I am surprised there is no discussion of alternative readers like Onyx Boox, which allow infinite customization through Android OS. Remarkable is a closed ecosystem with no third party apps.
Seems like the dataset behind this article is for founders who have built businesses with $5K MRR and above. $60K revenue (and $20K profit @ 33% margin) is a fairly low bar, so it is not surprising to see solo founders create 2.5X more businesses that clear this bar.
My question after reading this article is, do these solo founders manage to grow their business as large as founding-teams? How many solo founder businesses cross the $50M revenue mark?
If you have ever contracted at any length you would know that $120/hr is hard earned and usually has not insignificant time on the back end in so far as negotiating the deal, keeping it going, etc.
Here on HN I've occasionally seen people talk about $150/hr as a "low" contracting rate.
And others talk about how they could not achieve that in their wildest dreams, and consider $80/hr "good".
I was recently contacted about a contract proposal, in the USA, and they were offering $50/hr for some quite advanced cryptography work for a BigCorp end customer. I turned it down but it's good to get an idea of the market rate.
Rate expectation seems to vary a great deal depending on which geography and network-bubble people are in.
Hahaha, I wish I could tell my clients that's a fairly reasonable rate! The only situation where that's fairly reasonable is when you're contracting with MegaCorp Inc...
It would be good to correlate that question with "what percentage of solo founders successfully raise". Because that would affect how many cross the $50M revenue mark as well.
As a solo founder I've been told many times by VCs that they will invest in solo founders but then when you look at their portfolio it tells a misleading story. Most of their solo founders are previous founders or rockstars e.g. someone like Justin Kan.
Author of the article here. Agreed with your point. I personally advocate for getting a hands-on advisor (https://www.growthclub.online/post/advice-for-solo-founders) and at least for us in GrowthClub it helped to raise funding from 2 angels. Not yet sure about VCs.
I have a loving girlfriend Rachael and another dog Millie. They're extremely supportive.
I am looking to expand the team. Working on getting some angels on the team to put in some capital. So that I can hire people more talented and smarter.
Hi Peter, what is your macro view on immigration trajectory in the coming years? Do you expect the hurdles and wait-times to keep getting bigger, or do you expect a softening should the presidency change hands?
Doctors vs Software Engineers are very interesting case studies in my eyes.
AMA (American Medical Association) has successfully lobbied congress to cap residencies at 100K a year, essentially restricting supply. Foreign doctors have to go through a gauntlet of exams, tests, and licenses that keeps market from being flooded with cheaper talent and diluting local doctor salaries.
Software Engineers have failed to unite like this, so the MS+FAANGs and consulting companies have lobbied for free flow of cheap labor under the guise of innovation. There are no board certifications, no licensing exams, and no restrictions on supply. This is why software salaries have been artificially suppressed for two decades.
> Doctors vs Software Engineers are very interesting case studies in my eyes.
Actually, this is a great example. By restricting medical professionals, medical wages went high. Great for them!
But for the rest of America, this SUCKS. Medical expenses are through the roof, care cannot be had without selling all your money and often, specialist shortages mean appointments can be had only 3 months later. The lack of liquidity of healthcare professionals has made American healthcare the WORST in the developed world.
And this is in cities. Healthcare in rural America is pathetic.
Thanks for bringing to the fore how America has forever destroyed lives for the rest by trying to advantage the few.
Oddly, many of those immigrant healthcare professionals who put in the time to complete residency, get certified and take up jobs in under-served rural areas are on H1B visas.
The AMA doesn't institute caps though they may have lobbied for one in the past (which I kind of doubt) - the Federal Government has the cap via the GME program at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Residents are expensive to host and Medicare pays something like $10B/year to train new physicians. Congress could increase that amount tomorrow if they felt like it.
Medical professions are physically constrained, easier to lobby and limit supply.
Software development is not as physically constrained, any moves to restrict supply will automatically lead to offshoring similar to manufacturing.
Licensing does not limit offshoring. Accounting is the best example of this. There are many licensed CFAs in India and Philippines doing outsourced accounting work.
Wait you were ecstatic because it would supposedly reduce competition. It’s been pointed out to you that it won’t, but you’re fine with it because... for some other reason? What is it, then?
Furthermore, downloading the Ethereum Blockchain, going through shady exchanges to buy ether coins, and maintaining a secure wallet is a much bigger headache than simply paying for Amazon Prime.
This is a nice tech demo but not of any practical significance.
That’s like someone in the 90s saying paying for an internet connection, getting an email address and signing up for YouTube is too much of a headache than turning on the TV.
Besides, you can earn currency from just seeding the torrent- presumably there would be a way to download some initial torrents for free and then you can contribute to the network directly without needing to get a wallet or set anything up.
It’s on the web as well, so it could be as seamless as YouTube, only you’d have a small currency counter that goes up if you leave the tab open, and you can either spend that currency by downloading or withdraw it by selling it to other users who would rather pay than seed.
Cryptocurrency doesn’t look good when it is inevitably compared with the early days of the web. The internet got rapidly better each year, whereas crypto has been around for years without any real improvements, in usability, safety, or efficiency.
I don't know what you mean. Maybe you just don't pay attention?
A few years ago transactions were limited to 15 transactions per second, today there are multiple ways to achieve thousands of transactions per second[1]. A few years ago privacy didn't exist and now there are multiple ways to achieve privacy [2][3]. A few years ago end users had to remember long complicated strings to send a transfer or to restore their wallets and now there are easy ways to transfer to human readable names [4] and social wallet recovery [5] if you lose your funds or make a mistake. Argent alone is a huge increase in usability for end users.
There are more but if you even look at these metrics then things are improving at a great clip. Faster than the early web even.
Software libraries, APIs, tools, dependencies have exploded exponentially since the early days of C language and a handful of Berkley/Bell libraries. I often use a dozen different things for my projects and the next project invariable needs a different roster.
Thus I want to voice my contrary opinion that it is okay to "consume" and not "create" for non-core parts of your project. Need to do dump an arcane data structure to a remote logging tool? Go ahead and copy paste that StackExchange snippet kings!
Some sincere feedback: LVT sounds a cooky concept that might solve inherited / ossified land ownership problem in the UK, but it seems to have little relevance to the USA. Land is plentiful here.
LVT might also reward families with liquid assets, while burdening lower-income families whose main asset is their house.
I read through the entire pitch and I still don't understand what is special about Polar. There are a ton of apps that do all this and more in no particular order:
1) Xodo Reader
2) Liquid Text
3) Margin Notes 3 (AWESOME)
4) KOReader (Open source)
And several dozen more...
