Startups are individual, highly varied, and idiosyncratic. ~20 hours/week sounds a lot like a pretty good retirement—why not carry on for a few more years, and figure out if the “zero churn” for the last few months is real, or just a blip from being first to notice this was worth solving? Alternately, hire out most of the work, so they have a smaller income stream, but can spend half (probably not less) the time.
The primary question is who wants to provide the energy and vision to grow to the point that it’s worth anything, either to hit a VC or to sell to a bigger company. For many small businesses, transition is by partnership—someone “buys in” over the course of a decade by taking a lower salary in exchange for ownership. But I don’t know of any cases where that happens for a TINY business that’s a sole proprietorship.
~20 hours/week sounds a lot like a pretty good retirement
They’re only putting 20 hours a week into it because they have a lot of other things going on, but I think it would grow much more effectively with multiple full-time people. Given its current growth rate, I think it probably should have two full-time people, one technical and one non-technical, similar to a classic early stage software startup?
Startups are individual, highly varied, and idiosyncratic. ~20 hours/week sounds a lot like a pretty good retirement—why not carry on for a few more years, and figure out if the “zero churn” for the last few months is real, or just a blip from being first to notice this was worth solving? Alternately, hire out most of the work, so they have a smaller income stream, but can spend half (probably not less) the time.
The primary question is who wants to provide the energy and vision to grow to the point that it’s worth anything, either to hit a VC or to sell to a bigger company. For many small businesses, transition is by partnership—someone “buys in” over the course of a decade by taking a lower salary in exchange for ownership. But I don’t know of any cases where that happens for a TINY business that’s a sole proprietorship.
They’re only putting 20 hours a week into it because they have a lot of other things going on, but I think it would grow much more effectively with multiple full-time people. Given its current growth rate, I think it probably should have two full-time people, one technical and one non-technical, similar to a classic early stage software startup?