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What I Learned in My First Year Year as a Solo Founder

293 点作者 thakobyan大约 6 年前

12 条评论

todd3834大约 6 年前
Thanks for sharing! I have spent a lot of time as a solo founder and I’ve spent time as a co-founder. I thought it might be helpful to contrast my experiences.<p>As a solo founder I found that the highs were muted and the lows were amplified. This likely won’t be true for everyone but this was very true for me.<p>As a solo founder I often felt like I had no idea if I was working on the right thing because there are so many things that need to be done. Being able to divide and conquer is a great feeling.<p>I’ve read that statistically your chances of succeeding are higher as a co-founder. This idea can really get in your head if your having a rough week.<p>As a co-founder you might sometimes feel like you are carrying all of the weight and others are benefiting more from your hard work. Don’t worry, the next time you get sick they will carry on for you. It goes both ways. Not everyone will put out the same effort every day but hopefully it averages out.<p>Personally I’m a very social person even though I sometimes feel like an introvert. Just because you can live life alone doesn’t mean it is the best choice for everyone. Now that I’m married and have a daughter I can’t imagine how lonely I would be if I had to go back to experiencing life alone. Similarly, working with people who you care about to some degree can be a great reward and motivator.<p>Everyone is different and solo founders can be successful. For me, having experienced both, I will find a friend to join me on my journies from now on.
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idlewords大约 6 年前
After running a thing by myself for nearly ten years, I would say the most important factor is anxiety management. People experience anxiety very differently, so it&#x27;s hard to give advice, but without some way of dealing with and reducing this stress it is not possible to run a solo business for a sustained period of time.<p>Some examples of what can make you anxious working solo:<p>* A &quot;lumpy&quot; income stream that is hard to model or predict<p>* The feeling of being on call 24&#x2F;7<p>* Having to make a large capital outlay or hire an expensive professional like a lawyer<p>* Seeing a well-funded competitor appear and start hiring<p>Anxiety is an odd meta-problem in that if you worry about it, you just make it worse, but some strategy for long-term coping is necessary.
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Abishek_Muthian大约 6 年前
I ran my company successfully as a single founder for 5 years, till one day I was told I would become a quadriplegic &amp; I had to close my company as there&#x27;s no other executive to take care of it.<p>I had Facebook Fb Start accelerated product with 2,50,000 customers , any company expressing interest in acquiring my product wanted me to work for them; which wasn&#x27;t possible as I was recovering from surgery.<p>Being single founder has it&#x27;s merit, but when things go south with your health or anything personal; you&#x27;ll loose your company.<p>I used to despise YCombinator&#x27;s co-founder requirement, now I advice everyone to get a co-founder before they start their operations.
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api大约 6 年前
I&#x27;ve been a solo founder for some time. By far the toughest thing for me has been the cognitive load.<p>I don&#x27;t mean raw time. I generally have enough time to get done what I need to get done. I&#x27;m talking about the sheer number of different things I have to think about and pay attention to. It&#x27;s more about mental clutter and management of it than time management, at least for my own case.<p>Burnout can be an issue too and can come from cognitive load and also not having as many peers to give support and energy. It&#x27;s easy to get down and lose motivation.<p>Overall I&#x27;d say: multiple founders with good chemistry &gt; solo founder &gt; multiple founders with bad chemistry or conflict. I always put being a solo founder on a list of weaknesses, but the thing is that everyone and every team&#x2F;venture has a list of weaknesses and part of succeeding is recognizing yours and trying to work around them.<p>Strategies I&#x27;ve found include maintaining time&#x2F;energy boundaries (e.g. not working weekends unless something is on fire), delegating where possible, managing scope creep (I&#x27;ve had problems with this one!), and looking at it as a marathon rather than a sprint and thinking in terms of endurance. Getting exercise, eating healthy, and trying to get enough sleep help too as with anything requiring one to be fit.
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therealwardo大约 6 年前
I&#x27;ve been working on a project with a couple people that I don&#x27;t get a lot of value from as co-founders right now because they aren&#x27;t designers or engineers. They are trying to help us define the set of requirements given their relationships in the industry, but they have not really done product work before. I keep telling myself how valuable they will be once we launch because they will bring customers. Echoed by the author here:<p>&quot;When you start a project, you always think that finishing and launching your project is the hardest part. However, after the launch you realize that the most difficult part is just ahead.&quot;<p>Any recommendations for how to handle this kind of co-founder situation?<p>I&#x27;m thinking about working with them to define equity incentives on both sides, but I&#x27;m short on other ideas for how to make things feel well balanced in the short term given our unbalanced skill sets.
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nyrulez大约 6 年前
This resonated well with me - thank you for the article! I jumped into the fray late last year full time and it&#x27;s been the most exciting (and nerve-racking) few months of my life. As the author says, I feel like I am learning new things, growing personally (and making mistakes) at 10x the speed! (and I live in Jersey City too)<p>I would say the hardest part for me is balancing time between building and outreach. It&#x27;s always concerning to build stuff mindlessly without having a tight user loop, but in the beginning it&#x27;s really hard to wear multiple hats and figure out how to do both. I wish I had a great co-founder who could handle the outreach and audience part, but that&#x27;s probably like wishing for a genie.<p>If anyone invests in crypto or stocks at all, feel free to check them out [0][1] - I am always looking for feedback (I haven&#x27;t publicly &quot;launched&quot; yet but am close).<p>Fun fact: everything here is in Python, both frontend and backend.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;coinquanta.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;coinquanta.com</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stockquanta.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stockquanta.com</a> (only landing page)
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mamitas大约 6 年前
On the flip side (to most of the comments here) I&#x27;ve done 2 failed startups as a cofounder and feel that things might have gone better if I just did it solo.<p>Both of these were with people I knew for a while and initially had good chemistry with - but it ended up going sour over ultimately product&#x2F;idea differences (both over 3 year stretches). I feel I did most of the work anyway (development work in a deep tech startup) and the sales&#x2F;business partner basically just walked away with the biggest clients (since they were the face of the company as far as the client was concerned).<p>The next startup I do, I&#x27;ll just pay for sales&#x2F;consulting with cash, rather than cofounder equity.
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bszupnick大约 6 年前
&gt; The communication cost of making decisions and shipping something is extremely low.<p>I&#x27;m sure everyone is a little different in this regard, but for me, having someone to make a decision with is something I really cherish. I&#x27;m a very optimistic person who dreams big, so having a partner who can poke holes and challenge my decisions has always helped me along the way.<p>&gt; Do not invest too much time early on designing the perfect pricing model for your product.<p>As someone on the cusp of launching a side-project&#x2F;wanna funded startup, I really loved this. I&#x27;ve recently caught myself trying to attain perfection instead of &#x27;ship and adapt&#x27;, and this is a great manifestation of that to be aware of.<p>Thanks for the great article!
jasonwen大约 6 年前
A lot of solid advice. I’m surprised you learned so much in just your first year. It took me way longer for certain things to realize. Thanks for sharing!
unwind大约 6 年前
Meta: the word &quot;Year&quot; is duplicated in the title, that would be great to have the mods edit. Thanks.
loriverkutya大约 6 年前
Since it is hugged to death, alternative link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;swlh&#x2F;what-i-learned-in-my-first-year-year-as-a-solo-founder-efeb845da1f9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;swlh&#x2F;what-i-learned-in-my-first-year-year...</a>
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avip大约 6 年前
What does &quot;net revenue&quot; stand for? Is that profit?
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