The Single Founder Handbook | Hacker News Reader

The Single Founder Handbook

singlefounderhandbook.com

146 points3stripe54 comments

If this was on Amazon at a sensible price I'd use look-inside and probably buy it.

Instead the sales pitch with bundles and special offers at $200 is very off-putting. It makes me feel like I'm trapped in an airport convention centre being given a hard sell by an American self-help guru with a head mike telling me "you too can be a success if you just sign up to my ...".

I've read "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" on the same topic which Taber edited. I'd be concerned about repetitious content.

I bought the e-book on the sheer strength of the title. Everything I've read so far is largely concerned with people who want to control huge amounts of money, hire employees, own a market segment, rather than work slowly, cautiously, incrementally, and happily towards a better future. I'm sixteen pages in, and it has yet to disappoint.

I read Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, it's my current favorite business book in this space. I hope this book manages to supplant it with an actual followable and iterable plan for action.

I'm a bit confused by your comment - do you mean everything you've read so far in this book is about Eating The World, etc? Or everything you've read prior to this book?

Prior, books like The Founder's Dilemma and The Lean Startup are geared towards people who want to build the stereotypical startup. I have no desire to take on those kinds of risk, even for the possibility of the outsized rewards promised. I just want control of my time, where I spend it, what I do with it. This book, more than any other book I've read since The Four-Hour Workweek promises to deliver on that wish.

The problem with The Four-Hour Workweek is that Tim Ferriss is a productivity monster and his muse method only really works for people like him. Four hours a week after months / years of 80 hour weeks.

Mike's partner in the http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ podcast - Rob Walling - has a pretty good book too:

http://www.amazon.com/Start-Small-Stay-Developers-Launching/...

It's also very much targeted at people doing small-scale stuff.

I'd buy Mike's book in a second if I weren't in the middle of a hairy intercontinental move.

When I read the Four Hour Workweek, I quickly shifted to a literal Four Hour Workweek. And it most definitely was NOT because of being a productivity monster. I've never, ever, ever worked 80 hours in a week. I've rarely ever worked more than 40 hours in a week.

If you want to have a "muse", it's all about building a system that amplifies the work you do -- and ideally makes you you an unnecessary component in the business.

It is most definitely NOT about working tons of hours.

I'd be interested in a treatment of the specifics concerning radically restricting the hours you're working to four actual hours. I do about four real hours of work a week here, but I'm still chained to my desk for 35 or so of them. I could push for a more WFH arrangement, but honestly that's not the needle I really want to move here.

A muse is a very specific type of lifestyle business. It works with certain kinds of products and a certain kind of mindset. If what you want to bring to the world doesn't fit that kind of product and that mindset, then a muse isn't really going to be all that much different than any other business you build that's not a good fit for you. Because you'll end up having to learn all kinds of things you don't really want to learn and work the way you don't really want to work. Of course in the end you'll be able to take yourself out of the equation, but what if you don't want to? It's not really workable for someone not interested in going through life the way Tim has.

Certainly some of the ideas Tim brought to the table re: Internet businesses are really good, but he has yet to really tie it all together. I actually went to the back of Tim's book and read all four of the books he recommended. They were all really good reads, but mostly orthogonal to what I wanted to do.

I built a business following the 4HWW. I happily spend more than four hours on it.

But the book gave me something very important: a systemization mindset and a wariness of administrative overhead.

Most of the stuff I've built runs pretty automatically. I spend my time building new stuff to add to it. Once that's built, it runs automatically too.

So I could take two months off if I wanted to and still earn most of my money. And I have done similar things. That's the freedom I really want.

So I've taken myself out of parts of it, but I'm still in it. Working on your business, not in your business, as the e myth revisited puts it.

Send me an email and link to this thread if you'd like more details. Emails in profile.

On one hand, I really like that developers and other smart people can put out work like this to supplant their income. Also it's a way for us to get boots on the ground knowledge, without the filter of a publisher.

On the other hand, I agree with most of the sentiment here, these are starting to feel like ads and pitches, and I have a feeling the single founder that will benefit the most here is the author.

Is there anything wrong with him benefiting from it? Mike is a real guy, with a real bootstrapped company, who gives out tons of advice at his podcast (link in another comment here).

I bought his MicroConf/Podcast partner Rob's book a while back, and it was well worth the money I spent on it, and I continue to advocate it for people interested in doing bootstrapped startups. I haven't read Mike's book yet, but from looking at the ToC, it looks to be of similar high quality.

Mike Taber was a contractor at my old job for a few weeks before I became a programmer professionally. He coded us a reliable solution within very difficult time constraints and dealing with management who could not make up their minds. I've been following him ever since on social media. He really knows his craft, and I have no doubt this is a solid product.

With that said I really don't support advertisements on HN. I don't think this belongs here. If there were some free content and an upsell I could get behind it, but alas there is not.

When there is a physical copy offering I will most likely purchase.

Isn't the physical copy already available?

"You'll receive the book in both digital and audio formats, as well as a paperback book that will be shipped to you free, anywhere in the world."

It's available for the second and third tiers but not the bottom one. I mentioned this in another comment, but the shipping costs were brutal for international fulfillment during the private launch so I had to make some changes for the public launch.

Love the Startups for the Rest of us Podcast, which is why I just bought the book. Look forward to getting some good stuff out of it.

All I want is the book. Not the $100 package.

Time was when self-promotion was one of the major drivers of HN (formerly Startup News, before my time).

I have no problem with self promotion. I just don't think HN is the place for product landing pages. If there was something for free where I didn't have to give my email address I'd have no issue with it.

Here's a podcast interview with Mike Taber about his new book: http://techzinglive.com/page/1541/280-tz-interview-mike-tabe...

Multiple time single founder who bought the book anyway.

Excellent book. Not so much for the content, much of which I've seen elsewhere, but for the curation and the voice, which spoke directly to me. I got a lot of value out of things you wouldn't expect, but are real issues for solo workers, especially planning and time management.

A ton of work must have gone into this. Even at a dollar per good idea, it's a great deal for people like me.

This is the most interesting thing I have ever agreed to in order to download something:

As an added bonus, I'll also send you a few follow up emails to help you along on your entrepreneurial journey and you can ask any questions you like about the book. I hate spammers, so feel free to opt out at any time.

I've always argued that entrepreneurs should be clear and give readers the ability to opt out in advance. But, I'd assume that this kind of statement has been a/b tested. Interesting...

while I think the topic looks interesting - i'm certainly among the target audience - its a bit too heavy in sales pitch.

First, i'm not giving you my email address just so I can get the table of contents and a free chapter. I know that "converts" better but I think given the target audience, its tasteless.

Second, there's really no "content" in this page that gives me any kind of inclination that this book is going to be good. They vouch for the author and the sources, but not for what the book contains. Maybe their advice is run of the mill and can be found anywhere? or maybe its so unique and interesting they're afraid to give any of it away? I couldn't say which.

Ultimately, this feels more like a get rich scheme than someone having something legitimate to offer. Maybe this could all change with a revision to the website. I'd be more compelled to take a look at this if this was simply up on amazon with tons of great reviews.

I didn't understand what he meant by you get 9 hours of interviews transcribed. Does it mean you're interviewing with the person via Skype and then you get a copy of what was said or you're watching a video of someone else's interview with what they said?

You get access to pre-recorded videos, and text transcriptions of them (because reading is fast).

Nothing against the quality of the book. But I would have considered this at a $9 price point, not above, for ebook. That's how much I paid for "Running Lean" and I doubt to gain more value, personally, from this than that book.

I just want to buy the physical book, not e-book. There is no option like that:(

I tried to offer a physical book with every order during the pre-launch several weeks ago, but international shipping was brutal. It was nearly $900 for shipping alone, plus the cost of the books themselves. The book is 327 pages long and since it's print on demand, it's a bit more expensive than the run of the mill printed book.

I'd like to find a solution to this long term, but in the short term I don't have one yet.

Great that you are trying! I understand that the international shipping is pain. Just wanted to take it to my vacation next week, but I will wait!

Thanks for the response. I hope you will get good reviews and feedback!

I appreciate the understanding. The book is 1 lb, 4oz and a bit over 3/4" thick. USPS has a tiered pricing structure that puts the book into another tier. Shipping costs jumped from under $5 to nearly $20 to virtually all international locations. I thought shipping was going to be straightforward but it really wasn't at all.

Looks like there is a need for a "print on demand + shipping" geographically distributed network.

Amazon does exactly that. (I'm guessing selling on Amazon doesn't fit into the author's sales model)

Amazon already offers this https://www.createspace.com/

So are you shipping via USPS? I'm about to buy. I use a PO box for receiving most parcels, but only the postal service can ship there. 10x the hassle to accept via courier.

The landing page didn't say if PO boxes work.

The 4SttE book, as I understand, is printed on demand as well (at least it looks like it), I'm fine (as well as a lot of people) with paying shipping corresponding to my geographical location.

i wish they spent more money on designing a better cover. i do judge books (and products in general) by their cover.

Worst dating book ever.

Why so many upvotes for Spam?!

The title seems odd to me -- the Single Founder? Maybe I'm missing content somewhere, but I was looking for something related to you, as an individual entrepreneur, going it alone.

This would do just as well for me as "The Entrepreneur's Handbook."

Very meta here, but I don't understand your confusion. That's exactly what it is. It's "Single Founder" as in solo entrepreneur/solopreneur. Does that clarify it?

I do include a discussion of taking on a cofounder in the book. Personally, I don't think that having a cofounder is bad per se, but having a bad cofounder is significantly worse than having no cofounder at all. The downside to taking on a cofounder is that your ambitions for what to build need to increase proportionately because now it has to support 2 people, not just one. It's no longer just a matter of getting 2x the work done. Basically everything doubles.

“having a bad cofounder is significantly worse than having no cofounder at all”

^^^ This is so true.

For anyone thinking of bringing on a business partner, I highly recommend the book “The Partnership Charter” — it does an excellent job of taking you through the things you really need to address before you just jump in and get to work.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009IU4YWI?tag=13r-20

Thanks for the reply, Mike. I was referring to the bullet-point list of "How will this help you?" on the webpage. I haven't read the book, so my feedback is entirely based on the website content.

I've been both the single entrepreneur as well as a co-founder. I found that list to be entirely applicable to both scenarios. (Good list, BTW!)

Anyway, just offering some feedback that I thought there would be a greater emphasis on the unique challenges for a solo founder vs. a team.

Indeed, I'm not sure there's a more concrete example of "judging a book by it's cover." :-)

You're absolutely right about the fact that the list applies to both. Then again, it was easy to come up with since it came mostly from the table of contents and that was based on what people emailed me about during the development of the book.

If you look around at that "traditional" startups covered by news or accepted by YC, they don't talk about single founder startups. In my circles (MicroConf, Micropreneur Academy, etc) it's virtually nothing except single founder companies. So there's a misconception that single founder startups aren't possible or don't work.

For VC's and huge scale startups, that may be true. But I know of hundreds of small scale software companies that are doing just fine that would beg to differ. It's a matter of what your goals are and what you want out of life.

The title is meant more to draw attention to the fact that if you're a single founder, this book is for you. That doesn't change the fact that it's useful to small teams or to any software startup. But when you have two people working on something, the discussions tend to be different than the ones you have in your head.

I wrote the book in such a way so as to be that other voice saying the things you would have needed to hear from a cofounder. It's not necessarily about the message itself in many cases, so much as the subtle nuances of how that message is communicated that will make them more understandable and resonate better with a single founder.

In some ways, the title is a marketing strategy too.

Very good points, and thank you for adding that context. By all accounts, sounds like a wise book.

Mike's blog is at http://www.singlefounder.com/ so the book name must be playing off that. www.entrepreneur.com was probably taken!

I'd prefer not to have content-free ads on the HN front page, regardless of who is involved in the product. I'd feel differently if there was at least some useful content on the site.

I totally understand why you have that preference, but I have the opposite view. I'm unlikely to discover stuff like this except through the curation of this community, and I really appreciate it when it happens. At least at present it seems like the signal-to-noise is pretty good.

Maybe it's better if it's all grouped under the "Show HN" titles so folks who don't like it can mentally filter it quicker. But I'd be sorry if these posts disappeared.

That said, I think the author should take your point about providing useful content to heart - I think it'd be better for the visitors, but also better marketing.

Yes, this should have been prefixed with Show HN, it's a total product advertisement that has been pushed up the rankings.

Do you have something specific in mind? There's the option to download a sample chapter from the book on Idea Validation on the page. Or were you looking for something else? I thought about putting together an e-course or something like that as well, but I simply haven't had the time.

Any thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome.

Personally I don't mind when people showcase their work on HN (although I agree the landing page is a bit overloaded on marketing speak).

Perhaps it'd fit in better as a Show HN.

Perhaps but I don't think the author is the one that submitted it.

Correct, I didn't submit it. I hadn't planned on it either, but when it hits the front page, you sort of have to pay attention and go with it.

I'm sure it was from a fan of your podcast or Micropreneur Academy. You have delivered so much quality free content over the years I have no problem with a pure sales link to your book on HN.

I think it's totally OK to have this link here, because content is relevant to the nature of HN crowd.

Yep, this is a straight-up advertisement.

UGH, these kinds of bundles annoy me. I don't want the physical or audio book, I just want the e-book and the supplemental materials - I will never want/need the audio or physical book, and yet it increases the markup a ton. Actually, I don't even care for the interviews, but I'd like to know what this "supplemental" material is before I'd ever consider that complete package.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com