[Ethan_Mick]

Don't hire until you need to.

And then don't hire until you want to.

I'm doubtful every business can make it to $14M ARR, but I bet many companies could generate $1M ARR without needing employees. And that amount of money would be life-changing for many people (with, of course, the potential to sell what you've created to exit).

I've spent much of my life chasing the "make it big" startup dream. I'll be pretty content if I can generate meaningful recurring revenue by building things I love. Still trying to decouple hours worked from the paycheck.

[pevey]

It's been a few years now, but a co-founder and I took the 'solo' (almost) route, refused to take money we didn't really need yet, refused to hire employees we didn't really need yet. We spent 8 months building our product, and when we finally did decide we were at a point we need to raise money and hire to scale, we had both had significant life changes that meant we didn't really have the heart to see the idea through. We had the self-awareness to realize that. So we sold out completely, and because it was just us, and for a pretty short amount of time, we made out pretty well. All of this was totally off the usual SV radar, and definitely not considered a startup success story. But who cares, it worked out great for me personally and allowed me flexibility to do the things I do with my time now. So many people quit the rigid, corporate culture only to join another rigid, corporate culture that just goes by a different name, "startup." Doing it on your own with no outside resources for as long as you can is totally valid, and only the VCs will try to tell you otherwise.

[scubakid]

I've been making a little progress on the "building things I love that generate revenue" piece (in part thanks to the HN crowd!), but oh boy, do the goalposts always keep shifting.

I remember the first dollar I ever made on the internet felt so amazing and validating... but several adjustments later, the mentality is more like "okay, but I still can't do this full-time."

Goalposts aside though, I'd agree that if there's a scenario where you have the autonomy and freedom to work on just the things you love, that's a game-winning scenario.

[xwowsersx]

Care to share what kinds of things you've built or are currently building?

[scubakid]

For the past year and a half, I've been focused on just one side project: a privacy-friendly personal finance simulator that doesn't ask to link your accounts (projectionlab.com), can run Monte Carlo simulations in your browser, and keeps your data client-side unless you choose otherwise.

[tlapinsk]

Randomly came across your comment on this thread and took a few minutes to check out your sandbox env. Could totally see something like this taking off or getting bought out by a bank/Intuit/etc.

I may be a bit biased since I'm huge into personal finance, but hopefully you can target that segment and carve out a solid set of paying customers

[scubakid]

Thanks. Lifestyle business would be the dream I think, but for now there's still some daylight between here and there.

[xwowsersx]

Oh awesome, thanks for sharing. This looks great. I love the "choose an example persona" flow in the beginning.

[nunez]

This is really cool, dude. Keep at it!

[aliqot]

Hey don't give up. You're gonna make it, just keep pushing irons into the fire, it's inevitable. I believe in you.

[quickthrower2]

You can hire without hiring! Use other SaaS or even human services for every spot you would normally hire someone.

[youssefabdelm]

Interesting, you mean something like mTurk but for what would ordinarily be a full time spot, and break down the task into small tasks?

[quickthrower2]

You could do that for low skill tasks. Fiverr might take the skill level up a notch while still being self-serve pay as you go. Also use Heroku over AWS and so on, footing a bigger bill to have ops taken care of.

[presentation]

I realized recently there’s tax pressure to make money from equity and exits over income and revenue, since the cap gains rates are so much lower than income tax rates. Depends on your jurisdiction but alas.

[ehnto]

That is my perfect scenario as well. I don't want the startup investment hustle, I just want to run a comfortable software business for people in my community.