Solofounding & Solofunding is tough, but worth it (my reflections, 4 years into it)

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manga006

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I am somewhat technical — building sites since the early 2000s, but I’m in my 30s now in a non-technical corp marketing gig. As I started working on this side project, I knew it was important to hire a dev who can code while I leverage my day job salary and bonus to keep the whole thing afloat.

My technical knowledge (very basic self taught sql, php, command line) allows me to product manage quite well, and I have worked with this freelance developer on other small projects of mine for years, so while the common advice is to not project manage out your coding — this was a special circumstance.

The easy part about my project is that I am the end user. I am essentially building a SAAS for myself to automate specific business processes within an industry that sells specific products to consumers (B2C). Essentially, I am automating an entire business. And once fully scaled, it could have a huge share of the market of this niche industry. The industry is quite old, and super niche, but still has a lot of scalability. The audience is consumers (not businesses). There are physical products which cannot necessarily easily be drop shipped, providing somewhat of a moat.

Nearly 4 years in now, I have spent roughly $75K on the outsourced (non-US) developer and the project is in good enough shape that I am finally able to get scale. The channels I use to market/sell are your usual marketing/selling channels. I’m not going to list them, but just think where you buy stuff online. It’s probably those.

Yes, it took a long time to get to this point, but that’s the fate you accept when you solofund and found. Common YC advise is to build quick— so you can iterate when you can see things aren’t working. But since I’m the end consumer, I could see the progress all along and thus I can give real time feedback all the time to determine priorities and the next most important thing to work on at any given time.

Scaling continues now. Over 6 figure yearly run rate now and over $300K in total revenue since starting in 2020. And with each bonus I get from the day job, I deploy it into this business. Essentially, it’s cash machine generating 25% ROI with each dollar I toss in. I see a pretty easy path to mid 6 figure revenue in next 3 years, and even 7 figure yearly rev seems possible.

I’m excited and optimistic for the future. My take away here is it’s fine if things take a while if you are a solo founder, especially if you are the end user. Sure some APIs we integrated got deprecated during the 4 years and we had to rewrite and rebuild, but that’s just the cost of doing business as a solo & self funded founder.

As of today, I have no plans to garner outside investment and plan to continue bootstrapping indefinitely. I could certainly grow more quickly with cash and investments, but I’m in this business for the extreme long term and taking funding can have dire long-term consequences even if its not very apparent right now- despite what YC or others may say.

I also have no desire or plans to ever sell, but that probably has to do with the longevity of the business that I think I’ve built. Since I have essentially no overhead, and everything is automated, it’s very improbable that a competitor could oust me. Weird things can happen to the market, but it feels extremely safe. Much safer than if I had a big team.

I see an unlimited number of ways to expand to adjacent industries in the future. I plan to expand in a controlled and methodical way.

Shout out to all you self funded solo founders. I also give many thanks to the freelance dev who worked with me on the project. If you find a good one, they are truly worth a significant amount and I plan to bring him along for the ride. As for why I post this on YC Reddit, I think it’s important to share solofunded and founded stories since they are so few here, to give you a vision of what the process is like.

Feel free to post questions about the journey and I’ll do my best to respond. 🙏
 
@manga006 I am in my early thirties solo tech founder with advisors on board. It is tough everyone see solo founder as a red flag. Tbh I don’t want to have a co-founder unless I see it worth it. In fact co-founder could cause more problems sometimes.
 
@sweetheart1 I agree. I have worked with partners before, and mostly what I learned about myself through those business trials is that I work best alone. It’s different for everyone though.

I’m in so deep now that I have no need for any advisors, especially since I’m not taking any investment and am single-handedly (with my dev) driving all aspects and levers of growth.

There are some things that I need opinions or advice on from time to time, and when that is needed I just do some searching on LinkedIn and reach out directly with basic questions and usually the responses are pretty good.

Last year, I reached out to a self-made multi-billionaire on LinkedIn who bootstrapped his business to over 10 figure+ ARR and he actually responded to me. If you give value and appreciation to people, they will talk with you.
 
@alephnull Many VC including YC people are very pro “e/acc”, however if e/acc results in people (either workers or the consumers) being miserable, I do not think that is an honorable philosophy to follow. For YC, VC, and other investors, e/acc essentially “is” their business model. There needs to be some voice in this world that has a differing opinion, which I am proud to express whenever given the opportunity.

I very much believe that with some businesses you can pour gasoline on them and they will grow to 3x, shine brightly for a minute, and then burn out. But I believe with slower, more methodical growth, and consolidated control, it can grow much longer and burn much brighter, for an even longer time. It’s just very difficult to do that, so we don’t see much of it. It also takes significantly longer. Luckily for me, I quite enjoy the process.
 
@manga006 I totally agree with you.

I am in a similar state like you. I am solo and self funded. I am looking for seed funding though.

I am not willing to sell my company and I am going to raise just the amount to get to default alive with a sustainable growth and profit.
 
@ams59 I understand. If you don’t have some savings to deploy or very high income, it can be tough to do it without any funding at all. Luckily I had quite a bit of savings and a stable job, otherwise this would not have worked out as well for me.
 
@ams59 I'm in the same boat, but I guess the only risk I regularly consider is that you do need to spend money to make money. Sometimes growth has a cost you can't front piecemeal. That being said I'm currently totally bootstrapped and have a positive ARPU so 🤞🏻 we can grow fast enough without fuel.

The time VC works out the best for you as a founder is if you don't need them - if you can say "every $1 you give me immediately returns $1.20." V rare to be in that position though
 
@christodoulos That’s great! Congrats to you for building a great boot strapped business! Wishing you the best on continued growth.

I agree that it is quite challenging to build a bootstrapped solofounded business where investment of $1 turns into $1.25, and maintains that with scale, but even rarer to be in that position and decide not to take investment in favor of continued bootstrapping.

You have to be real stubborn to continue on that path because it’s NOT the easy decision. But nothing so far in this life that is worth having has come easy for me. Yet we are all on different paths, so I don’t fault anyone for taking money, but it’s just not in my cards with this business.
 
@manga006 Thanks for sharing your experience! It’s always interesting to see different perspectives. I have a few questions:
  1. Have there been points along the way where people told you that you need a co-founder and did that make you question whether you could do it alone?
  2. How did you meet/find your freelance dev?
 
@ozzywilkes 2 - I found him in 2013 on Upwork (then called O-Desk).

He was the best bid for a new small business I was creating that needed some very specific custom scripts. We just communicate via online chat and to this day that is the only way we’ve communicated. I am introverted so this works extremely well (probably also explains my solo founding & funding preferences).

His country of residence changed due to the conflicts occurring overseas and it made him ineligible to work for Upwork so I started working with him directly.
 
@ozzywilkes 1 - I’ve kept this entire 4 year endeavor close to the vest. Only a few people in my life are aware (those that NEED to know). Most founders don’t operate that way, but it is my preference. It may help the business slightly if I am a publicly known figure, but I’m seeing how far I can take it in the shadows.

I really think the “do things that don’t scale” advice was key in making this work. I started the foundation of this business doing everything in a manual way then learned how to automate every aspect over time. There are things that weren’t easily possible to automate 4 years ago, that eventually became possible and as soon as it became possible I could easily leverage that. Only later did I even hear the “do things that don’t scale” advice and upon reflecting on my own journey it made perfect sense that this was critical in giving me the confidence to sustain the journey.

Yes, it was quite tedious early on, since I was running the business at a very low level doing absolutely everything manually. Business processes that took months early on are now automated in hours.

There was never really a time since I started where I had any doubt that what I was building would work because I manually proved out that the market was there in like day 3 of this 1,000 day journey, and that confidence has only increased as the capability of my product and business improved.

So, the sooner you can prove to yourself that what you’re doing is viable, the sooner you’re going to gain the confidence to go at it alone —- and proving something is viable is very, VERY hard. Perhaps it is the most difficult aspect of all. I got lucky in finding it somewhat quickly, but then again this is about my 5th startup in a well over 20 year period. I’ve been trying to build a successful online business since about age 12.
 
@quez My industry isn’t wood working, but let’s use that as an example. Let’s say I sell custom dining tables with some ornate custom decoration on them with diamonds embedded into the fixture.

These tables are extremely bulky, quite expensive, and all are completely custom based on exact specifications from the client. This type of business would be quite difficult for a drop shipper to copy.

The perk of solofunding and solofounding is that I have no overhead or partners to share the proceeds with, so I can deliver the absolute highest quality and the absolute lowest price in comparison to any other competitor.

When you have no one to share the proceeds with, you are able to accept an absolute lower margin than any other party. IMO, this understanding was critical in building up my confidence that I would succeed.

No one can compete unless they can deliver higher quality at a lower price point, and I’ve essentially ensured that it’s not possible to do that. Of the thousands of clients I’ve sold to, not a single one has had a negative interaction with the product or service provided. The vast majority of them proactively message that they are beyond thrilled with the product and service. Tons of repeat customers.

The reason this somewhat relates to YC and venture scale (and not just some small business) is because what I’ve built is somewhat industry agnostic and in the long term I can apply it to a ton of different industries (which I will do, in time).
 
@manga006 Got it. That’s funny. Ya we have a network of skilled woodworkers and we connect them with small businesses to make their products from anywhere at scale. We have tools and processes to ensure all the products come out the same, no matter who makes them. Definitely easier with CNC’d products. Haven’t ventured into dining tables yet but actively working on it. Things are expensive to ship!
 
@quez Sounds like a great idea and improvement for everyone involved - consumers, the woodworking architect, and the small businesses.

For the industry im referencing in my main post above, let’s just say it’s not physically possible to outsource it and that will never change. Vague I know, but hopefully it helps.
 
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