The business profits are comparable to my full-time salary, so money isn't really an issue. I'm based in the US. What advice would you give to someone in this situation (Taxes, incorporating, lifestyle, anything and everything welcome)?
I agree that tough terms are good at filtering them out. You might even have to be a little aloof, but not outright rude. Things like pay up front, by a certain date, is great for this.
As anyone who has worked in retail or has had customer interactions can attest to, individual customers can be very wrong.
Some of the best advice I've seen in a while.
In my situation, most clients/users are amazing, understanding, and appreciate the work we're doing.
Between 5% and 10% are insane. In my very small part of the market, I've learned that most horrible clients will be either very small (1-2 employee businesses or family operations) or enterprise level with sloppy internal policies. I try to catch on early and tweak the terms to: a) discourage them from using us b) insulate us from their hellish behavior.
You should probably decide early on whether it's a lifestyle business (steady $40k per month) or a VC backed business ($100M+ valuation). VCs won't back lifestyle businesses, but they can be life-changing. On the other hand, lifestyle businesses are actually harder, but in different ways, e.g. you can get disrupted by Google or a VC backed company 20 years later.
Don't spend too much focus on incorporating and lawyers and all that. It's probably worth paying well enough to trust someone to handle it. Some of my biggest regrets are spending days handling my own accounting and logo design. Even a mediocre lawyer probably knows better than you.
Try your hand at applying for accelerators. The good ones are easy to apply to and the process forces you to analyze your company.
You should also get a cofounder if you don't already have one. This could be a spouse or early employee. The standard is 4 year vested equity.
Beyond that, I personally made a point of ensuring that my product stuff runs itself with no human input whatsoever. Even to the point of ensuring that customer support tasks get automated after the second time I see the same request.
The goal is to be able to really down tools and disappear for a month at a time without the business falling apart. Chances are you will have had to do a lot of this in order to run the thing while employed full time, but now that the payoff will be true 100% downtime for you whenever you want it, it’s well worth finishing the job.
Good luck!
Take it with a grain of salt and use your intuition. Related thread on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214512
Anyway, congrats, good luck.