Small, Profitable, Nobody's Unicorn
Curated by Claude · 12 videos · 9 hr 19 min
Hacker News is funded by a startup accelerator, yet a large share of its readers don't want venture capital, and these are the talks they pass around. It opens on luck and cheap experiments, then gets to the 2008 argument for charging customers, then practical advice on pricing, contracts and solo shipping. It ends with people who have kept small, independent operations going for decades.
Play all on YouTube- 121:40
Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions - XOXO Festival (2014)
82K views • 12 years agoXOXO FestivalDarius Kazemi's XOXO 2014 talk on releasing 72 weird internet side projects in a year. Framed as 'How I Won the Lottery,' it argues that success needs both luck and buying many tickets.Opens with how luck works: 72 odd side projects in one year, and HN's favorite answer to survivorship-bias success stories.
- 231:56
David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08
202K views • 18 years agostartupschoolDavid Heinemeier Hansson's talk at Startup School 2008 on building a profitable startup. He argues for bootstrapping and small, well-run companies instead of chasing investment and exits.The founding text, given at Y Combinator's own event: charge money, stay small, ignore the exit, which founders still call career-changing.
- 341:39
BOLTR: Juicero, Cold Press Juicer for Rich Weirdos
2.5M views • 9 years agoAvEAvE tears down the Juicero cold-press juicer, examining its heavily machined parts, electronics and the pricey juice packs. He pokes fun at the product and venture-funded culture along the way.The counterexample: AvE takes apart a venture-funded juicer and shows what unlimited money and no constraints look like in machined aluminum.
- 439:23
Maciej Ceglowski - Barely succeed! It's easier!
22K views • 12 years agowebdirectionsMaciej Ceglowski's talk at Web Directions argues that small teams and lone programmers can build sustainable businesses without chasing Silicon Valley's grow-or-die model. He offers alternative, more achievable definitions of success.The Pinboard founder's dry case for aiming lower, and a gem HN found inspiring even though few have watched it.
- 5
58:50David Heinemeier Hansson-Unlearn Your MBA (Entire talk)
85K views • 13 years agoEntrepreneurship.orgDavid Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and partner at 37signals, argues that planning is guessing and startups should focus on today. He says constraints are an advantage and that startups can bootstrap profitably in sizable markets.DHH five years on, with the argument expanded: planning is guessing and constraints help you.
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4:56Understanding the Job
507K views • 10 years agoEdward CapaldiClayton Christensen explains the jobs-to-be-done idea in five minutes, using the fast-food milkshake example. The point is that understanding the job a product is hired to do makes it easier to improve.Five minutes of Clayton Christensen's milkshake story, the simplest tool here for working out what customers would actually pay for.
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1:05:37Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business with Jason Cohen
551K views • 6 years agoRob WallingJason Cohen's MicroConf talk on designing a bootstrapped business by starting from your own strengths, goals and constraints. He works backward to the business model, pricing, market and product that fit, with practical points like annual prepay and pricing tiers.The practical core and the top-scoring video in the startup section: start from your own life and constraints, and work back to pricing and market.
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37:54Mike Monteiro: F*ck You, Pay Me
859K views • 14 years agoCreativeMornings HQMike Monteiro's CreativeMornings talk on getting paid for creative and freelance work, covering contracts, working with lawyers, and refusing to work for free. It is delivered with blunt humor.The part bootstrappers forget: contracts, lawyers and collecting payment, which HN sends to every freelancer whose client won't pay.
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1:00:00How to Build a Startup Without Funding by Pieter Levels @ Dojo Bali
355K views • 8 years ago@levelsioPieter Levels talks at Dojo Bali about building startups without venture capital through bootstrapping, persistence and learning many skills as a generalist. He reviews his own past projects.The solo-maker version: a tour of many shipped projects and why being a generalist matters when nobody is paying for a team.
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30:58Emojli: Behind the Scenes and Why You Should Never Build An App
1M views • 12 years agoTom ScottTom Scott and Matt Gray talk at Electromagnetic Field about making Emojli, an emoji-only messenger that began as a joke, how it was built and why they never want to do it again.A funny cautionary tale about a joke app that got real users, and the support burden that came with them.
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59:47Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way
570K views • 8 years agoGDC Festival of GamingJeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software gives a GDC 2018 retrospective on surviving as an indie game maker since 1994, from shareware days through Steam. It covers business realities, costs and sustaining a comfortable living without chasing riches.Long-run proof: Jeff Vogel has made a comfortable living from indie games since 1994, and HN calls the talk legendary.
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1:46:51"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal 2017 Interview
1.2M views • 8 years agoBlender GuruA long interview by Blender Guru with Ton Roosendaal, creator of Blender. They cover Blender's origins, the move to open source, why Ton is not driven by money, Autodesk, and what sets Blender apart from other open source projects.Ends with the furthest version of the idea: Blender's creator on building world-class software without running it as a business at all.