Basically, expect around $800 to $1,000 in maintenance costs per year. LLCs may be cheaper, but open you up to tricky tax setups (you could be personally liable for U.S taxes).
> What is the recommendation for a company to manage an open source project?
I don't think you need that.
There is a non-trivial legal and accounting overhead that you will have to deal with to keep the corp running.
I built my business on Rails/SQLite/Sidekiq+Redis.
Hetzner (bare metal) for hosting. Bash script for provisioning a server. Vanilla JavaScript only when necessary. Tailwind for design. nanoc for generating a static site.
If I were to start again, I'd pick the same stack again. It just works and gets out of the way.
For Notion Backups, it was a mix of Hacker News and SEO, if my memory serves me well. These days, it is mostly SEO, with some word of mouth/directories (SEO is hard to replicate if you are in a crowded market or don't have any unfair advantages).
I'm on the team "start talking about your product early on, even if you don't have the mvp ready". Don't worry about someone stealing your idea.
If the product can solve someone's problem, it is good enough, even if it won't solve all the problems your potential customers might have.
Thanks for the input. I saw on your profile that you sold a company before. That’s super cool, especially since it contrasts nicely with what you said about not being afraid of talking about your products or showcasing them early on. I’m still working on being comfortable with that concept but I’d love to get there. Especially since it’d be cool to talk tech with new tech friends irl, who would probably be more inclined to do so if they knew more about my own project…
Take one step at a time — it will get easier with time. The fact that you started this thread is already a step in that direction.
Regarding selling a company: I sold it because it wasn't very successful and I couldn't find a reliable distribution channel, so it wasn't going anywhere. I let it go for very low five figures, which wasn't a lot, but better than nothing.
A fellow solopreneur here, I've been doing it for several years now.
I browsed through your profile, website, Twitter account, and I'm still not sure what your product is and what it does. Is it consulting? Coaching? Book?
You don't have a lot of followers (me neither), so tweeting won't get you far as you're talking into a void. Instead, join existing discussions where people already are. Also, don't use too many hashtags - it looks spammy.
Not trying to put you down, just offering a different perspective you might not hear otherwise. I hope you succeed.
> launched my first SaaS 3 months ago, and got zero users
I couldn't find a link to your SaaS from your website.
Maybe you should put a giant button linking to the SaaS, put it in your Twitter bio, pin a tweet to it, your HN bio and every other place that you can think of. Assuming that's something you want to promote more than all the other things on your website.
Thanks for the suggestion. This particular one was classified as failed, I don't intent to work on it. I'm focusing on another one, which is close to be released as private alpha. This one, I'll try to pin everywhere.
even if it's private alpha, you should probably release it to a friendly hostile audience or feedback. Once against it is beta, you can release it to the world at large because well that's what a lot of SAAS companies do. Once you get some revenue, then you can make it better. Otherwise, if you don't get the feedback you need on how to make the product better and live in your own head, you might find yourself polishing turd. if I want to see someone who's done that, all I need is a mirror.
That's akin to a psychedelic experience: that reality feels more real than the everyday reality we live in, which, in comparison, comes across as quite shallow.
I've never tried that, maybe I'd have to before I could ever understand how someone could feel like it's more real.
I've avoided psychedelics because all I have is my brain, and I'm scared I could screw something up in my mind. I kinda want to keep my mind safe, it's all I am. Losing the consistency of my mind that I've always known is scary.
> I've avoided psychedelics because all I have is my brain, and I'm scared I could screw something up in my mind. I kinda want to keep my mind safe, it's all I am. Losing the consistency of my mind that I've always known is scary.
Psychedelics probably won't permanently screw you up. On the most common ones, like psilocybin mushrooms or LSD, you may even still feel very much yourself while tripping.
That said, if this is your attitude about psychedelics, they would probably be a bad time for you. It's one of those things where the more you stiffen up and brace yourself, the scarier and more uncomfortable the changes in your perception that come with tripping will seem to you. You definitely want to approach them with more openness and curiosity, and if you don't feel like that's available to you with respect to psychedelics, opting out of them is a totally sound choice.
I'm also a founder who started a C Corp using Atlas.
I see two options here:
* Do you process transactions through Stripe? Have you received an offer from Stripe Capital? It probably won't be enough, and their APR is unfavourable compared to typical loans, but it could be a starting point.
* Doing part-time consulting. That's what I had been doing for 3-ish years before I managed to get my business off the ground. Start from the monthly freelancer threads on HN and work your way from there. If it doesn't work, try Upwork (not a fan, but you gotta do what you gotta do).
On the stack itself: it might seem overpriced (or even overengineered), but if that's what they're comfortable with, so be it. Getting your product out there faster and being more agile (no pun intended) is worth much more than saving here and there - you can always optimize later (which is a place most businesses won't ever reach, unfortunately).
My SaaS business runs on SQLite, and it has been working like a champ. Backups are dead simple, and I don't have to worry about uptime, configs, network latency, and all that.
Postgres is great, and I used it in my previous business, but sometimes, it's an overkill.
Basically, expect around $800 to $1,000 in maintenance costs per year. LLCs may be cheaper, but open you up to tricky tax setups (you could be personally liable for U.S taxes).
> What is the recommendation for a company to manage an open source project?
I don't think you need that.
There is a non-trivial legal and accounting overhead that you will have to deal with to keep the corp running.