Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#11

Post by kariatx » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

I started Blogthings.com (a personality quiz site) in 2004 by myself, and I've never had a job while working in it. It makes enough money for both my husband and I to live off of, and we split the work on it, which ends up just being a few hours a week (no more than 10). I spend my free time working on my programming / math and figuring out what's next.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#12

Post by no_gravity » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 1:58 PM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #9

I 've been living off facebook apps since 2008. Upside: life free of commitments. Downside: Too much free time. Right now, i 'm doing a PhD course.

Interesting. Are you making money off your own facebook apps or by writing facebook apps for others?

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#13

Post by wmat » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 1:58 PM UTC

You should check out The Micropreneur Academy: http://www.micropreneur.com/ Many, many single founders there.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#14

Post by dangrossman » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:01 PM UTC

I'm a solo founder, spend most of my time running http://www.w3counter.com and http://www.w3roi.com. I also have a number of other sites I don't routinely talk about because they're competition-sensitive, and some past products that have been successful and sold, like "WP Review Site", a WordPress plugin that earned me over a quarter million in the year and a half I sold it. I started building webapps/services for a living in earnest in 2004 as a college freshman to pay my way through two degrees, finished that last year and bought myself a new car and a new house this year. It's going well, though the poor economy has hurt some of my customers and me by proxy.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#15

Post by flyosity » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:03 PM UTC

I don't know if apps count in your mind, but Matt Rix's huge success with Trainyard (http://struct.ca/2010/the-story-so-far/) and Andreas Illiger's mega-hit iPhone game Tiny Wings are both good examples of one person doing a soup-to-nuts app (graphics, audio, programming, marketing) and hitting the jackpot with it.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#16

Post by sheff » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:07 PM UTC

Some previous "Ask HN" threads which have details of single founder businesses include :

Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487

Ask HN: Anyone making a living from just 1 app? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199

Ask HN: Inspirational money making web apps made by hackers. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#17

Post by braindead_in » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:08 PM UTC

I'm a solo founder at Scribie.com. My first venture was a embedded startup which failed and we closed it down in 2008. I decided to go it solo and released a free Skype recording app called CallGraph. It was based on some of the work I had done in my failed startup. The idea was follow the Freemium model and make money off paid services. One of the services was audio transcription and that took off. In that process I discovered transcription was a big pain and decided to develop a system which takes out as much pain as possible out of it and works reliably. The result is Scribie.com.

I've been living off Scribie for the past two years and it's been fun. It pays my bills and I've learnt a hell lot--didn't know anything about web development when I started--and I consider it a success. There's a lot to do still and I hope I'll be able to grow it into a big business some day.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#18

Post by gopi » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:13 PM UTC

I am a single founder, made around $10 million in pure profits in the last 8 years from relatively few internet projects/products. The interesting thing is i am not even a professional developer (but can write simple scripts and understand technology)

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#19

Post by acabal » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:16 PM UTC

I'm the sole founder, developer, marketer, and everything-else-guy for http://www.scribophile.com and http://writerfolio.com.

They've funded my travels across the world for the past few years. Right now I'm living in Germany with my German girlfriend whom I met in Australia.

Scribophile has since become one of the largest writers communities online, and we're about to have our 100,000th critique written (sometime in the next 5 days if usage numbers stay average). There's been over 35.2 million words of critique written on the site.

I'm not making a million bucks and companies aren't knocking down the door in a rush to buy me out, but so far I've managed to pay off my student loans, save a little cash, and not worry too much about where my next rent payment will come from.

Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?

#20

Post by Brajeshwar » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 2:17 PM UTC

Not mine, but a friend of mine, whom I share a similar passion for Photography besides technology, is very happy in life with decent income from his humble solution to backup Flickr Photos.

He lives here in Bangalore, India and his monthly income from the sales of his software is very very good. The software itself sells on its own, do not need much maintenance and it just works.

Bulkr - http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr/

Disclaimer: I'm helping him spread more awareness about his awesome software and if you ever felt the need to buy, it sells for 50% through my website.