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Ask HN: When / how did you untangle personal accounts of the tech founder?

9 points by jaxn ↗ HN
My current venture started as a personal project. That means that all of the passwords are tied to me personally. This means the domains are in my personal registration account, the code is a private project under my github user, the 3rd party APIs we use are tied to my personal developer account, etc.

As I am looking to grow from using occasional contractors to building a tech team, it is probably time to start untangling all of that. I assume this is fairly common among HNers.

So, when did you untangle the mess of accounts? How did you do it? Did you create a tech@domain.com email for all of the account logins, use a different email per service? Store API keys in something like LastPass or a secure Evernote folder?

Or did you just leave it alone? It is my company and I don't have outside investors, so I don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon.

2 comments

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primitivesuave
I prefer to use external SaaS that allows multiple members of a team to login independently, so we don't have to worry about sharing a single username/password. For things like SSH keys and GitHub repositories, we pay for private organization repos that are shared with the team. API keys, passwords, etc are stored in a private GitHub repository that is only accessible to myself.

One interesting aside to your query is "what happens if I get hit by a bus tomorrow?" That is, will the startup cease without its CTO? My solution has been to keep a handwritten password in a safe in my house, and provided an extra key to a trusted third party (my parents). So if worst comes to worst, my legacy will not end when its domain needs to be renewed.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

jaxn
That really does help. I am using private repos now and will shift them to an organization. However, I had not thought of storing password and keys in a repo. The sharing doesn't seem very granular, but it makes it easy to document and store the history.

I like the safe idea too.

Very helpful comment.