Sahil Lavingia: Recent Episodes
Sahil Lavingia
Now more than ever, you don’t need a fancy office, Ivy League degree, or millions of dollars in venture capital to launch a business that matters for the communities you care most about. Software, the internet, and remote work have made it possible for entrepreneurs to start for free, make a customer of anyone, and grow a profitable, sustainable company from anywhere.
Packed with hard-won, battle-tested lessons from my own journey of building Gumroad, a platform for creators to sell their work, The Minimalist Entrepreneur teaches founders how to:
• start then learn
• build a community, then solve a problem for them
• charge for something even before you’ve built anything
• avoid running out of money and, more importantly, energy
• run a tight ship amid the rise of the gig economy and remote work
• own a business without it owning you back.
The Minimalist Entrepreneur is the manifesto for a new generation of founders who would rather build great companies than big ones. This is essential knowledge for every founder aspiring to build a business worth building. Or at least, I'd like to think!
Listen to the whole book via Audible: https://amzn.to/3DdEijB
I started Gumroad in 2011. In 2015, we reached a peak of 23 full-time employees. In 2016, after failing to raise more money, I ended up back where I began: a one-person company.
Today, when I’m asked how many people work at Gumroad, I respond with “ten or so.” That’s how I convert the number of people we have into what others expect. But the truth is more complicated:
If we include everyone who works on Gumroad, it’s 25.
If we include full-time employees, it’s none. Not even me.
We have no meetings, and no deadlines either.
And it’s working: our creators earn over $175 million a year, and we generate $11 million in annualized revenue, growing 85% year-over-year.
In 2011, I left my job as the second employee at Pinterest — before I vested any of my stock — to work on what I thought would be my life’s work.
I thought Gumroad would become a billion-dollar company, with hundreds of employees. It would IPO, and I would work on it until I died. Something like that.
Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
Now, it may look like I am in an enviable position, running a profitable, growing, low-maintenance software business serving adoring customers. But for years, I considered myself a failure. At my lowest point, I had to lay off 75 percent of my company, including many of my best friends. I had failed.
It took me years to realize I was misguided from the outset. I no longer feel shame in the path I took to get to where I am today — but for a long time, I did. This is my journey, from the beginning.
A year ago, I lived in San Francisco. I spent over $2,000 a month for one bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment in the Mission District. Outside of working on my startup, I devoured books on my Kindle and brooded with my fellow liberals about Trump and the GOP on Twitter. Most everyone I knew was agnostic.
I had my whole life planned out. Decades of startups, at least one of which would hit it big. A retirement full of vapid, but pithy tweets.
Today, I live in Provo, the most conservative (and religious) city over 100,000 people in America. I live in a one-bedroom apartment that costs $800 a month. I no longer tweet as much, and especially not about politics. A majority of my friends, including my girlfriend, are religious, and most of them are conservative. I go to church every Sunday.
What changed?