How Difficult is Being a Solopreneur?
If you think it's hard, it might be more challenging than you thought.
The rise of AI is inevitable. Everyone can be a founder from now on. It's already spread and used by millions of people as part of their daily activities. Some of them are: asking what's currently happening in the US, generating images, or building a full web app.
Now let's talk about the last topic. Building software. It can be a web app, a desktop program, or a mobile app. Whatever it is, it will involve us writing at least a hundred lines of code to make it work and run.
Creating software with a team or building it as a single person is a whole different story.
If you work for a company or have at least one team member. You can divide all these tasks to build an MVP software and work together to achieve the goals. Set up a server, design a landing page, brainstorm several ideas for the article, etc.
The burden is divided equally. From the marketing side to the technical stuff. You can share the tasks with everyone on your team. That will make it more effective, since each person can focus on a single task. You don't have to think about all of them every single time. Unless you want it to.
All those things above will be different if you are a solo founder.
The failure is in front of your face
As a solo founder, the chance of failure is a lot bigger than the chance of success.
Like what every solo founder did. Most of us will build something for no one. We have our strong ideology and believe that our idea will be another "The Next Big Thing". That's nothing wrong with that, though. It's one of our superpowers as a solo founder.
We should believe in our product before everyone else. But we also have to think about the big question, "Who’s gonna use this?". Next is "Can it scale?", "How about competitors?", and so on.
We tend to start the product from the emotional side, not from the actual data. That's also fine; most of us did that, too. Because many of us have no access to it or have less time to do the deep research.
And that is dangerous. Because we make a decision based on an assumption. Not data.
Money is always the biggest bottleneck
Let’s keep it real, without money, we wouldn’t be able to do many things nowadays. You can do a zero-cost marketing strategy, but you cannot do zero-cost building and maintaining.
Purchasing and renewing a domain every year already costs you money for your startup. Not to mention other expenses like paid software, server cost, and services.
Internet bills, electricity, rent, living costs, insurance, etc. These are the things that we have to cover, whether we are a startup founder or not.
We are not even talking about how we manage our savings. Like, that’s important too, but not everyone has the privilege to save some money for their future self.
Money will always be an important part of our lives. It’s a hard-to-swallow pill that we cannot live without. Especially in this modern era, where every single thing in this world is costing you money.
From the business side, money is the most important data metric to chase. There are a lot of things out there that offer money-related services. Like banks, payment gateways, churn reduction services, etc. This is enough to tell the world how important money is.
I am always proud of everyone who is grinding and fighting for their lives. You should take pride in the fact that you are still able to maintain your sanity in this cruel world. You got my respect 🫡. Keep shipping, sir!
Burnout tends to happen
It would likely happen because some of us will be too excited about what we gonna do. We already believe that our product will be used by at least a hundred people on the launch day. That's why we work too hard to make it happen. And because of that, we usually ignore the fact that we're already tired of doing it.
"Launch day is coming". A day has already passed. The users we are expecting are not coming. We don't even get 10 users to use our product on the launch day.
We are getting drowned emotionally, we become more tired than we used to be. All the happy imagination is not happening. Now we face the reality that our product has nowhere to go. It stuck, and no one cares.
Not long after, we realized that the burnout was happening. All the roadmaps, all the unpublished features, all the excitement – are fading away. Leaving the happy soul slowly with all the joy.
This becomes a difficult situation. Burnout not only blocks your ability to think clearly. But it also deeply drains your mental and emotional well-being. You may not realise it until nothing remains of you except the last spirit that keeps you alive.
Sales and marketing are hard
Yes. That's it. That's the actual thing.
Technical founders usually have less knowledge about these areas (sales and marketing). They are super good on the technical side. Like building an MVP in a week, fixing important bugs in a day, or cracking the hackathon. They are geniuses, no doubt about it.
But we have to remember how important sales and marketing are. We won't go anywhere without marketing and won't get revenue without any sales. That's why both of them are part of the super important things in building a product.
Building a great product without marketing and sales is also doable. The difference is when you have a great product, but also great sales and marketing. It will make you go faster to reach your goals. Probably beyond your expectations.
It will make you wonder how far the product can go with those combinations. No wonder many big enterprise companies out there spend a lot of money on sales and marketing. They knew what we didn't.
But don’t worry. You will learn sales and marketing along your entrepreneurial journey. Keep shipping, and the results will be better in every step.
Less patient and kills the process
Many of the indie hackers from social media like X/Twitter or Reddit, or any other platforms, tend to rush things.
Some of them would say something like "if you don't get the xxx revenue during the launch day, you fail". They will encourage you to start a new business when they think your launch doesn't meet any of their goals. Ignore them.
You know what you do. You don't need to follow every indie hacker bros advice if it's against your will. These people say that because most of them have huge numbers of followers on their accounts. They can just create a poster with only "GM" text on it and will make a lot of money selling it.
This quick "build and kill" method for a product is insane. It won't work for everyone. You are free to use any method for your startup. Being patient is one of them.
We can't expect someone with no experience in starting a business to launch a product and then generate thousands of dollars from it right away. That's a rare case.
Most of the people we saw online who made huge $$$ from their product had a longer journey than we thought. We just usually saw the results without knowing how far exactly the process is.
It's like knowing the pizza is delicious after we ate it and have no idea how the creation process behind it. Like how to cook the pizza? What are the ingredients? Where does the flour come from? Why is there a pineapple on pizza? And many other things.
It's because we don't care how the process is made. All we care about is if the results is good, then it's good. It's a common thing in our everyday life. And that's okay, too.
The point is, we don't need to judge other people's ways if they are different from ours. Let them enjoy what they do. Let them learn, let them live the moment.
The fear of someone stealing your idea
This is a common thing in the indie hackers community. This also will probably happen anyway. Don't be scared, be brave and start your journey. This happens not only in the online startup community. It's also happening on the bigger stages.
Like how Instagram is stealing Snapchat's story idea. Like how WhatsApp copies every single Telegram feature. Like how YouTube is copying TikTok with their shorts. And so on. It's ethically wrong, but if it's not against legal issues. Someone will gonna be do it anyway. Brace yourself.
It's okay if you fear someone will steal your idea. But don't make it a burden for you. Don't let it stop you from starting and shipping your business. Having a great idea will be the real deal if followed by great execution.
Like Nike's slogan, "Just do it". And you will learn along the way how to maintain and maximize everything on your end.
Become the Jack of all trades
It's mandatory to learn everything needed if you're just starting a business as a solo founder.
You have to learn how to code. Learn how to design. Learn how to market your product. Learn how to sell your product. Learn how the law works. Learn how PR works. And many other things out there by yourself.
Because if you don't want to do all of that. Then no one does it for you.
Being a solo founder means working several times harder than anyone with a team. You should manage everything yourself. From buying a domain to how to deal with taxes.
You have to grind, you have to be patient. Keep your grit, and someday the luck and success might come for you. There is no success guarantee. But it's worth trying.
Thank you for reading a weekly Saveku newsletter. Feel free to join as a subscriber or write your thoughts in the comment section.
This article is brought to you by Saveku – Organize links, inspire others. Happy bookmarking!