Solopreneurship

I started https://ipinfo.io as a side project, and eventually transitioned to working on it fulltime by myself for a while. I really enjoyed that time, but as things progressed it was a huge relief to bring in other people to help. Offloading support to people that were better suited to dealing with customer issues, and enjoyed doing that more than me. Then offloading design work to someone who can actually do a good job of design. Then getting help optimizing some DB queries. And before you know it we're a team of 17 globally :) I sometimes fondly remember the times that it was just me working in a coffee shop by myself, they were certainly simpler times. But the business would never have been able to get to the stage its at if I was doing this by myself.

I see this tendency of solo projects a lot in developers. My experience has been quite the opposite, I started to get traction as entrepreneur after accepting the idea that I needed a team. My business sells b2b so maybe it is different, but companies are tired of automated SaaS sales funnels focused on “features”, they want competent people to talk to about their problems that are never just technical ones. I think the Enterprise tech market is very underserved at the moment, but I find it hard to believe you can approach b2b solo.

Very relaxing read. Thank you.

I have just started a similar journey as well. I have passed my bar exam and became a qualified lawyer during the pandemic. To all minds that are sane, the logical thing would be to keep my high paying job and ride out the lockdown recession. Instead, I have left my job, took up a coding bootcamp for 4 months and became a tenant at a co-working space with my laptop, setting myself a 6-month goal to create something of my own - doesn't matter what it is, as long as I can create it. As throughout my life I have always questioned myself that I haven't created anything that is worth an ounce of meaning, but now I am slowing getting that rewarding feeling.

One thing I know from this journey though, is that not getting paid do make you feel down but at the same time I got my family with me and my health. So I am still pretty happy when I wake up in the morning and work, for, myself.

I've been a freelance / solowhatever developer for a long time but instead of being an employee you still have a boss. You usually have multiple bosses.

Instead of working 40 hours a week as a W2 employee you work as many hours as you want as a 1099 contractor. That could be 20 hours a week or 80 hours a week, it's your call.

But if you want to have semi-dependable income typically you'll be working pretty long term on-going contracts. That's cases where you might be working 10 hours a week for company A and 15 hours a week for company B for 6+ months or even years. If you drop off the face of the Earth for a month without warning chances are you're going to leave your clients wondering what's going on. That's an illusion of freedom because you still need to let them know you won't be available as often as usual and you'll likely adjust your desired time off to ensure you can fulfil your contract requirements.

There's other forms of freedom tho, like being able to say no which is really nice to be able to do. If some type of contract doesn't fit what you want to do you can say no and find work on something else.

This sounds wonderful, but as a one man shop its missing something: customers.

I am solo at the moment but that still means I'm doing zoom meetings, trying to deliver features to a budget and a deadline, trying to keep on top of the books and cashflow and keeping my system up.

Customers aren't that different to having a boss. I do get the freedom to choose how things are done, but once your product ships you are no longer really free.

OK, still better than working as an employee, but it's still work.

I started park.io and ran it myself for 5 years, growing it to over $1m/year in revenue.

It was an exciting and enjoyable time for me and my family. I loved the freedom to do whatever I wanted, and to move quickly. I loved taking good care of the code, because it took care of me :)

Eventually partially because I started to get tired of it and also to de-risk, I brought on a partner, which has worked out really well.

Going solo could fall into two different writer-style idioms: Stringer vs Novelist. A Stringer is a freelancer that writes a news story. The content is short term and quasi-anonymous. A Novelist spends months writing something a bit more epic, published under their own name.

On several occasions I've tried going the Novelist route. The problem is when the money runs out and you revert to becoming a Stringer to top-off the bank account. But, then you return back to your project and find the APIs have all changed. So, there is a lot of refactoring to do.

For iOS, there is also the aspect of APIs becoming more team oriented. I met an Apple engineer and asked him what he worked on. He mentioned a very narrow aspect of one API. I asked him what else he worked on and he said that was it! In contrast, I have to juggle hundreds of APIs. There seems to be a conflict of mindset.

A counter example was from an Uber driver in San Mateo. We struck up a conversation and I mentioned that I'm an iOS developer. He showed me an app that he wrote in Flutter to track all his rides. He was on the verge of marketing it. I was kinda blown away.

I’ve tried this and it failed. I applaud the author if he can make it work, but in my experience I was spread too thin and my customers suffered.

I didn’t make connections, I over marketed and undersold. My failure was an important lesson for me.

I also haven’t given up on entrepreneurship, I’ve learned a lot and I plan on making a comeback.

This is great. I definitely consider myself a solopreneur and hope to get back to being self-employed. The burnout after my first one took years to recover from… I probably wouldn’t have burned out if it was a web project instead of an iOS project

I’ve been making a “toy” SaaS website solo, both as a dry run for future endeavors and as a way to practice broader tech skills than my day job requires. (“Toy” = real website, but not one that I expect will make more than a few hundred dollars per month at max.)

Anyone who’s been down this path have any lessons learned or general resources you found helpful to share? It’s been smooth sailing so far, but the place that I’m running into a lot of unknown unknowns is legal compliance: what do I do besides form an LLC, write a privacy policy, etc.?

This is a great read. I find myself in a similar boat but always struggle with the title. Most of the people around me do not consider a person as a solopreneur unless they hire others.

I have worked a very similar way for the last decade. My company works largely in OSHW/OSS and I consider the work I do for closed source companies as "extra stuff" that I expect no long term income from.

I am a one man show...everything from Janitor to CEO duties are my responsibility. Every hour you are not in the shop you are paying for an unused building. Work (and therefore income) stops when you stop. It is hard to go on vacation for a week when you know that the meter is running and that shop costs you $xxx.xx/day.

Automation is key, in my case I use machines to supplement my time (3d printers, CNC mills, Pick and place machines, website sales) and if it is something which is better done out of house I use other companies to do the work (production machining, contract manufacturing).

Even still...it is a very difficult path. Paperwork is neverending, phone calls and emails come at any time and you are typically expected to answer them immediately. Health insurance is not included (United states), vacation/sick days are not guaranteed and in my case...retirement is something I don't even consider an option.

Why would I do all this? Because it leaves me the ability to work 20hrs a week (physical hands on time...not counting admin stuff) half of the month to focus on my loved ones and the other half of the month I work 50-80hr weeks. I have the freedom to choose to get up in the morning and take a Tuesday morning hike without having a manager upset that I clocked in late, or go swimming during the summer midday during the time when I am out running errands.

Would I make more in industry? Probably...but not likely locally. Besides...I am the type of person who does not do well in a "conventional" situation.

Yes, you do trade one boss for many customers...but you can also fire customers. From what I have found in my experience though is that it isn't the customers who are the hardest on you...it is yourself. Trying to let go for a few hours to just watch a movie without thinking about work is difficult. When I contract myself to do a design for a customer I tend to think about that design nonstop until it is complete...then often after I am still revising it and thinking of how it could have been done better/faster.

Someone once said to me "When you are self employed your boss is always an asshole." I recommend anyone who is debating becoming a solopreneur to remember that.

This was a nice read, glad everything has worked out for Flavio. Part of why this is possible is that there is a lot more leverage available for those that are solo nowadays. It's an exciting time for sure

I started https://fabform.io as a soloprenur. I looking for feedback on how to improve my form builder.

It's been brought up before but this style this guy has of writing paragraphs of one sentence each is very distracting and doesn't add any value.

The author wrote great stuff, I hope he will update his vue2 handbook to vue3 one day.

Be careful, some people (perhaps even the majority) aren't made for this. Do everything solo and soon enough you may hate everything, everyone, life itself and just wonder why you're even living.

> One day I’m spending 10 hours at my desk writing blog posts for my daily blog schedule.

Going for quantity over quality I see.