Sales Rep, Software Engineer, UX designer. Or also no position at all on Linkedin and no Crunchbase :)

6) US LLC companies from states like Delaware and Wyoming don't publish online who owns equities in the company.


Nope, but you could afford to live so far that it does not really matter for the 90% of the people. Maybe in a tropical island or in a ranch in the middle of nowhere?.

I don't think that government will accept pseudonyms unless there is a tax reason. Se the "Jr" added in Larry Mullen Jr. for example after his father Larry Mullen got fed of fighting with the taxes of their son.

In any case they came with new problems. Your boring real name is probably shared with other people so can be more secure than a pseudonym. Pseudonyms are their own unique brand, and much more easy to trace. You could always change legally your name to "John Smith", "Netscape", "foobar" or something like this, as an exercise of google camouflage but I would not advise it, It makes you to look as a supervillain. If you have a boring surname, use it.


Yes, it's possible. There are tons of rich people who are not famous. The owner of the company I work for is a billionaire many times over. It's a private company, he's not famous. Perhaps in his industry. But outside of that, 99.99% of people on HN will pass him on the street and not recognize him. So you are worried about the wrong stuff, go start a business. The hard thing is making it successful. With that said, some businesses draw attention and folks might want to know the owners. However, I bet many people on here can't tell us the name/founder or CEO of TikTok, Onlyfans, Lucid Motors. You have to court the press/fame to become famous outside of your bubble.


It is an option if you have the kind of money to build and maintain the infrastructure to make it work and keep it working.

But, since you are asking, you almost certainly have that kind of money. And I am talking about kinds of money rather than amounts of money because while it takes a particular amount of money, relationships, experience and knowledge also play roles...basically, the easiest way to do what you want to do is to ask your banker to set it up for you (again your banker not your bank).

At the high level bit, this smells a bit like a way to excuse failure. I mean business is hard enough and you could do everything the easy way and still probably fail one or more times.[1] And making it harder from the outset...taking a dependency on finding someone you don't know with vague qualities and availability allows assignment of causality to that person when things go south...they're the face of the business afterall.

Finally, there's a fundamental problem with what you are looking for. Your plan places trust in someone you don't know well who is comfortable with ongoing deceit and will take credit for things they didn't do and will play second fiddle to your lead...and they aren't your banker.

Good luck.

[1]: you could also do everything the easy way and the right way and still fail just because of insufficient luck.


I'm sure there are a number of business persons who choose to remain anonymous to the wider public while being somewhat visible to the government. Family offices are a very common example - the public doesn't know much about you, but the government still does. Eventually, depending on how much you grow, the government will force more disclosures out of your business, but you may also become better connected by then.

That being said, in my experience, it is extremely hard to make new contacts or approach government for projects, since they go by name recognition, which you chose to forgo. For example, my firm has a few "side" projects in the Middle East, India and South America, but we could not push through without a local partner who was the face to the government agencies, or my prior contacts in the government.


100%, but not in all fields, because you will lose important opportunities.

Main nuance, in modern extremely concurrent world, business need access to cheap money for fast grow, but to got cheap money, need to be open, not anonymous, because investors want to know, who run business in which they invested.

Second, most businesses, sure not all, benefit from wide network of partners, and most owners also don't like to deal with anonymous.

Partner as face is not enough to solve these issues. But this depends on business culture of country. In some parts of world, this is considered normal, in other, this is nonsense, or in best case, weirdness, and in any case people don't like to give money to somebody weird.

So, anonymous will constantly suffer losses, but as I said, in some niches it is not important.


> My strategy would be to eventually get a partner who could eventually "be the face of the business" but I'd still have to build it up.

If you pick this route don't ever under any circumstances raise equity. Raising equity means creating a scenario where the most skilled politician gets what they want, including total dilution of less skilled politicians.

Stick with debt + reinvesting FCF. It's an LLC anyway, a vehicle crafted to separate the personal assets from the company's assets.


You certainly don't have to be famous but if you start a B2B you SHOULD talk to customers! If it's consumer, no need to ever put your name out there.

As someone else said, all the "famous" CEOs at startups are DOING WORK to get themselves that famous. May not look like it, but it is intentional. It rarely just happens. And it is mostly for vanity.


The founder of carrd is anonymous.

https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/087-aj-of-carrd


Something like Silkroad? ;)


Are you planning on being Batman? Joking asides, I would focus first on two things. Understanding what problem you would like to solve and whether or not there is a market for your solution.


Depends how anonymous you mean, but there are many successful youtubers who are mostly anonymous to the public (think AvE). So if that's what you want, it's feasible.


You can obfuscate ownership by incorporating, but the degree and details will depend on the location and the structure. Talk to a lawyer who specializes in this stuff.


Famous (as in, recognizable by an average person on the street) businesspeople are an absolutely tiny minority, an exception not worth worrying about.


Looks like this is what the Carrd developer is doing.


How are you going to receive money if you are anonymous? You will have to register somewhere to get fiat money? That exposes you to tracking.


CTO or COO is what you're looking for. For the CEO spot you need to be out there meeting customers and making it rain.




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