I'm compiling a list of founders who have achieved OPP. There are the obvious ones like Markus Frind and Gabe Rivera, but I'm sure there are many HN readers who have also successfully bootstrapped as single founders.
Anyone know of a verified one person profitable startup? Have any YC founders accomplished it?
I support around 40,000 users and half a million a year in revenue from my web apps and ecommerce sites. You could say I've been OPP since I was 15, when I was making enough from websites I'd built to pay hosting costs, cable modem service, and buy my own computers. I'm 25 now, have never been cash flow negative in my life, no debt. I have no cofounder or employees, I own 100% of my LLC.
My goal is simply to build useful services for as many people as I can reach. I don't think I'm alone. Anyone who has the right mix of technical, design and business skills can run the whole shop for themselves if they prefer that to consulting.
To my knowledge, prgmr.com (VPS provider) was and is a one-person company that's profitable, though it has a few employees now. I don't know if he's an HN reader, though he hangs out in some of these kinds of circles. I believe it had a long (~2-3 year) bootstrapping process where he basically supported it out of income from his day job, which he described as "working for venture capital".
well, we're not ridiculously profitable, and I didn't do it by myself, but, uh, I do have all the equity.
I believe that if I didn't have all the equity, it would have died from one of my many early mistakes. There is no way I'd have expected anyone else to pour money into a hole for three years.
Also, even though I kept the equity, I had a lot of help. There is no way I'd have been able to do this by myself.
Of course, I'm the first to say that sometimes you should give up, but I'm pretty happy with how prgmr.com turned out. It probably hasn't yet paid out what I put in, but it's getting there, (and according to offers, it's worth about what I've put in now)
I'd say that this has a lot to do with the availability of cloud computing, app stores, and powerful third-party APIs. There are probably thousands of profitable single founders out there.
One person startup here, now 6 people (and taking on a partner).
The biggest problem I've had is that there are too many hats for one person to wear. Yes you can do it, it's damned painful and sometimes there isn't anyone who can help you avoid bad decisions as employees don't always want to challenge you.
FWIW I was close to taking on a partner before and it would've gone very bad, which as a learning experience has prepared me for the partner I'm looking at taking on now.
Anyone know of a verified one person profitable startup? Have any YC founders accomplished it?