Ask HN: Are there any substantial product-based businesses with zero employees?

by gathersight on 12/22/2021, 5:06:28 PM with 7 comments
Other than the founder or the founding team?

Or, put another way, is it possible to build a sizeable business using contractors and external providers only?

For arguments sake, 'sizeable' and 'substantial' equate to $10m+ pa in revenue and the business must make and sell something i.e. it's not a holding company, licensor, trader etc.

  • by Jefro118 on 12/22/2021, 7:40:42 PM

    BuiltWith.com is pretty much just one guy doing over $10m per year. At the notch below there are others like Pieter Levels who I think is doing over $1m per year with Nomad List and RemoteOK and I think it's mostly just him with some part time help. Probably a few more that no one has heard of.

  • by kleer001 on 12/22/2021, 6:49:08 PM

    sounds a bit like arbitrage and I suspect there's at least one or two

  • by garbagecoder on 12/22/2021, 5:23:45 PM

    Mondragon Cooperatives?

  • by jsiaajdsdaa on 12/22/2021, 5:07:18 PM

    In the event that there isn't, you should try to be the first!