The Minimalist Entrepreneur: How Great Founders Do More with Less

The goal here is to free yourself, to make the business require as little of you as you wish it to, so that you can engage with the world in the way you think best, whatever that looks like. For most, that means freeing others too. You can’t free everyone, or build every business, but you can at least teach a few people how.

You picked a community. Why that one? You shipped a manual valuable process and then iterated it into a minimum viable product. Why did you choose to solve those problems in the ways that you did?

“I’m creating longevity by building a foundation more slowly,” she says, “so I ask myself, ‘What is the next smallest step I can take?’ ” That has allowed Rainbow Road to grow in a way that feels sustainable for the company and for the world. “I can grow something really substantial with baby steps, so I’m not afraid of taking the longer path.”

I found that when I wasn’t trying to placate investors or make the company grow faster than it was meant to grow, finally, I had time. While I was no longer on track to become a dollar billionaire, I realized I was a “time billionaire,” someone Graham Duncan defines as having at least a billion seconds left in their life—or at least thirty-one year... See more

Your job listings should be a filter, not a magnet. Most people won’t enjoy working at your company, and your job listings should make it clear that they should look elsewhere. The people who get all the way through are the ones you should have more serious conversations with.

Never mind if your business isn’t “changing the world” from day one, or doesn’t employ hundreds of people. As long as you’re making the world better in an honest, scalable way by selling a product worth paying for to a community that wants it, starting a company is worth it.

minimalist entrepreneurs should be selling to their users, not selling their users. In practice, that means building a product that solves a real problem for your customers, only selling to customers who are already convinced by your product, and only using your email list to send important information (not spam) to people who have opted in.

Instead of hiring like crazy, hire when it hurts. Instead of getting a fancy office, work out of a fancy coffee shop. When you do spend money, see how it affects your burn rate and your runway.

At Gumroad, we disclose everyone’s salary in the company to everyone else, using a simple spreadsheet I keep up to date. This lets people feel good about how much they make and minimizes information asymmetry between me and the rest of the team. Revealing that kind of information may seem scary at first, but that’s just because it’s unusual. In pra... See more