Top all-time · #1071
Sahil Lavingia
Personal blog · sahillavingia.com/blogstartupscareer
Sahil Lavingia's personal blog at sahillavingia.com covers startups and career. Since 2010, 62 different Hacker News readers have linked it 125 times, most often “No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Rarely recommended · 3 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Sahil Lavingia's posts on running Gumroad with no full-time employees and a lean, contractor-based model (/work), its finances and ownership history (/reflecting), and early startup marketing advice.
- Recommended for · 3 comments
- Called a fit for the asker's question ("This was made for you"), "might be useful", and "Have you read Sahil Lavingia's blog?" suggests reading his posts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees22 people · 23 mentions · first linked 2021-01-07
- Reflecting on my failure to build a billion-dollar company (2019)19 people · 19 mentions · first linked 2020-06-27
- God Mode7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2024-10-17
- how can I improve my personal site?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-10-01
- Doge Days3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-05-28
- Paying freelancers in equity and dividends2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-05-15
- The Creator-Owner Economy: Gumroad’s “IPO”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-22
- Build apps not businesses2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-01-21
- From Bubble to Bubble2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-11-05
- Don’t judge an email by its length.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-02-03
What Hacker News says?
This was made for you: https://sahillavingia.com/work
Comment linking /work
on “Ask HN: What tech job would let me get away with the least real work possible?”Submitted No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees as a story · 1329 points
HN discussionIt does seem like there might be room out there for things that aren't unicorns, but are sustainable / good products that can operate, even at a profit, with small teams. I always think of / mention Gumroad when I think of that: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting I worry in the rush to the tip top we lose some good products / services / economic activity that are billion dollar wins... but are still way good ideas.
Comment linking /reflecting
on “Del.icio.us”Submitted Faking it. as a story · 198 points
HN discussionYou know, I often feel like the success of a business is set at the beginning. There is certain trajectory created by initial starting conditions (founding team, vision, talent, timing), market fit, and external forces and events, and it is very hard to escape that. As CEOs and founders we like to think we have a lot more control than we actually do. The point of VC is to inject money to achieve hypergrowth. But how…
Comment linking /operating.png
on “No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees”Submitted Build apps not businesses. as a story · 172 points
HN discussionThe graph speaks for itself: https://sahillavingia.com/operating.png You seem a little surprised. But why? This is the whole point of business: to make more money than you lose. As for why he did it, it looks like he wrote a retrospective here: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting
Comment linking /reflecting
on “No meetings, no deadlines, no full-time employees”Submitted Paying freelancers in equity and dividends as a story · 100 points
HN discussionThe longer I work in this industry the more I reflect on the value of all this accretion of process: Agile, Scrum, PI planning, daily stand-ups are counterproductive to real work. So much of it, the sprints, the retroactives, the sprint planning, feel like taking place in the stead of real work. (I reached for the common "instead" of here but wanted to emphasize the work being removed or substituted by not-work). Re…
Comment linking /work
on “Doing too much work on one's own before looping in others”Submitted Why I’m scared of the post-PC era. as a story · 90 points
HN discussionI appreciate the kind words! The second part of your post is something I've thought about a lot. There are a lot of incentives driving business operators to try to get the most out of the fewest number of employees possible: - Less communication overhead due to fewer people - Constant availability (less need to pre-plan meetings, etc to match everyone's hours) - Less complexity WRT HR, payroll, taxes - Employees sti…
Comment linking /work
on “The Tsunami of Burnout Few See”Submitted Doge Days as a story · 77 points
HN discussionIf your software business relies on last minute availability all the time, no engineer worth their salt will work there. https://sahillavingia.com/work
Comment linking /work
on “CEO behind Japan’s best-performing stock says his secret is raising salaries”Submitted Starting as a story · 72 points
HN discussionAgreed. Their 'no full time employees' philosophy would be consistent with that: https://sahillavingia.com/work
Comment linking /work
on “Gumroad’s source is available”Submitted Pivoting is really hard. as a story · 60 points
HN discussionFor what it's worth Gumroad left VC land several years ago. https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting
Comment linking /reflecting
on “Gumroad’s source is available”Submitted Dayta is free, forever (and now for web too) as a story · 58 points
HN discussionGumroad's journey has been interesting: https://sahillavingia.com/reflecting -> Billion dollar journey with VC backing to Kleiner selling back their stake to Gumroad for $1, which enabled Sahil to steer the company in a different direction. Perhaps the shift to making the source available has more to do with work culture: https://sahillavingia.com/work
Comment linking /work
on “Gumroad’s source is available”Submitted Reworder – A tale of learning Python and launching an app in five days. as a story · 54 points
HN discussionVery impressive Miles ! You should speak to Sahil http://sahillavingia.com/ Wish you all the very best !
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: Meet me, I'll buy you coffee”Submitted Whatever works as a story · 50 points
HN discussionI just created http://unaffixed.com for finding and posting Gumroad-like jobs [1]. It's just a markdown file converted to html and served from a Fastmail folder. My process was: Read this thread [2] yesterday afternoon. Thought this sounded like a "looser" work environment. Searched "synonym loose". 3rd result was "unaffixed". Bought unaffixed.com and pointed it at Fastmail. MD to html with pandoc. Added water.css s…
Comment linking /work
on “Ask HN: Show me your half baked project”Submitted Think small as a story · 50 points
HN discussionOne of my predictions/hopes is that part-time work becomes far more prevalent. In addition to the benefits already mentioned here, it would be great for people who want to be e.g. entrepreneurs or independent researchers. Wrote a bit about this here: https://jacobobryant.com/p/what-im-trying-to-do/#1-help-buil... Also relevant: https://sahillavingia.com/work . I'd like to make a collection of part-time success stori…
Comment linking /work
on “Show HN: Side Quest – An aggregator for not full-time tech jobs”Submitted The nil-nil philosophy. as a story · 45 points
HN discussionsahillavingia, your personal site looks awesome too! http://sahillavingia.com/
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: my weekend project, Gumroad”Submitted Optimize your website for iPhone in 10 minutes. as a story · 41 points
HN discussionMay be look for jobs that offer reduced working hours? For example, quoting from https://sahillavingia.com/work > People work at Gumroad as little as they need to sustain the other parts of their lives they prefer to spend their time and energy on: a creative side-hustle, their family, or anything else.
Comment linking /work
on “How to pay your rent with your open source project (2020)”Submitted My Startup School experience. as a story · 41 points
HN discussion
