Three years in, I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons from bootstrapping a real paying product. The biggies are:
- Whoa, okay, so maybe we’re working a lot since we’re doing it on the side, but this isn’t so bad. I should have started years earlier.
- OMG it’s so awesome to wake up with money in my inbox.
- The more we market it, the more money it makes.
- A product can survive a lot of abuse and still make a profit.
- Nothing beats owning and running your own product, with no one to answer to except your customers.
- Be extremely, extremely, extremely picky and careful about who you work with. That’s for freelancers… when it comes to partners (who have a share in your profits), be extremely, extremely, extremely picky times 100.
And that last one, #6, was the hardest to learn.
Lessons 1 thru 5 were almost all positive lessons, learning that things were easier & better & less terrifying than I’d imagined.
But working with the wrong people? That can be the death of you.
Shopping for founders on the intertweets
Which is why it’s so tragicomic to see people shopping around for cofounders like they’re shopping for toilet paper.
This guy isn’t looking for a cofounder in the strictest sense, but this type of thing goes on all the time.
Founders’ nights. Web apps where you list yourself as being interested in finding a cofounder, or being picked as one by somebody with an idea. Mixers. “Will you be my cofounder?”
Does anyone actually believe that this approach will result in lasting happiness?
Creating a business is a big deal
Creating a business — a real one — is possibly one of the biggest things you’ll do in your life. I don’t want to talk it up so it sounds like some sort of unassailable mountain of a goal, because it’s not; it’s very achievable. But if you really knuckle down and intend to create a business, not just hack on cool stuff — then it’s going to change your life. No two ways around it. Learning & growing and all that jazz.
In fact, in terms of life-change-ability, creating a business is right on par with getting married. And choosing the right co-creator is just as critical as choosing the right spouse.
Tell me: Is this really how you’d go about finding the right man or woman for you?
Starting a business really is like starting a marriage. Trust me, I know — my husband and I did both at the same time.
It’s true that we didn’t get started alone, and people have looked at that and accused me of being disingenuous about how “not that hard” it is to do it on your own.
But what they don’t know is that many of the people we’ve worked with have disappointed us. And every time, it’s been an immense blow not only to the continued momentum of the project, but to our desire to work on it.
Our co-founder sob story
In a way, we were both lucky and unlucky. We parted on good terms with our original partners after they lost interest and slacked off, leaving me & Thomas alone to work on Freckle — but I know from many watercooler & bar stool conversations that this is an unusually rosy outcome. More often, a falling out with a partner kills the project dead.
Why didn’t this ruptured business association kill our app? Three reasons: partly because we had all agreed, up front, that our friendship was more important than the business; partly because they owned only a profit-share and not part of the product itself; and partly because I was willing to (in the interest of friendship) buy them out with more than they had earned so far.
Even then, the discussion we had to set this agreement was heartwrenching to everyone. We were all upset for a long time. I even cried (and I’m not much of a crier). Everyone was hurt and disappointed and wary and sad and angry.
Not gonna make that mistake again in a hurry
Since then, we haven’t given any ownership — or even profit-sharing — to anyone else. Not for lack of being asked. A couple of people we’ve hired to freelance have asked, and I said that we’d be up for considering it… later. When we’d all worked together longer. (This was only a couple of months in.)
Then, predictably, the people who asked for a stake in our company lost interest. We were still paying them an hourly rate, of course, but other things in their life took precedence. They became unavailable, or unpredictable, or unreliable. Work suffered, things slowed down.
I don’t hold that against them at all. I know what it’s like to be a freelancer, and they have their own lives and passions — and I don’t expect anyone else to be as passionate about our products as Thomas and I are. However…
I sure am glad that we didn’t bring them on as partners and experience Heartstomping 2: The Second Heart (You Don’t Actually Have).
You might say, “Well, maybe they wouldn’t have lost interest if you’d given them a stake in the product.”
Maybe not, but my gut says that a stake wouldn’t have changed a thing. Our original partners had a 50% stake in any profit generated from Freckle, and they still slowly abandoned it. Originally, I thought this was a “company culture” thing that I could fix, but I did everything in my power and couldn’t stop it. It was like watching a trainwreck in slomo.
Now, after talking with lots of other indie biz people, I’ve learned that cofounder experiences like mine are just par for the course. Big cofounder drama is everywhere (just ask Noah Glass, the guy who led the creation of Twitter).
In short: Don’t obsess, don’t fantasize, and don’t rush in
You don’t need a partner. Don’t believe the myth that if only you had one, everything would be great. Even if you find the right partner, there’s no such thing Happily Ever After.
A true partnership is a fantastic thing, but it’s also really rare. (And still fraught with issues.) And you can’t fake it.
In the end, it’s far better to be single than to marry somebody who’s wrong for you just because you’re lonely. The wrong person not only won’t contribute to the success of your venture, he or she will almost surely destroy what little good you can achieve. Not to mention sap your will to live.
Finally, get realistic about finding your business life partner. It’s almost vanishingly unlikely that you’re going to find the right person by asking every person you see, “Will you marry me?” or “Wanna be my cofounder?” Or even just limiting it to attractive people, it’s not a winning strategy.
Better to keep your eyes peeled, all the time, for somebody you’ve worked with for a long time, somebody you can predict, somebody whom (gender aside) you’d trust enough to marry and raise children with.
Cuz when you create a business, that’s what you’re doing.
This is not a sexy fantasy, but it’s the truth.
Wanna learn how I came up with a plan, a product, and marketing that got us $1,500 in the first month of selling our subscription web app? (Now, 2 years and 4 months later, earning 12 times that?) You might want to take my upcoming 30×500 Product Launch Class.
Related posts:
- Don’t Follow Your Passion
- Happy Burnout
- 21 Lessons Learned from 16 Years of Hustling
- You Are So Damn Lucky – Stop Blaming Your Family, Your Friends, & Your Society & Get Off Your Ass
- Success: The Boring Way! The Only Way
I don’t understand why freelancers feel they have the right to ask for a stake in a product just because they worked on it. A freelancer’s product is time + skill. They’re making a profit off what they are selling, their time + skill. It would be no different if a paper company asked a book publisher for a portion of book profits for using their paper.
I don’t think it’s about “have the right” at all — they have the right to ask, I have the right to say no. The first rule of negotiation is that there’s nothing you can’t ask for. And if you never ask, you’ll never know.
The reason I won’t give any kind of profit-sharing or equity to freelancers is that I’ll rarely get enough of a return. Why would I take such a big risk and give away part of my company?
If I pay a person an hourly rate, and they slack off, I simply stop paying them. I can easily make enough money to continue to hire freelancers.
And, more importantly, just like abuse is higher among stepchildren than biological children (it’s true, look it up), it’s unlikely that one of the freelancers would care even half as much about the product as we do. They just want more money. Which is a valid want, but not one I’ll indulge.
You’re spot-on with #6. It’s a very hard lesson to learn. In fact I’m not sure it can be learned unless you try and fail, feeling the pain of it all.
“But we’re different… our love is eternal!” cries 1000s of teenagers per year. I thought we were different, too. You’re right.
Dutch, I agree, but I don’t think they’re saying, “I wooooorked on this, give me a share.” More commonly, a freelancer might ask (or be offered) to essentially be paid in equity — “hey, can my next few months be $50/hr instead of $100/hr, but also plus X% share of your company?”
I turned down a similar offer recently. I don’t think they’re uncommon.
Yeah, you’re right, it was definitely a proposal, not a demand. But made by people who don’t understand that when trying to make a deal like that, you have to please the other party first. Nobody made me a compelling offer.
Mrs Hoy, would you please tell us more about starting a business with a significant other? I’m considering doing just that, but it seems so risky. On the other hand, I know him better than anyone else, so maybe that makes it less risky. Plus, I would really like to have a man to be the “face” of the business because I don’t want to have to deal with the kind of stuff that Kathy Sierra had to go through.
I’m having a hard time figuring out if it’s a good idea or not, so I would love to hear from someone who did it. We’re doing a just-for-fun programming project together now to test the waters and see if we work well together. I think it’s kind of analogous to a couple living together before getting married to see how well they get on.
Molly, you gotta get your head on straight. You want somebody else to be the face of your business because of one thing that happened to one person? How many women out there have their own businesses and nobody has ever hassled them at all? It’s called “selection bias.”
Definitely, if you WANT to start a business with your man, then do it. Starting out with for-fun projects might help you decide if it’s going to work at all, but things get more complex when money gets involved. I can’t really advise you one way or the other; Thomas and I bicker (usually productively) about the making of products, but never about money or the big things like that. We are of one mind, most of the time.
History is full of husband/wife (or long-term lover) collabs. Plus there’s that phrase “mom & pop business,” which of course is about running a business with your spouse. Plus all those hundreds of years of husbands and wives collaborating to run homesteads & farms. It’s not like you’re blazing a trail. Of course there’s risk — there’s always risk.
But the chances are much greater that you create a product and nobody buys it, than you create a product and suddenly nasty people come out of the woodwork to harass you. You should devote more energy to worrying about things that might actually happen
So glad I could provide some fodder for your blog post Amy!
Agree with a lot of what you said regarding co-founders but recruiting management is a different story.
~Steve
Oh no, it’s definitely the same. After all, pick a wrong manager, and it fucks absolutely everything up. The wrong manager in one situation could be the right manager in another, because it’s much more about fit and vision and personality and style than it is about total managerial competency. And the best ones aren’t searching job ads.
So what about dating? I’m on a team that is creating a “co-founder speed dating” event. It’s our first try. We thought it was a good idea. After reading your post, maybe it’s not. THANK YOU for this AWESOME post!
Here’s my pushback: How do you find that person to marry/co-found with? Do you do any “dating”? I think it could be valid to find people interested in co-founding, then work with them, feel them out, etc, before getting married.
How do you find co-founders? (especially if you’re non-technical & you need a tech person).
Really, really, really important stuff here. I don’t think it can be said enough times that the right team and the right leadership are crucial to any project, big or small. I’ve been such a lone wolf over the years because it is painfully difficult to find people that (a) stay motivated (b) make great decisions (c) work really hard.
After reading this, I suddenly want to co-found something with you. Is that wrong??