In 2014, I was working at Homejoy (RIP), and started hanging out w/ this guy I sorta knew from college. We were reintroduced at Mission Cliffs, started climbing together ~5-6x a week, and talked a lot about startups since I was a newcomer who was just learning about the space. Oliver co-founded an analytics company (Sensor Tower) and eventually invited me over to visit their office which they were sharing w/ another analytics company started by two guys from college that I also kinda knew: Spenser and Curtis.
They were sharing an office in the same building as Dropbox (ooo fancy) and each had one, mayyybe two employees. At the time, they were both still figuring out how to increase their self-serve revenue in hopes of eventually selling to businesses. (Hilariously, I remember thinking how boring B2B SaaS businesses were compared to... on-demand home cleaning startups??!? Oh how young and naive I was back then, haha)
Anyway, fast forward seven years… Oliver and I got married, had a baby, and now Spenser and Curtis' “baby,” Amplitude, is all grown up! [insert crying emoji]
I cannot overstate how proud I am of them and happy for the success of Amplitude. Spenser is one of the hardest working and most down-to-earth CEOs I know, too, so this monumental milestone is beyond deserved. What’s more, Amplitude is one of my customers on Key Values, and I am also a very satisfied Amplitude user myself. I mean, these are the SV stories we all dream of (using each other’s products, being each other’s customers, and building a company that goes public!) and they're coming true, y'all!
The biggest congrats to Spenser, Curtis, and the rest of the Amplitude team! YOU DID IT!
This is a great story! I love hearing about startups when they were tiny and growing (YC does a great job with this; Segment comes to mind).
My story about meeting someone "famous" when they were tiny is: I met @muneeb (a well known guy in the bitcoin-universe) in a 2 person office in a wework in NYC back in '14/'15. They were doing an identity/crypto sort of thing that I didn't understand.
I live in SF but was in New Zealand just 9 days ago. At the time, there were 6 confirmed cases and NZ had already put in place a 14-day self-isolation policy for travelers. Seeing how things _could_ be handled (and watching the U.S. from afar) made it extremely difficult to "go back home." I felt so much safer there. W/ all of that said, I'm actually surprised Arden didn't lock things down sooner.
I think the government has failed to prepare everyone, almost misleading us with lack of worry or urgency over the last many weeks. We obviously could have begun some actions months ago (I started acting on the 10th February, Taiwan started acting strongly on 31st Dec). Many people and businesses have been caught out badly in NZ.
However, I have some trust that our government has been actively measuring the signals needed to know when to shutdown, and I am now really happy to see action.
I have seen many people I would expect to be smarter downplay this (Ioannidis, Musk, etc), and the failure of most western countries to act, so I don’t have too many hard feelings about what we could have done better...
NZ has a lot to learn from Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and other countries that prepared properly and haven’t had to shut down their economies.
I'm the founder of Key Values, which helps software engineers find teams that share their values. Not only do I live in the Bay Area and have many founder friends, but it is also my full-time job to connect tech startups that are hiring w/ devs looking for new roles, so I think I have a good view on this.
I'm still gathering information on how coronavirus is impacting the job market, but what I know now is that many companies have laid team members off in the last week, and I suspect many more will soon. Most early-stage startups that did not recently fundraise and do not yet have significant revenue will struggle during this pandemic. If they were planning to fundraise this summer, fall, or winter, their investors and advisors have already told them start cutting costs in order to survive. Hence, a rise in layoffs.
More stable startups may have slowed their hiring efforts (i.e. "we planned to hire 40 engineers by 2021, but after adjusting our budget, we're now looking to hire ~20"), but they've also explicitly told me that filling certain roles are more urgent than ever.
While this all sounds bleak, some companies will endure, and a smaller number will actually thrive during these times.
Several folks who have recently been laid off have reached out to me. I know that getting laid off can give you the impression that every company is laying people off, but it isn't true. Companies who need to hire in order to keep up w/ unprecedented demand are ramping up and are excited to capture talented folks who were recently let go. So stay positive, put yourself out there, and keep looking!
I'm currently reaching out to all of the companies I work w/ in order to stay on top of their hiring plans, and I hope to message what I learn in my upcoming newsletters. It is the easiest way for me to keep folks up to date on what I'm seeing, and I absolutely will not take offense if people unsubscribe. Key Values: https://www.keyvalues.com
Chiming in here with a bit of data on the hiring side of things. I'm the cofounder of SharpestMinds, an ISA-powered mentorship marketplace for data scientists. For all the obvious reasons, we track the hiring rates for our grads very closely and have been keeping close tabs on the pandemic's effects on the tech job market.
Our observations so far:
1. Hiring in tech has definitely not gone to zero, even for the junior-level roles we skew towards.
2. We're seeing more like a 60-70% drop in hires compared to our original (pre-COVID) projections for the month of March, so far.
3. Companies least affected seem to fall in two major categories: A) BigCos with deep pockets; and B) SaaS businesses with predictable revenue streams and some degree of economic insulation from the "meatspace" economy.
Many software businesses (e.g., Zapier, GitLab) are already run partly or fully remotely, so their hiring workflows can take quarantine in stride, to an extent. Many others (e.g., Stripe) are quickly adapting to these new constraints.
The effects of a global quarantine and pandemic are almost certain to propagate to all companies eventually. But some are less affected than others, economically and operationally. We're fortunate in tech that it's still quite possible - albeit measurably harder - to get hired under current conditions.
> SaaS businesses with predictable revenue streams and some degree of economic insulation from the "meatspace" economy
Those are most likely lagging by a few weeks or a month. Monthly subscriptions are arguably the easiest to cut and companies are looking to cut non-essential services.
With the majority of companies not at all well positioned for work-from-home, I would bet that many business-oriented SaaS companies (that do something useful) are going to be picking up new customers. As a result, they'll probably be hiring people esp. related to operations/customer support.
There are two possibilities: either this is a storm to be weathered or an existential crisis.
In the former, cutting run-rate is important but you also need to look at the aftermath. Firing people now hurts you later on when the storm clears, whereas cutting Slack and switching to open source self-hosted alternatives is a cost savings that won't impede the future growth. Obviously cutting slack won't save a company with zero revenue.
Subscription models vary across SaaS vendors (and even across different offering tiers at the same vendor). At the low end of the market, monthly subscriptions are the norm. As you move up to bigger deal sizes, annual subscriptions become more and more common.
Experience costs $$$, and there is always some more basic or straight-forward work to do in addition to the cutting-edge stuff. If a junior-level engineer can work with the senior, they can do those lesser tasks for less money and let the higher-payed people tackle the harder tasks (and get some experience!)
I am experienced and biased because of that obviously but I have seen so many train wrecks created with this method.
The amount of waste in corporate american and startups is insane. IMO
There are solutions experienced folks know that save so much money when you look at the big picture it always baffles me when I see that..
The other thing that baffles me is when a CIO makes choices based off of things he has read online instead of taking the business need and finding the most economical solution
If you are interested in making money finding technical solutions with known failures is the key. Experience always knows those.
Just a perspective and comment to an opposing. Not arguing.
It's all a fancy optimization problem. Each project can be broken into tasks that take X amount of skill/experience and you have workers with varying skill. If you only have high-value workers, you'll be wasting a lot of skill/experience on the menial tasks. If you only have low-value workers then some projects will fail because none of them meet the skill thresholds.
As a company you want a diversity of workers to allow you to better optimize.
There is some merit to that but what I see over and over is companies try to use too much.
Most menial tasks senior guys have figured out how to automate. We hate menial repetitive tasks and find ways to eliminate them so the ROI of having a senior guy is yes payroll is higher but you have less headcount.
There really isnt anything new being done. Containers have been around for ages ( Solaris doms / freebsd jails )
What I see is companies prematurely optimizing by saying they need portability and multi cloud strategies before they have achieved profitability.
Multi cloud is expensive and difficult and if you don't have a successful business you really don't need it to be portable.
Just some observations from someone watching various business models
Another reason is 'experienced' developers can sometimes be difficult to work with. They can be arrogant and bull headed, 'my way or the highway' sorta attitudes. Negative to others with new ideas, etc. Teams that already have some vets on them like working with Jr folks precisely because they are moldable.
I've seen that before, it has some good points. I don't think an experienced person has to - or always does - get like I described. But it does happen.
The question was "why higher less senior people?" My answer, and perhaps I wasn't clear, was that for your first 1-5 devs, you should definitely higher senior...but once you break past that then your senior devs - you know the ones who launched all that boring technology - then want Jr devs to mold into doing things the right way from the start.
Wow, these are fantastic insights that almost exactly match the language that was used during the announcement at our company. They were planning on a raise in the next few months and this hit them pretty hard. I don't blame them for for the steps they've taken as, frankly, it's the only thing that makes financial sense.
Thanks again for this comment, and I'll absolutely be subscribing to your newsletter.
No worries! I'm sorry to hear you were laid off, but am glad you aren't taking it personally and understand the reasoning behind what was certainly a difficult and painful decision. There's a lot of uncertainty right now –– for everyone –– but I think people who are resourceful, stay positive, and take initiative (like posting this on HN to generate discussion) are gonna be A-okay.
Btw, I don't know your email, but feel free to reply to my next newsletter (goes out on Thursdays) if you have specific questions or feedback on how I can be more helpful. I sometimes feel powerless because I don't know what I can do to help during these trying times –– I'm not a healthcare professional, I'm not rich, I'm not a political leader, I'm not famous –– but I can at least (a) connect individuals and companies who can help each other, and (b) do my part to inform anyone I know about COVID-19, the job market, and/or what I'm doing/thinking. It's not a lot, but hey, it's at least a start!
I've subscribed to your newsletter and will be staying in touch. Also, in case you'd like to get in touch directly, my email is my name (Casey McNeil) at the mail service that google offers.
I hope we are not conflating conservative values with monoculturalism and you meant to ask about two different values. Also, as someone who has been at the receiving end of monoculturalism crowd, I hope they find enlightenment eventually.
As the OP, I intended for this to be more about a discussion of the current market than my particular situation. While things just became quite difficult for me personally, and I would love the opportunity to make a connection that leads to another job due to this post, things have gotten much worse for many people all together. This individual's comment was insightful, helpful, and directly answered the question I asked in my post. Personally, I'm quite glad this person added their perspective.
If socializing feels uncomfortable at first, but rewarding after, then it sounds like it's a good thing to "force" yourself to do. But if you're doing it just because you think you're supposed to and it actually isn't enjoyable, then maybe you can rethink what "being social" means. Or rather, rethink how you practice it. You don't have to leave your house in order to make friends, build relationships, or feel connected to other people! Invite people over. Or if you prefer 1-on-1 interactions, just invite one person over at a time.
My husband is super introverted and will always choose being alone over being in a big group of people. I'm the complete opposite. But we're both still social animals. We both get energized by camaraderie, interesting discussions/debates, and human connection – we just have different preferences for how we engage w/ and achieve those things.
I didn't read the book the OP quotes, but it rings true to me on many levels.
While happiness doesn't guarantee success, it sure has hell makes it easier to work hard!
The darkest year of my life was sophomore year in college. I wasn't doing well in my classes, so I dropped some hobbies to make more time to study. I got out of shape, gained weight, lost touch w/ my friends, put more pressure on myself to make all of these sacrifices "worth it," and welp – my grades never improved.
The next year, I fell in love w/ this boy.
After what most people call a downward spiral, I essentially fell straight into an upward spiral! Falling in love was (and still is)... inspiring. I got back into shape, rejoined all of the teams and activities I had quit, and also got straight A's in not four, not five, but all six of my classes (at MIT).
Being happy doesn't magically transport you to the finish line, but it certainly makes running the race more enjoyable. As the quote says, happiness is indeed fuel.
And lastly, I don't know if you're proud of yourself for losing so much weight, but you ought to be! When I get out of shape, my goal usually starts out as "I want to feel good in my body." But every time I start the process (and it happens frequently because I'm a bit of a yo-yo-er), I start to get really geeked by the progress. Progress is one of the only things that reliably and consistently makes me happy. (It's the best!!!)
> Progress is one of the only things that reliably and consistently makes me happy.
My experience is that if you rely on progress for your emotional wellbeing you will not have a good time. Progress too easily slips backwards or plateaus for long periods of time. It sounds like the kind of ting someone would say during the easy beginning stages of of a thing.
I loved this article and just want to thank Dan and Scott for all that they do. I appreciate how moderating a forum like HN leads to deep introspection about what triggers us. "This seemingly trivial stuff, about people getting mad at other people on the Internet, is actually tied to this much deeper and more fascinating process of what goes on between people and what goes on in oneself."
It's too easy to judge quickly (i.e. never reading but criticizing an article based on its title) and misunderstand strangers on the Internet. I admire the extreme patience that our HN mods have in helping us to judge less quickly and respond more thoughtfully to one another here. It's no doubt a challenging, emotionally taxing, and never-ending job, but y'all are doing it and doing it well. Thank you.
Lots of great advice here already (especially #1 and #4 from @csa), so I'll only add two things:
1. A good exercise for you and your wife: take turns expressing how you each feel and why you feel that way to one another. Then, take turns describing the other person's feelings and frustrations back to each other. Sometimes the biggest source of frustration comes from feeling unheard. Doing this forces you to actually listen (vs. waiting for your turn to talk) and helps demonstrate that you're at least hearing and understanding where the other person is coming from.
2. After talking to your wife, you may find out that there really is an unfair imbalance right now. If so, it's important to get a sense of whether this imbalance is short- or long-term. Most couples where both partners work take turns prioritizing each other's career. It sounds like you just need to find out if what's happening right now is forever or not, and maybe get a little more recognition from her for how much you're stepping up right now.
Thanks, it's so easy to forget that we'll never understand each other without listening to each other.
Re: 2, I am beginning to embrace my role as it is now, and I feel so much better about it already. Whether it's short- or long-term, I can take pride in my ability to enable her to be the best mom and wife she can be.
Key Values (https://www.keyvalues.com) is a one-woman show (oh hi!). I started Key Values as a side project two years ago, but it quickly turned into my full-time passion and business. I'm doing ~$30k/month and it's almost all profit since I don't have an office or any employees. I recently talked to Courtland of Indie Hackers (already mentioned in the comments) about how I got here: https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-va...
I would never have started Key Values w/o Indie Hackers, so I highly recommend you spend some time there. It's a bottomless treasure chest of inspiration.
Same, definitely thought of https://keyvalue.xyz/ which I haven't used myself, but once recommended (after searching it up) to a client dev for his hackathon project and he was happy with it
I was interested in knowing how you got the idea for this, and reading your about page confirmed my suspicion that this is an amazingly simple example of the whole "make a product that solves a problem in your own life" sentiment. Kudos!
1. I think only ~1/150 companies I talk to are actively hiring part-time engineers, so it's unlikely I'll add this category any time soon... if ever. (Sorry!)
2. A lot of people don't trust employers, but in reality, hiring managers aren't trying to mislead people. Especially at small startups. It's extremely expensive (and heart-breaking!) to interview, hire, and onboard devs only to have them leave soon after. It's a competitive market and software engineers have their pick of the litter, so companies want to attract the right candidates, the ones who are truly aligned w/ their values and will stick around for the long haul.
3. Trust me, I don't want to use OR logic either! Once there are enough companies on Key Values for AND logic to provide a good user experience, I'll switch. For now, the results are sorted by number of matches and how highly companies rank those matches.
Consider that you may be turning people off the product: I had run into this service before (as a job-seeker) , but gave up simply because I couldn't actually drill down to anything meaningful-it didn't offer anything above browsing job boards. Even with a small # of offerings, AND logic allows people to filter down to what they are actually seeking. Providing a ranked list that grows the more specific I am being is, in my mind, negative value, since now I have to sort through a longer list of results that likely don't match at all. There's nothing wrong with providing a page that states "there are zero results for this query, but if you relaxed {X} then there are {y} employers avaliable.
@lynnetye — what about drawing a horizontal line, between the companise that AND match all criteria, and the ones that only OR match? And there could be a sub title / explanation below the line, like, "The below companies match only some of your criteria:".
And maybe the match number could be instead of just a single number, a text like "X exact matches, 7 partial matches"?
Persnoally, getting both an AND count, and an OR count, and this combined AND + OR match list, seems nice. I'd probably be interested in an OR match company, if it matched say 5 out of 7 criteria.
> 1. I think only ~1/150 companies I talk to are actively hiring part-time engineers, so it's unlikely I'll add this category any time soon... if ever. (Sorry!)
Is that not a chicken and egg thing tho? With your visibility, encouraging the values you want to see can be a good thing?
I run an event listing site, and years ago I added a totally optional "Code of Conduct" field. I know that prompted at least one local group to officially add one!
Also, if you do, make it so companies can select both full time and part time. We just closed an job advert where we would accept both, and the number of places that only let me pick one was frustrating.
> 1. I think only ~1/150 companies I talk to are actively hiring part-time engineers, so it's unlikely I'll add this category any time soon... if ever. (Sorry!)
That’s sad to hear. I’m currently working part time (I value my free time much more than the money I would make) and it took quite a bit of effort to find a place.
I spoke to employers of friends who were open to the idea. Small (but post-startup, I guess) tech companies that I found through my personal network. I also talked to a recruiter I know, but he didn’t have much luck finding anything for me.
I think you need some % match indicator or a floor (eg chose at least 8 values? Match more than 1). At the moment it isn't clear when I would want to stop scrolling or improve my search criteria.
Perhaps use a soft floor? I.e. a little header "matched one value" at the right point in results. If people want to scroll past that they can, if not they'll know where to stop. You could also exclude them from the result count. In which case it would say "We also found these companies which matched one of your values".
Nice idea, but I miss society related values here (which are increasingly important for many people). For example, what if I don't want to work for a company that trades user data? Also negative externalities of a company are not clearly shown.
Great interview on indie hackers podcast. Always motivating to hear from the perspectives of people not trying to grow at all cost, following SV conventional wisdom etc, aiming for more lifestyle type businesses.
> I'm doing ~$30k/month and it's almost all profit since I don't have an office or any employees.
Awesome job. I am really surprised with that kind of revenue you don't spring for an office or dedicated office space at WeWork. You might as well spend money on your business, either that or you paying taxes to uncle sam (assuming you based out of the US). I try and buy a new MacBook Pro each year, might as well get a high end asset I use daily and the deduction.
Umm... if you spend money on tax deductible stuff that you don't need, I don't think you end up with more money than if you pocket the cash and pay taxes on it...
I’m not sure how the US tax system works, it seems doubtful that if you spend money on an asset you can deduct the full amount from the tax you pay? In Australia you would basically deduct the purchase price of a MacBook Pro off the total profit you calculate tax on so it ends up being around a 30% discount on the MacBook Pro. If it’s similar in the US at all spending profit pointlessly would just be throwing money away?
I have photography equipment that I used while working a media consultant. It was a 100% deductible business expense back then, I get a tax break every year as they continue to "depreciate". It's been a few years, I still do some photography on the side mostly portraits or headshots.
I don't think deduction means what you think it means. If you deduct 100%, you aren't deducting it from the total tax owed. You are deducting from your total taxable income.
So if your tax rate is 30% and you spent $1,000 on a camera, you will save $300 on taxes. So the camera is not free. But you do get it for effectively $700.
Additionally, you can't deduct the value of a purchase AND depreciate it every year. You do one or the other. And which one you do is dictated by tax law.
> Additionally, you can't deduct the value of a purchase AND depreciate it every year.
In Austria we have an "investment bonus" that allows you to do exactly that (with a limit). If you are in the highest tax bracket (50%), this means you can get around 5000€ of equipment effectively for free every year.
surely that depends on the type of company you have? If you have a personal company then I expect it is like that, if on the other hand you are incorporated the full purchase should be deductible, the reasoning of course is that a product you buy for a personal company is also used for you.
No matter the type of company, deducting 100% of something does not reduce your tax burden by that amount. Multiply your tax rate times the amount of the deduction to see you tax savings. If you deduct 100% of a laptop and you or your company pays 30% tax rate, then you save about $300 because you were able to deduct.
If a company buys a laptop for a 1000 that is an operating expense of that company, if it is a personal company that is to say you are the sole owner and it is not incorporated then you can deduct part of the cost of that laptop which I thought I already indicated. If on the other hand the company is incorporated in some way - and because I am not referring to any particular country I just mean in some way the money spent on that laptop will not be counted in the company's profits and not be taxable.
on edit: unless of course this is different in the country under discussion but in the countries I'm familiar with it works that way, also note I have not discussed depreciation which would definitely apply to a laptop.
You are right, of course it's not 100% deductible. I am not advocating spending wildly on things you don't need for the business. If you have lots of revenue and not a lot of expenses, it makes sense to splurge on physical assets you can use and then expense and in the future sell. I.E. computers, networking equipment, storage, monitors, etc. Furthermore, it also make sense to spend on things that can help you grow the business like advertising, marketing, office space, employees. Again, better to spend and get the tax deduction, and have the resources that grow the business.
A lot of these are manager-dependent, like 'fosters psychological safety'. My impression is that these are snapshots of how the companies would like to be seen, which is what they are paying for. They aren't paying for an 'audit' of what their true value are, or for insight from employees (like Glassdoor).
Sweet mother...this is awesome. As a very technical engineer currently lost in a sea of bean counters and project managers, it has been a real challenge wading through idiotic recruiters and endless repeated garbage job postings. Thank you for Key Values...this is gold.
Companies pay a yearly subscription fee for content creation and listing their profile on Key Values. I never charge software engineers and I don't charge companies any placement fees for the engineers they hire through Key Values.
Having a contingency model is definitely the more lucrative path, but I'm against it for two reasons: (1) I'm a dev, not a recruiter, and (2) I think placements fees are part of what's broken in recruiting. The incentives are misaligned among recruiters, candidates, and employers when recruiters only want to place someone just long enough to hit the 90-day mark.
^^The incentives are misaligned among recruiters, candidates, and employers when recruiters only want to place someone just long enough to hit the 90-day mark.
Precisely! That's why I think Triplebyte.com is such an overrated company. Behind all their new-age silicon valley spin, they are nothing but an old-school scheming recruiter, charging $10K++ per hire.
Think of about it - it's the ultimate rent-seeking industry out there. I feel that the $10K should go to the candidate who is actually going to do all the work and/or be re-invested into R&D (actually adding value to the world rather than paying fat recruiters).
$10k per hire sounds like a lot, until you realize that engineers add hundreds of thousands of dollars in value to their companies per year, if not much more. And good hires are worth their weight in gold.
So clearly, Triplebyte’s success is at least to an extent the result of their delivering value to their clients.
you're attacking a straw man. I didn't deny the worth or value of a good engineer.
"And good hires are worth their weight in gold." => So don't they deserve a chunk of the 10K triplebyte gets, considering triplebyte is just a middleman. Also wasn't the internet supposed to get rid of the middle man or drastically minimize the rent they seek?
I really like what key values does - I think it's a very sustainable way of doing it (both the incentive structure and the philosophy itself) and wish the very best.
I don't wish triplebyte, recruiters, and other rent-seeking middlemen well.
Heads up I can’t seem to get half the tags (self-funded for example) to filter. I select and then hit select values and nothing happens. On an iPad / Safari.
This is great. In a mildly amusing side-note, in order to fill out my companies profile, my (barely profitable) side project is a perfect fit: https://forcerank.it lets you have your team rank all the values so you can see what the team actually thinks your values are.
I have a feedback for you - would be great if you can add filters (separate from the value filters) e.g. I selected my priority values and then wanted to filter the results with only remote jobs but no such option was available. Similarly one might want to filter the results by location etc.
A common belief on HN is that any SaaS/tech business is constrained by the complexity of its code and product. Famously, the top comment[0] on Dropbox's HN launch was about how it's not a valuable business because the commenter could build it for himself. There were similar comments here about Asana recently, too, and I'm sure many other startups.
If I had to guess, this is due to a combination of two factors. First, some kind of "visibility bias," where we all tend to overvalue things that are highly visible. And second, "man with a hammer" syndrome. We're programmers, so we tend to overvalue the importance of code.
But the reality is just as you guessed — marketing, sales, partnerships, content, customer service, etc all play a huge role in a business' success. They require a lot of time, too.
Not understanding this is one of the reasons many developer-founders make the mistake of taking on overly ambitious product ideas and not allocating enough time to the rest of their business.
Key Values is not valuable because of its code. In fact, it's a simple static site that I could rebuild in a couple of days if I wanted to.
I meet a lot of technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else. They run the risk of building a lot of fancy features that no one wants or needs.
> technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else.
the truth is that these tech co-founders are really looking for a playground to have fun with code/tech, the same way a kid wants to play lego.
Building a business is not fun at all. There are tonnes of mundane stuff, and these are fairly important. A technical co-founder is quite likely to have quit their previou job because they want to create an environment where they aren't restricted by the "business people" for doing technical exploration and play.
This is why i think finding a business partner who isn't technical is quite important. They can reign you back in.
I once saw a line that went something like, "to a systems programmer, all users and applications serve merely to provide a test load". There are plenty of people who just want to build stuff, and oh by the way it would be handy if we had some users to test the technology:)
I've also noticed that a lot of successful solo projects seem to be network/directory platforms - i.e. building an audience through free content that you then monetize through commercial partnerships.
As you said, these require a lot more on the marketing/partnerships side, rather than the technical side (in fact, one of the great things is that MVPs can be built in a couple of days on something like Wordpress).
> I've also noticed that a lot of successful solo projects seem to be network/directory platforms - i.e. building an audience through free content that you then monetize through commercial partnerships.
Startup directories like ProductHunt, BetaList, AngelList are all great examples.
Now that I think about it, that actually describes a lot of blogs/vlogs/podcasts too (create an audience with great content, monetize via advertising). Not quite SaaS, though, so slightly different from OPs original question.
Places like https://designacademy.io/ sit in the middle - content-first to create the audience, then use that audience to sell online courses in your given niche.
The takeaway - which applies to any business really - is that you need an audience and you need to be selling something that someone desperately needs (rather than something that someone "wants").
Recruiters need candidates. Advertisers need eyeballs. Companies need investor networks. Find the need, build the audience.
Yes, I spend a good amount of time doing marketing and sales, but I also spend a lot of time working w/ each engineering team, helping them to articulate and express their values. Culture is really hard to pinpoint. Companies (and especially eng teams) struggle to identify and convey what's actually unique about them, and many don't even realize they're different from other companies!
People sometimes ask me how I scrape content for each profile, but it's obvious to anyone who actually reads them that they're thoughtfully curated. A lot of time, care, and attention goes into each profile, which is what makes Key Values valuable.
If you're making 30 kUSD/month without any employees, it sounds like you could reasonably hire someone to take some of those responsibilities off your shoulders, freeing you up to do more stuff.
Have you considered hiring an employee or two to help with some of the basic responsibilities? Or do you feel that there may be some nuance to the work that you're hesitant to trust to someone else? Or, do you simply enjoy it too much to want to do something else?
You are spot on, my friend. These are the tough questions I've been asking myself every day for the last few weeks, and I'm still trying to answer them!
I've had two people/friends do a bit of contract work for me (a few hours a week), but I'm not sure if hiring someone full-time is the right move. Not only do I genuinely love what I do every day, but I also really want to soak up the freedom I currently have while I still can. Real talk, I'll probably enter mommyhood in 1-2 years, so not being beholden to employers, investors, or employees is something I want to cherish for a bit longer. But who knows! Only time will tell... :P
I guess for the companies you're interacting with you are part of your brand. If someone else was going to take over talking with them, it would probably feel different to them. In a way you're already a mommy of your business. It must be hard to change that status quo for yourself.
I was just talking to the team at Airtable this morning about whiteboard interviews... and how they aren't binary. Companies use whiteboards in their interviews to varying degrees, and it's not always to answer algorithms or questions about data structures.
In 2014, I was working at Homejoy (RIP), and started hanging out w/ this guy I sorta knew from college. We were reintroduced at Mission Cliffs, started climbing together ~5-6x a week, and talked a lot about startups since I was a newcomer who was just learning about the space. Oliver co-founded an analytics company (Sensor Tower) and eventually invited me over to visit their office which they were sharing w/ another analytics company started by two guys from college that I also kinda knew: Spenser and Curtis.
They were sharing an office in the same building as Dropbox (ooo fancy) and each had one, mayyybe two employees. At the time, they were both still figuring out how to increase their self-serve revenue in hopes of eventually selling to businesses. (Hilariously, I remember thinking how boring B2B SaaS businesses were compared to... on-demand home cleaning startups??!? Oh how young and naive I was back then, haha)
Anyway, fast forward seven years… Oliver and I got married, had a baby, and now Spenser and Curtis' “baby,” Amplitude, is all grown up! [insert crying emoji]
I cannot overstate how proud I am of them and happy for the success of Amplitude. Spenser is one of the hardest working and most down-to-earth CEOs I know, too, so this monumental milestone is beyond deserved. What’s more, Amplitude is one of my customers on Key Values, and I am also a very satisfied Amplitude user myself. I mean, these are the SV stories we all dream of (using each other’s products, being each other’s customers, and building a company that goes public!) and they're coming true, y'all!
The biggest congrats to Spenser, Curtis, and the rest of the Amplitude team! YOU DID IT!