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Ask HN: How did you start your business?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#111

Post by mrskitch »

palidanx wrote: post #107
mrskitch wrote: post #106

I started https://www.browserless.io/ when I found out that there wasn't a good hosted solution for headless-browser work. There's a ton of other higher-level services that do things like screenshots and pdfs, but what if I needed something that those services didn't cover (and had to scale out to 100's of concurrent sessions). I didn't really set out to do this service, but it came after _not_ finding it anywhere el…

What was version 1.0 of the product?

Version 1.0 was a very very simple hosted headless image running on a few VM's. At that point there wasn't any debugger or notifications about your sessions. Pretty much just a submission form that provisioned machines to support the account.

This actually took place after a few months in a beta where I was doing everything manually (to see if it could even work). That was actually a good lesson: do things manually until it doesn't scale as it's possible that you'll be writing code that doesn't ever run!

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#112

Post by wilhow »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #23

I started making video games as a teenager, and about ten years ago there was this golden age of Flash games where you could make a small video game, auction it off on a private website to various companies that ran Flash game arcades. You'd incorporate their branding, ads, links, and in exchange receive an upfront fee followed by a split of the ad revenue. Over the course of my three year degree I had five games pub…

Just wanna say that's pretty inspirational. Keep it up.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#113

Post by erohead »

graycrow wrote: post #108
erohead wrote: post #98

I started working on a prototype smartwatch back in 2008 while I was doing undergrad at UWaterloo. iPhone didn't have a Bluetooth API then so I actually hacked together a small 30 pin dongle with an nrf radio. Quickly moved to Blackberry which had a semi working BT API. I graduated in 2009 and decided to work on it full time. Funding in early days came from oversized novelty cheques from pitch competition wins, some…

I still regret that Pebble went out of business. Any plans to make similar smartwatch again?

No, there's no point. You can buy a Pebble 2 HR on Amazon for $90. It will last long into the future (albeit with slightly reduced feature set in July, until the Rebble.io project is up to speed).

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#114

Post by komuW »

csallen wrote: post #3

I left my job. Or, more accurately, the startup I was doing contract work for went under, and I decided not to look for another contract afterwards. I worked on a few projects before starting my business, Indie Hackers, which I grew to just under $6k/mo in revenue (in 8 months) before joining Stripe. I've done interviews with close to 300 founders. Recently, I added a sortable, filterable directory that can help answ…

Allen, thanks for your work.

I used to read indie hackers once every 2weeks. I would go to the site and read the latest 6 or so interviews.

With the new sortable view, i can't sort by recently added. I can sort by recently updated, but that isn't the same thing. Could you add a sort by recently added?

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#115

Post by csallen »

komuW wrote: post #114
csallen wrote: post #3

I left my job. Or, more accurately, the startup I was doing contract work for went under, and I decided not to look for another contract afterwards. I worked on a few projects before starting my business, Indie Hackers, which I grew to just under $6k/mo in revenue (in 8 months) before joining Stripe. I've done interviews with close to 300 founders. Recently, I added a sortable, filterable directory that can help answ…

Allen, thanks for your work. I used to read indie hackers once every 2weeks. I would go to the site and read the latest 6 or so interviews. With the new sortable view, i can't sort by recently added. I can sort by recently updated, but that isn't the same thing. Could you add a sort by recently added?

Check https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews (just added this recently, sorry!)

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#117

Post by DizzyDoo »

wilhow wrote: post #112
DizzyDoo wrote: post #23

I started making video games as a teenager, and about ten years ago there was this golden age of Flash games where you could make a small video game, auction it off on a private website to various companies that ran Flash game arcades. You'd incorporate their branding, ads, links, and in exchange receive an upfront fee followed by a split of the ad revenue. Over the course of my three year degree I had five games pub…

Just wanna say that's pretty inspirational. Keep it up.

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#118

Post by k1ns »

greysteil wrote: post #5

I left my job, took some time out, and then started building my business ( https://dependabot.com ). Financially, it's been tough - after 10 months Dependabot makes $2,100 a month (although that's now growing quite fast). I know I'm the kind of personality that couldn't have started it at the same time as working a full time job, though - I need to be really focussed on one thing at a time.

From what channels did you gain the most initial traction? After reading your other comments, I assume you didn't do "traditional" sales such as cold calling/emailing, so I'm curious as to how you built up a user base. I'm currently struggling to do that exact thing with my own business right now. I started selling (cold calling/emailing, demoing, PH/HN/IH posts, etc.) Jan. 1 2018 and I feel like there's something I'm missing as far as my sales process.

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#119

Post by k1ns »

nickjj wrote: post #33

I started freelancing just under 20 years ago and have worked as a solo developer ever since. Maybe this isn't the best advice but I think we're capable of doing pretty extraordinary things when you're thrown into the deep end. You'd be surprised at how things start to work out once you're 100% out of your comfort zone. I'm not saying quit your job immediately while still in debt or whatever. I just think that if you…

> I think we're capable of doing pretty extraordinary things when you're thrown into the deep end

This resonates with me as I've been there once already in my life and felt the same thing. A very sudden life-changing situation popped up unexpectedly and I just had to dig my heels in and push forward. You really find out what you're made of when failure is not an option. It turned out great and got me a job at a Fortune 500 while still in college, but admittedly I've had trouble replicating that tenacity ever since. There has to be a term for the phenomenon, but you feel like you're in this advanced state of mind and somehow you just know you're going to hit the ball out of the park if you keep working. Thanks for sharing your story!

Re: Ask HN: How did you start your business?

#120

Post by tiffanyh »

mandeepj wrote: post #85
cabinguy wrote: post #57

I started buying broken laptops on eBay, fixing them, and reselling them with my best friend. We started with $600 each on credit cards. That turned into a large refurbished computer sales business. So large that I started shopping for a vacation home (lake home). Well, the process of buying a vacation home was frustrating. This was back in 2002 and most real estate brokerages did not have websites, and if they did,…

A naive question - if you are selling a lake home worth $5m then you are considering that amount as your sale? Let's say you are charging 1% as your fees then $50k is your revenue? Thx

Given that OP was doing $0.45M just 7 years ago [1], doing $300M today would be some phenomenal amount of growth.

Maybe this is a “gross revenue” vs “net revenue” topic.

Especially given that the OP states in the same Link that he’d love a “$20m exit”.

A $20m exit on a $300m is a no brainer.

Either way. Being your own boss. Being profitable. And growing is awesome. Congrats.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341124

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