Solo founders

Reading path

• Bootstrapping versus raising over a ten-year horizon

  Most new firms start with little outside money. What Kauffman Firm Survey and federal survival data say about funding choices when the horizon is ten years.

• Choosing a startup program that fits: a decision guide

  Batch programs, incubators and community programs differ in length, terms and fit. What research reports, and ten questions to ask before applying.

• Coworking and community: what the research shows about staying power

  Does working among other founders help a company last? Two published studies, what they measured, and how to use a shared space or a founder community well.

• Encore founders: starting a company after fifty

  What Census Bureau research says about founder age, prior industry experience and prior business ownership, and what a founder past fifty can plan around.

• From first filing to first payroll: what the timing data says

  How many business filings become employers, and what a panel of 2004 startups earned by year eight. The public data on timing, and where it runs out.

• Shutdown data and what survivors do differently

  Federal closure data for new businesses, how the first-year drop compares across opening years, and what the survivors measurably do differently.

• The longevity paradox: sprint weekly, endure for a decade

  Early work runs on weekly sprints, yet public survival data runs on decades. What federal survival curves say about pacing a company for the long haul.

• The time between funding rounds: what Carta data reports

  Carta reports that the median wait between rounds has stretched past 600 days. The figures, who they cover, and how to turn them into a runway question.

• Using SBA resource partners: SBDC, SCORE, WBC and VBOC

  Federal business counseling centers, volunteer advisers, women's centers and veteran centers. What each does, who it serves, and how to find one.

• A weekly operating rhythm for a founder

  How a founder can set a repeating week with a plan, protected work blocks, an admin block and a review, borrowing the idea of fixed-length cycles from Scrum.

• Acquiring a small software product instead of building one: what to check

  A checklist of what to verify before buying a small software product: the ownership chain, accounts and data, customer contracts, tax reporting and filings.

• Burnout: recognizing it and what to change

  What a US occupational-health institute says burnout is and is not, the six work-design areas a UK regulator ties to stress, and when to talk to a professional.

• Choosing a co-founder, or deciding not to

  A co-founder is one way to cover missing skills, and the only one that makes someone an owner. How to list the work, test the fit and write things down.

• Choosing an entity: LLC or C corporation

  What an LLC and a C corporation are, how each is created and taxed in the United States, and the questions to bring to counsel and a tax professional.

• Choosing and managing a small company's software stack

  Criteria for choosing a small company's tools and a light routine to keep them in order, using a US consumer-protection agency's data principles.

• Choosing your first channels

  Pick one or two places to look for first customers: start from the buyer, score what each channel asks of you and write each test down before you run it.

• Crowdfunding and Regulation CF for a software company

  What Regulation Crowdfunding requires of a company that sells shares online: who is eligible, the limits, the filings, and what to ask your counsel first.

• Customer references and case studies without breaking FTC rules

  What the FTC Endorsement Guides say about customer quotes, case studies and connections to customers, quoted from the rules, with questions to take to counsel.

• Estimating a first release: ranges and what they hide

  Why one number misleads, how a three-point range works with an invented example, and what even a good range hides from you and from the people you tell.

• Fake-door and concierge tests

  Two ways to learn whether people will act before you build: a page for a feature that does not exist, and a service you deliver by hand. With an honesty note.

• Founder IP assignment and confidentiality agreements

  Who owns code and inventions made by founders, and what the copyright, patent and trade secret statutes say about assignment and confidentiality.

• Founder-led sales calls: a structure

  A six-part structure for a first sales call run by a technical founder, a note template, and what the U.S. wiretap statute says about recording.

• From side project to company: the decision points

  When a side project starts to need a legal home, a bank account and written agreements, and the questions each moment raises for solo and student founders.

• Funding a first SaaS from customer revenue

  How customer payments can fund a first SaaS, what billing choices do to the timing of cash, what you owe for prepaid service, and the arithmetic to track it.

• Funding a software startup: the routes and what each asks of you

  A plain-language map of the routes to money for a software startup, from customer revenue to grants, loans, investment and crowdfunding, and what each asks.

• Kill criteria: deciding in advance when to stop

  How to write down, before you start, the evidence that would make you stop, change direction or continue, and why that decision belongs to your calmer self.

• Metering and budgeting model usage

  How to measure language model usage per feature and per customer, set limits before a bill surprises you, and handle the errors that limits produce.

• Paying a first team before funding: the options and what each risks

  Ways early founders pay first helpers without outside funding: fixed fees, wages, deferred pay and shares, what each risks and what to put in writing.

• Product-led and sales-led growth: choosing between them

  What product-led and sales-led growth mean, what each asks of a small team and its product, and a set of questions for choosing a motion without benchmarks.

• Revenue-based financing and venture debt: when they apply

  What public sources say about sales-based financing, loans and debt beside equity, and what to ask a provider before you agree to repay money from revenue.

• Runway and burn: the arithmetic

  How to work out burn and runway with one worked example, what the arithmetic hides, and how to read the result before a decision about spending or raising.

• Solo founders: where a second pair of eyes comes from

  A solo founder makes every decision alone. Four sources of outside review, and a short session format borrowed from public-service assessments.

• Trademark name clearance before you commit

  What the USPTO and the federal trademark statute say about similar marks, clearance searches and likelihood of confusion, with questions for an attorney.

• Trials, demos and self-serve: how a customer first meets the product

  The mechanics of demos, pilots, trials and self-serve, what each asks you to build, and what a U.S. statute says about recurring online charges.

• Writing down how a remote team works: a team handbook

  What to put in a short handbook for a remote team: hours, channels, decisions, devices and time off, with public guidance on security and flexible working.

• Your first hire: what to settle before you write the job

  A decision framework for a founder's first hire: the work, the working arrangement, the money, the equity question and how you will judge the result.