6 ms·

The "Army of One" entrepreneur

139 points by anthony_franco 15y ago

AznHisoka 15y ago
Does this advice apply to those that are working at a dayjob? I find it hard as it is to focus on 1 idea
- swombat 15y ago
  I think so. You don't need to focus on all your ideas at the same time, you can take turns with them. The more important take-away is to test multiple ideas until you find one that actually works, before committing to it.
mise 15y ago
swombat, what mental framework would you apply when looking at a project and wondering if it is "the one"? Or perhaps I should be taking from your post that unless you really are tackling a problem that takes full time over several years, then your plan probably should include running multiple businesses/sites at a time.
- swombat 15y ago
  Quick answer as I'm on my phone! The framework is simple: each of those projects is basically throwing something on the wall to see if it sticks. Your definition of "it sticks" may vary, but basically, if you're seeing enthusiastic responses from target potential customers, in a tangible way that means you're fairly confident that money will be forthcoming, or even better, if you're seeing money coming in, then it probably counts as "sticking". The exact definition depends on the type of business... I'll write a follow up post to explore that in more detail.
  - mise 15y ago
    Thanks, and I'd love to hear more as you mentioned. For example "money coming in" could be: * $100/month (ok, we're getting something) * Or $2,000/month (still not enough to live off, or whatever is less than your living expenses) * Or $5,000/month (ok, I could live off this) * Or $10,000/month (from my perspective would be a comfortable income). I guess one part is one would have to look at the acceleration of the growth. If it's $800/month after 2 year's work it doesn't sound like you're really on to "the one".
    - swombat 15y ago
      "Success" really depends on way too many factors to come up with a general formula, as I've argued in this article: http://swombat.com/2011/12/23/entrepreneurial-success http://swombat.com/2011/12/23/entrepreneurial-success However, I'd say if your business helps you move one rung up the ladder (from zero to survival, to comfort, and then to wealth) then it's "successful" at least on the financial level. In terms of figuring out if the business is "sticking" early on, that can't be ascribed just to money - it really depends on what you're building. You need to figure out the core metrics that drive your business and see whether they're going somewhere good. In some cases, the metrics are money, in others they might be user growth, or something else!
  - nubela 15y ago
    And what if it is a social idea whereby monetization comes only with traction? IE: Dropbox, etc, and a initial invest of time, say at least 6 months is needed to the product ready, what should I do in a case like this?
mcrady 15y ago
I'm highly skeptical of this iteration idea. I've been through this two times and it's taken me two years each time to fully prove out the idea. Any examples of good businesses that have been proven out in a short period of time?
- swombat 15y ago
  You can't "prove" anything about businesses until they either finally fail or finally succeed (whatever your definition of failure or success is). However, you can get a pretty decent idea of how successful an idea will be if you push it further without spending anything like 2 years on it. Most ideas that are invalidated after 2 years of the founders working their bollocks off on the business could have been invalidated much sooner than that. Ask experienced entrepreneurs (who have built profitable businesses) around you. I think you'll find that most of them already do this to some extent - they don't commit fully into an idea until they've tested the waters and found that this idea is worth committing into.
raheemm 15y ago
Great post swombat! A great followup post would be one on identifying and testing micro-niches.
gizmo 15y ago
I'm kind of curious how successful swombat is, and if he followed the strategies he's recommending to others. What I see a lot is that a lot of startup people give startup advice in order to draw more attention to themselves and to their products/consulting gigs. When I see that swombat has two businesses and time on the side to do consulting, then that's a pretty big red flag.
- swombat 15y ago
  I should really take the consulting thing out. I'm spending 95% of my time on GrantTree, half a day here or there on Woobius, and no time whatsoever consulting. I've invalidated a few ideas via this approach, but right now I do have an idea that's "sticking ", so I'm following that one for now.
  - swombat 15y ago
    I should add that yes, I follow or have followed most of the strategies I talk about, and when I haven't used them myself, I say so! My posts are based on direct personal experience. In some cases the "lesson learnt" may be anecdotal/deeply contextual, but I usually take pains to follow my own advice in http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advice-articles http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advic... and make the context clear so that the reader can decide if this is useful advice for them.
- veyron 15y ago
  He probably took VC money at some point. When you are bootstrapping on your own, you throw yourself 110% at the problemvand only after you've succeeded do you think about the next thing.
sebastianconcpt 15y ago
I'd not advice this for people that loves their comfort zone nor those who have a hard time unlearning things. For the rest, it might be their hope. If you can be hyperproductive you can do it. But you can't be that productive if the technology you use doesn't help you to achieve that by design. In my case I've validated the product's idea with a prototype in ~15 days, then started to develop the product. Now, it's in full commercial operations since last august. Here I've wrote a little about the technology I've chosen: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467308 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467308
- loceng 15y ago
  I'm glad you brought this up. It can be unhelpful/damaging to tell someone "this is the way." It could cause cognitive dissonance, confusion, and conflict for many between one's own previous experiences of what they are currently capable with and what is being stated they are required to do to be successful. I go through this very often. The latest being the push that's going to around, mainly that VCs and incubators perpetuated, that you need to find technical co-founders. This mainstream idea is promoted because it reduces the risk for those who will profit/benefit from reduced risk in their investments. Likewise, people who are, as you call them, hyperproductive, will probably have more successes from having more experiences and also be the personality to be vocal of their methods and will have more experience and success to be vocal about.
edw519 15y ago
(Slightly off-topic) I said this on twitter, but just realized that I never said it here ( > 140 chars this time): Daniel, your blog is great! It has quickly moved on to my "must read" list. I don't know how you do it every day, between your own thoughts and the curation of so many others' great content, too. I may not understand everything and it may not all apply to me, but believe me, enough of it does. Fellow Hacker Newsers should definitely bookmark you. I also have a hard time understanding how someone could have such a high quality daily blog and get much else done. I struggle to post once or twice a month. Keep it up. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and are really appreciated.
- xinsight 15y ago
  In case any one else wants to follow him on twitter (only RSS is linked on his site): http://twitter.com/swombat http://twitter.com/swombat
- wildmXranat 15y ago
  Hear hear. I've been scanning both yours and his articles on regular basis.
- highace 15y ago
  I agree. Daniel consistently puts out rich, interesting and educating posts, enough so that I was just about to make my own comment stating so before I noticed yours.
- swombat 15y ago
  Thanks! :-) I also have a hard time understanding how someone could have such a high quality daily blog and get much else done. I struggle to post once or twice a month. I'm not quite sure how I do it either! I think there's a certain rhythm that comes out of writing something every day. It's like the anecdote about the pottery teacher who asked graded half his class on the weight of the pots... the more you do, the easier it gets to keep on doing it. Unfortunately this last week I haven't quite kept to my daily rhythm... but I've got 2 more articles in the queue now, so the rest of this week is covered. :-) Perhaps worth also noting that these days I wake up around 5-6am, and my first priority is usually to get a blog post written. That might take an hour or two, then I get on with my day...
SMrF 15y ago
In theory I like this concept, in practice it blew up in my face. After two years and two ideas that failed, (executed poorly, no traction, no market, trouble in cofounder paradise -- you name it, I've failed it), I decided to try a different approach: rapid exploration of niche products. In the course of a year I spun through about one idea per month. I got remarkably good at (in)validating my ideas. (Hint: write down who you think your target market is and then pick up the phone. Have a conversation. Ask if they would pay $X dollars for your product where X is something that makes you cringe because you think it's too much. If it's worth pursuing they won't hesitate to say yes. Then tell them if they give you $X right now you'll start building it for them -- if they ask where to send the check you're golden, otherwise you need to rethink your assumptions. If you don't know anyone to call run some ads to a fake landing page, collect emails, then offer an amazon gift card or something for a 30 minute phone call. I wrote about it here: http://twosixes.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/tips-for-talking-with-customers/ http://twosixes.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/tips-for-talking-wi...) I finally landed on something, (and feel free to steal this) -- filtered google alerts for PR agencies. I had customers using the service and waiting for a bill. But I never implemented the billing system, I procrastinated it hard core. It wasn't because I was afraid they wouldn't pay, (they would have). It was because I was afraid of supporting the project. It was like I built myself a job I didn't want. So for me the biggest pitfall of this approach was a total lack of vision combined with a drive to pivot to product/market fit at all cost meant I created something I had no passion about whatsoever.
- GotToStartup 15y ago
  Interesting, not to get too off topic here but is there a reason you didn't use a 3rd party service for billing like Paypal or something? Sounds like you went 90% of the way and stopped at the last 10.
  - thomaslangston 15y ago
    I read the OP as the billing not being the impediment, but what would come after: A business that the OP had limited interest in running.
  - 15y ago
davidw 15y ago
The niche market accessible to one person working part time sounds very much like what Rob writes in "Start Small, Stay Small", and I think it's a great concept. In particular, one aspect of it that's good is that it works fine in "the rest of the world": you don't need to be in Silicon Valley or get VC or anything else. That said, I'm not sure about parallelizing the process, that presents some risks if you're already spread thin.
- swombat 15y ago
  It certainly is, and I've linked to several of Rob Walling (http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/) 's posts in the past. Rob is a great example of a one-man-army type of entrepreneur. I know a few others who are successfully applying this model. Re: parallelising, obviously you can only focus on one thing at a time, but many ideas take time to build out - as in, waiting time. If you've got control over your time, why not spend that waiting time testing out other ideas? In practice, I think most people who are still at the validation stage will in fact parallelise part of the process.
zerostar07 15y ago
I suppose many here work on multiple projects, in fact is there anyone who doesn't? It's just that people don't usually brag about their failures (or non-successes). Personally i start a new project every 2 months, usually minor ideas or things i couldn't find online. It doesn't take that much time anyway ...
run4yourlives 15y ago
You've been around here for quite a while, but other than recognize the name, I knew little about you. I want to say that I just finished reading your account of the London bombings - and how close you were that day - and was quite moved. Recognize this coming from a 5 year infantry vet that often sees stories about "how I was 5 km from a bombing!" as much ado about nothing. I'm glad you took the time to share, and I hope that the action helped in your healing. Cheers.
brlewis 15y ago
tl;dr version: People usually do a depth-first search for product-market fit, but there are good reasons to consider a breadth-first search.
bignoggins 15y ago
This pretty much describes exactly what I did. I worked on my idea nights and weekends for about 6 months (iOS app) before launching. 6 months after that I was profitable enough to quit my job and do it full time. Instead of going the typical startup route and seeking funding and hiring people, I decided to travel the world while building up my startup. After a year of doing this, I'm making many times what I was at my day job in silicon valley and really enjoying being my own boss. I think the army of one part-time idea really resonates with my personality. I like the idea of startups, but I have a family and am fairly risk averse.
jseims 15y ago
This is how I work. As an "army of one" you can be almost as fast as a small team, and you can execute with much higher conceptual coherence. I.e., you can aim better. It is important to filter out ideas you're not interested in running, even if they could make money. And once you start getting traction, it's important to focus hard on exploiting it. Making $1000 per month is harder than scaling that to $100,000 per month (if the market size is large enough).
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  Making $1000 per month is harder than scaling that to $100,000 per month Many times over, although it seems like everyday I hear of an affiliate marketer who is killing it online and I wonder how.
  - swombat 15y ago
    Many times over, although it seems like everyday I hear of an affiliate marketer who is killing it online and I wonder how. Having interacted with that world somewhat in the past, I can say that there are some very rare affiliate marketers who are making a good chunk of cash - but those are people who have invested a lot of time and energy into building vast mailing lists of followers who sign up to stuff they recommend. If you're willing to spend years building such a mailing list, you can make a few thousands a month jumping between various MLM opportunities. Personally, I'd find that deeply unsatisfying work.
- manmal 15y ago
  I think that this theory applies to highly scalable markets combined with common-purpose products, such as a web app for a certain hobby (e.g., learning to play the guitar). An ad-supported Android app ought to have a userbase of 200.000 - 500.000 users to confidently reach 1000$ of montly revenue - in this case I would say it is highly unlikely that you will ever reach 100.000$ of monthly income (except you write Angry Birds, of course - but they built upon the success of the game on other platforms, a thing an army-of-one could not do within the required timespan). For this exact reason, I consider quitting Android development for the time being.
feralchimp 15y ago
Great post. There's a "swing for the fences" mentality in the SV / startup community that I think has driven a lot of potential talent away from entrepreneurship in general. The idea that entrepreneurship requires immense sacrifice to do well, or to be "worth doing at all" presupposes a set of romantic values that just don't map well to the relative size and frequency of market opportunities. My Mac app nets me between $100-200 per month, every month, for noise-floor incremental time commitment. For anyone obsessed with becoming a Successful Entrepreneur, that's a 'how dare you even mention it' achievement. But you would be AMAZED at how an extra $100-200/month can improve a man's happiness at the end of the day. It's like an anti-aliasing algorithm for all those little bullshit expenses that, in aggregate, can lead to non-trivial stress. If that $100/month (and the feeling of delivering value to direct customers) makes me 5% calmer and happier while I'm hanging out with my wife and son at night, it's an enormous win.
- kylemathews 15y ago
  I've made the same realization. There's something incredibly satisfying about having built something that others find helpful. That's where most of the joy of entrepreneurship comes from. Optimize for reaching that goal first and then move onto secondary goals like becoming a billionaire or changing the world.
- moocow01 15y ago
  I couldn't agree more. To add to it, I think there is something to be said about the natural slow evolution of yourself and your business. There are many who are looking for quick paths that involve raising a boatload of cash, hiring a bunch of people and trying to storm the market. In actuality this is rarely how most real businesses are formed - even in tech. Most businesses are formed through a slow and very unsexy evolution over a number of years by doing relatively difficult things that others don't want to do.
ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago
"What's the best strategy to get from having no startup to having one that provides you with income?" I would argue that the answer to this question is to enter a market that has already been verified for you. In the start-up community there seems to be a huge emphasis on seeking out and creating new markets and business models. While this is a fantastic thing, it is in no way a prerequisite for starting a business. Everyday entrepreneurs the world over start successful businesses in preexisting markets. If you're a developer looking to start a business, you don't need to verify a market for mobile application development, you know it exists. The only barrier is your skill level and ability to attract clients. I know this stuff is obvious, but I think the notion of validating markets has become overemphasized in the start-up community. There are plenty of opportunities where much of that leg work has already been done.
- swombat 15y ago
  That's not a bad angle, and in fact to minimise the risk, a services business may be a good idea. However, services businesses come with their own bundles of problems, not the least of which being that you're still caught in the "sell your time for money" trap which stops you from doing other things. It's better than a job, but not as good as building a product. I think in all cases where you're building a product, whether it's competing with existing products (better), or an entirely new thing (worse), there is some amount of market validation to do. Does anyone want your "accounting software with this extra feature"? Will anyone care about your "Basecamp but with a different look"? Best to validate those before sinking lots of dev effort in them...

139 points by anthony_franco 15y ago

AznHisoka 15y ago

Does this advice apply to those that are working at a dayjob? I find it hard as it is to focus on 1 idea

swombat 15y ago
I think so. You don't need to focus on all your ideas at the same time, you can take turns with them. The more important take-away is to test multiple ideas until you find one that actually works, before committing to it.

mise 15y ago

swombat, what mental framework would you apply when looking at a project and wondering if it is "the one"? Or perhaps I should be taking from your post that unless you really are tackling a problem that takes full time over several years, then your plan probably should include running multiple businesses/sites at a time.

swombat 15y ago
Quick answer as I'm on my phone! The framework is simple: each of those projects is basically throwing something on the wall to see if it sticks. Your definition of "it sticks" may vary, but basically, if you're seeing enthusiastic responses from target potential customers, in a tangible way that means you're fairly confident that money will be forthcoming, or even better, if you're seeing money coming in, then it probably counts as "sticking". The exact definition depends on the type of business... I'll write a follow up post to explore that in more detail.
- mise 15y ago
  Thanks, and I'd love to hear more as you mentioned. For example "money coming in" could be: * $100/month (ok, we're getting something) * Or $2,000/month (still not enough to live off, or whatever is less than your living expenses) * Or $5,000/month (ok, I could live off this) * Or $10,000/month (from my perspective would be a comfortable income). I guess one part is one would have to look at the acceleration of the growth. If it's $800/month after 2 year's work it doesn't sound like you're really on to "the one".
  - swombat 15y ago
    "Success" really depends on way too many factors to come up with a general formula, as I've argued in this article: http://swombat.com/2011/12/23/entrepreneurial-success http://swombat.com/2011/12/23/entrepreneurial-success However, I'd say if your business helps you move one rung up the ladder (from zero to survival, to comfort, and then to wealth) then it's "successful" at least on the financial level. In terms of figuring out if the business is "sticking" early on, that can't be ascribed just to money - it really depends on what you're building. You need to figure out the core metrics that drive your business and see whether they're going somewhere good. In some cases, the metrics are money, in others they might be user growth, or something else!
- nubela 15y ago
  And what if it is a social idea whereby monetization comes only with traction? IE: Dropbox, etc, and a initial invest of time, say at least 6 months is needed to the product ready, what should I do in a case like this?

mcrady 15y ago

I'm highly skeptical of this iteration idea. I've been through this two times and it's taken me two years each time to fully prove out the idea. Any examples of good businesses that have been proven out in a short period of time?

swombat 15y ago
You can't "prove" anything about businesses until they either finally fail or finally succeed (whatever your definition of failure or success is). However, you can get a pretty decent idea of how successful an idea will be if you push it further without spending anything like 2 years on it. Most ideas that are invalidated after 2 years of the founders working their bollocks off on the business could have been invalidated much sooner than that. Ask experienced entrepreneurs (who have built profitable businesses) around you. I think you'll find that most of them already do this to some extent - they don't commit fully into an idea until they've tested the waters and found that this idea is worth committing into.

raheemm 15y ago

Great post swombat! A great followup post would be one on identifying and testing micro-niches.

gizmo 15y ago

I'm kind of curious how successful swombat is, and if he followed the strategies he's recommending to others. What I see a lot is that a lot of startup people give startup advice in order to draw more attention to themselves and to their products/consulting gigs. When I see that swombat has two businesses and time on the side to do consulting, then that's a pretty big red flag.

swombat 15y ago
I should really take the consulting thing out. I'm spending 95% of my time on GrantTree, half a day here or there on Woobius, and no time whatsoever consulting. I've invalidated a few ideas via this approach, but right now I do have an idea that's "sticking ", so I'm following that one for now.
- swombat 15y ago
  I should add that yes, I follow or have followed most of the strategies I talk about, and when I haven't used them myself, I say so! My posts are based on direct personal experience. In some cases the "lesson learnt" may be anecdotal/deeply contextual, but I usually take pains to follow my own advice in http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advice-articles http://swombat.com/2011/1/20/how-to-write-good-startup-advic... and make the context clear so that the reader can decide if this is useful advice for them.
veyron 15y ago
He probably took VC money at some point. When you are bootstrapping on your own, you throw yourself 110% at the problemvand only after you've succeeded do you think about the next thing.

sebastianconcpt 15y ago

I'd not advice this for people that loves their comfort zone nor those who have a hard time unlearning things. For the rest, it might be their hope. If you can be hyperproductive you can do it. But you can't be that productive if the technology you use doesn't help you to achieve that by design. In my case I've validated the product's idea with a prototype in ~15 days, then started to develop the product. Now, it's in full commercial operations since last august. Here I've wrote a little about the technology I've chosen: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467308 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3467308

loceng 15y ago
I'm glad you brought this up. It can be unhelpful/damaging to tell someone "this is the way." It could cause cognitive dissonance, confusion, and conflict for many between one's own previous experiences of what they are currently capable with and what is being stated they are required to do to be successful. I go through this very often. The latest being the push that's going to around, mainly that VCs and incubators perpetuated, that you need to find technical co-founders. This mainstream idea is promoted because it reduces the risk for those who will profit/benefit from reduced risk in their investments. Likewise, people who are, as you call them, hyperproductive, will probably have more successes from having more experiences and also be the personality to be vocal of their methods and will have more experience and success to be vocal about.

edw519 15y ago

(Slightly off-topic) I said this on twitter, but just realized that I never said it here ( > 140 chars this time): Daniel, your blog is great! It has quickly moved on to my "must read" list. I don't know how you do it every day, between your own thoughts and the curation of so many others' great content, too. I may not understand everything and it may not all apply to me, but believe me, enough of it does. Fellow Hacker Newsers should definitely bookmark you. I also have a hard time understanding how someone could have such a high quality daily blog and get much else done. I struggle to post once or twice a month. Keep it up. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and are really appreciated.

xinsight 15y ago
In case any one else wants to follow him on twitter (only RSS is linked on his site): http://twitter.com/swombat http://twitter.com/swombat
wildmXranat 15y ago
Hear hear. I've been scanning both yours and his articles on regular basis.
highace 15y ago
I agree. Daniel consistently puts out rich, interesting and educating posts, enough so that I was just about to make my own comment stating so before I noticed yours.
swombat 15y ago
Thanks! :-) I also have a hard time understanding how someone could have such a high quality daily blog and get much else done. I struggle to post once or twice a month. I'm not quite sure how I do it either! I think there's a certain rhythm that comes out of writing something every day. It's like the anecdote about the pottery teacher who asked graded half his class on the weight of the pots... the more you do, the easier it gets to keep on doing it. Unfortunately this last week I haven't quite kept to my daily rhythm... but I've got 2 more articles in the queue now, so the rest of this week is covered. :-) Perhaps worth also noting that these days I wake up around 5-6am, and my first priority is usually to get a blog post written. That might take an hour or two, then I get on with my day...

SMrF 15y ago

In theory I like this concept, in practice it blew up in my face. After two years and two ideas that failed, (executed poorly, no traction, no market, trouble in cofounder paradise -- you name it, I've failed it), I decided to try a different approach: rapid exploration of niche products. In the course of a year I spun through about one idea per month. I got remarkably good at (in)validating my ideas. (Hint: write down who you think your target market is and then pick up the phone. Have a conversation. Ask if they would pay $X dollars for your product where X is something that makes you cringe because you think it's too much. If it's worth pursuing they won't hesitate to say yes. Then tell them if they give you $X right now you'll start building it for them -- if they ask where to send the check you're golden, otherwise you need to rethink your assumptions. If you don't know anyone to call run some ads to a fake landing page, collect emails, then offer an amazon gift card or something for a 30 minute phone call. I wrote about it here: http://twosixes.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/tips-for-talking-with-customers/ http://twosixes.wordpress.com/2010/05/29/tips-for-talking-wi...) I finally landed on something, (and feel free to steal this) -- filtered google alerts for PR agencies. I had customers using the service and waiting for a bill. But I never implemented the billing system, I procrastinated it hard core. It wasn't because I was afraid they wouldn't pay, (they would have). It was because I was afraid of supporting the project. It was like I built myself a job I didn't want. So for me the biggest pitfall of this approach was a total lack of vision combined with a drive to pivot to product/market fit at all cost meant I created something I had no passion about whatsoever.

GotToStartup 15y ago
Interesting, not to get too off topic here but is there a reason you didn't use a 3rd party service for billing like Paypal or something? Sounds like you went 90% of the way and stopped at the last 10.
- thomaslangston 15y ago
  I read the OP as the billing not being the impediment, but what would come after: A business that the OP had limited interest in running.
- 15y ago

davidw 15y ago

The niche market accessible to one person working part time sounds very much like what Rob writes in "Start Small, Stay Small", and I think it's a great concept. In particular, one aspect of it that's good is that it works fine in "the rest of the world": you don't need to be in Silicon Valley or get VC or anything else. That said, I'm not sure about parallelizing the process, that presents some risks if you're already spread thin.

swombat 15y ago
It certainly is, and I've linked to several of Rob Walling (http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ http://www.softwarebyrob.com/) 's posts in the past. Rob is a great example of a one-man-army type of entrepreneur. I know a few others who are successfully applying this model. Re: parallelising, obviously you can only focus on one thing at a time, but many ideas take time to build out - as in, waiting time. If you've got control over your time, why not spend that waiting time testing out other ideas? In practice, I think most people who are still at the validation stage will in fact parallelise part of the process.

zerostar07 15y ago

I suppose many here work on multiple projects, in fact is there anyone who doesn't? It's just that people don't usually brag about their failures (or non-successes). Personally i start a new project every 2 months, usually minor ideas or things i couldn't find online. It doesn't take that much time anyway ...

run4yourlives 15y ago

You've been around here for quite a while, but other than recognize the name, I knew little about you. I want to say that I just finished reading your account of the London bombings - and how close you were that day - and was quite moved. Recognize this coming from a 5 year infantry vet that often sees stories about "how I was 5 km from a bombing!" as much ado about nothing. I'm glad you took the time to share, and I hope that the action helped in your healing. Cheers.

brlewis 15y ago

tl;dr version: People usually do a depth-first search for product-market fit, but there are good reasons to consider a breadth-first search.

bignoggins 15y ago

This pretty much describes exactly what I did. I worked on my idea nights and weekends for about 6 months (iOS app) before launching. 6 months after that I was profitable enough to quit my job and do it full time. Instead of going the typical startup route and seeking funding and hiring people, I decided to travel the world while building up my startup. After a year of doing this, I'm making many times what I was at my day job in silicon valley and really enjoying being my own boss. I think the army of one part-time idea really resonates with my personality. I like the idea of startups, but I have a family and am fairly risk averse.

jseims 15y ago

This is how I work. As an "army of one" you can be almost as fast as a small team, and you can execute with much higher conceptual coherence. I.e., you can aim better. It is important to filter out ideas you're not interested in running, even if they could make money. And once you start getting traction, it's important to focus hard on exploiting it. Making $1000 per month is harder than scaling that to $100,000 per month (if the market size is large enough).

rokhayakebe 15y ago
Making $1000 per month is harder than scaling that to $100,000 per month Many times over, although it seems like everyday I hear of an affiliate marketer who is killing it online and I wonder how.
- swombat 15y ago
  Many times over, although it seems like everyday I hear of an affiliate marketer who is killing it online and I wonder how. Having interacted with that world somewhat in the past, I can say that there are some very rare affiliate marketers who are making a good chunk of cash - but those are people who have invested a lot of time and energy into building vast mailing lists of followers who sign up to stuff they recommend. If you're willing to spend years building such a mailing list, you can make a few thousands a month jumping between various MLM opportunities. Personally, I'd find that deeply unsatisfying work.
manmal 15y ago
I think that this theory applies to highly scalable markets combined with common-purpose products, such as a web app for a certain hobby (e.g., learning to play the guitar). An ad-supported Android app ought to have a userbase of 200.000 - 500.000 users to confidently reach 1000$ of montly revenue - in this case I would say it is highly unlikely that you will ever reach 100.000$ of monthly income (except you write Angry Birds, of course - but they built upon the success of the game on other platforms, a thing an army-of-one could not do within the required timespan). For this exact reason, I consider quitting Android development for the time being.

feralchimp 15y ago

Great post. There's a "swing for the fences" mentality in the SV / startup community that I think has driven a lot of potential talent away from entrepreneurship in general. The idea that entrepreneurship requires immense sacrifice to do well, or to be "worth doing at all" presupposes a set of romantic values that just don't map well to the relative size and frequency of market opportunities. My Mac app nets me between $100-200 per month, every month, for noise-floor incremental time commitment. For anyone obsessed with becoming a Successful Entrepreneur, that's a 'how dare you even mention it' achievement. But you would be AMAZED at how an extra $100-200/month can improve a man's happiness at the end of the day. It's like an anti-aliasing algorithm for all those little bullshit expenses that, in aggregate, can lead to non-trivial stress. If that $100/month (and the feeling of delivering value to direct customers) makes me 5% calmer and happier while I'm hanging out with my wife and son at night, it's an enormous win.

kylemathews 15y ago
I've made the same realization. There's something incredibly satisfying about having built something that others find helpful. That's where most of the joy of entrepreneurship comes from. Optimize for reaching that goal first and then move onto secondary goals like becoming a billionaire or changing the world.
moocow01 15y ago
I couldn't agree more. To add to it, I think there is something to be said about the natural slow evolution of yourself and your business. There are many who are looking for quick paths that involve raising a boatload of cash, hiring a bunch of people and trying to storm the market. In actuality this is rarely how most real businesses are formed - even in tech. Most businesses are formed through a slow and very unsexy evolution over a number of years by doing relatively difficult things that others don't want to do.

ISeemToBeAVerb 15y ago

"What's the best strategy to get from having no startup to having one that provides you with income?" I would argue that the answer to this question is to enter a market that has already been verified for you. In the start-up community there seems to be a huge emphasis on seeking out and creating new markets and business models. While this is a fantastic thing, it is in no way a prerequisite for starting a business. Everyday entrepreneurs the world over start successful businesses in preexisting markets. If you're a developer looking to start a business, you don't need to verify a market for mobile application development, you know it exists. The only barrier is your skill level and ability to attract clients. I know this stuff is obvious, but I think the notion of validating markets has become overemphasized in the start-up community. There are plenty of opportunities where much of that leg work has already been done.

swombat 15y ago
That's not a bad angle, and in fact to minimise the risk, a services business may be a good idea. However, services businesses come with their own bundles of problems, not the least of which being that you're still caught in the "sell your time for money" trap which stops you from doing other things. It's better than a job, but not as good as building a product. I think in all cases where you're building a product, whether it's competing with existing products (better), or an entirely new thing (worse), there is some amount of market validation to do. Does anyone want your "accounting software with this extra feature"? Will anyone care about your "Basecamp but with a different look"? Best to validate those before sinking lots of dev effort in them...