10 ms·

Ask HN: Solo founders, what do you struggle with the most?

68 points by pixelfeeder 10y ago

malux85 10y ago
Keeping up with demand, though automation is helping a lot. Time wasters - people who want endless meetings and never commit. Having Tech partners is helping with this a lot though
- pixelfeeder 10y ago
  Are you providing a service or selling a product?
  - malux85 10y ago
    Both https://signalbox.ai/ https://signalbox.ai/
    - setgree 10y ago
      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?
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  +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.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    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.
- codegeek 10y ago
  "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.
  - malux85 10y ago
    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 :)
    - codegeek 10y ago
      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).
  - rorykoehler 10y ago
    One way to deal with this is to charge for the demo and then knock the charge off the purchase price once they commit
colinbartlett 10y ago
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.
- tyingq 10y ago
  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.
  - swalsh 10y ago
    There's a million of them, the problem is I usually can't afford them :(
    - tyingq 10y ago
      The ones I'm familiar with have issues with: - 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.
tyingq 10y ago
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.
- tluyben2 10y ago
  This. Many times over. I never learn. You (the reader) should, but it is hard; where do they stop liking me and where am I being screwed?
  - corysama 10y ago
    "The Power of a Positive No" http://www.williamury.com/books/the-power-of-a-positive-no/ http://www.williamury.com/books/the-power-of-a-positive-no/ They should cover that book in software engineering classes. It's a great way to deal with overwhelming floods of feature requests.
- BillinghamJ 10y ago
  Saying no to meeting requests also! Though this is not solo-specific.
- stagbeetle 10y ago
  Aren't you leaving money on the table? Depending on how expensive your service is, bespoke could be a nice "extra."
  - mdekkers 10y ago
    Aren't you leaving money on the table? Not all money is worth it. My life improved significantly about 12 years ago, when I learned how to fire customers.
  - 10y ago
crablar 10y ago
Hearing other solo founders complain. 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.
CryoLogic 10y ago
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.
bshimmin 10y ago
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.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Why not hire a remote "secretary" to take care of this for you?
  - bshimmin 10y ago
    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!
    - curiousphil 10y ago
      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. Edit: Adding URL! https://www.intelligentoffice.com https://www.intelligentoffice.com
dbla 10y ago
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.
elijahparker 10y ago
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.
- tyingq 10y ago
  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..
- eappleby 10y ago
  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.
- dgudkov 10y ago
  Having an online community forum greatly helps with support. We're using Discourse (https://discourse.org https://discourse.org) and it's wonderful (no affiliation with it).
swalsh 10y ago
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.
- j45 10y ago
  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.
- tyingq 10y ago
  Is there any product that might be complementary to yours, but not competitive? Maybe you could approach someone that already sells well, to cross sell your product?
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Are there any resources you've found helpful to get better at sales?
  - swalsh 10y ago
    I'm not an expert :D 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.
bambax 10y ago
Marketing.
GBiT 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ofek 10y ago
  https://stripe.com/subscriptions https://stripe.com/subscriptions
matwood 10y ago
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.
- lazypenguin 10y ago
  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".
dgudkov 10y ago
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.
- infinite8s 10y ago
  Any tips on how did you find product/market fit? EasyMorph looks like a really nice product!
homakov 10y ago
Marketing. Having a fresh look from outside. Not knowing anything except how to build the product.
epynonymous 10y ago
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. my project is here: https://madsportslab.com https://madsportslab.com
p0nce 10y ago
Reaching niche users in a cost-effective way.
- scardine 10y ago
  The secret is specialization. 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 https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier 2) The Single Founder Handbook (not free but worth it) http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/ http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/ 3) The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (read for free online) http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/ http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/
  - p0nce 10y ago
    Thanks for recommendations. Are your clients consumers or businesses though?
    - scardine 10y ago
      Businesses.
MattyMc 10y ago
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.
miiiiiike 10y ago
I actually love being a solo founder. 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.
- it_learnses 10y ago
  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.
  - miiiiiike 10y ago
    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?"
netman21 10y ago
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.
- curiousphil 10y ago
  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.
god_bless_texas 10y ago
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.
jeffy 10y ago
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.
- juancampa 10y ago
  > 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
codegeek 10y ago
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.
louprado 10y ago
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.
bsvalley 10y ago
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.
simonebrunozzi 10y ago
I will quit my job in a few days. 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.
- williamstein 10y ago
  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.
TechHawk 10y ago
Fear of vulnerability, my term for perfectionism. While external things like marketing and invoicing can be a challenge, the biggest challenge is, and always will be, your view of yourself and the world. This is were success and failure ultimately come from.
jcslzr 10y ago
its ironic that most of the problems are related with too much demand, my biggest problem has always been customers, I have never started something where my problems were too much customers, I guess I have to get better at picking what to do

68 points by pixelfeeder 10y ago

Keeping up with demand, though automation is helping a lot. Time wasters - people who want endless meetings and never commit. Having Tech partners is helping with this a lot though

pixelfeeder 10y ago
Are you providing a service or selling a product?
- malux85 10y ago
  Both https://signalbox.ai/ https://signalbox.ai/
  - setgree 10y ago
    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?
PaulHoule 10y ago
+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.
- ams6110 10y ago
  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.
codegeek 10y ago
"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.
- malux85 10y ago
  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 :)
  - codegeek 10y ago
    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).
- rorykoehler 10y ago
  One way to deal with this is to charge for the demo and then knock the charge off the purchase price once they commit

colinbartlett 10y ago

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.

tyingq 10y ago
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.
- swalsh 10y ago
  There's a million of them, the problem is I usually can't afford them :(
  - tyingq 10y ago
    The ones I'm familiar with have issues with: - 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.

tyingq 10y ago

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.

tluyben2 10y ago
This. Many times over. I never learn. You (the reader) should, but it is hard; where do they stop liking me and where am I being screwed?
- corysama 10y ago
  "The Power of a Positive No" http://www.williamury.com/books/the-power-of-a-positive-no/ http://www.williamury.com/books/the-power-of-a-positive-no/ They should cover that book in software engineering classes. It's a great way to deal with overwhelming floods of feature requests.
BillinghamJ 10y ago
Saying no to meeting requests also! Though this is not solo-specific.
stagbeetle 10y ago
Aren't you leaving money on the table? Depending on how expensive your service is, bespoke could be a nice "extra."
- mdekkers 10y ago
  Aren't you leaving money on the table? Not all money is worth it. My life improved significantly about 12 years ago, when I learned how to fire customers.
- 10y ago

crablar 10y ago

Hearing other solo founders complain. 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.

CryoLogic 10y ago

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.

bshimmin 10y ago

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.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Why not hire a remote "secretary" to take care of this for you?
- bshimmin 10y ago
  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!
  - curiousphil 10y ago
    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. Edit: Adding URL! https://www.intelligentoffice.com https://www.intelligentoffice.com

dbla 10y ago

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.

elijahparker 10y ago

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.

tyingq 10y ago
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..
eappleby 10y ago
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.
dgudkov 10y ago
Having an online community forum greatly helps with support. We're using Discourse (https://discourse.org https://discourse.org) and it's wonderful (no affiliation with it).

swalsh 10y ago

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.

j45 10y ago
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.
tyingq 10y ago
Is there any product that might be complementary to yours, but not competitive? Maybe you could approach someone that already sells well, to cross sell your product?
ajmurmann 10y ago
Are there any resources you've found helpful to get better at sales?
- swalsh 10y ago
  I'm not an expert :D 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.

bambax 10y ago

Marketing.

GBiT 10y ago

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.

deleted 10y ago
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ofek 10y ago
https://stripe.com/subscriptions https://stripe.com/subscriptions

matwood 10y ago

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.

lazypenguin 10y ago
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".

dgudkov 10y ago

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.

infinite8s 10y ago
Any tips on how did you find product/market fit? EasyMorph looks like a really nice product!

homakov 10y ago

Marketing. Having a fresh look from outside. Not knowing anything except how to build the product.

epynonymous 10y ago

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. my project is here: https://madsportslab.com https://madsportslab.com

p0nce 10y ago

Reaching niche users in a cost-effective way.

scardine 10y ago
The secret is specialization. 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 https://www.freshbooks.com/ebooks/breaking-the-time-barrier 2) The Single Founder Handbook (not free but worth it) http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/ http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/ 3) The Win Without Pitching Manifesto (read for free online) http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/ http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/the-manifesto/
- p0nce 10y ago
  Thanks for recommendations. Are your clients consumers or businesses though?
  - scardine 10y ago
    Businesses.

MattyMc 10y ago

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.

miiiiiike 10y ago

I actually love being a solo founder. 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.

it_learnses 10y ago
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.
- miiiiiike 10y ago
  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?"

netman21 10y ago

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.

curiousphil 10y ago
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.

god_bless_texas 10y ago

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.

jeffy 10y ago

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.

juancampa 10y ago
> 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

codegeek 10y ago

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.

louprado 10y ago

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.

bsvalley 10y ago

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.

simonebrunozzi 10y ago

I will quit my job in a few days. 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.

williamstein 10y ago
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.

TechHawk 10y ago

Fear of vulnerability, my term for perfectionism. While external things like marketing and invoicing can be a challenge, the biggest challenge is, and always will be, your view of yourself and the world. This is were success and failure ultimately come from.

jcslzr 10y ago

its ironic that most of the problems are related with too much demand, my biggest problem has always been customers, I have never started something where my problems were too much customers, I guess I have to get better at picking what to do