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Tell HN: A disabled 40-year-old person founded a startup and makes a living
I am Michael Cao. I am from Viet Nam. I suffered the polio disease and became disabled when i was one year old.
When covid 19 pandemic hit the world. All people has suffered a lot. I and my friend, Canadian guy, decided to cofound 2HAC Studio because we thought that we need to do something to help people.
We don't want to hire any employees to keep the cost at minimum (only spend 9.99$ per year for domain). I keep my job at American company in Viet Nam and my cofounder also still worked at a Bank of Canada. We spent our free time to implement and marketing our products
We have been developing the Google workspace addons. Out technology stack are App Script, VueJS for addons. Hugo for our website. We hosted our website in Google Cloud. Paypal is our payment system. Tawk for customer support.
All of them are free.
At 2020, we had a pain point in Viet Nam because health official requires to do contact tracing when people went to events, churches, schools so we scratched our own itches and developed QR Code Attendance addon https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_attendance_for_classroom_employe/372652717544 https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_attenda... . After that, we provide our addon in G Suite marketplace and a lot of customers used our addon for contact tracing, for example take temperature, name, health status of attendees and give data to health official.
Currently, we continue working on QR Code and barcode solutions. Our startup has survived and thrived during Covid-19 while a lot of startups have failed miserable. Our business model are both subscription and lifetime pricing. We have more than 5 million users for all our Google workspace addons.
We make a decent living but we don’t want to risk to give up the main job. Financial recession is coming and a lot of pain is ahead. We highly recommend that most founders should keep the job and reduce spending as much as possible for a while during early stage of their startup. Also, I would like to encourage disabled people, older people to escape your comfort zone and make changes in the world. All of us could develop outstanding products with open source or very cheap tools.
If you have any questions and feedback, please fell free to contact me and send me an email. Have a great day, everyone.
- ohiovr 4y agoCongratulations on your success! I have a hobby project I'm going to release soon I hope in time before the collapse so people can enjoy some of the work I've been doing.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. I wish you all the best. If you want to have a tester for your product, please fell free to send me the link so I can give you some comments.
- ohiovr 4y agoI might do that! I'd like to hear what music you'd like turned into an orchestra work from Vietnam. It would be easy for you to set up microtonality if you need something special for the local scales. Its all python and pretty simple to read. But I have a lot of docs to write.
- michaelcao 4y agoI like the song "Người về đem tới ngày vui" of Trọng Bằng author. Orchestra helps me to reduce stress during Covid-19. Python is a very powerful programming language and I have been using it for some work.
- ohiovr 4y agoHi Mr Cao, I would love to try this but I am not able to read your language to find what I need. If you can provide a link to a page that contains a midi file I can turn that into arranged an arranged chamber orchestra recording. A midi file ends in .mid and should be found by searching for the song + midi or .mid. If you can't find that one, there's got to be something else you could find!
- yuvalsteuer 4y agoThis is inspiring, Michael please keep sharing more updates!
- michaelcao 4y agoDefinitely, thanks
- ws404 4y agoThis was really inspirational. Thanks and congrats!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for taking time to read my post. Have a great week.
- icosahedron 4y agoCongratulations on your success so far. And great job creating something useful to people in a time of need.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. We learn much from the Rework book of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. I rarely write publicly. But recession is looming so I would like to share our story and encourage start-ups to save money and prepare for the worst.
- 1001101 4y agoMichael, best of luck to you. You aren't the only one thinking along these lines. I saw this list of good advice from YC on the macro setup back in may, posted on news.yc: https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/1527238287471292417?lang=en https://twitter.com/refsrc/status/1527238287471292417?lang=e...
- 23B1 4y agoCảm ơn - for your story!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for reading my post
- ugh123 4y ago#winning
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks.
- nixcraft 4y agoI would say reading your post brightened my day. Thank you for sharing it. Cheers.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. I am happy that my post could help founders and startups at some points.
- belkarx 4y agoI edited this for readability while maintaining as much of the style as possible. If doing that was offensive or not socially correct I can remove it. *** I am Michael Cao. I am from Viet Nam. I suffered from polio and became disabled when I was one year old. When the covid-19 pandemic hit the world, all people suffered a lot. My Canadian friend and I decided to cofound 2HAC Studio because we thought that we need to do something to help people. We don't want to hire any employees to keep the cost at a minimum (only spend 9.99$ per year for domain). I kept my job at American company in Viet Nam and my cofounder continued working at a Bank of Canada. We spent our free time implementing and marketing our products. We have been developing the Google workspace addons. Out technology stack is App Script, VueJS for addons, and Hugo for our website. We hosted our website in Google Cloud, use Paypal as our payment system, and use Tawk for customer support. All of them are free. In 2020, we had a pain point in Viet Nam because health official required to do contact tracing when people went to events, churches, schools so we scratched our own itches and developed a QR Code Attendance addon: https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_attendance_for_classroom_employe/372652717544 https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/qr_code_attenda.... After that, we provided our addon in G Suite marketplace and a lot of customers used our addon for contact tracing, for example take temperature, name, health status of attendees and give data to health official. Currently, we are continuing to work on QR Code and barcode solutions. Our startup has survived and thrived during Covid-19 while a lot of startups have failed miserably. Our business model is both subscription and lifetime pricing. We have more than 5 million users for all our Google workspace addons. We make a decent living but we don’t want to risk to give up our main jobs. A financial recession is coming and a lot of pain is ahead. We highly recommend that most founders keep their jobs and reduce spending as much as possible for a while during early stage of their startup. Also, I would like to encourage disabled people and older people to escape their comfort zones and make changes in the world. All of us could develop outstanding products with open source or very cheap tools. If you have any questions and feedback, please fell free to contact me and send me an email. Have a great day, everyone.
- aerovistae 4y agoIn what universe would adding line-breaks to a giant run-on paragraph be considered offensive? I can't imagine being that worried about offending people that I'd put an apologetic disclaimer on a reformatting of an internet comment.
- yding 4y agoGreat job! Really inspiring.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for reading it
- hiyer 4y agoCongratulations on your success. I hope you reach a point in revenue when you can quit your day jobs.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. Actually, we already reached this point but I love my company and my boss so i don't want to quit.
- tough 4y agoYou're awesome Michael, inspiring words today, thanks for sharing your journey and keep rockin'
- equilibrium 4y agoKeep going! Inspiring read - how did you meet your cofounder?
- michaelcao 4y agoWe are close friends from university so we are culture fit and easily to reach consensus on all things.
- koopuluri 4y agoThanks for sharing this Michael. I'm inspired by your story of how all of us can take our destinies into our own hands through determination and perseverance. All the best with your projects! With <3 from India.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. Hacker News is a great community for startups and entrepreneurs and i learn much from entrepreneurs like you and others. Thanks for your support
- flashgordon 4y agoMate this is amazing. You are an inspiration for giving a big middle finger for disability and hurdles in your way. All the best going forward!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for encouraging us
- Hnrobert42 4y agoI am very proud of you. I spent a lot of time in Vietnam. I am always happy to hear about Vietnamese start up success stories. How did you attract business? Did you advertise anywhere?
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. I hope that we can drink beer in Viet Nam when you come back here. I only posted some posts in Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc. I haven't spend any money for advertising because we are living in covid-19 pandemic. I am an value investor also so I always want to minimize risks as much as possible. We think and invest for long term. Honestly, we were quite lucky because covid-19 helped our QR Code attendance get tractions very quickly. We keep our jobs so we have money to raise our children and family so we don't need short term thinking for our apps.
- zygy 4y agoCongrats on the business, and thank you for sharing!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your comment
- jokab 4y agoCongrats. I hope you become more successful. Love from the Philippines.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks your post. We are living in Asian countries. Hopefully, you can go to Viet Nam in the future and we can drink beer and discuss about start-ups
- uptownfunk 4y agoWise words of advice in this post. I definitely feel that times are changing and many of us will definitely have to be more thoughtful about our expenditures going forward.
- michaelcao 4y agoI absolutely agree with you
- random_0 4y agoGreat work! You're an inspiration for us
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks
- tomcam 4y agoCongratulations! Inspiration mixed with good plain business sense. You rock!
- michaelcao 4y agoThank you
- shadeslayer_ 4y agoLove your story Michael. More power to you!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks
- pplonski86 4y agoGreat story. Thank you for sharing. Did you have programming experience before starting a startup?
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. I am a software developer for 15 years. Recently, cofounder (CTO) does technical things and I do all the other stuffs. I love my company and my boss so I don't want to go full time for 2HAC Studio. I and cofounder only spend free time for 2HAC Studio. We automate most tasks. For customer support, we can reply some hours later and most customers don't complain about that.
- shepherdjerred 4y agoCongrats on your success, and I’m wishing you the best through this coming recession.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. I wish you all the best. Take care.
- ultrasounder 4y agoHi Michael, your story put a smile on my face. Its so awesome that you were able to leverage the Google workspace add-on marketplace for your QR code. I think there is still a lot of untapped markets apart from Contact tracing which might use QR codes. So keep plugging and wish You and Your co-founder all the power in the world. Start Small.Stay small.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your feedback. I like the book "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" and I learn a lot from that book. We event don't have an office. 100% remote work.
- FlyingSnake 4y agoI second your recommendation, it is a great book for small business founders.
- michaelcao 4y agoOne more comment, i think that Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business is a great book for founders.
- rwalling 4y agoYou rock, thank you sir!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks
- MrKey 4y agoHave been looking for such a book for almost my entire software developer career. Finally, I have found it! Though it's a very niche book, for a very specific subset of developers with very specific motivation and life goals. But man, really, huge thanks for mentioning it - that's something I was really missing, even felt depressed about being unable to find such a book, there are a lot of books and materials around the topic but until now couldn't find an actionable resource.
- cocoland2 4y agoVery nicely done Michael. So happy for your success. More power to you , lots of <3 from India
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for encouraging us
- sunderw 4y agoHi Michael, congratulations ! In what ways do you think your disability has been a force or an obstacle to your startup ? Also, combining your main job plus building a startup must have been very hard. Do you have an idea of how many hours you spent working each week in total ? I'm asking that because I too have a disability, and it's very hard for me to work more than 20h per weeks, but I'd love to start my own startup one day... Have a great day too :)
- michaelcao 4y agoYou and I have disability physically but not mentally. I wake up 4.45 am everyday and go to bus for work. I reply to customer on the go. Software is a great way to earn passive income so we can do both full time job and start-up job. I wish you all the best. Please contact me if you have any problems which I could help.
- jnovek 4y agoI’m in a similar boat — I am a founder and YC alum who became disabled a few years ago and I can’t currently work in a sustainable way. I want to work my way back very much. For me, the rule is to keep making progress. If I’m always making progress I’ll eventually end up in the other side of this thing. I push myself as far as I sustainably can in my current condition. I read papers and I do my best to control my medical narrative and experience. I try every new (or new to me) thing that I think might help. I just push and push and keep pushing. It’s not unlike being a founder. Everything is two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes a new problem is just two steps back. In both cases you have to plow forward on your own and make a path where none (or almost none) exists. Edit: feel free to drop me an email if you want to talk to someone about it, it’s in my profile.
- michaelcao 4y agoI absolutely agree with you. Deliberate practice is a great way to improve performance bit by bit. I will drop you an email when i need to talk to someone and need advice from you. Thanks again.
- olliepop 4y agoThis made my day. Thanks dude, you're amazing and very inspiring.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your comment. Have a nice day
- Simon_O_Rourke 4y agoCongratulations Michael, your story is truly inspiring! What impact do you foresee the coming financial recession is going to have on your product, or indeed on any dependent functions (e.g., meetups, subscriptions, etc.)?
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your comment. I learn a lot of lessons from Ray Dalio, an American billionaire investor and hedge fund manager, who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. He said that an idea could reach saturation point in 5 years generally. Therefore, we have been preparing new ideas from a year ago. To be honest, we failed multiple times. We developed some apps and most of them failed but we always try new ideas. That's why we still keep current job so we are safe during upcoming severe recession. Also, i am moving to be a stock investor to be diversifying my portfolios. I am currently investing in real estate, software, stock and may be crypto currencies. I believe that diversification is a free lunch during crisis.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your link. It's very useful for me. Severe downturn is coming and all of us should prepare for that.
- rishsriv 4y agoThis is awesome! Thank you for sharing your story.
- michaelcao 4y agoI appreciate your comment.
- throw_m239339 4y agoThat's great! congratulations!
- bbsimonbb 4y agoSuper. Thanks for posting! Nice stack. I shall be using some of you're picks I think. I really want to go back to Vietnam some day.
- michaelcao 4y agoCool. Please ping me when you go to Ha Noi in the future.
- redanddead 4y agoApp script? Nice! Let's say you weren't disabled, what job would you have/is best for a founder? Myself, I personally think coders should code for work and for their startup, this way you develop higher quality code in both sides, which creates better outcomes, you're always in the software soup so to speak, or in the phó in this case.
- michaelcao 4y agoI personally want to be a stock investor. I read a lot of investing books such as Margin of Safety - Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth A. Klarman, memos and books from Howard Marks, other books about Buffett. Investing help me to minimize risks for my startup. I also want to have multiple passive income sources. Stocks and apps are great options.
- avnigo 4y agoCongratulations, Michael, thank you for sharing your story! A cautionary note on using Paypal as your sole payment system. If this is a considerable source of your income, I would caution against only using Paypal or keeping a large amount of money in that account. There are too many Paypal horror stories out there to mention of people getting their accounts limited or shut down without recourse because their automated checks flagged accounts for suspected fraud or violating their ToS. Best of luck!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for reminding us. We are thinking about integrating Stripe also.
- xisthesqrtof9 4y agoHi Michael, if you need any help integrating stripe. Let me know, I’d be happy to help, my email is in my bio.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks in advance.
- nickphx 4y agoThe same issue can happen with Stripe.. They approve accounts before doing underwriting, once you hit a threshold your account is reviewed for underwriting, funds will be withheld, usually a 'rolling reserve of % of last X days of transactions' sometimes it's more. :(
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your information. I don't integrate Stripe because it doesn't support Viet Nam.
- nickphx 4y ago
- softwareoiu 4y ago
- testmzakrzewska 4y agoGnvh
- rramadass 4y agoThis is indeed inspiring. Congratulations and Good Luck for the Future!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for taking your precious time to read my post.
- palebt 4y agoCongrats! This is inspiring!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks a lot
- pts_ 4y agoVery motivating! Thanks!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks
- roberthahn 4y agoGreat story, Michael, thanks for sharing! I have a disability (profound hearing loss) and I've started 2 businesses in my career; the first was a freelance gig, the second was a health recordkeeping app for iPad. Neither have been successful enough for me to sustainably provide for my family but I'm hoping the next one will succeed! Really glad to hear your story - it's very inspiring!
- michaelcao 4y agoGreat to hear your story. I wish you all the best in the future. I started a start-up during pandemic and when i was quite old to be a founder. But everyone should try to do it and mitigate risk by keeping full-time job if possible.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y agoThe proper term is “differently abled”…
- dtjb 4y agoIsn't the proper term whatever people choose to use to describe themselves?
- zitterbewegung 4y agoMichael, For you I would hire a professional copy writer to go over your description and improve the flow and readability (writing copy is HARD but for you since you have a compelling product its one of those things that could make the difference between a sale)
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for your recomemdation. Copy writer is harder for us because english is not a native language
- shp0ngle 4y agoHey Michael! I have lived in HCMC for a while and I thought it must very unfriendly for disabled people. (nothing is ever wheelchair accessible etc.) So even better when I hear this story. edit: ah I see you are from Hanoi. Well not sure how it is over there, but I cannot imagine it’s very different
- michaelcao 4y agoTo be honest, Ha noi is not much better.
- tmilard 4y agoGreat job. Very inspiring project... I also think it is best to keep a job in the beginning. At least keeping a half time job. In France we have a great unemployment benefit (2/3 of salary Netto). This is great for founders to be full-time on the project on the first year and a half. I used it. According to many business Angel, unemployment benefits counts for the BIG majority of 'investment' in a startup.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks. I agree with you. We don't have unemployment benefit like France so we choose the safe way to keep both full time and startup job
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoHi Micheal, I admire what you did, seriously. But here us the "but"... In no way am I understating the difficulty of what you have to go though. I am disabled myself and you should celebrate your success widely in t his forum. However, you lost me when you said: >Also, I would like to encourage disabled people, older people to escape your comfort zone and make changes in the world. When you say that things like that you lump all disabilities into one amorphous blob and it actually harms the disabled community. That and your whole story is known as "Disability Porn". Not all of us have disabilities that are constant and predictable. I was making six digits working at Cisco Systems and idea that I should struggle through it all for some notion of success almost killed me. I have Schizoaffective Bipolar Disorder. It is not predictable and it is way more stigmatized. Plus it get worse when you are under stress. I know you can appreciate that as the owner of a startup. So people will read your story, then they ask me what I do and when I am disabled they say a lot of stupid sht like; "Why don't you get a part time job?" Or "You are so intelligent, can't you get an online job?" All because they heard some guy who was disabled by polio did a startup up, or a man with no legs climbed Mount Everest. The part about telling us to "escape our comfort zone" was demeaning as well. In the U.S., many disabled people are forcefully pushed out of our comfort zones. I am currently homeless livening on disability as inflation makes me more and more uncomfortable. This is not to say I do not keep trying. I have taught my self Genetics, Nutritional Biology, amount other health related sciences in hope to keep me alive with this genetic disorder. But there were times when the effort involved to merely brush my teeth was all the success I could muster. I am glad for you, really, but I had to say all this if not for anyone here, just for myself.
- dennis_jeeves1 4y agoThanks FollowingTheDao, this guy indeed needed the tough love that you provided. Their certainly was "Disability Porn" in his post. I suppose you get a free pass because you are disabled yourself, god forbid if a able bodied person said it.
- michaelcao 4y agoSorry to hear that. I was very lucky that I can walk, think and code. My dad was a doctor and he died because of lung cancer. I wish I could be a doctor in the childhood but my health said NO to me. Nutritional Biology is a great subject. I wish you all the best.
- navjack27 4y agostanding applause Awesome! Congratulations! Inspiring!
- snsa_kscc 4y agoGreat story, Michael! As a struggling business founder myself much of what you said is very relatable. Nevertheless, this story made my day and I wish you and your partner best of luck. Have a great day.
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for reading my post. Edison once said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I've successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work". Keep fighting is a good slogan for startup founders
- wowai 4y agoWow Michael! This is amazing. You are truly inspiring!
- michaelcao 4y agoThanks for taking precious time to read my post. Have a great day.
- meechi555 4y ago