Nickola Naous
Notes on building, hosting,
and staying independent.
I am Nickola Naous. For almost twenty years I have built hosting companies. This is where I write about that work, and about running a founder owned company in a market that keeps consolidating.
Recent essays
From the desk
A few of the longer pieces. Slow, plain, and from experience.
Why founder owned hosting still matters
7 min readConsolidation swallowed most of the hosting industry. Independence is the counterweight, and customers can feel the difference in every ticket.
Learn more →What an exit teaches you about building
6 min readSelling a company shows you exactly which decisions compounded and which ones just made noise. Notes from the other side.
Learn more →Managed WordPress without the upsell
5 min readMost managed hosting is a pricing exercise wrapped around the same servers. What the job actually takes, and what it should cost.
Learn more →Now
What I am focused on
Most of my time goes to Flashcloud, a founder owned managed WordPress hosting company. The rest goes to writing, and to reading more slowly than the internet would like.
The Now page is the honest version, kept current.
Read the Now page
A short letter
Dear reader,
Every couple of weeks I write a note about hosting, ownership, and building a company you actually want to keep. No launch emails, no funnels. Just what I have been thinking about that week, sent the way I would send it to a friend.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, leave your email on the say hello page and I will add you. You can leave any time, and I will never pass your address on.
Warmly,
Nickola