4 ms·
Ask HN: What's the largest business you know of run by a single founder
I'm trying to understand how big solo founder companies can get before they take on other staff. Is there a ceiling? What are the challenges?
As a reference, I run https://doarama.com and looking for comparisons.
- f_allwein 10y agoCraigslist has 30 people now according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist , but was run by only the founder for a while (unclear in the Wikipedia page)
- kohanz 10y agoPlentyOfFish is probably one of the biggest when it was run by its founder.
- crispytx 10y agoReally good article on Markus Frind of POF: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped-plentyoffish-and-sold-it-for-575-million-2015-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/how-markus-frind-bootstrapped...
- ddorian43 10y agoAnother good article http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture
- davismwfl 10y agowhat is the size you are wanting to understanding? Revenue? Cost? Net? Revenue is easily above the low 7 digits, Net is above the low 7 digits. Essentially the ceiling is not artificially limited, your abilities though are.
- pedalpete 10y agoMy abilities are artificially limited? I'm not sure I understand that. I purposefully didn't select a metric. Was going much more for what the community judged. Could be users, rev, scale of impact (however that would be defined). I'll have to look at the stats on each of the responses to see what kind of numbers craigslist, and pof had while the founders were still going it solo.
- davismwfl 10y agoPoor choice of word on my part. That wasn't a dig on you, just that as a solo founder before taking on staff there is a limit to how much you can accomplish. Your ability to produce is limited by the number of hours you can work. The revenue and income is limited by whom you are selling to. The more clients you sell too the less likely you can scale before taking on staff. So typically you'd have fewer clients at higher revenue per client. Which also has its own issues. In general, and in my opinion you wind up hiring staff for almost any business once you cross $500k/yr run rate or you have more then 5-10 active clients/projects that require weekly touches. The level and details of what that staff is and the cost varies greatly. That said there are solo founders generating more.
- shaunpud 10y agoMaybe BuiltWith? http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-of-australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/ http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one...
- pedalpete 10y agoGreat one. I'm in Oz too, so may reach out. Thanks.
- Sandel 10y agoI know of a guy that sells some windows libs and has a turnover of about 1 million per year. He runs this alone and also has some 3 months of holiday per year.
- soulchild37 10y agohttps://pinboard.in https://pinboard.in , his income from just pinboard makes him live comfortably in Bay Area