Ask HN: How many of you want to stay small, part-time, and manageable?

24 pointsby route3almost 15 years ago

Hi HN, longtime reader, first time poster...I've been bitten by the bootstrapping "bug" and I hope to launch my own micro-ISV in the next few months with a niche SaaS product. I've been inspired by many late nights of pouring over Patrick's (BingoCardCreator) blog, A Small Bear, Peldi's writings about getting Mockups off the ground and many others out there.The thing I love most about HN is the diversity. There is the single-founder, bootstrapped "Shareware" guy with a handfull of lifetime solds having a discussion about sales techniques with a founder of a top SaaS firm and ego's never get involved.With that said, I plan on being one those single-founder bootstrapped guys with a small number of customers. And I want to stay that way. I know I might be the minority here on HN and that is perfectly OK (each of us has different backgrounds, ambitions, and goals). A little bit more about my backgroud: I don't know what Series A funding is. I don't live near the Valley, San Francisco or NYC - I live in a small town in New Hampshire, USA. I don't Tweet, I'm shy, I've never met an angel investor and I don't have a blog. I provide these details because I hope they give you a little insight as to how much I'm not a loud, Twitter-happy founder ready to shake up the social media with a interweb 2.0 platform!I enjoy writing software and also finding niche B2B voids to write software for. I've finally picked one and started writing some code. As I poke around HN and read the conversations, I'm curious how many of you are creating something small and manageable. I'm OK if my SaaS product, at $29/mo doesn't grow past 200 customers. Imagine that, grossing over 65K/yr to compliment my full-time software job! In fact, I don't think I want the headache that comes with 1,000 customers. At that point, you probably can't hold down your full-time job anymore. Then you're hiring, you're paying for additional accounting and legal fees, employees, taxes are increasingly complicated, multi-lingual releases, you need office space and your accountant wants you to become a Delaware corporation but some book you read said to incorporate in Nevada. My goodness!Summary: Did you start out with small business plans but things took off? Do you sometimes wish your business was smaller and more manageable? Are a micro-ISV with just a few customers and absolutely love it? If someone popped up on HN and said they now have 200 SaaS paying subscribers and they are taking down the sign-up page to keep his/her business small and manageable rather than growing, would you laugh at the notion or, like me, completely understand his/her decision?

7 comments

joshkaufmanalmost 15 years ago

I'm definitely in this camp: I quit a management-track job at a Fortune 50 a year and a half ago to teach business full-time. Finished a book (to be published December 30), have a full roster of consulting clients, an online course, and a few big licensing deals in the works.I'm keeping the business small by design: I have absolutely no desire to manage/supervise the work of a large team - been there, done that, hated it. The maximum I'm willing to manage is a calling service and a part-time assistant, mostly to offload administrative work I'd rather not do.I'd rather make a very good living and keep it simple (particularly with a child on the way) than spend my life compensating for the complexity that any huge operation inevitably has.

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SMrFalmost 15 years ago

I don't think it's a coincidence that you don't live in the Valley and you're thinking of bootstrapping a small business. In the rest of the country I believe you are firmly in the majority, so welcome to the club!I've always wondered why this is. I'm from Chicago myself, and while we have a growing community of tech startups that is beginning to resemble the Valley, small business owners are much more the norm. My theory is a lack of infrastructure and culture. I think it's easier to find someone to quit their job and work with you on some big, "internet scale" project in SV because that's (almost) normal behavior there. Plus you have the venture capital ecosystem to back you up once it's time to scale. I know of a few great startups in New York that are struggling to secure VC, and I suspect their jobs would be much easier if they lived out West.Personally, I'd love to tackle a huge problem. I have some crazy, disruptive ideas. But I'm starting out smaller so I can pay my own way, Chicago-style.

foxtrotalmost 15 years ago

For my own business project I aim to keep it manageable, this is easier when on your own as you have the luxury of picking your customers from those that are interested in your services. I have always been of the mind that if I can make enough money to live comfortably without disliking what I am doing then I will be happy. By making sure I don't have any "troublesome" customers and being proactive to move them to other providers I feel that I will be offering them a better service whilst maintaining my sanity and allowing me to support all of my other customers.Its like a teacher who removes a loud student for the benefit of the others.

seaotteralmost 15 years ago

I write for businesses, and I think a lot of us probably can't mainstream because either we can't handle a large load of customers suddenly pouring in (although it's probably our lifelong dream), or we don't want to take the chance in hiring more labor and hope everyone is as devoted and committed to the company's success as we are. There's probably a lot of other reasons, but those stand out the most to me. I certainly can't see business writing as becoming a "factory" type industry anytime soon, with those conveyors of word-smiths standing around waiting. :-)

hgaalmost 15 years ago

While his business is retail vs. B2B, you might want to check out Patrick McKenzie: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11</a>

radu_floricicaalmost 15 years ago

Yup, except that's the only thing I do (no day job). Also I somehow never managed to make an app that was used by several people: all my projects are for one client each. Well, there was one who had two, but they merged (that was a fun moment... I'm still integrating).

ahoyherealmost 15 years ago

I wouldn't laugh. If you actually enjoy being employed, more power to you! It's ludicrous that you even feel the need to ask, to find out if the people in your community would mock you for not dreaming big enough, when you have decided what would make you happiest.Note that I'm not criticizing you, but the attitude of many around here that you led you to feel like you either have to boil the ocean or go home.I love being an independent businesswoman, but even my product is still only part-time. We've got about 580 paying users at <a href="http://letsfreckle.com" rel="nofollow">http://letsfreckle.com</a> and "we" is just me, my husband, and our new part-term intern-y guy. While we're picking up the dev/promo pace, I bet we don't put in more than 60 man-hours/wk total for all 3 of us.Now, I do want to grow it (and our future SaaS projects) to a lot of revenue, but not a lot of people. My ideal company will employ 5-8 people. Just enough for a nice big family dinner.I will say that if you put enough effort into the "mode" and interaction design of a product, that the customer support burden can be very small. We spend less than 30 minutes a day on emails. (Not counting work the emails might bring up, e.g. bug fixes, but that's not customer support!)EDIT: I hate that phrase, "lifestyle business." We need a powerful term that doesn't conjure up the idea of giving us pats on the head because of our adorable little dreams. Any suggestions?