Comment by DevX101 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DevX101 | Hacker News Reader

You don't know me and I'm just starting to post on HN, but I've read a bit of your writings and you're clearly a brilliant guy. I recently saw a thread from a couple years ago where a few people made the flawed assertion that the aggregate rate of failure among entrepreneurs was uniform, and that your chances of success were also 10%, just like everyone else. Your response basically said that you were quite confident you were better than the average entrepreneur, and that you were pretty sure you're on the right hand of the bell curve.

I actually admire that bravado in people who can walk the walk. I'm not a fan of false humility.

All that being said, you seem to wear the solo-founder badge a bit too triumphantly. I can't comment on the superiority of your solution versus competitors but I'll bet you can hold your own. Getting someone on board who can SELL your story, and communicate your product to interested buyers would probably do wonders for your sales if you found the right guy.

Trust me, I see where you're coming from. After a bad past experience myself, I am now a single founder building up my product in solitude. But I know where my limits end, and when my product is ready to go to the next level, I'll have no problem bringing on a VETTED and qualified partner to grow the company as fast as possible.

Just a thought!

Your response basically said that you were quite confident...

Ah yes, the old Putnam thread which gets trotted out every month or so...

I know where my limits end, and when my product is ready to go to the next level, I'll have no problem bringing on a VETTED and qualified partner to grow the company as fast as possible.

Sure. One of the bullet points from my talk which didn't get translated into the blog post was "Step 1: Figure out what you're good at". I'm very much aware of my limitations, and if I ever forget them tptacek will step in to remind me how horrible I am at web design and how I need to do a better job of selling Tarsnap.

As for marketing, I very nearly listed Hacker News as my marketing co-founder: Roughly 10% of Tarsnap users come to the website from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389304 -- far more than any other single page (although my blog is more in aggregate).

That's not marketing, dude, that's some thin shreds of organic traffic. Perhaps you should listen to tptacek, wheels, jacquesm (and myself) and actually find someone who's competent at building a business, just as you are competent at building technology, and team up with them.

Would Steve Wozniak be considered successful by any metric if only 100 Apple computers had ever been sold? No. A business needs many things, of which a great product is only one. "Make something people want" implies you need people (enough of them) to actually want your product. If they've never heard of it or if they don't buy it because of some other reason, they don't want it. If only very few people buy your product, it's because it sucks on some important metrics.

Harsh reality: until you get your head out of your ass and bring in someone with the skills to turn your technology into a business, you don't even have one founder, because you don't really have a business at all... yet.

That's not marketing, dude, that's some thin shreds of organic traffic.

I'd say it's a thick shred. :-)

One of the benefits of Dropbox's popularity is that there are a very large number of people who google for "dropbox security".

It's all love, Colin. But you should get a cofounder.

I knew I could count on you to jump in with your usual advice. :-)

That doesn't make him wrong though. The fact that you consistently ignore the advice to get a co-founder given by people that mean you no harm to me means that you are in your 'comfort zone'.

The fact that you don't take some of the other advice at face value indicates that even if you had a co-founder it might not last long, so you might be right not to choose for having one :)

Mahmud offers a good third alternative though, between taking on a marketing savvy co-founder and going it alone in your own (I would add 'pig headed' here but I don't mean that disrespectful) way, a white label version would make a lot of sense.

That way you get to concentrate on the tech the way you want to and you can enable other parties that are more marketing savvy to be your shop front.

The fact that 10% come from that page is a problem, not something to brag about.

Given cperciva current situation, I expect he could grow his company just as well by hiring a sales or marketing professional, perhaps even on a part-time contract basis, and he wouldn't have to give up any control or equity.

Not even hire anyone. If he white-labels the service and lets others brand it, he will be sweet.

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