If you follow me on any social media you'll know that I've successfully landed in Vietnam and am acclimatising well to the 30 degree heat and 85% humidity. The main topic for this week is solopreneurship, a cringeworthy corporate sounding jargon for unemployment with extra steps, or so I thought. It turns out that there's a large (and growing) community of people chasing solopreneurship as a means to escape the corporate life, which of course got me interested...
From my foray so far into the world of alternative lifestyles, solopreneurship emerged as a way for individuals to make money outside of traditional employment, and outside of the world of business (in a sense). The goal of solopreneurship is to build monthly recurring revenue (MRR) streams through technical services like websites and browser extensions, selling information products like courses and guides, and other 'extra' things which large companies could do if it were a management priority, but which might legitimately go ignored in favor of more obvious products. Successful solopreneur ventures seem to be a mix of very tightly solving a specific problem, having broad enough distribution & marketing to dominate solutions to that problem, and doing it better and faster than a more bloated working group could do. Two of the several main voices in this space are Pieter Levels and Marc Lou , both generating more than most small businesses from a handful of niche but important products.
This got me interested, since so far I've been in pursuit of a more traditional approach which involves things like a concierge MVP, well documented and architected internal tooling, and other more 'serious' things. However, profit doesn't care how serious or polished your internal architecture is, and this is not to say that technical solopreneurs are by any means not serious, but rather they appear to build in a more scrappy way so as to quickly gain momentum in a small niche, and then later capitalise on that momentum, rather than starting slow and building a 'perfect' product to then roll it out slowly. The two approaches share the 'pick a problem and solve it' philosophy, but also differ in that solopreneurs might rapidly abandon even a promising product in favor of achieving higher MRR, whereas traditional businesses might be slower to turn off revenue engines and therefore risk being caught in losing a half-hearted competition.
So the question then is; is pursuing solopreneurship something I'd like to do? For now the answer is yes. I have time, I have technical expertise, and I think there's a lot to be learned about business from building and shipping technical products in this rapid prototype style.
For now, nothing. Like any business, solopreneurs need some sort of legal entity capable of sending invoices, paying tax, and all that fun stuff. For me OJS Group will become more of an umbrella project containing a bunch of different products, and if you're thinking about doing the same then I fully recommend still registering a company, if only to learn how it actually works and what a chairman, board member, CEO, and all those important sounding roles actually need to do.
If you've been following this newsletter the past few weeks you'll remember reading about engineering for acquisition, and how the possibility of acquisition as a business might gently drive you towards better engineering practices. Whilst acquisition as a solopreneur isn't impossible, it's definitely not the goal for most people as far as I can tell. After all, why sell ownership of a product giving you solid MRR which you and only you fully understand and can improve.
That said, if you've worked with me over the years you'll know that I can be a real stickler for details, which is something I need to let go in pursuit of this new style of working. This also means that some of the ongoing OJS Group projects (company incorporation surveillance tool and property price scanner) may go through the sausage machine and be turned into software-as-a-service (SaaS) or data-as-a-service (DaaS) subscription products, so that a steady trickle of Pina Colada money starts coming in.
I'd be lying if I said that the last week has been absolute chaos, and that I hadn't learned so many other things that I wanted to include about travel, visas, social media, international commerce, and more. But, I can only chop down so many trees to send these emails, so the rest is going to have to wait for future episodes. One thing I did want to mention is that it would be great to get your thoughts on a redesign of the OJS Group website that I did a few days ago. What do you hate least about it, what are your thoughts on the font spacing, and any other hot takes. Message me on LinkedIn, X, Threads, or join my Habbo Hotel casino room (if this wasn't part of your childhood I won't judge you).
Also, please consider sharing links to my website/newsletter with a friend who might be interested - turns out it's incredibly hard building an audience for this type of broad-topic newsletter, so I appreciate any recommendations!
Thanks and all the best and see you next week,
Oliver
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