Ask HN: How many of you are self employed?

1

Postcard.page

#Website Builder #Personal Website #Single Page Websites 3 social mentions

2

FRCTNL

#Developer Tools #Design Collaboration #Online Services 1 social mentions

3

Booklet

#Community Platform #Music #Music Tools 1 social mentions

4

Vokabeln.io

I'm freelancing two days a week, which generates most of my income. For the rest of the week, I'm bootstrapping a language learning app.(https://vokabeln.io/) I'm lucky enough not having to pay rent and also living expenses in Czechia are not that high.

#Studying #Diagrams #Language Learning 11 social mentions

5

Persumi

I'm "half-half" so to speak. I work as a CTO in my day job (as an employee). Also I'm self-employed (via a company structure) to build https://persumi.com - a blogging platform, and https://rizz.farm - a lead gen platform, as well as to work on client work. https://persumi.com/u/fredwu/hire-fred :).

#CMS #Copywriting #Blogging 9 social mentions

6

Audio Diary

I am working on https://audiodiary.ai as a solo founder, I recently have been getting enough income to just about cover my living expenses and haven’t received any funding and didn’t do any marketing, with 9k users so far since launch last May. It’s fulfilling and great to see people use and love a product I’ve built. I’m obviously highly motivated to grow so it keeps me busy.

#Social Networks #Note Taking #Instant Messaging 9 social mentions

7

Team Today

I built https://team-today.com with a friend about 4 years ago and have been working on it full-time for the past 6 months. I tried to get funding but never really got there and we've just managed to grind it out to a point where we have enough revenue to pay ourselves. The flexible lifestyle is great, I play golf on Wednesdays and help out with childcare much more than I would have been able to with my previous jobs. There is the looming threat that all our customers will leave us one day and I'll have to go back to a regular 9-5 job, but hey ho.

#Productivity #Project Management #Digital Asset Management 4 social mentions

8

Buttondown

Self-employed, running https://buttondown.email as a solo founder. (My day generally looks like — 30% engineering, 40% onboarding + support, 10% marketing, 20% operations.) It was a profitable nights-and-weekends project from 2017—2022; took it full-time in 2022. I think the thing that I would say about self-employment is that people understate the day-to-day flexibility and overstate the month-to-month flexibility. It is _addicting_ to be able to structure a given day exactly how you want it, and to take days off without having to worry about PTO; conversely, I've done a hither-to poor job of increasing my bus factor and it's tough to e.g. Plan entire week-long vacations without knowing I'll need to carve out extra time afterwards to catch up on inbound issues. Being self-employed is hard work for sure. I also _totally_ understand the cliche of "becoming a founder makes you un-hireable"; it's really hard to imagine going back to a traditional job after this, and I find it more fulfilling than anything else I've done in my career.

#Email Newsletters #Personal Newsletter #NaaS 24 social mentions

9

flat.social

Same here! I've been running my own digital products (https://flat.social and some smaller ones) and bridging the gap with consulting. For me, the flexibility lead to a fully location-independent lifestyle which allowed me to work from places where I feel at my best. Currently writing this from a tropical patio in Brazil :).

#Online Meetings #Video Chat #Virtual Events 38 social mentions