This feels like bragging but I also run a one man company and the loneliness is what I enjoy most. Granted, I only work from 08:45 to 14:30 and some hours in the evening, because I bring my kids to school and I pick them up in the afternoon, but the hours when I’m alone, I am 100% productive. When the kids are at home I mostly do some kind of manual labor to get some sort of exercise. Right now I’m building a shed. Last year I built my home office/guest house.

To make up for the missing social interaction I play football with friends, do some consultancy jobs on the side and I help where I can with my son’s football club.

This really is my dream job and I enjoy it thoroughly. I have no problems staying motivated and every day I have loads of inspiration.

The moment I lose motivation will be a sign for me to sell everything and start something new. I ran an online marketing company before this and that was really exhausting for an introvert like me. Selling that company was the best decision I ever made, apart from marrying my wife.

You have described exactly the kind if work/life balance i desire! I do enjoy a lot working alone since i've got family with little children too. I won't add any value with my comment, i just wanted to thank you since it feels just a little bit easier to know somebody else is having what i want: one day i may have it too.

You can do it. A good life/work balance is something I hope everyone will find. It took me 15 years to get to where I am today.

I'm not criticizing your preferences at all, but I think it's really strange for you to describe them as loneliness. I would say you work alone, but you're not lonely, because you have a bunch of other social connections in your life that for some people are replaced by coworkers. If anything, your comment reflects a kind of strange default on HN where work consumes so much of your life that coworkers are your "friends" and working alone is the same as being lonely.

I should have quoted that word. What I prefer is the fact that it's quiet, I don't get interrupted, I can set my own agenda and I never have to go to a meeting that messes up my progress. I like teammates and coworkers, I just don't need them to do what I like to do.

You're living my dream. I've been working on a side project all year but struggle to find the energy and build momentum while working a full time job.

Did you quit work to start this, or did you manage to work around your day job?

I found that having 10-15 employees (and working for clients instead of yourself) took all the fun away from the work I enjoyed most so I started designing/developing/marketing my own projects as a hobby. It was already earning a living wage by the time I sold the company, and it was always my plan B. So when I got the chance to sell I did not hesitate.

How do you make money? I didn't think farming spiders would pay that well, unless they're really rare spiders.

Super broad question here but how do you guys do it? I mean, how do you go from knowing how to build a basic webpage to knowing that you need e.g. Elasticsearch for search queries. It seems like there is so much specialized tech to learn but no obvious learning progression path.

I shared this answer before on HN:

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I only learn when I have a project in mind that I want to do. No matter if it’s work on or around my house, creating an app or designing something like a logo or interior. Then I just start. Walk into a wall. Stop. Look for learning material or inspiration. Start over.

Reiterate. Learn more. Reiterate.

I’m not easily frustrated by failure, starting over or general lack of progress. If I have an interesting goal I just keep going. It might not be the most efficient way, but it’s how I learn best.

---

There is no magic bullet. It's a combination of inspiration, motivation and perseverance. Example: I spent 1 year learning to built an app in Swift (together with a friend, one evening every two weeks), then we decided to ditch most of what we learned and start over in Flutter, knowing that it would take us another year and I just don't care. I'll get there eventually.

For how long? I kind of was at your place (no kids, just my girlfriend) for a few years and then I needed a change

Started january 2016, so I’m almost 4 years in. I’m actually thinking about dropping some consultancy clients so I can focus even more on my own projects.

I get that it’s not for everyone but I grew up on a farm so I kind of got used to the quietness early on I guess.

What product/service does your company sell if you don't mind me asking?

I have developed a network of websites (communities and marketplaces) in several very specific niches, all focused on the agricultural sector. The revenue is mostly coming from subscriptions and Adsense.

do you earn 6 digit salary?

Does it matter?

What is your current company about? How are you able to restrict your working hours?

Most of my revenue (subscriptions and advertising) is recurring, so as long as there are no incidents I can just timebox everything I do.

(author of this blog post here)

The hardest part of building this business is to keep motivated for a relatively long period of time. I'm still early in this startup journey. This is only the 2nd year of me working full-time on Listen Notes.

I think it would be helpful to surround yourself with like-minded people (online or offline) -- we are social animals. Indie Hackers is pretty good: https://www.indiehackers.com/

I live in San Francisco and I used to work for companies, so at least I can often hang out with some friends/former coworkers who are doing startups or working in tiny startups.

In my coworker space, people from different companies rarely talk to each other...

Why did you choose to have ec2s with postgres rather than using RDS? I've found it saves me a ton of time dealing with upgrades worrying about backups etc to have RDS handle it.

I love RDS, but having maintained complicated Postgres setups before (at my previous employer we had a few dozen Postgres servers for different big clients, all set up with replication to different geographical locations etc. as well as automated log shipping and backups going to a "homegrown" blob store), it's not that much effort.

What you gain is the flexibility to control e.g. which extensions you want to run, and exactly how you want to set it up. How important that is really depends on what you want to do.

Not OP, but I set up a SaaS platform, and I also ran on straight Postgres (RDS wasn't an option, we weren't on AWS). In my experience, after setting up WAL-E to continuously backup to S3 and giving it plenty of extra disk space (for stalled WAL segments), it worked pretty well with no intervention. Restores occasionally took a bit, but they never failed (we managed a couple dozen databases over five years).

If you know what you're doing (important qualifier), I'd imagine cost is a huge factor too. RDS is pretty often a significant % of your AWS bill - how valuable this is, entirely depends on how confident you are doing it yourself.

Hey, thanks for building LN. I was actually admiring the site design just yesterday while I scrolled through some episodes. "Dang, I hope I can build something like this one day."

You managed to pull me away from my previous preference, player.fm. Good job!

Interesting to hear that your WeWork building isn't an especially social space. I know you talk about why you picked a dedicated office in a coworking space over coffee shops etc., but why did you pick WeWork in particular?

because it's 2-minute walk distance from my apartment :) don't like spending too much time in commute

That coit tower view is pretty killer as well.

At the 4 year in make building a professional services firm in Shanghai, old school work, but looking constantly for online B2C and B2B opportunities, I love IH for the community aspect. Although I find one has to be careful with balancing the amount of work allocated to seeing what others are doing and the hard but inevitably more important grinding out of one's own business aspirations. Great conversation!

Was it hard to come up with the idea and believe in it enough to pursuit it to where you are today? I think self doubt must be a challenge, especially when you are alone and still far from a proven concept and nothing so show to customers. Was this idea the only one you evaluated before you chose it or did you also have other ideas, of which this one you liked best?

Hey wenbin (and any others pursuing indie-hacking), I run a virtual meetup about once a month you might find fulfilling for meeting like minded people.

We just made a Twitter recently, but it has all the links: https://twitter.com/ih_worldwide

do you need to live in SF?

Yes, the worst thing is the huge amount of decision making even over very minor details that has to be done all the time. Coding and maintaining the servers isn't even that difficult. It's all the little stuff like scheduling with clients/vendors suppliers, wondering when is a good time to chase that invoice, which words to change in your proposal for this client, and so all. If you have employees, how to manage them, how to review their work, how to mentor them. It really is death by a thousand paper cuts.

What can help with this is to start building little systems and solve these problems in general.

Dedicate a given day of the month or week for all your meetings so scheduling is simpler.

Chase invoices on the same date every month, chase all invoices that are overdue by some threshold you have set. Just follow the rule, and chase using a template. Perhaps even code the first few chases into an automated system.

Try to avoid customized proposals, use templates for many things. I agree this one is hard.

Managing employees, you have to consider each employee is a force multiplier. The idea here is to invest a day to get a week or similar.

Overall, you need to just invest a limited time into each decision. After that time, go with what feels best even if it isn't perfect and move on. I find the same thing hard myself.

My company's Slack is just me and ~12 Slack bots all doing various things (reporting subscription changes, feedback, bug reports, error alerting, CI status, etc). It's amazing to look at and functions immaculately, but occasionally does have the grim reminder of just how alone it is being on your own.

Especially when you think "this all works great, but would still work equally great with another human or two here."

Dude, I would love more insights on this. I have trouble finding assistants for the most rudimentary stuff and am constantly looking for IT solutions. Please, please, please. Maybe an HN post?

I started a Medium draft a while back just detailing what all bots I use and how I organize all the channels, but it honestly felt pretty boring/droning.

I'll see if I can clean it up and finish it though; if you have any particular questions you'd like to see included (selfish: so I can feel like it's less braggy and more interesting), I'd love to hear them. Contact info is on profile if you don't want to derail this thread. :)

This type of life sounds like only a few steps away from a Black Mirror episode

Years ago Joel Spolsky on his site "Joel on Software" had a "Business of Software" forum where a lot of very small ISVs hung out and discussed items of mutual interest. Anyone know where those kinds of folks hang out now to discuss things?

I second this. It’s a small group of people but with very focused interests and experience. Really good group.

There’s https://barnacl.es/

Looks like lobste.rs. Any relation?

Yep. I've run Barnacles for a few years and became the Lobsters admin almost two years ago. They use the same codebase.

https://github.com/pushcx/barnacl.es https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

I'd presume that they use the same codebase: https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

Some people enjoy being alone, others don't. You don't know in which group you are until you experience it. Unlike you, I wasn't running my own business, I was just working remotely for a company where the HQ was on a +12h timezone. I felt the exact same way, even if I was working from a coworking space.

The lonely aspect is incredibly difficult, especially if you're an extroverted person that draws their energy from collaborating with others. I also find the lack of accountability to others as hard. I know there are services that cater to this type of founder/freelancer.

I have found that running a twitter account is helping for this. I have <20 people following and their encouragement that my stuff is not total rubbish really helps.

The part that I find the loneliest is making all the core technical and business decisions by myself. I really miss being able to bounce ideas of a partner.

Sure, you can do it with friends etc. But at some point you just become menace asking them to think about your stuff so much.

I used to do this with a friend, for me thinking about his problems was refreshing. We worked in different domains, so it felt like a challenge not work related.

"I ran a small company", what happened? Why did you stop or did it get stopped? What was the reason?

One man show / sole proprietorship is great, but its bad for family life. It's 24x7. Atleast thats how I saw my dad, dining room was the company meeting room and we all are unpaid company "helps",assisting our Dad support the family. This is the main thing that holds me back from being an entrepreneur (sole proprietorship 2.0).

you don't have to do it that way. i run a company, and i don't get my family to help me. as long as i earn enough money to cover the family expenses, i don't need to work crazy hours. i get to take time off whenever i want, or whenever the family needs it, and not when my boss allows it.

I'm kind of experencing this right now, a remote worker whose working on a thing solo. Feel like I need to dip back into a team for a while

I know a few people who have entrepreneur Marco Polo support groups- asynchronous but still seeing actual faces and human expressions.

are there any groups out there for the small technology business owner? i'm extremely hesitant of asking about this because it's a fine line between brainstorming technology problems with like-minds and getting owners who want you to problem-solve for them.

Paul Jarvis, author of "Company of One" has a private academy/community group.[1] I'm not a member, but plan to consider it after I finish the book.

[1] https://ofone.co/learn/

Indiehacker is a good starting point

Mind expanding on the coworking bit? I always think about hitting up a coworking just to have some human contact when I'm working on a project. I've yet to actually do it however.

it depends on the co-working space. at a wework place i found everyone stuck in their little offices, and hardly any opportunity for interaction.

at another space i find people are more social. they organize events, coding workshops, even cooking classes, occasionally they cook meals. there is a fully stocked kitchen that everyone can use whenever they like. just pay for materials used. people often go out for meals together. etc...

when you are working, people will leave you alone, but if you know who else is there and what they do, you can talk to them and help each other. it helps that many are freelancers and not secretive startups hustling for investment money.

artists and farmers have lived like that for centuries. i dont think it s so uncommon that we have to start warning people about it

Agreed. Part of a two person team, but the other is mainly on the business development front and I'm the main designer/coder.

It's so hard sometimes. No one to really bounce ideas off of, every little thing you have to do yourself. Staying inspired to work is sometimes difficult, because you are literally doing everything yourself it just gets so overwhelming.