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Successful Solo Startup Founders

softwaresmitten.com

80 pointsyoyo17 comments

The first years of PlentyOfFish is the best example I've seen of a very successful solo founder in a software-driven business. And by successful, I mean "makes up to $10 million a year on Google ads working only two hours a day." Markus Frind wrote all the initial code himself. He handled the website's servers by himself until it reached a very large size. It's still the best example of a single programmer scaling a website using scale up versus scale out principles:

http://highscalability.com/plentyoffish-architecture

It is inspiring.

Agreed. It's linked at the bottom of the HS piece, but I really recommend checking out Max Chafkin's Inc. piece on Markus if you haven't already:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/and-the-money-comes-rol...

And not far from PlentyOfFish, another Vancouverite solo founder was Milun Tesovic who created MetroLyrics which sold to CBS in 2011.

I don't know figures on MetroLyrics, but being the 3rd largest music site on the web for a time, they would have been doing pretty well.

I've founded two companies by myself, both "exited".

The first resulted in maybe 2X return on the opportunity cost of taking no salary for a year. It was a 1 man shop the entire time until Gomez (now Compuware) saved my butt :)

The second was far from something that would make TechCrunch, but life changing nonetheless. At the time of acquisition (by Neustar), the company was break-even and there were 3 people in total.

I don't regret doing either of them by any means, but I will never again start a company by myself. While there are certainly many examples of success like these (and even my own) to point to, it was incredibly stressful and lonely most of the time.

I will do another startup, but I want there to be 2-3 cofounders next time or I won't do it. Having someone else to ride out the highs and lows with you is really, really helpful.

> Starting a company is an emotional roller-coaster which becomes much easier when you have someone to share the experiences with

This is the argument I hate the most. It's up to you how much of a roller coaster something truly is. For example, I can start a successful side business selling apps. At first, it doesn't pull in much money, but after I work with it for a few years I can hire my first employee, then another, then another. The entire pace of growth is entirely up to you in most types of entrepreneurship with the most notable exception of the VC model which focuses on growth over sustainability.

My gripe with the "startup crowd" is that all companies are viewed with the same lens as the hyper-growth VC-backed category. Even the word "startup" has been co-opted and made synonymous to this type. Looks like folks want to co-opt the entire concept of company to mean this too.

If you've done this, you've been an extremely fortunate outlier. The people I know who have done "a successful side business selling apps" have had just as many emotional highs and lows as friends who have done venture-backed companies. The problems can be even more acute when you consider that founders who elect to go that route usually cannot quit their day job until the company has started to take off, adding another large source of stress that they have to balance with everything else.

I never took funding with either of my two startups, but I still had massive roller coaster moments. I'm glad you had the emotional fortitude to get through it without a hitch, but that has to be an exception and not the rule. Starting your own thing is extremely hard and can be a very lonely place, even after you've hired employees. And that has nothing to do with "pace".

There is a "startup industry," where VC's, small companies, and acquirers are the players, and deals are the products. Bootstrapped companies aren't a part of this, they aren't "startups," they are simply businesses. In other words, the word "startup" is a signal that someone is talking about the deal industry.

Though not a "start up" in the sense of how we use the word now, I can think of a couple people who have started solo before as well:

1. Donald Trump: say what you want about him, but the man knows how to make money. I am sure his father helped him, but his first commercial building that launched him to wealth was done by himself.

2. Hugh Hefner: got tired of his job, and started the first "gentlemans" magazine.

3. Joe Coulombe: started a chain of grocery stores in the LA area. Later became Trader Joes.

4. Andrew Carnegie: one of the richest people who ever lived. He was helped by people certainly (traditional educations weren't as popular back then, but he started working in railroads young and was helped by his boss, Thomas Scott, who was the founder of The Pennsylvania Railroad Company) but he made his money by himself.

5. Howard Schultz: Went on a trip to Italy and fell in love with Italian coffee and the coffee shop atmosphere. So inpired by what he saw in Italy he came back and opened up a coffee shop which later turned into Starbucks.

6. Tony Hsieh: started his first company, Link Exchange, by himself. Once the company got going he brought in a college friend. Sold to Microsoft for 265MM, later founded Zappos.

7. Sara Blakely: mentioned in comments on the article, but she was frustrated by her panty hose that rode up her legs and wanted something to slim her in her favorite jeans (apparently a common girl problem). Took her 5k savings, started knocking on manufactures doors, hacked her way into a meeting with a Neiman Marcus buyer and became one of the few women billionaires.

8. Mark Hughes: from a disrupted childhood and born to a single mother who later passed and was later raised from grandparents, he got involved in the MLM business. After one of the companies he was working for went under, he started Herbalife.

I could go on and on, but the point I'm trying to make and what others seems to say, is if you think you can handle your shit and are passionate enough about your idea, go ahead and start a company by yourself. More equity for you, and once you get going you can always find other people to help you out.

I think the press plays way too much of an emphasis on founders. The early team (first 5-10 members) form the basis of an organization, more so than just the founder. Obviously, the founder sets the tone for the company, but the first team members either affirm it or shift it.

I was just about to comment the same thing. Being in the first few employees at my last few companies, I often vetoed solo founders. Most of the time for the betterment of the company.

I'm wondering if solo founders aren't really the rule rather than the exception in business? I think the tech industry values this going back to the heritage of Hewlett-Packard, but if you look at other industries it just isn't the case.

I wonder how many of those multi-founder companies were in practice single founder. If a cofounder contributes most of the important ideas, makes most of the important decisions and has controlling share in the company, I don't think that qualifies as multi-founders. They are just de facto single founder with multiple early employees that owns equity.

Yeah, that's a good point. If I had a enough money I could hire a few smart devs at market price to make what I wanted. Even bounce ideas off of them, but I'd still the single founder.

Agreed. The question should really be "Successful de facto solo startup founders".

I'd love to see a chart that broke down startups (successful or otherwise) by number of founders. Anyone know of such a report?

I've heard of some analytics being done but I can't remember any resource. Maybe you could scrape crunchbase or something to get it? There aren't a whole lot of startup directories out there.

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