My Experience as a Single Founder

87 点作者 fotoblur超过 14 年前

Thinking about being a single founder? (Add generic disclaimer here) Well let me outline what my experience has been as a sole creator/manager of my own project. The short of it is you'll do lots of different jobs. Stuff you never thought you'd have to do or know about, you eventually will. Its fun, don't get me wrong, but at times taxing, especially if you start to get some traction.So here is the kind of things you'll need to do as a single founder. For one, it helps to be a developer. Why, because without a product/service/website what else do you have to do. So first you develop. You build new features, you analyze, you build some more, you get some feedback, the cycle continues. People start signing up and using your product.First, if you're lucky enough to have received some feedback from interested users pat yourself on the back for this one. If you develop something and no one's interested you don't have much else to do anyway so you're done. Next, as you develop some more you realize you need to start getting the word out about your service since everyone is giving you good feedback and they're telling their friends about you. But maybe you're not just getting the numbers you'd like to see yet. You'll most likely buy into the notion (as I did) that growth = success (and maybe that is right). You never know, your site could be the next best thing (you at least tell yourself this!).So now empowered with users and interest you become a Marketer Guru. You'll want to learn just about everything you can about SEO (takes about an hour), then do as much as humanly possible to revamp your entire site to make sure you rank well at Google. You revamp alt tags, page descriptions, position keywords, create 'interesting' context....blah, blah, etc. You try Google Ads for a while, maybe Facebook, send bloggers emails, try to get some press, maybe even do some hardcore banner advertising. So now your traffic starts to grow even more, GREAT! Now you can relax, right? Well not so fast. Now you realize that the VPS just can't handle the new load you ingeniously placed on it, so you move to a dedicated server (thumbs up). You get that up and breathing, then you realize that you've got over 30Gigs of client files to transfer, a https cert to transfer, an SMTP server to configure, installing other useful tools, etc. So you stay up all night to configure the new server and pray that you'll get all your files transferred intact.Not to mention you've got support emails filling in your inbox, you're getting automated exceptions in your email telling you that you're site is having connection issues with your SQL server and your hosting company can't tell you why, you have to figure out why your HELO is being rejected (ahem email), insure DNS is correctly setup, find out why half of Europe can't access your site but the rest of the world can. It goes on and on. I'm sure I forgot the half of it already. We have a product (magazine) as part of our site/service so optionally throw in creating a product.So now we've got a few jobs for you: Senior Web Developer, Database Admin, Marketer, Publisher (in my case), System Admin, Help Desk ... and on and on and you start to get the picture. Oh and by the way you might have a day job too! So you'll be working just about every night from about 9-1am and probably half your weekends too. Let me tell you that lack of sleep catches up with you after a while, but I'm still amazed by how durable the human body is! And also, If you have a family, which I do, you'll need a very understanding wife.This is more of a footnote but you could me suffering from a disease or mutation which allows your brain to solve lots of problems or generate a million ideas so you see opportunities everywhere which you'd love to start working on...but crap, you've got an inbox full support emails.Good luck if you decide to go this route, but my opinion is get somebody to help you do something. One person can't do it all forever. Luckily I have a good support system which can also help. Knowing a few people here and there with different expertise can be of great value.If you're interested, I am the creator of fotoblur.com and Fotoblur Magazine.

11 条评论

istvanp超过 14 年前

I am a "single" founder myself who is still in the early stages of my web publishing platform but this sounds already like what I am (and will be) doing. I am a developer and a designer at heart so maybe, just maybe, I might have a bit easier road than you =PI don't have founder related questions but I do want to ask you about the MagCloud platform (<a href="http://www.magcloud.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.magcloud.com/</a>) your are using for publishing your magazine. I never heard about it before (and surprised HP does this but thinking about it it's not the first publishing platform they do: there is also <a href="http://www.tabbloid.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tabbloid.com/</a>).1) How did you come up with the pricing? Do you break even? From the site I see that MagCloud charges 20 cents per page and for 90 pages that's $18. If you charge $19.50 your profit is $1.50. Is that enough to build a business upon?What I do know from working for a niche magazine publisher for over two years is that there isn't revenue to be seen when you take into account printing costs, distribution and returns of issues that were not sold. (Which is why it ceased to exist.)2) I see that some other publishers place ads within their magazine. Are you doing that or have you considered doing that?I could see a publisher charging much less for the magazine if they can offset the printing cost (and salaries, if applicable) and even possibly turn a profit with advertisement alone. However, I can't see this kind of platform raking in as much readers (or circulation in publishing-speak) as regular off the shelf magazines which basically means less advertisement money and harder to get advertisement opportunities.3) I see they are offering an iPad app which allows you to view complete magazines. It's more akin to a closed-garden PDF reader (which might explain the 1.5 star app rating) but that's besides the point I am getting at... At the moment they only support publishers who wish to publish their magazine for free -- which you don't seem to do since I can't find you in their iPad store. Would you make your magazine available for free provided you can support yourself with advertising only? If so, do you think you alienate any hard copy purchase? At 20$/100 page + shipping (>=$3) it isn't really a steal for most readers and even for the materialistic ones when they know they can get the content for free (provided they have an iPad of course).

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sabj超过 14 年前

Great story! Impressive that you were able to pull it together all the same.Two questions:1) At what stage did you realize that you really wished you had some help?2) Looking back, what capacity / role do you most wish someone else had been able to fill? All of them, or maybe someone especially to do design for you, or something else...?Very cool project, followed on Twitter to track those beautiful photos.

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mansilla超过 14 年前

Going solo can be tough, especially if you struggle with time management and prioritization. Being sidetracked is a common problem because things often appear to be very important or urgent simply because there's nobody else around to handle the problems.All teams (even "solo" ones) need good tools for time and project management, CRM, and solid infrastructure, so that you're not constantly putting out fires where there shouldn't be fires. I've tried adding "more people" to the mix without good tools in place, and just found out that I had two more people to manage rather than helpful human resources.BTW, you have a wife -- so you're not flying solo. She can be one of the best members of your team. She's probably the most trustworthy, reliable, honest, biggest supporters you have. You should leverage her for her opinions and advice, whether or not she is technically inclined.I've been doing net startups since 1994, and one of the best pieces of advice I can give is to think about marketing before you build anything. Hopefully, you can build on top of a platform for which marketing directly to the platform consumers is intrinsic. For instance, building apps/tools that can be offered directly to consumers in a venue or manner that they're expecting it, thus, increasing their trust in your product/service and meeting their needs/interests immediately. So, it's no longer "if you build it, they will come".. it's more like "if you build it, position it in the right place, they will already be there waiting."Best of luck. Fotoblur looks great, BTW.

_exec超过 14 年前

Great submission, thank you! May I ask, how did you hire the support team? Did you outsource your helpdesk or did you hire the support team yourself? How do you handle accounting? Finally, what resources helped you the most with SEO?

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mkramlich超过 14 年前

Being a solo founder sucks in some ways (everything on your shoulders) but nice in others -- hyper-efficient communication and pivots, for example. I've seen both, done both, and see advantages to both.

sandeepshetty超过 14 年前

Haven't got anything off the ground yet, but I've thought about this a lot, since I've heard this story before from friends that tried going down the single founder route.The conclusion that I've come to, is that this is a business model problem. If you are a single founder and want to stay that way, then starting a consumer business whose success depends on getting a lot of customers doesn't seem like the way to go. When I do take the plunge and start something of my own, it's going to be something that caters to very few customers, who in turn sell something to a lot of customers (e.g., a publishing platform for authors where you make a cut of every book sold) or who I can charge a lot. Even better if the billing is recurring.P.S. The single founders I've spoken to consistently also mention that something that got to them more than any of this, was a feeling of loneliness. Guess HN sorta solves that problem for some.

anonummyeahaa超过 14 年前

Into any major investing yet? How is that going?If not, how do you think you would approach the process should you seek some?I keep hearing over and over again that investors love teams of founders. I think YC's organizers also think the same?Good luck!

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skowmunk超过 14 年前

Very nice article, thanks for posting it. It helps that it comes from first hand experience.It gives a good picture of some of the challenges I may be facing in the future. I guess I should get cracking on some planning for these issues.Checked out fotoblur: many of the black and whites are plain dead gorgeous - I am partial to black and whites :).Its a great site, giving exposure to talented artists from around the world. I hope you will keep taking it higher and higher.

andrewacove超过 14 年前

About a paragraph and a half of that, I'm hoping to avoid by using Heroku.But I can see marketing/SEO on the horizon, and I could definitely use some other hands on deck so that I can do new development in addition to improving what's already built.A question: would tighter control on your own growth (if feasible) have made it easier? or did you need the growth to find out what to do next?

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vaksel超过 14 年前

Yes as a single founder you get to wear a lot of hats...but most of those things tend to be one offs. The rest are routine, which are easy to manage by making a to-do list the day before.

bystac超过 14 年前

Good post, may I add one tip, Always try to distribute you task to 3rd providers. Emails: google emails, rackspace emails. Support: online issues service. etc...