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Comment by bdunn | Hacker News Reader

I founded a product called Planscope (https://planscope.io). I'm the only person involved. I develop, design, support, and handle all the marketing.

* I don't pitch 50% of the time (0% is more accurate)

* The lights are on. With more than 200 paying customers and 20% growth month-to-month, they should stay on for quite some time.

* I know most of my customers, and tailor the product around what I learn in talking with them. Thus, customer development.

* Me, myself, and I all agree about our company's vision.

* I keep tabs on my industry by asking my customer's about their business — and it helps that I eat my own dogfood.

* I do take all responsibility.

* And I handle all support

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What happens when you get sick and need to take 10 days off? Family emergencies? A company with a "team" can give you that margin of safety. A One Man Band is great, but is not sustainable for long, because life happens. Startups are built to scale so that founders can step back and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Many startup founders are overworked — I usually put in maybe 3-4 hours a week into Planscope (when I'm not actively working on any major new features.)

I'm not opposed to delegation at all, I don't want to be glued to a screen — I just haven't put all the necessary pieces in place yet. 90% of support requests can be handled via cut and paste by a virtual assistant, and having someone on-call for server issues is easy enough.

A labmate of mine recently shared his term for this [1]: "Bus Factor" -- as in, the number of people who could be hit by a bus and still have the team / company / project function.

With a single-person company, the bus factor is essentially zero... unless you're a master of automation.

[1] Though he said it was common among his peers in Austria.

Another term used in this context is "single point of failure".

For those who can be control freaks with their businesses, this is one of those show stopper risks that creep up on you.

The idea that the goal should be to work for a bit and then "step back and enjoy" while other people take over is a bit of a weird aspect of silicon valley. Successful small businessmen in most fields expect to continue operating their businesses long-term, maybe with a few employees. One of my uncles ran a shop for 45 years! I don't see what's wrong with being a tech small business long-term, either. Past the bootstrapping phase you do need some trusted people to cover while you're on vacation or sick, but it doesn't have to be a huge operation to get to that.

This is also the case with many professional fields. There are plenty of lawyers, accountants, marketers, etc. who start a small firm and then run it the rest of their life without expanding much, if at all. There's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business, it's just not a "startup".

What happens is you have your systems set up so you don't need to tend to them if you don't want to/can't. What daily business does a single individual running an internet shop really have to tend to in the age of automation?

Do you have an API? I'm working on a tool that might fit in well to part of your app's workflow.

Email me: brennan@planscope.io

I have a few customers testing out my soon-to-be public API. Would be more than happy to have you work with it.

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