A lighthearted take on the pendulum swinging back and forth between idealistic hopes and dreams and the slightly-less-amazing events from reality when building a small business as a sole founder.
Reality: NOPE Slow and steady linear growth is the standard. It sounds boring, but it’s sustainable and reliable. (It’s also much more likely than viral growth.)
Reality: NOPE Unless you’re fi ling directly competitive patents, you’re probably OK. If you work for a particularly vindictive boss or company, this may be worth thinking about. Otherwise, your current company probably doesn’t care what you do at all.
Reality: MARKETING CAN HELP The idea that your idea and execution have to be amazing enough that you don’t need marketing is poisonous. Marketing, when applied wisely, can make a di ff erence.
Example: EVERYWHERE Apple. Samsung. Windows. Amazon. Google. The de fi nition of “remarkable” is both subjective and constantly evolving, but these companies are remarkable and spend a lot on advertising.
Reality: MORE BOSSES Instead of reporting to 1 or 2 bosses, you report to hundreds or thousands of customers with frequently divergent needs and priorities.
c c c Hope: c c c NO CONSTRAINTS “I can invest time on fun things instead of rushing half-baked ideas assigned to me by pointy-haired bosses and clients.”
Reality: MORE CONSTRAINTS Bills. Employees. Revenue. Accessibility. Security. Front-end. Back-end. Server. Marketing. Once you view everything holistically, you recognize the importance of tradeo ff s.
Reality: YES Pros and cons to both co-founders and going solo. There isn’t a right or wrong. Only what’s best for you in the here and now. Don’t be overcon fi dent about going solo, but don’t let the lack of a co-founder stand in the way.
Example: BUG TRACKING 45 options listed on Wikipedia. Many of which are open source and/or free. Probably just as many that aren’t listed. Do your own thing, and don’t worry about “competition.”
Example: ACCOUNTING Quickbooks vs. Less Accounting. Quickbooks is a borderline industry standard. Yet Less Accounting is still a pro fi table and healthy company.
Example: MY FOOT Lost about 6 of the last 12 months to being in bed, on pain killers, or in the hospital. Being self- employed actually made the situation tolerable. Recurring revenue ensured no negative a ff ect on our income.
Non-example: CONNECTIVITY Hosted software needs to be available 24x7. (More or less.) If you like to get o ff the grid, ignore what I said about co-founders. You’ll want one.
Reality: YOU NEVER WILL The only way to learn is by doing. Running an app is nothing like running one for a corporation. You have to become a generalist, and most corporate jobs just don’t enable that.
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