Last Updated On: 2026-02-15 08:01:35 -0500

As a startup, DesignJoy is a particularly interesting one. What makes DesignJoy stand out is that it is a single person design agency doing a million dollars a year. Yep – 1 person, 1 million dollars.

His model is this:

Design as a service

The keys to his success appear to be:

• Regularly raising his prices (Mercedes pricing style philosophy perhaps; it costs more so its better)
• Firing bad clients
• Focusing on optimal personal productivity
• Choosing NOT to have employees (he says he can’t find people as productive as him so why hire them)
• Defining how an engagement happens – minimizing phone time; moving to a custom trello board for every client, etc

Hopefully I’ll have more to say about this but what it makes me wonder is could you do:

Backend as a service

Greenfield Prototyping as a service

DevOps as a service

Resources:

• Podcast 249 on Making a Million $ as a Solo Founder and Only Employee
• YouTube Clip On His Blowup
• His Twitter Handle
• A DesignJoy Customer Speaks Out
• HackerNews: Just Hit 15K / Month
• HackerNews: Launch
• DesignJoy 50K Post on Indie Hackers
• DesignJoy Posts on IndieHackers – It is really interesting that DesignJoy appears in 411 discussions here!