Getting unstuck on Solopreneurship

My motivation and strategy to unlock the entrepreneurial path

Jan 15, 2024

I've been putting off starting this newsletter for over a month now. I’m still not ready, yet I feel the threshold for putting my thoughts out there is over. Why? Let me explain - and please note that this is going to be a bit of a long brain dump.

Motivation

First things first, why would I want to do a solo business these days?

There’s a certain subset of people I identify with, who just don’t like doing what others tell us to do, and prefer to always approach it in our own (subjective) way. You can call it stubbornness or even selfishness if you will, but it’s not that. I (and I’m sure many others) really want to help others at my very core, and in fact it often feels very demotivating if something I’m working on is only for my own contentment. But when others tell us how we should get there, is what creates a problem. Let me tell you a personal story on that.

Unleashing my personal creativity

I finished graduate school at MIT almost 10 years ago. To be honest, those years have been a mixed bag for me - filled with both wonderful connections with others, and deep sorrows of depression (a story for another time). I didn’t finish my PhD - instead, I saw that this academic path is simply not the kind of grind I’d like to pursue further.

However, something completely unexpected happened when I continued working in the same academic lab for a few more years. This was the first time in my life when I didn’t have a particular aim to satisfy coursework, thesis research and other educational requirements. Yes, my professor kept me around to help with a couple projects I started as a student, and there were certain milestones to reach. But intellectually, it was much more open-ended and “free to explore”.

I could finally bring in what I felt was much more relevant to the task at hand - my long-held passion in computers, software (since 10 years old), and my curiosity in engineering as a whole - requiring me to think much more pragmatically at what’s feasible to achieve with the fewest amount of resources. It was much more multi-disciplinary in nature - I was no longer labeled as a “physicist” or “materials science” specialist. Instead, I just used whichever tools are best (and most affordable) for a given problem, and I learned and practiced it along the way, right there and then.

During that time, I’ve learned much more about designing and engineering systems (both in software, hardware and consumables) than I had ever before. It has become very apparent that real-world engineering has very little to do with a purely academic pursuit. Something that always feels “ideal” on paper/theory, something that we can easily model with a set of equations or theories - a lot of that simply falls apart when we’re faced with a real-world problem at hand, and a need to afford or make money from it.

In my last year during that time, I’ve decided to dive in head-first into cloud computing, which was the topic du jour. The problem I was trying to address is how to make scientific computation at scale much more accessible to scientists, who are often ill-equipped for the task. Traditional academic computing relied on by then-outdated models of computation, requiring capital investments into expensive clusters of servers, or access to external clusters where scientists competed for time instead of focusing on research. Needless to say, none of that provided the best user experience.

So I’ve decided to change that - yes, single handedly, and yes - that was quite an ambitious (or even naive) goal at the time. But once faced with the problem, I studied Amazon Web Services (AWS) inside and out, along with all of the best and most popular software engineering practices I could find. And I started creating a whole framework that solved that problem. There was no one that could tell me whether what I was doing to get there was right or wrong (not even my brilliant professor, who was not a specialist in this stuff - which is why he hired me). There was only my problem, me, and feedback from a brilliant postdoc in our lab (as the “user” or even the “product owner”, in modern business lingo).

This leads me to the 2nd important point on this.

Fast feedback loop

Working with that postdoc (and a few other wonderful folks from the lab) brought me immense joy and satisfaction - not only because they were smart and great to work with, but because it enabled me to have an extremely fast and lean feedback cycle.

I would think of the next feature to build, then walk up to my “user”, and ask them directly if what I was doing would be helpful or not. And right there and then, I’d get a very pointed answer to it. 5 minutes later, I would start designing and coding the feature (or sometimes avoid building it, if it wasn’t that useful).

This kind of feedback is simply impossible in big companies these days. Not only the actual users of for example, a software product, are multiple layers separated from the engineers implementing it, but the whole chain of dialogue is the proverbial “broken telephone” - by the time something is fed back, the message is distorted and ends up in something quite different from what was desired. In addition, it’s normal for the whole cycle to take days or even weeks, despite best efforts of these companies in “Agile” software development.

Don’t get me wrong, some companies manage to do it better than others, but the core problem is always there, and not specific to any particular company. In addition, the decision on what to build (or not) is almost always in someone else’s hands, and so engineers oftentimes feel powerless, even when they want to help users the most. This kind of lack of “personal responsibility”, or “skin in the game”, and just purely motivational joy of working directly with customers, is what kills good products.

Computer speed analogy

Working alone back then allowed me to tap into a powerful mental effect I haven’t really seen much described elsewhere. Let me explain it with an analogy.

In computer systems 101, it’s taught that computer memory and networks are organized in a hierarchy of layers. The so-called processor registers are the fastest and most accessible memory available, even though there are only a handful of them. It is what the CPU uses most in its day-to-day tasks. Then come several layers of “CPU cache”, that enable a greater pool of “quick” memory. Then come even larger RAM, local long-term storage drives, and finally remote storage. All there’s to say that each layer enables progressively larger but slower method of accessing information, and the slowest and most prone to errors of them all is access over networks.

Of course, computers aren’t people (not even recently introduced AI LLMs). But I believe this last point holds as equally true for us as species as for our silicon pets. Communication is hard - and slow. It’s lossy, and it takes time to travel between people. So it makes sense to shortcut and minimize unnecessary communication as much as possible, if we can avoid it. Yes, wider discussion can be very useful, but too much discussion is also detrimental.

On the other hand, a person’s mind is like a hyper-drive information gateway. It acts very quickly on its own, it can fire ideas back and forth faster than we can even verbalize them. And we can look up information and make decisions in as much as a few breaths. So any time a non-consequential decision has to get out of our mind and go through communication channels to another person, these decisions are made much, much slower. Not only that, but it can deprive ourselves of learning about a particular topic, when we rely too much on others to “know” it.

This is the inherent problem in organizations - no one becomes the jack of all trades. Everyone is a specialist, and is even actively discouraged from “siloing” information in their heads. Yes, siloing has its own inherent downsides (the so-called “bus factor”). But it can also be such a liberating vehicle to success - which is what I had the privilege to experience first-hand. I had to become a software architect, engineer, designer, project and product manager, security and developer operations engineer, and probably other “er”s. This is also impossible to achieve in bigger companies.

Don’t get me wrong - this is not for everyone. It can be scary, hard and time-consuming to be “everyone everywhere all at once”. It’s a ton of responsibility. But it’s also extremely liberating, especially once these skills become mastered and turn into second nature. And people with this kind of mindset and skillset are extremely unique and in-demand.

Incentives

Last by not least, working alone brings in the question of why and how we do certain work. Some folks are motivated purely by money (and that’s ok!), but for me it’s always been a mix of social causes and financials. This is why I have been enjoying helping scientists do their jobs for many years.

The unfortunately reality is that purely profit-seeking activities tend to (in my own subjective opinion) lead to loss of this ethical objective - instead, oftentimes they lead to the proverbial “enshittification” of user experience, until the chase for ever-increasing profits (or corporate ladder politics) sucks out all joy from a product to the bone, leaving nothing behind. Yes, this is probably an exaggeration and there’re many effects both good and bad at play - but the core problem of aligning the strategy with the core values remains there. And this gets harder to maintain the more people and personal interests are involved.

Strategy

Now that I’ve covered the core motivations, how would I actually get there? This is the hardest and most open-ended question of all.

Over the past year, I got an opportunity to consult some of the folks I had the pleasure working with during those earlier years (now in a new startup). This has already been an immensely rewarding activity, however it prompted me to consider - what would be a good long-term investment of my time to build the new foundation for my solopreneurship? I don’t think there’s a single answer - consulting can certainly be one.

However, something that’s unfortunately inherent in consulting is my relative inability to “scale” my time. When I put a certain number of hours into helping a client, that time is devoted to helping that one client. And if I have to increase my revenue, I have to increase my hours to help more clients. One can see how this could quickly turn into a new full-time job.

On the other hand, building online products that can help a much greater number of people, while demanding only a fixed amount of my own time, could scale much better. It is that proverbial dream of the “product working for me while I sleep”. The challenge is, of course, in how to get there.

I don’t have ready answers to this yet, or even which of these paths is right for me. But one thing is for sure - it’s becoming increasingly clear in our unstable economy that relying on a single source of income (such as from a traditional full-time job) is a riskier path. Even if I don’t plan to do any of this full-time, I could still benefit from “compounding” effects of whatever I build on the side over time.

Uncertainty and perpetual quest for perfection

This last point touches on something else - the inherent uncertainty of business-making, and the need to embrace it. If there was the recipe for success in business, everyone would be doing it. But I have been shying away from it for years precisely because of this - the risk taking required seemed too intense.

However, more recently I’ve become motivated by my learnings from the wonderful Small Bets community. Among what they teach are the various ways to make a modern small business click - and that the risk involved doesn’t have to be large. In fact, contrary to the mantra I’ve been learning (and now unlearning) over this past decade, one doesn’t have to strike a golden idea and grind for many years in one direction, as many Silicon Valley startups would tell us.

Instead, a much less riskier and more sustainable way is to adopt a lifestyle-first approach for myself, and to try on a number of small but attainable “bets”. Focusing on getting my non-work-related goals in life (such as starting a family) first is what could fuel my other ambitions, and in fact entrepreneurship is what would enable me to more sustainably support this better way to live, while keeping me focused on what’s actually important to learn and do vs other fluff - i.e. perfection.

This last point deserves a special mention - and what has stopped me from writing this very essay and more generally exploring these more uncertain paths. I’ve been an “exemplary student” for many years, trying to learn A grades in everything. This has propelled me in my academic career, but not much beyond. And this was hard and unsustainable! In the end, what I described above that brought me the most satisfaction is in fact to embrace the uncertainty and say “F*ck it, we’ll do it live!” - not afraid to make mistakes anymore, and not afraid of attacking completely open-ended problems, with no sure path to success. And this strategy has so far brought me the best opportunities for growth - including the very fact that I came to this country to study a new discipline, with few connections and no savings.

Learning to unlearn

Just as I learnt cloud software engineering from every good source I could find, I’m now trying to absorb learnings about this new wave of online entrepreneurship from many different sources:

Small Bets, which offers this entirely new framework and many different skills for it (and in my opinion, is the most unbeatable deal of all!). Their large community is also extremely lively and helpful, and I’ve learned even more from it already.
Build in Public Mastery, which teaches how to adopt “build in public” mentality to find genuine friendships and connect with my future audiences in the most authentic way, instead of relying on proverbial “growth hacks”. Their community is awesome as well.
Build in Public Live, which shows how streaming my building sessions on Twitch can help me find new connections and gather feedback from others that would be hard to do with any other medium. In addition, this would help me overcome my social anxiety and improve my communication skills, which is extremely helpful in all areas of life. Great small and growing community of makers as well.
Starter Story, which has a large collection of successful solopreneur stories, community, and various classes that I’m yet to tap into.
Indie Hackers community, which has a large collection of stories and insights into indie business-making. I’ve been lurking there for several years, until deciding to pursue solopreneurship for real.
Content OS, a class by Justin Welsh on growing social media content in a more genuine way.
The Bootstrapped Founder by Arvid Kahl, a collection of posts, books and podcasts on all things regarding building sustainable bootstrapped businesses.

These are probably more than enough to get started, and I need to apply what I’ve already learned from some of them first. But the bottom line is, there’s no shortage of great resources that are opening my mind to all of this.

I’ve also been learning a great deal from following many amazing folks on Twitter that are too numerous to list here, but big thanks to all of you!

Takeaways and next steps

So how am I going to practice it all? Here’re some very helpful tips I took from others that are helping me to further unlock my thinking, and which I’m hoping to reiterate and expand on in future essays:

What matters most is usefulness to the customer. Everything else pales in comparison - tech stack, bugs etc. It’s hard to overstate how often I as an engineer start with a tech stack that I’d like to use, and then find a problem to solve with it. But that’s the wrong way to go about - it should be the opposite (although one can inform and inspire another, of course).
Focus on solving the problems that both me and my customers share. It’s important that the problems I try to solve in the beginning solve a real pain point for myself, while simultaneously resonate with the bigger communities I belong to. This can keep me motivated in solving a problem for much longer, while providing me with first-hand understanding of it and turning it into a business rather than hobby
Don’t wait too long until getting started. It’s easy to get stuck in the perpetual cycle of learning and “analyzing” without actually practicing those skills. As described above, I make the most progress when I learn something and then immediately apply that to solve a real problem at hand.
Don't solve a problem until I have that problem. Once again, when considering a problem to solve I try to imagine all the possible ways it could fail. This helps sometimes, but oftentimes it kills all joy and just makes it incredibly hard to start anything, because there are always more problems to find in everything. I've got to put more trust in my own skills that I will be able to figure it out as I go (I’ll do it live!)
Start small - don't aim for grandiose plans. This is a big one for me. Years of training in ivory towers and “venture entrepreneuship” mentoring taught me to aim for the toughest and most ambitious challenges, while looking down on simple day-to-day problems that are much easier (and more immediately useful!) to actually address.
Keep it simple. This is by far the best and most unexpected lesson I’ve learned from my professor in grad school. Prior to that, as a Math and Physics student I thought that complexity is cool. It turns out that fails miserably in engineering, and we should cut complexity at all costs.
Share pain and learnings with others in the same struggles. To all that I said above about going solo, I should add a big asterisk that it helps tremendously to find other folks with similar struggles - such as the communities I mentioned above, where we all learn from each other and share and address common challenges.
Get myself excited about things I didn't know I would be excited about or good at. It’s easy to think “I’m not good at marketing” and do nothing about it. Instead, throughout these experiences I’ve seen first hand that things I wasn’t initially intending to even explore, turned out to be the ones I’m most curious and passionate about. Same goes for my pre-conceived notions about things that I just didn’t understand previously.
It’s OK to be unsure, uncertain, and lost. The is one of the most important ones - every other day I feel that maybe this is all a mistake, or that I don’t know where to go next, or even want to give up on it. I think this is a natural part of learning - and it’s necessary to take a step back, relax, and do something else. The mind will do the learning and find new ways and excitement regardless.
It’s ok to be vulnerable and share it publicly. This is probably the biggest challenge and change for me. As someone with social anxiety, I was too afraid of being judged and ridiculed online. But practice shows this is much less scary (and happens much less often) than it seems in advance, and also that being public online is in some ways even easier than face-to-face interactions. At the same time, the upsides of opening up and developing genuine connections thanks to that far outweigh the risks.
Don’t think that your ideas are worse than others’. I know sounds like a platitude, but I sometimes suffer from the “imposter syndrome” - which feels like I’m a nobody, while others know things so much better and are much more competent as a result. While this may be true to some extent, especially in the beginning of the journey, it’s been important to realize that developing my own voice in all of this is what will enable me to actually become “someone”. This also means listening too much to others’ advice can be detrimental. And in fact, when I go on Twitter and see completely differing opinions from different “experts” on how to build businesses, I roll my eyes: everyone’s journey is different, what works for some doesn’t work for others, and vice versa. I can only conclude from that that every opinion (including my own) is valid in each person’s circumstances and point in time, but nothing should be taken as gospel, especially in such a chaotic world as business.
Use freewriting to unlock ideas. I’ve recently started reading this book by Mark Levy, and even just one chapter has already helped tremendously! It teaches how to use the technique called “Freewriting” to completely unlock my mind for creative ideas and just writing in general. It basically boils down to writing down my thoughts as they come, in their most raw unadulterated form, with the goal of freeing myself from them and collecting them for future synthesis. This is what has finally enabled me write this very essay, based on a collection of random thoughts over the past month. It works!

That’s all for today folks. I’m immensely grateful if you made it all the way to this point - and even if you didn’t, I hope there’s at least something that you found useful in this essay. Going forward, I’m hoping to develop a more consistent schedule to share my learnings along this new and exciting journey.

Special thanks goes to

Daniel Vassallo

Louie Bacaj

Chris Wong

Michelle Elisabeth Varghese

, Val, Tim Wheeler, and many others from Small Bets and Twitter for inspiring me and/or providing feedback for this newsletter!