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I have been a single founder 2 times (one of the companies got sold and other one is doing good) and 2 times with co-founders. And I personally find starting up
by infogaufire 13y ago
I have been a single founder 2 times (one of the companies got sold and other one is doing good) and 2 times with co-founders. And I personally find starting up a single founder.
You mentioned you have good ideas more than 2 times i guess, you will have to take that thing out of your mind. When you are onto something, burn rest of the ideas for atleast 6 months.
If you can't find co-founder, surround yourself with team members, start with hiring people remotely china,india,bangladesh.
Build prototype, no full fledged product. Try to fail fast if things doesn't pick after few months to save some time and fatigue. By prototype I mean, that one feature that separates you from others.
Learn to delegate work. As a programmer first, founder second - I used to micro manage things which gave me really bad time with my first startup. But as you start delegating work to your remote workers / employees, you will start feeling better.
I would advice you to build something with atleast some business model. Its tough to create instagrams or tumblrs of the world.
Hope this helps.
- alexshye 13y agoYeah, the biggest thing I’ve been trying to do is minimize the prototyping, and try to fail fast. It is difficult to tell the difference between failing, and not trying hard enough.I feel it is a gut decision that should get better with time.
- taktix 13y agoMost business ideas will work eventually, if given enough time. Good ideas, on the other hand, tend to get traction quickly. For me, I test a lot of ideas. Most of the stuff I do takes minimal time and resources so that if it fails, it doesn't hurt too bad. I'm always testing.
- alexshye 13y agoIn your experience, how quickly is "quickly"?
- taktix 13y agoQuickly is unscientific but very intuitive. It's determined by things like my energy levels, my finances, how well the launch is going, any new information I've received since launch - many factors. I can always go back and revisit the project later if I want.
- Sealy 13y agoIts good to hear from another single founder. I'm at a stage now where I have a product running and I'm looking to grow and/or seek VC help. What puts me off is the fact that they are less interested if you do not have a co-founder. But surely I should be in a good position if my site is already monetizing itself??? It means that my business model is working. @infogaufire, how did you manage accounting and marketing? Did you delegate that too?
- alexshye 13y ago"@infogaufire, how did you manage accounting and marketing? Did you delegate that too?" I would love to hear about this too. One of my other biggest challenges, as a tech guy, has been figuring out how to go about all the non-tech stuff.
- Sealy 13y agoExactly how I feel. I've coded like a headless chicken for the last 9 months, its what I enjoy and what I'm good at. When I show the product to VC's and tell them I need help with marketing, accounting, establishing as a [already profitable] company. They brush me off and almost laugh. "Thats the easy stuff" they say.
- infogaufire 13y agoI actually managed that myself for sometime. Accounting can easily be managed if you can dedicate just one night on building a simple app for that with even a bad UI. All you have to do is: 1. Create a table Money with id, name, money, credit/debit (1 or 0), date&time 2. Create a form to enter these values Below the form, just print values from database order by date&time This simple thing will take you very long - believe me. Its that easy. For marketing @ very early stage, you just have to be a hustler. This is something what I do whenever I float some random new project (just posted this comment on HN) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836395
- OafTobark 13y agoAlex, what's your email. I can try to help best I can.