5 ms·

A Company of One

88 points by herbertl 3y ago

dmezzetti 3y ago
This isn't possible in every industry but it certainly is in the software space. With modern tooling and automation, one person can accomplish quite a lot. As with most paradigm shifts, many are sleeping on this. But expect small teams to be behind more and more of the most influential software of the next decade. And the traditional mindset on what is a company and how growth happens will also evolve.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I suspect that AI will be an accelerator for this. It's not gonna replace us. It will help us to be more productive.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    Some stuff won't be needed in more quantity. So if what was needed had five people and now three people can do that same job, two are let go. Of course, things will sort themselves out eventually, but whenever fast shifts occurs, a lot of throwing under a lot of buses will occur in the meantime.
  - passion__desire 3y ago
    Each software framework, whether they be java, python, js frameworks, would have its own finetuned llm, which the foundation maintaining the framework would provide. It's the next evolution of documentation. Instead of consulting the docs, people would consult these doc-llms. Thank God, we have llama 2 for this purpose.
  - nicbou 3y ago
    It will replace some people, and the benefits of productivity will be reaped by someone else.
  - lionkor 3y ago
    The biggest issue for founder-type programmers is not code volume, its code quality. Most founding code of products I have seen is the most fucked up, horrible, over- or under-engineered, hacky, buggy, usually platform-specific and NIH covered pile of hot shit. Strong dependencies on half-assed internal data structures, stretch marks everywhere ("we did it like this because we had time pressure, and it was wrong, and now we cant get rid of it"), weird protocols ("we will just use a stringly-typed header for our high performance TCP communications, its easier to debug!"), lack of documentation ("no bro, the code is the documentation!"), and very little if any devops or testing (lol testing). Thats good that way, too, otherwise products would never be launched. Thats why a lot of engineers will not launch a product, ever - their standards are too high and theyre too hung up on doing it right, that their window of opportunity for their niche fades. The one thing I haven't seen a single startup or upcoming product struggle with is quickly churning out a lot of code that mostly/fully does the job and sells. Unless AI can replace engineers like me, half of who's job experience is cleaning up, streamlining and refactoring these "quick launch" codebases, in order to make the code last even if core engineers leave and to make onboarding easier, we are NOT going to see a massive revolution of AI programming tools.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      Simply not true, and this post represents the biggest fallacy most technical founders struggle with. The most common problem is they never ship anything. Or they ship something no one needs. Or they ship something people need but don't know how distribution works so those people never find it. I'm someone who's spent enough time writing high quality code that my default thinking is in line with yours, but the truth is it's a privilege to get to a place where you can afford to hire people to clean up your "quick launch" codebase. Even if you look at it from a place of personal pride, there is more pride in proving your idea solves real problems for real people today, than there is in chasing an ideal codebase that scales better tomorrow when you don't even have proof anyone wants it.
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > The biggest issue for founder-type programmers is not code volume, its code quality. > Most founding code of products I have seen is the most fucked up, horrible, over- or under-engineered, hacky, buggy, usually platform-specific and NIH covered pile of hot shit. I dunno your background, but I think you have it almost completely, 100% incorrect in your first paragraph, while being completely, 100% correct in your second. The summary is this: if you're launching a product, you want to do it as soon as possible, damn the quality of the code as long as the quality of the product is sufficient. The reason for this is because, 9 times out of 10, you're going to be throwing all that code away anyway! It's rare that the first product you ship is successful. And if it does get successful? Well, then you have the money to redo it, refinish it, polish it, address tech debt, whatever. There's only two outcomes: the product succeeds or it fails. If, in the rare case, you launch a successful product and the code is clean, perfect, etc, you haven't gained anything over the person who launched a half-assed, broken-but-still-sufficient successful product. The competitor can still get his product to your standards because they succeeded. If you fail, then you have spent unnecessary time determining what doesn't work, while the competitor has spent less time and can attempt another product after his failure, while you're still perfecting your first failure.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
pxue 3y ago
what's not being said: unless you're rich, it's much better to aim for a small, profitable business within the first 3 months and a low 7 figure exit. If you can't figure out how to do this, work for someone else until you do. I think the genz are very aware of this.
- GordonS 3y ago
  I think you're right. Hell, a lot of GenZ'ers find the very idea of billionaires to be abhorrent, let alone strive to become one. Can't say I disagree.
  - valzam 3y ago
    I always find the anti-billionaire sentiment a bit weird in the sense that it's not like they have literally been given billions of dollars in cash. Most billionaires net worth is highly centralised in the stock of the companies they founded, which at some point were worth nothing. When people say they find the "very idea of billionaires" abhorrent, what exactly is the solution here? After the stock in your company becomes worth > billion you have to give it away for free? Because selling it means you are still a billionaire. I think there is something to be said about inheritance taxes and limiting the infinite perpetuation of wealth through generations but unless we are talking asset seizure I am not quite sure how you would do away with the Musks, Brins, Gates' etc. of today.
    - diogenes4 3y ago
      > When people say they find the "very idea of billionaires" abhorrent, what exactly is the solution here? After the stock in your company becomes worth > billion you have to give it away for free? Yes. Arguably it was never rightfully theirs to begin with—owning someone else's labor output without working yourself is a pretty antisocial act. Furthermore I'd argue that billionaires have repeatedly demonstrated they are unable to invest in public good. Philanthropy used to be a thing; even the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is a pathetic shadow of that practice with obvious ideological blind spots.
BirAdam 3y ago
The most liberating insight I had in studying economics is that every person in a relatively free country already is a company of one, even if each individual is “employed” by another company. The negotiation of salary or wage is one in which the employee is negotiating the price of his/her labor, and in that sense is selling something, or purchasing services/facilities from the employer, or in reality both.
- xmprt 3y ago
  This might be a controversial take but by that reasoning, I don't think America is a particularly free country. Most people need to work whatever shitty job they can get and class mobility is relatively difficult even with things like higher education and the like
  - nostrebored 3y ago
    “Most people need to work whatever shitty job they can get” Even as someone who grew up well below the poverty line, this wasn’t true ime. The vast majority of adults aren’t impoverished. They’re quite clearly choosing not to work the shitty jobs that would make them impoverished, usually through skills they’ve chosen to acquire. While I don’t have the stats on what percentage of people exercise job choice — these stats are completely unobtainable - I don’t think there’s an argument that can reasonably suggest it’s >50 (or even 20)
    - nicbou 3y ago
      I think that most people have the possibility to choose, but the cost of choosing (in terms of lost income, lost vacations, uncertainty and risk to immigration status) are prohibitive enough to favour the employers. Sure, people can upskill or move across the country, but that's prohibitively expensive and not guaranteed to work. A lot of people are trapped by this.
    - xmprt 3y ago
      You're right. Employees do tend to have a lot of options. But I think the balance is still in employers' favor for most workers when it comes to making decisions for the employee.
HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> how life could fit into work ? This should never have been the question in the first place!
iainctduncan 3y ago
I am all about small companies but they lost me at web 3.
- keikobadthebad 3y ago
  Came to say the same > Web-3 while out of favor will eventually enable more ownership and equity for individuals. Giant red flag not to trust anything this guy says, since he has zero clue.
monero-xmr 3y ago
It took me a while to realize this, as I began my startup journey over valuing software skills and under valuing business skills, but you truly need marketing, sales, and legal (business ops) in addition to product and engineering. As a solo tech guy you can do product and engineering, but the other areas are neglected unless you can pivot away from development and focus on those. Small, highly profitable companies are totally feasible. But making a big splash with a product (not just consulting / freelancing) is extremely difficult as a single person.
ak_111 3y ago
I am wondering what is the greatest product-based company in terms of revenue and impact that had no more than one programmer. To be strict about the definition I am looking for a company that generated cash (not raised it) while still having a relatively small programming team. Top of my head plentyoffish and minecraft are the two main ones that probably everyone heard of? If you relax the condition of 1 programmer a bit then whatsapp is certainly up there. Also if you consider btc a product (although I am not a fan of crypto) and don't believe the theories about satoshi being a group, then btc is definitely up there. In fact this one needed almost less than one programmer since you had to do very little 'maintenance' after the codebase stabilised.
- layer8 3y ago
  Flappy Bird
- fakedang 3y ago
  Ludeon Studios, the guy behind Rimworld. They raised a kickstarter though.
- conceptme 3y ago
  Battlebit 3 people team and it seems just 1 dev https://joinbattlebit.com/meet-the-team/ https://joinbattlebit.com/meet-the-team/
lelanthran 3y ago
> The Avengers are successful not just because they work together but because each one of them whether it be Wonder Woman or Iron Man have their own unique powers. They have powers of “one”. I think if you're going to use analogies, you should stay away from things you don't really know about. Wonder Woman exists in a different universe from Iron Man - One's DC (Justice League, WW, Superman, etc) and the other is Marvel (Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, etc).

88 points by herbertl 3y ago

This isn't possible in every industry but it certainly is in the software space. With modern tooling and automation, one person can accomplish quite a lot. As with most paradigm shifts, many are sleeping on this. But expect small teams to be behind more and more of the most influential software of the next decade. And the traditional mindset on what is a company and how growth happens will also evolve.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I suspect that AI will be an accelerator for this. It's not gonna replace us. It will help us to be more productive.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Some stuff won't be needed in more quantity. So if what was needed had five people and now three people can do that same job, two are let go. Of course, things will sort themselves out eventually, but whenever fast shifts occurs, a lot of throwing under a lot of buses will occur in the meantime.
- passion__desire 3y ago
  Each software framework, whether they be java, python, js frameworks, would have its own finetuned llm, which the foundation maintaining the framework would provide. It's the next evolution of documentation. Instead of consulting the docs, people would consult these doc-llms. Thank God, we have llama 2 for this purpose.
- nicbou 3y ago
  It will replace some people, and the benefits of productivity will be reaped by someone else.
- lionkor 3y ago
  The biggest issue for founder-type programmers is not code volume, its code quality. Most founding code of products I have seen is the most fucked up, horrible, over- or under-engineered, hacky, buggy, usually platform-specific and NIH covered pile of hot shit. Strong dependencies on half-assed internal data structures, stretch marks everywhere ("we did it like this because we had time pressure, and it was wrong, and now we cant get rid of it"), weird protocols ("we will just use a stringly-typed header for our high performance TCP communications, its easier to debug!"), lack of documentation ("no bro, the code is the documentation!"), and very little if any devops or testing (lol testing). Thats good that way, too, otherwise products would never be launched. Thats why a lot of engineers will not launch a product, ever - their standards are too high and theyre too hung up on doing it right, that their window of opportunity for their niche fades. The one thing I haven't seen a single startup or upcoming product struggle with is quickly churning out a lot of code that mostly/fully does the job and sells. Unless AI can replace engineers like me, half of who's job experience is cleaning up, streamlining and refactoring these "quick launch" codebases, in order to make the code last even if core engineers leave and to make onboarding easier, we are NOT going to see a massive revolution of AI programming tools.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    Simply not true, and this post represents the biggest fallacy most technical founders struggle with. The most common problem is they never ship anything. Or they ship something no one needs. Or they ship something people need but don't know how distribution works so those people never find it. I'm someone who's spent enough time writing high quality code that my default thinking is in line with yours, but the truth is it's a privilege to get to a place where you can afford to hire people to clean up your "quick launch" codebase. Even if you look at it from a place of personal pride, there is more pride in proving your idea solves real problems for real people today, than there is in chasing an ideal codebase that scales better tomorrow when you don't even have proof anyone wants it.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > The biggest issue for founder-type programmers is not code volume, its code quality. > Most founding code of products I have seen is the most fucked up, horrible, over- or under-engineered, hacky, buggy, usually platform-specific and NIH covered pile of hot shit. I dunno your background, but I think you have it almost completely, 100% incorrect in your first paragraph, while being completely, 100% correct in your second. The summary is this: if you're launching a product, you want to do it as soon as possible, damn the quality of the code as long as the quality of the product is sufficient. The reason for this is because, 9 times out of 10, you're going to be throwing all that code away anyway! It's rare that the first product you ship is successful. And if it does get successful? Well, then you have the money to redo it, refinish it, polish it, address tech debt, whatever. There's only two outcomes: the product succeeds or it fails. If, in the rare case, you launch a successful product and the code is clean, perfect, etc, you haven't gained anything over the person who launched a half-assed, broken-but-still-sufficient successful product. The competitor can still get his product to your standards because they succeeded. If you fail, then you have spent unnecessary time determining what doesn't work, while the competitor has spent less time and can attempt another product after his failure, while you're still perfecting your first failure.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

pxue 3y ago

what's not being said: unless you're rich, it's much better to aim for a small, profitable business within the first 3 months and a low 7 figure exit. If you can't figure out how to do this, work for someone else until you do. I think the genz are very aware of this.

GordonS 3y ago
I think you're right. Hell, a lot of GenZ'ers find the very idea of billionaires to be abhorrent, let alone strive to become one. Can't say I disagree.
- valzam 3y ago
  I always find the anti-billionaire sentiment a bit weird in the sense that it's not like they have literally been given billions of dollars in cash. Most billionaires net worth is highly centralised in the stock of the companies they founded, which at some point were worth nothing. When people say they find the "very idea of billionaires" abhorrent, what exactly is the solution here? After the stock in your company becomes worth > billion you have to give it away for free? Because selling it means you are still a billionaire. I think there is something to be said about inheritance taxes and limiting the infinite perpetuation of wealth through generations but unless we are talking asset seizure I am not quite sure how you would do away with the Musks, Brins, Gates' etc. of today.
  - diogenes4 3y ago
    > When people say they find the "very idea of billionaires" abhorrent, what exactly is the solution here? After the stock in your company becomes worth > billion you have to give it away for free? Yes. Arguably it was never rightfully theirs to begin with—owning someone else's labor output without working yourself is a pretty antisocial act. Furthermore I'd argue that billionaires have repeatedly demonstrated they are unable to invest in public good. Philanthropy used to be a thing; even the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is a pathetic shadow of that practice with obvious ideological blind spots.

BirAdam 3y ago

The most liberating insight I had in studying economics is that every person in a relatively free country already is a company of one, even if each individual is “employed” by another company. The negotiation of salary or wage is one in which the employee is negotiating the price of his/her labor, and in that sense is selling something, or purchasing services/facilities from the employer, or in reality both.

xmprt 3y ago
This might be a controversial take but by that reasoning, I don't think America is a particularly free country. Most people need to work whatever shitty job they can get and class mobility is relatively difficult even with things like higher education and the like
- nostrebored 3y ago
  “Most people need to work whatever shitty job they can get” Even as someone who grew up well below the poverty line, this wasn’t true ime. The vast majority of adults aren’t impoverished. They’re quite clearly choosing not to work the shitty jobs that would make them impoverished, usually through skills they’ve chosen to acquire. While I don’t have the stats on what percentage of people exercise job choice — these stats are completely unobtainable - I don’t think there’s an argument that can reasonably suggest it’s >50 (or even 20)
  - nicbou 3y ago
    I think that most people have the possibility to choose, but the cost of choosing (in terms of lost income, lost vacations, uncertainty and risk to immigration status) are prohibitive enough to favour the employers. Sure, people can upskill or move across the country, but that's prohibitively expensive and not guaranteed to work. A lot of people are trapped by this.
  - xmprt 3y ago
    You're right. Employees do tend to have a lot of options. But I think the balance is still in employers' favor for most workers when it comes to making decisions for the employee.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago

> how life could fit into work ? This should never have been the question in the first place!

iainctduncan 3y ago

I am all about small companies but they lost me at web 3.

keikobadthebad 3y ago
Came to say the same > Web-3 while out of favor will eventually enable more ownership and equity for individuals. Giant red flag not to trust anything this guy says, since he has zero clue.

monero-xmr 3y ago

It took me a while to realize this, as I began my startup journey over valuing software skills and under valuing business skills, but you truly need marketing, sales, and legal (business ops) in addition to product and engineering. As a solo tech guy you can do product and engineering, but the other areas are neglected unless you can pivot away from development and focus on those. Small, highly profitable companies are totally feasible. But making a big splash with a product (not just consulting / freelancing) is extremely difficult as a single person.

ak_111 3y ago

I am wondering what is the greatest product-based company in terms of revenue and impact that had no more than one programmer. To be strict about the definition I am looking for a company that generated cash (not raised it) while still having a relatively small programming team. Top of my head plentyoffish and minecraft are the two main ones that probably everyone heard of? If you relax the condition of 1 programmer a bit then whatsapp is certainly up there. Also if you consider btc a product (although I am not a fan of crypto) and don't believe the theories about satoshi being a group, then btc is definitely up there. In fact this one needed almost less than one programmer since you had to do very little 'maintenance' after the codebase stabilised.

layer8 3y ago
Flappy Bird
fakedang 3y ago
Ludeon Studios, the guy behind Rimworld. They raised a kickstarter though.
conceptme 3y ago
Battlebit 3 people team and it seems just 1 dev https://joinbattlebit.com/meet-the-team/ https://joinbattlebit.com/meet-the-team/

lelanthran 3y ago

> The Avengers are successful not just because they work together but because each one of them whether it be Wonder Woman or Iron Man have their own unique powers. They have powers of “one”. I think if you're going to use analogies, you should stay away from things you don't really know about. Wonder Woman exists in a different universe from Iron Man - One's DC (Justice League, WW, Superman, etc) and the other is Marvel (Avengers, Iron Man, Hulk, etc).