Why I Decided to Go Solo
In the ongoing quest for collaborators, why going solo sometimes makes sense.
Planning Is Everything. The Plan Is Nothing.
— Dwight Eisenhower
I originally started working on Shaxpir back in the summer of 2013, a few months after writing and self-publishing a book.
The book project was a life-changing experience. For a solid year, I woke up a few hours earlier every morning and went to bed a few hours later every evening. I spent those extra hours each day writing and revising the manuscript, designing the cover art, laying out the paperback, and assembling the ebook files.
When the experience was over, I felt like I had gained certain unique insights into both the creative process of storytelling and the mechanics of self-publishing. After trying to use all the different word-processors available on the market, I wasn’t satisfied that any of them actually does a very good job serving the creative needs of a long-form narrative storyteller.
I remember the exact moment when that little white lightbulb hovering over my head flickered on for the first time: I was going to be the person to build that product.
Naturally, because I’ve been a software engineer for almost 20 years, I can recite to you by heart all 18 of Paul Graham’s Mistakes that Kill Startups. Therefore, I knew that having co-founders was the second-most-important thing I could do for the success of my project, and I started talking to my friends and colleagues in startup-land, in search of potential collaborators.
But the most-most-important thing I could do for my project would be to build a product that people actually love. So while I looked for co-founders, I just went ahead and got started executing on my own, trying to build the product I now envisioned in my dreams.
Over the course of the first two years, I actually had five different people step up and express their interest in collaborating. All five of them were good friends of mine from the past: smart, experienced colleagues who I trusted and respected. They each spent some time working with me on small projects, and I was actually quite happy with their early progress.
But working on an early-stage startup takes an incredible about of time and focus, sustained over long periods of time, and not everybody enjoys it as much as they think they will. One by one, each of my collaborators gracefully withdrew from the project. I thanked them each for giving it a try.
Meanwhile, I kept building.
And then I realized something… I thought about all the time I had spent with these potential collaborators, getting them up to speed, having meetings and discussions and brainstorming sessions. And I realized that all the hours I spent vision-building with my co-founders was time I wasn’t spending getting to know the people actually using the product every day.
So I stopped trying to find co-founders, and I started focusing on the most important collaborators an entrepreneur can possibly have: my customers.
I’m still always on the looking for collaborators, but I’m more flexible in my expectations of what those collaborators can provide, and what form they’ll take when they appear.
In the meantime, I’m still building.
