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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

Another self-funded business founder here. One thing which rarely gets mentioned is the incredible feeling of loneliness which you have to be able to cope with. It’s not just that solo entrepreneurs usually work from home. On top of that they have problems that none of their peers have, and often also use technologies that are not common at larger companies (you have to use newer/better tech to gain an edge).

As a result, there is no one to talk to. No watercooler, no peers that understand you.

There is a certain subgroup of self-funded businesses that are strongly marketing-oriented that has organized itself around Microconf. There might even be a community of sorts. But not everyone is that strongly marketing-focused and not everyone is even at a stage when they have the means to attend a conference like that.

The article resonated deeply with me: I went through many similar issues as the author did. Perhaps it is time to form a community of sorts?

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https://indiehackers.com is a community for solo entrepreneurs that I've found helpful and interesting. They also organize meetups in different cities. I hope it grows because there are a lot of solo entrepreneurs like us out there!

I tried to give extensive treatment to the loneliness factor, as well as the lack of things in commit even with people ostensibly in the same profession. It was piled into the section on motivation.

You did! And you did a good job. I could add to it, but as I wrote, your article resonated deeply.

Have you tried Meetups? If you are in a reasonably sized city, Meetups can be great (and free) to talk to linkminded devs using the same technologies, making contacts and maybe even finding business partners.

I spent most of the last ten years in Atlanta and tried the full gamut of coworking, Meetup and networking options, which are extensive. But it’s very much as jwr said - very few of those people are truly flying by today’s bank balance, bootstrapped in the most literal (and perilous) sense possible, so nobody really understands where you are and presumes you have time for the same BS people with some kind of funding or employment do.

Plus, being in an obscure niche means nobody understands what you do, or much cares. Telephony ain’t sexy, and most specialised things that cater to very particular intra-industrial needs aren’t either. There is a small coterie of people in ATL with whom I can have fulfilling conversations about VoIP, and many of them are among my customers already. The chances of that happening at a generic business networking event are substantially zero.

So it’s not that one has literally nobody to talk to, anywhere. There just isn’t much of a support system given these two factors. It’s very rarefied, and one must develop a high tolerance for toiling in obscurity and the loneliness that comes with. Some developer types don’t mind that, I gather, but if you’re used to and generally enjoy working with humans, it’s really tough sometimes.

Exactly. Even in technology circles people will not necessarily understand the compromises you have to make as a self-funded entrepreneur. To take an example, there is often a way of building things that is understood to be the "correct" way. Comprehensive tests, continuous integration, container orchestration, there could be many examples. What people do not understand is that a self-funded solo entrepreneur has to compromise all the time, being desperately short on time and money. So yeah, some tests, very limited CI, and scripts that start docker containers, for now, until there is time to do more, because time is so short. Talking about this openly always raises eyebrows.

What few people understand is that a solo self-funded developer is not supposed to get tech things "right". That is a good way to run the business into the ground. Instead, the goal is to optimize cash flow by carefully balancing your time investment between technology and marketing.

Or people don't understand why you build things "right" anyway and are always broke. ;-)

But yeah, I agree. So much advice out and Best Practices out there that only work if you've got a 10-person org and plenty of time to spare, as well as a clear ROI for gold-plating.

Few of my projects have ever had any tests. And none of the even remotely successful ones have. Luxury I just can't afford.

The work I do for clients is always much higher quality from a purely technical perspective, but when you're solo and working on side projects, you optimize for a completely different set of variables (or fail).

Interesting. For me it's the opposite. I'm not saying I do sloppy work for clients, but the gold-plating really happens on the product side. For consulting projects the decisions are usually more pragmatic and get-it-done oriented.

I used to be more like this. To a fault.

Being a perfectionist and having no accountability and unbounded time to tinker on a side project and not release it or charge for it or market it is a recipe for disaster in my case. So now I try to do the shittiest first version that I can live with, and then revise as I go. It’s painful and stressful, but the money the projects make really helps :)

Curious if coworking centers/hacker spaces can be solution for this..

I think for some people they can be, but as mentioned in sibling threads, that hasn't worked out for me.

I and many self funded entrepreneurs are too cheap for this.

The best thing I’ve done to meet people is hosting in-person Indie Hackers meetups.

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