100 Ways to Run It Alone

Formulas#

• Order: delete → simplify → automate → delegate. Automating a task that shouldn't exist is pure waste.
• Automate when (minutes per run × runs per year) > (build time + upkeep).
• Support load = customers × tickets per customer. Customers should grow and tickets per customer should fall.
• Founder hour value = monthly profit ÷ founder hours. Anything that earns less per hour gets delegated or deleted.
• Rule of three: the 3rd time you do a task, write a checklist. The 10th time, automate or delegate it.

Principles (1–15)#

1. Delete before you automate.
2. Automate only what you've done by hand several times and written down.
3. Every recurring task has one owner: you, a script, an AI agent or a contractor.
4. Track your hours by category for 2 weeks. The results will surprise you.
5. Give your best hours to work that brings in revenue.
6. Batch shallow tasks into one block a day.
7. Separate maker days from manager days. (Paul Graham, "Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule")
8. Choose boring tools that rarely break.
9. Fewer tools means fewer bills, logins and failures.
10. Default to async. Hold meetings only for sales and partners.
11. Write it down. Every recurring process gets a short standard procedure.
12. Design for your absence. Can the business run for 2 weeks without you?
13. Cost per customer should fall as you grow. If it rises, something is broken.
14. Say no to custom work for one customer unless it's paid and can become a feature.
15. Review the whole system twice a year and ask what to delete.

Support (16–35)#

16. Every repeated question becomes a doc page.
17. Better still, fix the product so the question never comes up.
18. Tag every ticket with a reason. The top 3 reasons are your next fixes.
19. Track tickets per 100 customers.
20. Use saved replies for common answers.
21. Let AI draft replies from your docs, and approve them yourself.
22. Let AI answer first, with a clear handoff to a human.
23. Put help in the product at the exact point of confusion.
24. Write error messages that say what to do next.
25. Publish your support hours and response time.
26. Use email support unless live chat clearly pays for itself.
27. Host a forum where users can answer each other.
28. Answer complex questions with screen recordings.
29. Sell priority support as a paid tier.
30. Keep a status page for outages.
31. Write down what you don't support.
32. Refund and let go of abusive customers.
33. Keep a changelog. It cuts down "is this fixed yet?" tickets.
34. Update the docs from last week's tickets every week.
35. Treat support as research. Tag and count feature requests.

Product and engineering (36–55)#

36. One codebase, one stack.
37. Use managed services instead of running servers yourself.
38. Automate tests for the money paths: signup, checkout and the core action.
39. Deploy with one command.
40. Make backups automatic, and test them by actually restoring.
41. Set up alerts for downtime and errors.
42. Use feature flags so you can ship safely and roll back instantly.
43. Ship small releases often.
44. Remove features almost nobody uses.
45. Build only the integrations that pay for their upkeep.
46. Let AI coding agents write boilerplate, tests and migrations, and review every line.
47. Keep a "not doing" list.
48. Spend a fixed slice of each week on technical debt.
49. Update dependencies on a schedule, not in a crisis.
50. Cover the security basics: two-factor login, a secrets manager, minimal access.
51. Describe the architecture on one page.
52. Keep as few environments and configurations as possible.
53. Add a setting instead of custom code for each customer.
54. Build admin tools early for refunds, account fixes and lookups.
55. Log everything a customer might ask about.

Marketing operations (56–68)#

56. One main channel, published on a weekly rhythm.
57. Plan content once a month.
58. Turn one piece of content into many formats.
59. AI drafts; you add the opinions and check the facts.
60. Schedule social posts in batches.
61. Automate the core emails: welcome, onboarding and win-back.
62. Build one pipeline: release → changelog → newsletter → social post.
63. Keep templates for launch announcements.
64. Review the same 3 marketing numbers every week.
65. Run your affiliate program through a platform, not by hand.
66. Check your search and AI-answer visibility once a quarter.
67. Ask for testimonials automatically right after a success moment.
68. Keep a swipe file of good pages, emails and headlines.

Money and admin (69–82)#

69. Use a merchant-of-record payment provider so global sales tax is handled for you.
70. Keep a separate business bank account.
71. Connect your bookkeeping software to the bank, and close the books monthly.
72. See an accountant at least once a year.
73. Automate invoices and receipts.
74. Automate reminders for failed payments.
75. Keep a one-page dashboard: revenue, churn, cash and runway.
76. Review your tool subscriptions quarterly and cancel unused ones.
77. Move a fixed percent of every payout into a tax account.
78. Draft contracts from templates.
79. Publish terms, a privacy policy and a refund policy.
80. Use a password manager and keep a written recovery plan.
81. Put your domain and critical accounts on auto-renew, with a backup card.
82. Use a legal entity that separates business risk from personal assets.

Delegation and AI agents (83–100)#

83. Delegate outcomes, not tasks.
84. Write the procedure before you hire.
85. Start every new contractor with a small paid test.
86. Hire contractors for spiky work and use retainers for recurring work.
87. Pay for speed on work that isn't core, such as design polish, legal and accounting.
88. Never delegate product judgment, positioning, pricing or the early customer relationships.
89. Give each recurring role an AI agent: support drafts, research, QA, reporting.
90. Give agents a narrow scope and clear inputs, and review before anything goes public.
91. Treat prompts and skills as company assets. Version them and reuse them.
92. Check AI output against written checklists, not by feel.
93. Log what your agents do.
94. Check every automation weekly. A broken automation is worse than none.
95. Make sure someone else can get into everything if you're unavailable.
96. An assistant, human or AI, sorts the inbox so you read only what matters.
97. Hire when a task repeats, is documented and takes more than 5 hours a week.
98. Judge delegated work by its results, not by hours.
99. Keep the team tiny. Communication lines grow as n(n−1)/2.
100. The goal is a business you can enjoy running, not one that runs you.