Malux85, this is a really cool idea and I just bookmarked it, I'd love to give it a test spin. Only feedback so far is that I had trouble remembering the name...do you have a mnemonic device or something like that to help folks keep it in mind?
+1 on the time wasters. Real sales do often take multiple calls, but it can go overboard. You only want to talk to busy people, so you have to qualify people.
You also need to be sure you're talking to someone who is a decision maker. You can waste a lot of time talking to people who seem very interested in your product but ultimately are not the decision makers on buying.
"People who want endless meetings and never commit"
This is definitely a big issue being solo. Funny thing is that most of these folks who want endless demos and meetings are the ones whose signup rate is lower in my experience.
Yeah agreed - from what I've found if somebody isn't willing to commit after 2 meetings, then it's not gonna happen. I always leave the door open and keep things positive though, sometimes they come back :)
exactly right. 2 times is my ceiling as well. I actually have a guy who still emails us after 2 years asking if we have added any "new features". But he wouldn't just sign up and try it out, lol. But you are right. Always be polite and leave the door open for anyone. Unless they are rude to you. Those types, I tell them to f' off (not literally though).
Definitely marketing. Even though my product is targeted at people just like me - software engineers, start ups, dev ops, etc.... I still have no idea how to reach those people, how to market to them, how to promote my product.
Sounds like there's a start up idea in there somewhere for a controlled, non-sleazy, affiliate marketing service. Some way to connect tech-heavy/marketing-light founders with freelance people that can sell.
- control/visibility: being able to select who does the selling, seeing their track record first, ability to stop misleading ads, etc
- niche expertise: Lots of people can sell consumer oriented widgets. Harder to find a service that can sell to a specific niche (small retail businesses, developers, etc)
- a straightforward interface. Something maybe like toptal.com, but for salespeople.
Saying no to customers. I finally figured out that being more militant about per-customer customization was better in the long run. We have A, B, and C now. If none of them work for you, then here's a list of my competitors that can do bespoke work for you.
Of course, that's only good advice for specific situations. In my case, I'm small, not interested in rapid growth, and am focused on being low risk. I won't be rich anytime soon, but this approach keeps the hours down, and still maintains enough revenue to live like I want to.
In my case, yes, I'm leaving money on the table. The bespoke work isn't compatible with the "Solo founders" bit.
I could take on debt, hire, and do it. There's money there. Because of the customization though, the margins are lower. Exactly how much lower, I don't really know.
If you work in technology and are lucky enough to find yourself in a position where you can actually start a company you are on permanent vacation compared to most of the world.
As someone building a highly technical distributed platform, I have found that the amount of time put into engineering prevents me from dedicating large sums of time to marketing and other efforts.
Typical run of the mill "hackathon" style startups that can be built in a week or two will have different issues.
Invoicing. I sell a product that customers use on many of their own projects, and each project of theirs means one invoice for me. I can solve some of this with automation, and I will get around to doing this, but it will remain hard to keep on top of even then because the nature of the thing I'm selling relies on the customer to validate that the tally is correct before I send the invoice.
(I also have the opposite problem when the customers actually pay, because they often batch many invoices together into one payment, which makes reconciliation surprisingly difficult. I wrote a little script in Python to make that easier - sort of along the lines of "Given this total, which of these invoices could potentially satisfy it?" - but it's still frustrating.)
If the business continues to grow, I anticipate hiring someone to take care of this aspect for me in its entirety, because it's demonstrably a poor usage of my time, and I derive zero pleasure from it.
Yes, I've sort of half-heartedly considered this, without really exploring the idea very fully. Can you - or anyone else - recommend such a service? All they would really need to do is reach out to customers to check tallies on their projects and to see if they're finished, and then to generate invoices for said projects if they are. I guess this really isn't a difficult task!
My company recently signed up with Intelligent Office to handle our phones. It's been over a month now and we are really pleased with their service. They are pretty flexible on what they will/can handle. I believe they are franchised and we are using the Boise, ID franchise which is the next town over from us. It's always the same three girls that answer the phones for us and they do a great job of sounding like they are right in our office. They even joined one of our Slack channels so they can check in on who is available and such for incoming calls. When I went to meet them before signing up they told me they also handle customer returns for a high end mobile phone case company out of California, so I have no doubt you could train them on your invoicing process.
>(I also have the opposite problem when the customers actually pay, because they often batch many invoices together into one payment, which makes reconciliation surprisingly difficult. I wrote a little script in Python to make that easier - sort of along the lines of "Given this total, which of these invoices could potentially satisfy it?" - but it's still frustrating.)
Why not have accounts with client codes? Instruct clients to put their client codes in the narration(they won't always, but most will put something identifying themselves).
Instead of reconciling individual invoices, just sum the invoices of a particular client. If there's still an amount owing, it's for the most recent invoice(s).
I think many of these problems are general start-up problems. I've tried to start several companies as a solo founder and the unique challenge to going it alone that I've found is dealing with the ups and downs. When you have another partner you get some natural balance. Someone to pump you up when things aren't going well and someone to set realistic expectations when you think nothing could go wrong.
Support & email. It's hard for me to switch modes between writing code and answering email. My solution is to do just one or the other for a day at time to avoid too much loss in efficiency for either.
I have this problem too. Is there an affordable service that just does email triage...answering simple stuff from a FAQ/Knowledge Base, and escalating the real stuff to a simple ticket system? Something that works for a very small operation..
I write code on weekends and after-hours. I've found that in order to build trust with clients and stay on top of new opportunities, I need to be responsive to emails. Product development is a little slower, but since I coded the entire platform, it takes relatively little time to roll out updates. As for work/life balance, I work from home with my wife and daughters and regularly take off an hour here or there. Not for everyone, but this works for me.
Having an online community forum greatly helps with support. We're using Discourse (https://discourse.org) and it's wonderful (no affiliation with it).
I just quit my job to start a company. #1 problem is sales.
Seriously, I knew marketing would be important, and sales would be important when I started this thing... but I really didn't realize that when I quit, what I actually was doing was making a job change from "really pretty good engineer to full time sales guy".
I'm trying to do b2b software, which has a much different buying process. It's been quite a learning process, I've had to learn how to prospect, how to cold call (cold calling is frightening if you're an introverted engineer!!) how to actually drill into peoples pain points, how to avoid objection handling, how to find the decision makers. It's not easy.
As a senior engineer, i'd never had partner up with a junior sales guy, but for some reason I thought learning it myself was a good idea.
Sales is a really good skill to learn. The health of a business is directly measurable by the rate at which it is gaining new customers. That kind of direct feedback into your development efforts is incredibly valuable. When the going gets tough, I try to remind myself that it's likely easier for a technical person to learn sales, than for a salesperson to learn tech.
but what seems to be working for me, taking a lot of notes, looking back at failures for where I can learn. I try to do research on the prospect before I call. I think honestly trying to help the customer (and not just sell your solution) is important too.
There's no replacement for practice... but in terms of books. "Spin Selling" by Neil Rackham was pretty good, and Dale Carnegies "How to win friends and Influence people" is a staple everyone should read.
Have you already created a product? I am also deciding whether to quit and work on my product full-time, or work on in part-time. I find I don't have a lot of motivation and energy to work on it in the evenings after coding all day. At this rate I might never finish. Any suggestions?
We have a huge problem with invoicing. We have this problem right now for like 2 years and it struggles us to scale. We sell services. We have about 40 of them and with every customer we sign agreement with different pricing on same services, due to B2B nature. We have some recurring services and some additional depending on usage. It is hard to write invoices every month for us, because we can't find right billing solution.
We are looking for something like this: Then we sign agreement with customer, we create template/profile with prices and services on billing system. Then we provide services, we just add/register quantity to that template/profile. At the end of month system writes invoice with recurring service and added additional not recurring services to invoice. It means one invoice for recurring and not recurring services.
A lot of people are saying sales, but the meta problem as a solo founder is if you're not working nothing is happening. Even just one other person lets one of you do sales, and the product keeps getting built.
This is an underrated comment -- it's a silent stressor. Need to take the day off for personal reasons? Company grinds to an absolute halt. Therefore, any moment you're not working becomes a stressful period of - "I should be working".
I can't say that I struggle with something because I'm a solo founder. Just regular company lifecycle challenges. Year ago it was product/market fit. Now it's marketing.
my biggest problem with being a solo founder is being able to bounce ideas off others. Obviously I talk to my friends and family, but it's a different ball game because they're not really immersed in this as I am, so the advice is usually too generic. I need someone to keep me honest and bat ideas around back and forth with who have full context and passion.
One beginner mistake I did was positioning myself as a generalist. I reluctantly started to accept the advice of positioning myself as a specialist a couple years ago and now I want to go back in time and punch the former me in the face. It really works: it is easier to find work and I get better clients.
Last year was my best income ever despite the crisis in Brazil.
Allocating time between sales activities and product development to optimize growth and retention.
I've brought on some part-time help for the sales end, but ultimately the difficult factors to balance are:
- My desire to grow as quickly as possible.
- I'd like to retain all of my clients.
- I want to have a very high client satisfaction.
We have had a few complaints/suggestions from our user base, and like all of you we have had some feature requests. These need to be addressed, but it's also a solid MVP and very sellable. Determining whether and how to invest my time in product vs growth is an ongoing challenge.
I've worked with friends and strangers as co-founders. Even if you set the bar for a successful collaboration suuuuuuper low, you're going to be surprised by how many people will just flat out trip over it.
If I need help with something, as a solo founder, I pay a professional to come in and take care of it. They either do a good job or they don't. If they do, I call them again for the next job. If they don't, I make sure that I pay their invoice as soon as I receive it and move on to the next person.
Co-founders are way more complicated.
Most people who haven't started/grown a project before only have a vague sense about what starting a company means. Most can't seem to get beyond the fantasy of "not having a boss" while others may prioritize their own short-term gains over the potential long-term payoffs for the group/company if the opportunity presents itself.
As a solo founder I'm committed and I have a vested interest in the success of my company. If I have co-founders they may or may not be as invested as me or our incentives may not be perfectly aligned. Massive issues.
If you have the perfect friends to start a company with that's great! Do that! If you don't, don't stress out too much about being solo or try to turn someone into a co-founder that you shouldn't.
Hi there, I need some advice please. How do you find professionals? I am not very good at front-end design, so would much rather hire someone on contract, but I am not sure how to go about finding someone reliable, who will do a decent job.
I usually ask someone who does what I need done really well (someone that I know I can't afford) for a reference: "J, who's the best most reliable person that I can afford?"
Taxes are by far the biggest problem. It is so hard to set aside 33% of every dollar taken in and send it off to the IRS every quarter. Every month you must decide between paying the mortgage or paying the IRS. Once you fall behind penalties and interest just pile up. Eventually there are liens on your house so you cannot even refinance. The more you make the more you owe.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you only pay taxes on profits right? Hopefully you are maximizing the amount of your mortgage that you can write off assuming you work out of your home.
I'm not a solo founder now, but I have been twice before. Unless you're really good at getting into a network of people who are entrepreneurial, it's tough to get good constructive debate around a feature or even your project in general. Cofounders bring the luxury of debate so that hopefully you waste less time.
Isolation: It's hard not being around others from a social perspective. When you have no coworkers to vent to, celebrate with, or collaborate with, you get higher highs and lower lows since everything is internal.
Accountability: You're the boss and the employee, it can be really difficult to force your 'boss' self to do things your 'employee' self doesn't want to do (eg support, sales, refactoring, etc)
Sales: This has already been mentioned, but the hardest part for me is that you need to be pretty passionate about it to be successful.
Problem Solving: Sometimes you just cant "get" something, and talking through the problem aloud to someone can give you new ideas/solutions you hadn't even considered. You don't know what you don't know.
> and talking through the problem aloud to someone can give you new ideas/solutions you hadn't even considered
I have found that you can also do this by talking out loud as if you were talking to someone. You won't get the other person's perspective but for some reason your brain becomes more critical of its own thoughts
Other than the usual stuff people already mentioned, one of my issues has been the ability to switch off. I know that the idea of doing your own thing is to give you control over how you spend your time but boy I was wrong (being a solo founder).
Sure, you can automate the hell out of things. But when that email from a client comes (which it will), you have to decide what to do.
Honestly, being solo is great only if you intend to build a business that is almost 100% automated but I am realizing there is no such thing.
Of course, I would not give this up for anything else because I love being in charge of my own stuff but that also means I have to always be switched on.
Once you have sales and moderate growth you may lose the courage to continue growing and improving the company. Every decision has downside risk and the effort required keeps growing with each milestone. Without a co-founder or investors for motivation, it is easy to spend your time working like a low-level employee instead of a leader.
Knowing your goals and then spending time every day on the highest value, highest impact tasks is the job of a founder. This sentiment is captured in Brian Tracy's audiobook "Eat that Frog" which I highly recommend.
Everything - since you have to cut corners and can't be involved %100 into each and every single task, you have to work extremely fast in order to make it look like it's moving slow. And of course you can't go faster than slow.
There are two opportunities I am pursuing. One is to be a CTO in a nascent startup foundry; I would be co-founding, in a way, but there is one main person leading the initiative and therefore it wouldn't be a "solo founder" type of thing. It might happen. I am not going to talk about this one now.
The second opportunity/idea, however, is something I would do by myself for now, as a solo founder. It is about solving the problems that current cities have, by eventually being able to build a new city in a better way. Yes: taking a piece of land, and building a new city there, from scratch. Hopefully not too far away from existing hospitals, airports, schools, but far away enough that there is a lot of room to build new stuff. I would like this place to be sustainable, affordable, and a great place to live.
Every time I say this, I realize how nearly impossible this sounds. I have read a ton, wrote a ton, studied a ton, and spoke to several people, some of which could be good co-founding candidates, but none of which has shown interest in joining me as a founder.
I feel that the problem is evident, and I see a few serious "struggles" for me right now:
1) I am alone. Nobody to share the burden with. Being a solo founder, being alone feels harder, because you regularly have "down" moments and nobody is there to cheer you up.
2) The task feels unsurmountable. I fully realize how difficult it is to "eventually" build a new city; there are so many barriers, so many delays, so many friction points.
It still feels unsormountable, despite there seem to be a huge market for a radical new way to "interpret" city living, both for existing cities, and for new ones. There's going to be 60 million more "citizens" in the US in the coming decades, which means "demand" for new places to live (either in existing cities, or new ones) is strong. Worldwide that number is 1.5B more people living in cities by 2030 (or 2035?).
3) I am working on an idea that has is massively capital intensive - and I am not a billionaire. Convincing people to invest in this is going to be insanely hard.
4) Last, but not least, personal life is not too easy at the moment; I have no really hard issue to handle, but I am not the happiest guy on Earth either.
I could go on forever, but... I feel this is enough color to give you an idea.
Just to encourage you, starting a new city that survives shouldn't seem impossible because it has literally been done successfully tens of thousands of times: every town on the map is a working example to prove it.
71 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 210 ms ] threadTime wasters - people who want endless meetings and never commit. Having Tech partners is helping with this a lot though
This is definitely a big issue being solo. Funny thing is that most of these folks who want endless demos and meetings are the ones whose signup rate is lower in my experience.
- control/visibility: being able to select who does the selling, seeing their track record first, ability to stop misleading ads, etc
- niche expertise: Lots of people can sell consumer oriented widgets. Harder to find a service that can sell to a specific niche (small retail businesses, developers, etc)
- a straightforward interface. Something maybe like toptal.com, but for salespeople.
Of course, that's only good advice for specific situations. In my case, I'm small, not interested in rapid growth, and am focused on being low risk. I won't be rich anytime soon, but this approach keeps the hours down, and still maintains enough revenue to live like I want to.
They should cover that book in software engineering classes. It's a great way to deal with overwhelming floods of feature requests.
Depending on how expensive your service is, bespoke could be a nice "extra."
Not all money is worth it. My life improved significantly about 12 years ago, when I learned how to fire customers.
I could take on debt, hire, and do it. There's money there. Because of the customization though, the margins are lower. Exactly how much lower, I don't really know.
I'm not currently willing to take the risk.
If you work in technology and are lucky enough to find yourself in a position where you can actually start a company you are on permanent vacation compared to most of the world.
Typical run of the mill "hackathon" style startups that can be built in a week or two will have different issues.
(I also have the opposite problem when the customers actually pay, because they often batch many invoices together into one payment, which makes reconciliation surprisingly difficult. I wrote a little script in Python to make that easier - sort of along the lines of "Given this total, which of these invoices could potentially satisfy it?" - but it's still frustrating.)
If the business continues to grow, I anticipate hiring someone to take care of this aspect for me in its entirety, because it's demonstrably a poor usage of my time, and I derive zero pleasure from it.
Edit: Adding URL! https://www.intelligentoffice.com
Why not have accounts with client codes? Instruct clients to put their client codes in the narration(they won't always, but most will put something identifying themselves).
Instead of reconciling individual invoices, just sum the invoices of a particular client. If there's still an amount owing, it's for the most recent invoice(s).
Seriously, I knew marketing would be important, and sales would be important when I started this thing... but I really didn't realize that when I quit, what I actually was doing was making a job change from "really pretty good engineer to full time sales guy".
I'm trying to do b2b software, which has a much different buying process. It's been quite a learning process, I've had to learn how to prospect, how to cold call (cold calling is frightening if you're an introverted engineer!!) how to actually drill into peoples pain points, how to avoid objection handling, how to find the decision makers. It's not easy.
As a senior engineer, i'd never had partner up with a junior sales guy, but for some reason I thought learning it myself was a good idea.
Maybe you could approach someone that already sells well, to cross sell your product?
but what seems to be working for me, taking a lot of notes, looking back at failures for where I can learn. I try to do research on the prospect before I call. I think honestly trying to help the customer (and not just sell your solution) is important too.
There's no replacement for practice... but in terms of books. "Spin Selling" by Neil Rackham was pretty good, and Dale Carnegies "How to win friends and Influence people" is a staple everyone should read.
We are looking for something like this: Then we sign agreement with customer, we create template/profile with prices and services on billing system. Then we provide services, we just add/register quantity to that template/profile. At the end of month system writes invoice with recurring service and added additional not recurring services to invoice. It means one invoice for recurring and not recurring services.
my project is here:
https://madsportslab.com
One beginner mistake I did was positioning myself as a generalist. I reluctantly started to accept the advice of positioning myself as a specialist a couple years ago and now I want to go back in time and punch the former me in the face. It really works: it is easier to find work and I get better clients.
Last year was my best income ever despite the crisis in Brazil.
Reading list:
1) Breaking the Time Barrier (free ebook) https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier
2) The Single Founder Handbook (not free but worth it) http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/
3) The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (read for free online) http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/
I've brought on some part-time help for the sales end, but ultimately the difficult factors to balance are:
We have had a few complaints/suggestions from our user base, and like all of you we have had some feature requests. These need to be addressed, but it's also a solid MVP and very sellable. Determining whether and how to invest my time in product vs growth is an ongoing challenge.I've worked with friends and strangers as co-founders. Even if you set the bar for a successful collaboration suuuuuuper low, you're going to be surprised by how many people will just flat out trip over it.
If I need help with something, as a solo founder, I pay a professional to come in and take care of it. They either do a good job or they don't. If they do, I call them again for the next job. If they don't, I make sure that I pay their invoice as soon as I receive it and move on to the next person.
Co-founders are way more complicated.
Most people who haven't started/grown a project before only have a vague sense about what starting a company means. Most can't seem to get beyond the fantasy of "not having a boss" while others may prioritize their own short-term gains over the potential long-term payoffs for the group/company if the opportunity presents itself.
As a solo founder I'm committed and I have a vested interest in the success of my company. If I have co-founders they may or may not be as invested as me or our incentives may not be perfectly aligned. Massive issues.
If you have the perfect friends to start a company with that's great! Do that! If you don't, don't stress out too much about being solo or try to turn someone into a co-founder that you shouldn't.
Just get your thing working.
Accountability: You're the boss and the employee, it can be really difficult to force your 'boss' self to do things your 'employee' self doesn't want to do (eg support, sales, refactoring, etc)
Sales: This has already been mentioned, but the hardest part for me is that you need to be pretty passionate about it to be successful.
Problem Solving: Sometimes you just cant "get" something, and talking through the problem aloud to someone can give you new ideas/solutions you hadn't even considered. You don't know what you don't know.
I have found that you can also do this by talking out loud as if you were talking to someone. You won't get the other person's perspective but for some reason your brain becomes more critical of its own thoughts
Sure, you can automate the hell out of things. But when that email from a client comes (which it will), you have to decide what to do.
Honestly, being solo is great only if you intend to build a business that is almost 100% automated but I am realizing there is no such thing.
Of course, I would not give this up for anything else because I love being in charge of my own stuff but that also means I have to always be switched on.
Knowing your goals and then spending time every day on the highest value, highest impact tasks is the job of a founder. This sentiment is captured in Brian Tracy's audiobook "Eat that Frog" which I highly recommend.
There are two opportunities I am pursuing. One is to be a CTO in a nascent startup foundry; I would be co-founding, in a way, but there is one main person leading the initiative and therefore it wouldn't be a "solo founder" type of thing. It might happen. I am not going to talk about this one now.
The second opportunity/idea, however, is something I would do by myself for now, as a solo founder. It is about solving the problems that current cities have, by eventually being able to build a new city in a better way. Yes: taking a piece of land, and building a new city there, from scratch. Hopefully not too far away from existing hospitals, airports, schools, but far away enough that there is a lot of room to build new stuff. I would like this place to be sustainable, affordable, and a great place to live.
Every time I say this, I realize how nearly impossible this sounds. I have read a ton, wrote a ton, studied a ton, and spoke to several people, some of which could be good co-founding candidates, but none of which has shown interest in joining me as a founder.
I feel that the problem is evident, and I see a few serious "struggles" for me right now:
1) I am alone. Nobody to share the burden with. Being a solo founder, being alone feels harder, because you regularly have "down" moments and nobody is there to cheer you up.
2) The task feels unsurmountable. I fully realize how difficult it is to "eventually" build a new city; there are so many barriers, so many delays, so many friction points.
It still feels unsormountable, despite there seem to be a huge market for a radical new way to "interpret" city living, both for existing cities, and for new ones. There's going to be 60 million more "citizens" in the US in the coming decades, which means "demand" for new places to live (either in existing cities, or new ones) is strong. Worldwide that number is 1.5B more people living in cities by 2030 (or 2035?).
3) I am working on an idea that has is massively capital intensive - and I am not a billionaire. Convincing people to invest in this is going to be insanely hard.
4) Last, but not least, personal life is not too easy at the moment; I have no really hard issue to handle, but I am not the happiest guy on Earth either.
I could go on forever, but... I feel this is enough color to give you an idea.