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I see this tendency of solo projects a lot in developers. My experience has been quite the opposite, I started to get traction as entrepreneur after accepting t

by kfk 5y ago

I see this tendency of solo projects a lot in developers. My experience has been quite the opposite, I started to get traction as entrepreneur after accepting the idea that I needed a team. My business sells b2b so maybe it is different, but companies are tired of automated SaaS sales funnels focused on “features”, they want competent people to talk to about their problems that are never just technical ones. I think the Enterprise tech market is very underserved at the moment, but I find it hard to believe you can approach b2b solo.

alberth 5y ago
> "I find it hard to believe you can approach b2b solo." You can, as an independent consultant for hire ... but totally agree - with the exception of consultant, I'd be extremely tough.
chenmike 5y ago
Not disagreeing that a team might be better for targeting Enterprise SaaS but is the implication that a solo founder can’t learn to talk about other people’s non-technical problems?
- jonfw 5y ago
  My experience working on B2B in a bigger company is that enterprise accounts can be extremely demanding. They want you to be engaged while closing the sale and whenever they feel like it for the entirety of the deal. My clients were the type of folks who didn't want a link to documentation, they wanted me to turn that documentation into a powerpoint and spoon feed it to them. If you can satisfy these folks and do engineering at the same time good on you
- kesselvon 5y ago
  Serving B2B clients requires more time than you'd have as a solopreneur because they require a lot of handholding through the entire lifecycle. Even a small SaaS company can have 5-10 people touching a deal in some form (marketing, sales, sales engineer, etc) before its closed.
CosmicShadow 5y ago
Ok so out of all businesses you can do alone, that example is harder, yet not impossible, but that doesn't mean there aren't a million other opportunities to successfully make a living as a solopreneur. You probably don't see many doing this because it makes no sense and it sounds like you made the right choice when things made sense, but that doesn't discount the entire premise of being a solopreneur.
MikeDelta 5y ago
Especially the bigger companies have procurement that deals with contracts and are so used to having a salesperson as contact. I can imagine that your salesforce would be one of the limiting factors for these customers.

by kfk 5y ago

alberth 5y ago

> "I find it hard to believe you can approach b2b solo." You can, as an independent consultant for hire ... but totally agree - with the exception of consultant, I'd be extremely tough.

chenmike 5y ago

Not disagreeing that a team might be better for targeting Enterprise SaaS but is the implication that a solo founder can’t learn to talk about other people’s non-technical problems?

jonfw 5y ago
My experience working on B2B in a bigger company is that enterprise accounts can be extremely demanding. They want you to be engaged while closing the sale and whenever they feel like it for the entirety of the deal. My clients were the type of folks who didn't want a link to documentation, they wanted me to turn that documentation into a powerpoint and spoon feed it to them. If you can satisfy these folks and do engineering at the same time good on you
kesselvon 5y ago
Serving B2B clients requires more time than you'd have as a solopreneur because they require a lot of handholding through the entire lifecycle. Even a small SaaS company can have 5-10 people touching a deal in some form (marketing, sales, sales engineer, etc) before its closed.

CosmicShadow 5y ago

Ok so out of all businesses you can do alone, that example is harder, yet not impossible, but that doesn't mean there aren't a million other opportunities to successfully make a living as a solopreneur. You probably don't see many doing this because it makes no sense and it sounds like you made the right choice when things made sense, but that doesn't discount the entire premise of being a solopreneur.

MikeDelta 5y ago

Especially the bigger companies have procurement that deals with contracts and are so used to having a salesperson as contact. I can imagine that your salesforce would be one of the limiting factors for these customers.