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Ask HN: When / how did you untangle personal accounts of the tech founder?
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.
- primitivesuave 10y agoI 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 10y agoThat 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.