It's available for the second and third tiers but not the bottom one. I mentioned this in another comment, but the shipping costs were brutal for international fulfillment during the private launch so I had to make some changes for the public launch.
Very meta here, but I don't understand your confusion. That's exactly what it is. It's "Single Founder" as in solo entrepreneur/solopreneur. Does that clarify it?
I do include a discussion of taking on a cofounder in the book. Personally, I don't think that having a cofounder is bad per se, but having a bad cofounder is significantly worse than having no cofounder at all. The downside to taking on a cofounder is that your ambitions for what to build need to increase proportionately because now it has to support 2 people, not just one. It's no longer just a matter of getting 2x the work done. Basically everything doubles.
“having a bad cofounder is significantly worse than having no cofounder at all”
^^^ This is so true.
For anyone thinking of bringing on a business partner, I highly recommend the book “The Partnership Charter” — it does an excellent job of taking you through the things you really need to address before you just jump in and get to work.
Thanks for the reply, Mike. I was referring to the bullet-point list of "How will this help you?" on the webpage. I haven't read the book, so my feedback is entirely based on the website content.
I've been both the single entrepreneur as well as a co-founder. I found that list to be entirely applicable to both scenarios. (Good list, BTW!)
Anyway, just offering some feedback that I thought there would be a greater emphasis on the unique challenges for a solo founder vs. a team.
Indeed, I'm not sure there's a more concrete example of "judging a book by it's cover." :-)
You're absolutely right about the fact that the list applies to both. Then again, it was easy to come up with since it came mostly from the table of contents and that was based on what people emailed me about during the development of the book.
If you look around at that "traditional" startups covered by news or accepted by YC, they don't talk about single founder startups. In my circles (MicroConf, Micropreneur Academy, etc) it's virtually nothing except single founder companies. So there's a misconception that single founder startups aren't possible or don't work.
For VC's and huge scale startups, that may be true. But I know of hundreds of small scale software companies that are doing just fine that would beg to differ. It's a matter of what your goals are and what you want out of life.
The title is meant more to draw attention to the fact that if you're a single founder, this book is for you. That doesn't change the fact that it's useful to small teams or to any software startup. But when you have two people working on something, the discussions tend to be different than the ones you have in your head.
I wrote the book in such a way so as to be that other voice saying the things you would have needed to hear from a cofounder. It's not necessarily about the message itself in many cases, so much as the subtle nuances of how that message is communicated that will make them more understandable and resonate better with a single founder.
In some ways, the title is a marketing strategy too.
Do you have something specific in mind? There's the option to download a sample chapter from the book on Idea Validation on the page. Or were you looking for something else? I thought about putting together an e-course or something like that as well, but I simply haven't had the time.
Any thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome.
I'm sure it was from a fan of your podcast or Micropreneur Academy. You have delivered so much quality free content over the years I have no problem with a pure sales link to your book on HN.
I tried to offer a physical book with every order during the pre-launch several weeks ago, but international shipping was brutal. It was nearly $900 for shipping alone, plus the cost of the books themselves. The book is 327 pages long and since it's print on demand, it's a bit more expensive than the run of the mill printed book.
I'd like to find a solution to this long term, but in the short term I don't have one yet.
I appreciate the understanding. The book is 1 lb, 4oz and a bit over 3/4" thick. USPS has a tiered pricing structure that puts the book into another tier. Shipping costs jumped from under $5 to nearly $20 to virtually all international locations. I thought shipping was going to be straightforward but it really wasn't at all.
So are you shipping via USPS? I'm about to buy. I use a PO box for receiving most parcels, but only the postal service can ship there. 10x the hassle to accept via courier.
The 4SttE book, as I understand, is printed on demand as well (at least it looks like it), I'm fine (as well as a lot of people) with paying shipping corresponding to my geographical location.
Disclaimer: I'm Rob's business partner in the Micropreneur Academy/Startups for the Rest of Us/MicroConf.
I would also recommend Rob's book as a starting point. Many of the problems people run into are mindset related and knowing what else is out there, what things people have tried, and how they worked out is really important. Once you realize that something is possible, you can make it a reality. But without having concrete examples, it's difficult to make that mental leap.
I'm in the process of writing my own book on this topic called The Single Founder Handbook. http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com that you might find useful as well. Should be available within a month, but four areas it focuses on are Idea Generation, Filtering, Validation, and Execution. People have a tendency to jump right to code sometimes without thinking about whether or not the idea ticks off a bunch of specific criteria or validating it.
The pricing is a bit in flux right now because the cost is going to be largely based on the number of people who actually attend. Our target is to keep it under $750 no matter what. So that's on the high end of the pricing scale. Chances are really good it will be less.
The reason BOS is so expensive is because it's in Boston and they don't have sponsors. Vegas is significantly less expensive to host a conference. We did look into Boston and it was kind of ridiculous.
