Day #10: Why I’m just building micro-startups as a Solopreneur?
More than ever, we have tech startups for every kind of industry, country, gender, variations of the same products, etc… But that doesn’t mean there is no hope for new entrepreneurs to build their own startups. Actually, now is the moment.
On my 3rd day, I described how I’m building multiple micro-startups as a Solopreneur, and on my 5th day I shared one of my ideas to build multiple micro-startups. Now, in this article, I will explain why I’m just focusing on building micro-startups. Does this mean that I will always be just a small business? Not necessarily, but I will explain to you what is my idea.
Why do I want to be a Solopreneur instead of an entrepreneur with VC?
I’m just looking for a complete freedom, the capacity to make my own decisions…
First of all, let me explain to you why I decided to just become a Solopreneur, instead of searching for a partner with the same ambition to start a business. The reason is really a personal motivation, because what motivates me to build my own business is to get the freedom I always dreamed about, the independence of anyone else to succeed, to be able to fail because I took the wrong decisions and not because of the lack of commitment of someone. I’m not looking to be rich, to buy a great car, or to have those kinds of luxury vacations on a yacht. I never care about that and that it’s not what I’m looking for as an entrepreneur. I’m just looking for a complete freedom, the capacity to make my own decisions, the decisions I believe, and not the other's decisions.
That means freedom to me is waking up, looking at what I have to do, decide what I want to achieve that day at my personal pace. I don’t want to feel the pressure of others on telling me “hey, we have to do this asap because of competitors A and B”… Again, I’m not looking to get rich, I’m just looking for complete freedom, and to get that freedom I don’t need to be the best technology startup in the market, or being a “good boy” for VC investors. I just care about making my own thing, at my own pace to keep that quality of life that I have at the moment.
And so, that’s why I also didn’t want a partner to build a business. I’m a believer in the sentence “You can go faster going alone, but you go farther being together”. That is true and I agree, but that doesn’t mean that I want to go far, doesn’t mean that I’m thinking to build a big company. Again, I’m just looking for my freedom at my own pace, because to be happy about being a solopreneur, I also need to have time for my personal life. But I decide how I manage my time on a daily basis.
However, this doesn’t mean I’m not looking to hire someone to the business if required, that makes sense for me, we need people to keep growing, however, it will be when I decide to hire and assume the responsibility of hiring someone to the business.
Why micro-startups?
After explaining why I’m looking just to be a solopreneur (and you should also answer to yourself if that is what you are looking for as well), now the question is, why micro-startups?
For many reasons, I will list those here:
- Easy to build and deliver;
- Cheaper costs on test & failure;
- Sooner results;
- Market testing;
- Easy to learn and fail;
- You can build it as a Solopreneur (you don’t need a VC or a partner);
- Easier to measure the market size and value;
- The competition is lower (and usually big companies don’t target those niches);
- You can focus on customer retention and focus on your customer's needs (and so, being able to scale your business for extra features that your customers requested for their businesses);
- If you find a niche profitable market, it’s quite easy to be acquired by big companies (Big companies don’t build products from scratch for small markets, they just acquired those products to merge them with their products);
- If some product works for a niche market, you can repeat and reuse your strategy in another niche market with less effort (even if not profitable in the other market, you are now splitting the building costs with more clients);
- You are much happier building your small products, less pressure and you are free;
Those are some of my motivations to build micro-startups. Probably I will remember a few more after I publish this article, but what are your thoughts about building a micro-startup? Do you agree with the above advantages?
However, there are not just advantages to building micro-startups as a Solopreneur. Here are some that you should take into consideration when building some micro-startup as a solopreneur:
- You are alone, and is easy to feel unmotivated mostly when the results don’t come;
- If a micro-startup target a too-small niche can be hard to make it profitable (if no one else already built it, probably means that is a not so much interesting market);
- When is a small problem that we are trying to solve, can usually happen that we are trying to solve a non-problem. So, something that actually no one is considering as a problem, and only you thought it was a problem (it’s important that you try to ask your potential customers if they really consider it as a real problem);
- If it’s an opportunity in the market that appeared recently due to some trending topic, being alone and without any VC investment, you will be much slower to deliver the product than any other competitor with more resources. So, you can invest time in something that was already solved by others;
- If my micro-startup got some traffic and getting known by other potential competitors, if those have more resources they could easily build something similar and become the ones that created the market needs (rather than me that actually started the market);
Those are a few concerns that I have as a solopreneur building some micro-startups. However, to reduce those concerns I took a decision for my first steps which are described on the next topic.
My strategy for my first micro-startups
To take advantage of the pros of building micro-startups and to reduce the disadvantages of that, I decided to build micro-startups with these characteristics:
- Even if exists competitors, the same possible customer can consume/use the same solution from multiple competitors (e.g: Content, info data aggregation, etc…);
- Something that can grow with time at a regular pace (e.g: Communities);
- Something that can solve a small problem for potential customers, without the need for my manual intervention or customer support (e.g: Saas, micro-webtool);
Those are some of the characteristics of the micro-startups that I’m trying to build. Probably those are characteristics of small businesses, but as I said in the first topic, what motivates me is not to become a wealthy man, but to become a completely independent person. That is my main goal.
I will share some suggestions/strategies for building those Micro-startups as Solopreneurs
What do you think? Do you agree with my perspective about building micro-startups? Do you have the same motivation as I or you are seeking something different to becoming a solopreneur?
Let me know in the comments box. Also, follow me to keep receiving my articles. In the next article, I will share some suggestions/strategies for building those Micro-startups as Solopreneurs, that I’m considering for my own micro-startups.
Have a nice week,
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