https://loodio.com - Hardware company - Solo founder - No employees and same here; I don't see the need for any in the forseeable future. Don't even need capital as my burn rate is ~$50/month except when I order new stock. Weird times.
I’m still in stealth mode. My startup is super simple in concept - I gather a particular type of data, clean it, process it, and serve it to subscribers.
Some of my data sources are free, some are paid API’s.
All the processing is done in code. You would need an army of people to read all that text, a layer of bureaucracy to manage and check them.
This is the end state I envision: I offer a bunch of value for free in exchange for an email.
Value is delivered on web and per email. There is no marketing over email, it just serves as a regular touchpoint (where I email them free value) to keep the relationship alive until my client is ready to upgrade.
Then there’s a couple of paid tiers which is the same but with more and different features. Starting at $10/month, up to $50 - $100 per month.
For perspective, the service can be worth many thousands of times this much in dollars gained for the client, so it may be the wrong model altogether.
I’ve test-driven different aspects of this to see if people would be interested. I might announce it here when I officially launch it, but probably not.
What would have taken an army of clerks in the past is now a (lot) of code. Whole departments are replaced by API’s that cost less than $100/month.
It’s really incredible.