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I run three companies. - A solo, bootstrapped B2B SaaS - A bootstrapped B2B2C SaaS with one co-founder - A VC-funded B2B SaaS with two co-founders My solo p

I run three companies. - A solo, bootstrapped B2B SaaS - A bootstrapped B2B2C SaaS with one co-founder - A VC-funded B2B SaaS with two co-founders My solo project is the one I work on least. This is likely because nobody is holding me accountable for it, other than when I get the occasional email from someone who wants to use the product and they need x feature (which I haven't yet bothered to implement). In my experience, I've done far better owning a fraction of something than 100% of nothing.

glangdale 6y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that someone who runs three companies might not be an entirely typical case or all that predictive of how things work for someone who runs one company. Not doubting your word, but it seems like if you've got 3 cofounders distributed across 2 companies that's going to create a lot more "fires" for you or at least generalized urgency.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  Right, but that's kind of my point. In fact, I think the specifics of my situation go beyond just how many companies I'm running. The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think people should base their actions on what this research supposedly shows. To be honest, I also think this "research" is pretty thin. Not that the authors haven't worked hard on it, but there's a pretty obvious effect of Survivorship Bias in this study. The authors allude to this in their outline of the method used in the paper. > Data on founding teams and longitudinal data on nascent firm performance is notoriously difficult to collect … In many cases, team data are gathered based public records, which creates a left censoring problem as operational status implies a degree of success in itself …. We address this problem by using data from a unique survey of formal companies that raised money via Kickstarter projects, allowing us to observe the founding conditions and performance of firms. --- > might not be an entirely typical case I don't think there are many "typical" cases. I'm not even sure what a typical case would be. Company founders are usually atypical people. I think that's what usually leads them to finding gaps in markets. The best course of action — in my opinion — is learn to introspect as objectively and as honestly as you can, or otherwise try to solicit unbiased external critical feedback (which is harder than it sounds!) and then take a course of action based on your own individual situation.
langitbiru 6y ago
I thought VC would want you to commit 100% to their funded startup. How could you persuade them to let you run 3 companies? Very interesting.
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  There are a couple of things at play here: 1. The two bootstrapped projects predate the VC-funded one. 2. The VC-funded project is the only one I work full-time at. Three businesses doesn't mean three full-time working weeks squashed into the space of one calendar week. The original motivation for going all-in on my own projects was that as an employee/contractor, it doesn't matter how many business processes you optimise — your expected number of working hours per week remains constant. I wanted to scale my own time, which is worth more to me than the sacrifices I've had to make along the way. It's not for everyone.
noychery 6y ago
Author of the article here. This is a good point, and a real issue! What I advocate is finding a 'hands-on advisor', something in between the co-founder and advisor, check my other article about that, it's a 2-min read: https://www.growthclub.online/post/advice-for-solo-founders https://www.growthclub.online/post/advice-for-solo-founders
- yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
  That’s a great idea! Thanks for writing about that. There are so many more options for collaboration than what’s typically talked about here on HN or in other startup forums. I don’t know why arrangements like that aren’t often talked about, but I suspect it may be something to do with the idea of a “lifestyle business” being seen as a lesser endeavour, which is not really fair.
  - noychery 6y ago
    Yes! Hard to say much without looking deeper into it, but at least my experience shows me that I am able to be fairly productive as a part-time founder

glangdale 6y ago

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that someone who runs three companies might not be an entirely typical case or all that predictive of how things work for someone who runs one company. Not doubting your word, but it seems like if you've got 3 cofounders distributed across 2 companies that's going to create a lot more "fires" for you or at least generalized urgency.

yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
Right, but that's kind of my point. In fact, I think the specifics of my situation go beyond just how many companies I'm running. The point I'm trying to make is that I don't think people should base their actions on what this research supposedly shows. To be honest, I also think this "research" is pretty thin. Not that the authors haven't worked hard on it, but there's a pretty obvious effect of Survivorship Bias in this study. The authors allude to this in their outline of the method used in the paper. > Data on founding teams and longitudinal data on nascent firm performance is notoriously difficult to collect … In many cases, team data are gathered based public records, which creates a left censoring problem as operational status implies a degree of success in itself …. We address this problem by using data from a unique survey of formal companies that raised money via Kickstarter projects, allowing us to observe the founding conditions and performance of firms. --- > might not be an entirely typical case I don't think there are many "typical" cases. I'm not even sure what a typical case would be. Company founders are usually atypical people. I think that's what usually leads them to finding gaps in markets. The best course of action — in my opinion — is learn to introspect as objectively and as honestly as you can, or otherwise try to solicit unbiased external critical feedback (which is harder than it sounds!) and then take a course of action based on your own individual situation.

langitbiru 6y ago

I thought VC would want you to commit 100% to their funded startup. How could you persuade them to let you run 3 companies? Very interesting.

yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
There are a couple of things at play here: 1. The two bootstrapped projects predate the VC-funded one. 2. The VC-funded project is the only one I work full-time at. Three businesses doesn't mean three full-time working weeks squashed into the space of one calendar week. The original motivation for going all-in on my own projects was that as an employee/contractor, it doesn't matter how many business processes you optimise — your expected number of working hours per week remains constant. I wanted to scale my own time, which is worth more to me than the sacrifices I've had to make along the way. It's not for everyone.

noychery 6y ago

Author of the article here. This is a good point, and a real issue! What I advocate is finding a 'hands-on advisor', something in between the co-founder and advisor, check my other article about that, it's a 2-min read: https://www.growthclub.online/post/advice-for-solo-founders https://www.growthclub.online/post/advice-for-solo-founders

yakshaving_jgt 6y ago
That’s a great idea! Thanks for writing about that. There are so many more options for collaboration than what’s typically talked about here on HN or in other startup forums. I don’t know why arrangements like that aren’t often talked about, but I suspect it may be something to do with the idea of a “lifestyle business” being seen as a lesser endeavour, which is not really fair.
- noychery 6y ago
  Yes! Hard to say much without looking deeper into it, but at least my experience shows me that I am able to be fairly productive as a part-time founder