4 ms·

What I did is the latter, learning everything. It's really not as hard as it sounds, due to the Pareto principle. I taught myself most of what I needed regardin

What I did is the latter, learning everything. It's really not as hard as it sounds, due to the Pareto principle. I taught myself most of what I needed regarding sales, marketing, and design, enough to sell my products. Not sure why you say the skills aren't useful outside of the startup, sales for example is extremely good at teaching interpersonal communication.

Mezzie 4y ago
The main problem with doing it all yourself is the time sink/cost eventually becomes an issue, especially since in my experience communications/marketing/sales and programming/technical work tend to involve exactly opposite working styles and requirements: Programming and other technical work really benefits from long periods of uninterrupted work, whereas sales/customer service/marketing is very 'you work when the work needs done'. (I'm a programmer who worked in communications a bit.) Learning all aspects of running a business is definitely plausible, but actually doing all the work becomes a logistical nightmare of opportunity costs very quickly.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Business and engineering styles can both work together. What I do is alternate one week of engineering (coding, writing docs, etc) with one week of business (marketing, sales calls, writing blog posts, etc.). This was recommended to me by Jon Yongfook who got to 10k MRR this way last year and is now at 50k MRR, all by following this pattern [0]. He's also an engineer by trade but found that this alternating business and engineering week approach is extremely effective for solo founders, especially solo engineers who'd usually let their marketing fall by the wayside as they focus on coding then wonder how their startup failed after they got no customers. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25929259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25929259
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    That is definitely a good way to do it if you're going to go solo, but once you grow enough/depending on the product and market and who your competitors are, you absolutely CANNOT wait a week to respond to people/make sales pitches. If nothing else, a competitor providing the same service with an always on sales department and the ability to respond to important clients in hours rather than days will smoke you. So if you know you want take this approach, make sure to do your market research beforehand and see that it's an economically viable approach. It works great for something like Bannerbear where the clients can just find another way to make images for a week or so. If it's something crucial to client deployment of their own products or if you're B2C, less so.
    - cercatrova 4y ago
      Agreed. I think his company style works very well because it's an API product that's not very tied to sales. You can also hire a customer support person if you're successful enough which is what he did, his first hire I believe as well.

Mezzie 4y ago

The main problem with doing it all yourself is the time sink/cost eventually becomes an issue, especially since in my experience communications/marketing/sales and programming/technical work tend to involve exactly opposite working styles and requirements: Programming and other technical work really benefits from long periods of uninterrupted work, whereas sales/customer service/marketing is very 'you work when the work needs done'. (I'm a programmer who worked in communications a bit.) Learning all aspects of running a business is definitely plausible, but actually doing all the work becomes a logistical nightmare of opportunity costs very quickly.

cercatrova 4y ago
Business and engineering styles can both work together. What I do is alternate one week of engineering (coding, writing docs, etc) with one week of business (marketing, sales calls, writing blog posts, etc.). This was recommended to me by Jon Yongfook who got to 10k MRR this way last year and is now at 50k MRR, all by following this pattern [0]. He's also an engineer by trade but found that this alternating business and engineering week approach is extremely effective for solo founders, especially solo engineers who'd usually let their marketing fall by the wayside as they focus on coding then wonder how their startup failed after they got no customers. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25929259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25929259
- Mezzie 4y ago
  That is definitely a good way to do it if you're going to go solo, but once you grow enough/depending on the product and market and who your competitors are, you absolutely CANNOT wait a week to respond to people/make sales pitches. If nothing else, a competitor providing the same service with an always on sales department and the ability to respond to important clients in hours rather than days will smoke you. So if you know you want take this approach, make sure to do your market research beforehand and see that it's an economically viable approach. It works great for something like Bannerbear where the clients can just find another way to make images for a week or so. If it's something crucial to client deployment of their own products or if you're B2C, less so.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Agreed. I think his company style works very well because it's an API product that's not very tied to sales. You can also hire a customer support person if you're successful enough which is what he did, his first hire I believe as well.