The million-dollar, one-person business
by Elaine Pofeldt · first published 2018
83% recommend17% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Covers how solo founders build businesses that reach seven figures, with plenty of real examples. Suited to people considering a one-person business or building scalable software on their own.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"The rise of one-million-dollar, one-person businesses in the past five years is the biggest trend in employment today, offering the widest range of people the most ways to earn a living while having the lifestyles they want. In The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business, Elaine Pofeldt outlines the pathways to joining this entrepreneurial movement, synthesizing advice from hundreds of business owners who've done it. She explains how to identify, launch, grow, and reinvent the business, showing how a single individual can generate $1 million in revenue--something only larger small companies have
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…revenue might be USD $1m/enployee. good for individuals, but not good enough for media/blogs to report, because that won’t generate enough clicks :) a book i always recommend is https://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-One-Person-Business-Gr...
on “Small Teams” ↗You might like this one https://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-One-Person-Business-Gr... I listened to the audio version, it is interesting
on “Ask HN: One Person, $1M Company” ↗The book The Million-Dollar One-Person Business goes into a lot more examples. It's usually people who build software that can scale.
on “Automation enables founders to grow companies with fewer and fewer employees” ↗…creating courses and info-products. With your background you probably have a lot to teach. Also check out microacquire, Pencil Pirates, and Codie Sanchez’s YouTube channel. There’s a great book called Million Dollar, One Person Business. Follow Justin Welsh on LinkedIn. I wish you all the best. Happy to answer any questions
on “Ask HN: How successful were you getting out of tech and where did you go?” ↗There's a good book I read about this, Company of One. I also recommend The Million Dollar One Person Business. They're both about solo foundership.
on “Ask HN: Solo Founder Tips?” ↗In my experience the post quality has been down-trending for a while, but the podcasts are top-tier. Definitely check it out. I also recommend the books: - Company of One - Zero to Sold - Million Dollar One Person Business
on “Every Software Project Is a Startup That Will Probably Fail” ↗Check out the book Million Dollar One Person Business.
on “Ask HN: What's the largest known outcome for a solopreneur?” ↗The author’s disclosure should have been at the top “Elaine Pofeldt is author of The Million-Dollar, One Person Business (Random House, January 2, 2018), a book looking at how to break $1M in revenue in a business staffed only by the owners.”
on “How to Find a Million-Dollar, One-Person Business Idea” ↗I read a few books the other day, The Million-dollar, One-person Business and Company of One. They both discuss how with the advances of code (to build a product with), the infrastructure to host them (with AWS so that you don't need to build data centers), and the network…
on “AI is ushering in a “tiny team” era” ↗Reminds me of a few things, like being a meat proxy, as well as books like Company of One or Million Dollar One Person Business, and these were published before AI so right now we will see companies with only one founder and hundreds to thousands of AI agents. There already was that drug delivery company with the one founder but…
on “Building an AI-native engineering org” ↗