alt.hn

My product started off 25 years ago as a simple intranet web app I wrote in Classic ASP running on a PC in the office of my father's mobile home dealership. I had taken a break from corporate software development to run the dealership for him. I did that for seven years, then got back into software, first working for Symantec for two years (Ugh), and then as a freelancer/contractor.

Then in 2019 I noticed that the handful of small software businesses that used to service the mobile home dealership industry had all gone under. So I revisited my old dealership program and revamped/rewrote it to turn it into a SaaS product. My first two customers were in the summer of 2019, and it's grown steadily since then to about 80 dealerships using it in 13 states.

In my case, I knew a lot about the industry (mobile home retail) I was creating a product for, and was also lucky in that there were not (at the time) any competitors. (Unfortunately, since then there are at least three companies competing with me in the space.)

Creating a real, money-making business like this as solo developer is not easy. The programming is the fun part for me, but, as much as I don't like to admit it, that's the less important part in many ways. Selling is the hard part. And providing good support is crucial. I actually like doing support, but I suspect that a lot of developers would hate it.

The whole thing has been kind of a slow grind in many ways, but there's something very satisfying about making real money (and adding real values to customers) from something you created yourself from scratch.

by dx-800

There can be exceptions. If you come from a family with a long line of businessmen or merchants, you might be able to quickly awaken a dormant 'merchant' attribute. But that is a rare case. When we try to build a new feature we didn't have before, we have to go through a massive amount of trial and error. You must treat marketing as exactly that—a missing feature in yourself that requires a massive investment of time and effort to acquire.

For a developer equipped with this, the current era could be the time to escape through side projects. But if not, nothing will change.

by san_tekart

Shipped a B2B vertical platform in 12 months alone (paying customers now). What actually made it possible was: three prior jobs where I learned the boring parts (auth, payments, ops, CI), domain expertise I happened to have from family (HVAC engineering, which is what the product vertical turned out to be), plus forums and OSS libraries that are effectively hundreds of past engineer-years I'm standing on.

So "alone" is really "me full-time + 20 years of accumulated industry + 10 years of accumulated open source". The actual solo part is attention allocation across features vs. bugs vs. support vs. sales. That part, yes, is brutal.

What's actually impossible for one person: doing sales at the same time as shipping. You alternate. When I'm coding I'm leaving money on the table. When I'm selling my codebase accrues bugs. That's the real solo trap.

by goncharovart

I'd recommend scratching your itch first and then finding people in a similar situation. You know enough about your own problem to be able to design a solution around it, and you likely know some other people around that as well. Slice that segment into something worth attacking first. Bill Aulet defined the first group of people worth solving for as a "beachhead market". This is his test for that first segment:

- the customers within the market should all buy similar products

- the customers within the market should have a similar sales cycle and expect products to provide value in similar ways

- the customers within the market talk to each other, and there is a high probability of word-of-mouth referrals, where customers can serve as a “compelling and high-value references for one another in making purchases”.

The third one is for me the key to open doors as a solo founder. You probably don't have the marketing budget to compete with large companies, so word of mouth and happy customers will be your first best marketing strategy. SEO is black magic, and from my experience takes a long time to actually start working - happy customers doing word of mouth and writing/recommending you also helps significantly with that.

Once this segment opens the doors, things will likely change for something else, then you follow the trail.

by adzicg

Shopify stores, blogs (even owned a #1 tech blog), local job boards, global job boards, dating sites (which were shut down due to payment providers refusing to service these types of sites), various SaaS sites, etc.

Nothing made any real money. I don't know if it's just me - perhaps I'm just not meant to succeed here - but I'm still trying. Still building.

I think the biggest downer was when I built the coolest SaaS for martial arts academies. I thought it was guaranteed success, as I am involved in these communities, know a ton of owners. I reached out to all of them. Offered a free setup/trial. None of them cared, or even attempted to use it.

Likewise, I just built the coolest browser extension for chess players (in my opinion). I run a local chess club. Thought everyone would want to at least try it out. Maybe 2 users installed it. Lol.

I just stopped caring, and I look at it in a new way. Yeah, I may not have paying customers for projects, but I am expanding my portfolio. These are real assets that I own. The process is fun. Abandon the idea of making money, and it becomes more enjoyable.

by 0xmattf

You do need a market, not just a product. You also need to network to get input, partners, and build a BD pipeline. You don't necessarily need revenue at first, you need to prove external interest, whether that's a beta, pilot, or collaboration/partnership. All these things will add to your momentum.

by lyfeninja

But most people don't talk about their failures, because, maybe they are ashamed. In order to make a good product , the software development is just one peace of the cake. But in the technical universities, nobody teaches us marketing, and entrepreneurship, at least not in mine. ;) Those are the subject they explain about success stories, journeys, personas, financial aspects, support, marketing campaigns, specifics in other countries, laws, etc. You can easily see that the development is only a small part of the whole process.

You need a lot of time, a lot of books to read, and a lot of people to talk about: clients, partners, concurrents, etc.

And don't just use AI to give you answer. I tried to do a marketing campaign the way AI suggested, and I failed, because I did not have the proper basis to make the right decisions ;)

by sminchev

Instead of trying to find a "niche" like accounting for plumbers from thin air, go to where the "plumbers" (or whoever your target is) are actually venting. Reddit is a goldmine for this because people are surprisingly honest when they are frustrated.

I’ve found that spending two weeks just reading subreddits related to a specific industry—and looking for the most upvoted "pain" posts—is worth more than six months of SEO and "calibrating" a product no one asked for. The goal is to find a problem that is currently being solved badly. If you build the "not-bad" version of that solution, you don't need a massive marketing budget; you just need to show up where the complaining is happening.

by ItsClo688

In my first 20 years of trials i made enough to support myself, i had multiple projects + consulting work that got me some money. I tried everything, but I got better and better on spotting what works.

I didn't chase unicorns, I chase things that I needed personally in my projects and also had an established market. I found out that building simpler, improved and niched versions of bigger products gives me a higher chance of making higher revenue faster. This was before the indie hacker movement started.

Eventually one of my many projects grew faster than previous trials and I knew something is there. 7 years later I had a 8 figure exit with a team of 20 people, 100% owned and fully bootstrapped.

Was luck involved? Maybe, but after 20 years of grinding was it more luck or persistence and continuous learning? How many opportunities for finding "luck" would someone that tried methodically for 20 years to launch a successful business will get?

by make_it_sure

Almost everything with clear use has been built. You can make slight improvements to existing products here and there but you'll struggle to be ranked well in search because you'll find there's typically at least 10-20 direct competitors which have been doing what you're doing for way longer. Additionally today Google is more or less an ad search platform rather than a website search tool, which means even if you could just do some SEO and get on the front page, you'll always place below the ads anyway.

In my experience these days you need to be reasonably good and sales and marketing to start a successful business online. Generally that will mean you need a good ad strategy and you need to be able to convert those who click your ads, which will mean you need to aggressively pursue leads.

Another thing that can work if you're b2b is having a good network to sale into to. If you have a few contacts in corporations you can sign a couple contracts then you're good.

This isn't 2008 anymore. You can't just launch some random thing online, do a little SEO and be ranked at the top of Google with only 1-2 viable competitors. You need a good sales and marketing strategy.

by kypro

Then, continuously keep in touch to ensure you're building and tweaking the product according to their needs, not what _you think_ is important.

It's mostly customer support and business development work, not as much development/engineering, which is what most software engineers believe and hope it to be.

by BrunoBernardino

If you can afford it, go work in a non-software domain for a while (maybe a year or two). You'll see all kinds of problems wherever you are, and you'll learn about the domain and other solutions.

Make a note of the ones connected to revenue.

Leave and go start your own thing, selling it back to wherever you worked (first customer problem solved).

Of course, it's not that easy, but I think digging in deep to a non-software domain is a great way to learn how to build a solo business.

by mooreds

Ive recently become friends with a younger person who makes a lot of money off vibe coded mini saas. He is fanatical about step 1. If he can’t find n people begging him to make it he will go validate the next idea. He’s ruthless with this aspect and will drop an idea instantly if people dont care. It really woke me up to the reality of it all. Made me realise how much i delude myself into making things people dont want because i enjoy the making process. I will at best half ass step 1 and the proceed to spend a few months hand crafting some software no one wants. Meanwhile he spends two months validating and one month vibe coding something that people would be embarrassed to post on HN and then sell 100usd/month subscriptions to it. Its crazy

by maxaw

I have plenty of worries about it - will the product sell at all, is the product too niche so I'll have sales but not enough to make it full time, am I barking up the wrong tree and there is already an open source free alternative that I've somehow missed, what if nobody likes it? All sorts of stuff, some warranted, and some just the usual fear of making something and putting it out there.

With that being said I do consider a big portion of success being luck, as any one lucky event could catapult you to riches, and any unlucky event could ruin any chance of that happening, but in the end you have to take a risk and put yourself out there for the lucky events to happen.

But as with all risky things you have to be prepared for it all to go to shit, and then have enough of a support network which will help you get back onto your feet.

I genuinely hope that other people have some more concrete advice here or even war stories to tell.

by daemin

They don't strictly contradict each other because they are not mutually exclusive. Both methods are valid

> This leads me to believe that most people either get lucky and then apply a framework in retrospect to justify their luck

Definitely a thing. Survivorship bias.

> tried to build, calibrate, engage in SEO, talk to customers, but I can't seem to find traction

Are you speaking with people? Face to face, in person. That's more important than the online marketing methods at first. Manual onboarding.

by Gooblebrai

"You find a problem in a niche, say accounting for plumbers, and build for that, then you just go and market to these people". It's way better to work on something you are familiar with and you like.

by fduran

Yet, he is delighted to not have to run outsourcing shop anymore, and make same income with much smaller team and much more ethical line of business than outsourcing.

by anovikov

Where is the contradiction? You do need to solve a real problem, and it's very convenient if that problem is one you yourself have.

by jjk166

very few computer programmers have good business insight. we know how to build cool stuff, but most of the cool stuff are either - unable to directly bring values to people or cool but no one cares. that's why we need a cofounder, ideally, a person closer to product/sales, who can help you to make connection, understand what people want, shapes product... all the non computer programming stuff.

also - we tend to work in isolation when being the only founder. at least for myself, i sometimes live in my own head, which can be very far from reality...

despite that - i share the same sentiment with you and will not give up trying to found a business :)

by philipnee

Still... Build something! Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I'm just trying to leave the world better than I found it.

by scoofy

The best solo business is to pretend you are successful i.e. "I'm sitting on the beach sipping my drink while Claude is coding my app that's raking in 20k MRR, just use my {SEO|Social Media|Referral} tool and that will be you!". Hope to get enough people suckered in to become a "voice in the bootstrapper community" i.e. your posts filled with generic tropes get shared around X. But ultimately the product is the (fake) lifestyle. Most of the products in that eco system are not used by anyone in the productive economy, it's a pyramid ponzi of users believing they are getting valuable advice.

That said, I do still build stuff "Solo", because I enjoy the process of making and I can take the time time to meet my own quality standards (classic trope in that community even before AI was "you just gotta build you MVP in 3 days, ship quickly!" and it ends up causing you to churn out soulless software that obviously nobody will use unless they are your bootstrapping internet buddy).

Lot of people I know from those days are still trying to make it and wasted a lot of time/money! Not all bad for me personally though - I learned a lot about entrepeneurship, spotting fakes, etc. and was much more naive and younger then.

by borzi

Please feel free to reach out (contact in profile) if you're curious about the approach, I'm happy to answer any questions.

[0] https://www.notion.so/notventurescale/Wild-Built-Incubator-2...

by remyp

1. You need to focus on the problems that really do exist and for which people might willing to pay for.

2. Marketing and Distribution skills are more Important than your Engineering skills.

3. Good Things take time, if your product is useful and good as well, then it is just a matter of time and marketing. Eventually it will gain traction, so don't loose hope.

by shivang2607

one of the recommended posts: https://longform.asmartbear.com/problem/ which goes to the heart of what you're experiencing.

play in large markets, very large in absolute numbers i.e B2B but small enough not to attract major VC companies - again play in large markets - don't listen to indie-hacker influencers that are making stuff for other indie hackers.

luckily everyone is running into A.I now - so there's plenty of things to be solved. not sexy, you've to look hard, screen hard (cz some opportunities look credible till you do the math i.e is there a large number of people, what is the willingness of those people to pay)

most of your work will be in marketing (marketing not selling) i.e researching to find out which problem will people actually pay for - what are the market dynamics - then only will you code a product.

tip: for a solo business - you've to be in an ecosystem kinda place.

by dzonga

I have a project (a new kind of general-purpose data management system) that I have worked on for over 10 years. In the beginning, I hoped it would 'take off' and replace my salary. I was never able to quit my day job because it was so lucrative.

Now I am retired. I still work on it in bursts (spend many hours for a week to get something working, then don't touch it for a month); but I treat it like a hobby.

Maybe it will catch on (it does some amazing things with large data sets), but maybe it won't. I try to spread the word on forums or in my blog, but I am not a big marketing guy and there is so much noise out there that everything gets lost.

Good luck. You will probably need it.

by didgetmaster

Your idea bloody well does matter.

The myth that "your idea doesn't matter, it's all about execution" is complete nonsense. Successful businesses are built by people who understand a problem domain well enough to see how to solve a problem that people will pay more for than it costs to solve the problem, where "costs to solve the problem" encompasses everything, especially all the non-functional requirements.

The world is full of failed software companies where no one thought through all the cost ramifications of getting and serving a customer and figured out whether their idea will fly as a long-term profitable business. And it's also full of complete crap software (or software that started out as crap and then improved) that makes founders lots of cash because the idea was actually something people want to pay for.

I will also say, yes it takes years for most of these companies.

by iainctduncan

You choose which engagements to take on based on your own capacity, and you’re not burning cycles on business development etc.

by bigfatkitten

Its like a builder cpuld build a doctor surgery but it doesnt make them a doctor

by fiftyacorn

What changed for me was accepting that the code is the easy part. I can ship endpoints all day with Claude Code but that doesn't mean anyone cares. The hard part is the stuff that doesn't feel like "real work" to an engineer -- talking to potential users, figuring out distribution, writing landing page copy that actually communicates the value.

I don't think most people who succeeded are liars but I do think they massively understate how much of their success was finding the right niche before writing a single line of code. The "build something you need" advice only works if you're representative of a paying market. I needed my own tool once and built it. Turns out I was the only person who needed it that way.

The vibe coding push makes it worse imo because it makes the building part feel even more trivial, which tricks you into thinking you're closer to a business than you are. You're not. You have an artifact. A business needs distribution and that's a completely different skill that most of us never learned.

No silver bullet from me either, still figuring it out myself. But at least I stopped building features and started talking to people.

by ale_gd

Verify that.

Done.

The coding is the easy part in 2026.

by brador

Solo, not one time in all of human history, has ever been the way to go.

Of all the lies you could chose to believe in life, this one is the worst.

by nacozarina

Yes, congratulations on finding the truth.

This is the pattern 95% of business, psychology and other pseudoscience is built upon.

The 2 main system reasons behind it: 1) any complex system cannot be really calculated farther in the future than a very short timeframe 2) natural human brain tendency to organize the observed universe into patterns.

The good news is that if you keep buying lottery tickets your chances of winning at least once also grow.

by aristofun

Most of the solo success story you hear either had expertise in their fields OR built something to truly solve their own problem first and then expanded to others and it usually takes 18-24 months or higher to hit some sort of escape velocity. Most people think that magic will happen in 2-3 months and then give up after that and you have to go longer than that. The risk is high but that is what it takes.

Now with AI and vibe coding, more products will be built but the hard part remains: how to find customers, sustainably support them and keep growing. There is no shortcut to it.

My suggestion:

1. Pick a very niche problem that you have some familiarity or can relate to. You don't need to be an expert in it but you have to feel that you truly want to work on it to make a sustainably living.

2. Build an MVP in 30 days max. With AI, this shouldn't be an issue. If going beyond 30 days, you are doing too much coding.

3. You have to find where your potential customers are and you have to do it MANUALLY. no automation bs. no ads (you don't have money and unsure if you know your target audience yet). So right now, you are trying to figure out who your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) may be. You don't know yet. This can take months or even a couple of years (the scary part). But you have to do this manually. Go on Linkedin or use services like builtwith etc to figure out who may be using a similar product or a potential competitor. Then you have to email/call them directly.

4. You must have a social media profile. Look at the successful solo ones. they talk about EVERYGTHING online, I mean EVERYTHING. That helps build a personal brand which helps as a solo business owner.

5. Content Marketing. Sorry you are the marketer for your company. You cannot hire someone else to do that for you. YOU have to write the blog posts, YOU have to post the social media posts, YOU have to make those videos. And you gotta do it all if you want any chance of succeeding in 2026.

6. You have to go hard and specific for at least 12-18 months. This is the hardest part. Most people want quick results and if they don't see anything in 3-4 months, they give up. The goal is to see if you got at least 1 customer in say first 3 months. If you did, keep going and get the 2nd then 3rd. Note that your first few customers MAY NOT be your ICP but they will teach you what you need to know to build a successful product.

7. One tip: Being completely solo is overrated. I am not talking about co-founders. I am not talking about being solo founder but with a small team. That gives you a lot more mileage than just being by yourself. Yes it is hard to build a small team especially early on with no money but don't overthink the solo stuff and find 2-3 google people to work with if you can. Not necessarily as founders but freelancers/employees who can work in a small setup.

Source: Even though I am not solo by myself, I am a solo bootstrapped founder with a very small team that built a reasonably successful B2B SAAS business doing single digit million ARR. Not impressive by an VC standard but has given me everything for 10+ years and I love it.

by codegeek