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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?

#131

Post by csallen »

wuliwong wrote: post #92
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…

I've seen other attempts to build a community around this demographic before. One I really liked, I even found someone on there and we built a nice project together, though I forget the name. Do you recall what you focused on when you started? What do you think led to your success and traction? I find this stuff fascinating when there seems to be an idea that people want to happen but no has been able to get it right…

Long day, finally back. The key was a combination of (a) identifying the right audience, (b) finding a distribution channel that could consistently reach them in large numbers, (c) creating a product ideal for that audience and distribution channel, and (d) parlaying that traffic into its own community. And not necessarily in that order.

The answer to those questions turned out to be (a) developers who want to self-fund profitable online businesses, (b) Hacker News, (c) interviews with successful developer founders willing to tell their story and share revenue numbers in the open, and (d) getting readers onto a mailing list, then sending them links to interesting forum threads every week for a year.

Lest I seem smarter than I am, this analysis is being done with the benefit of hindsight. I did not have 100% of this stuff planned from the beginning.

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

#132

Post by csallen »

bwb wrote: post #94
elorant wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sponsors

What did the sponsors get in return? I am guessing traffic was pretty low comparatively so what was the pull?

Traffic was relatively high when I started talking to sponsors (~100k uniques/mo). Also, it helps to choose your sponsors widely. A company with low conversion rates that sells a service for low prices needs tons of clicks to justify what they spend on an ad. But a different company — let's say a recruiting company — may make thousands of dollars off of a single high-quality click, so they make for a better sponsor/advertiser.

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

#133

Post by rwieruch »

It simply started out with blogging about web development, JavaScript, and React and writing a self-published book about it eventually. I didn't plan to do it in the first place, but now I teach many people online React.js on my own course platform [0].

It's an exciting adventure, because suddenly you have to handle customer support, marketing and sales. Yet your main priority is keeping the course content up to date, adding new content and ensuring content with a high quality. It's not a 100% full-time gig yet, but I would say 60%. I hope by getting more students this year that I can accelerate it to 100%, because the teaching part itself is more fulfilling for me than any other 9 to 5 job. Last year I quit my job to support this adventure, but I have to have a couple of clients on the side [1]. Most of these clients are companies which are transitioning to React.

- [0] https://roadtoreact.com

- [1] https://www.robinwieruch.de/work-with-me

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

#134

Post by ibz »

imhoguy wrote: post #125
ibz wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1st step, going from 5 days / week to 4 days / week is pretty much a no brainer. You get 50% more free time for 20% less money. I did that 2 years ago and never looked back. Sometimes I switch to 3 days / week, then back to 4 days, depending on how I feel. But I would never consider a "full time job" more than 4 days / week. But sure, I am getting shit done, so I don't have a problem asking for that.

Well said! Just for a statistical curiosity, which weekdays do you work? :)

Mon-Thu or Mon-Wed. I like long weekends. Not that it matters really.

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

#135

Post by desaiguddu »

We started building small apps in 2010 for fun. We were building it for our passion, this was a side project.

2010 to 2012 - We generated $ 10k in ad revenue in a year.

2012 to 2014 - We started an app consulting keeping our full-time jobs.

2014 to Present - We started app consulting for full-time with a couple of clients. Two co-founders with a technical background.

- We had our first hire in 2014

- We became a team of 5 in 2015

- We on-boarded amazing clients & provided monthly retainers for App consulting & app maintenance

- 2017, we have our first $ 100k client

- 2018, we are a team of 14 people focusing on mobile apps, web apps

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

#136

Post by RikNieu »

haggenballs wrote: post #110

I decided to quit my full-time job in Feb and go 100% start-up. Two of the largest risks I considered before taking the plunge was career risk, and financial risk. For financial risk, I’m from Waterloo Canada, which is a relatively low-cost area. I’m doing some part-time contracting to pay off the bills just to break even. I am okay to lose out on the opportunity cost of earning more money at a full-time job. I treat…

> you can’t get randomly unlucky and die from entrepreneurship

Unless you, you know, get into an accident and don't have enough cash or a decent medical plan...

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

#137

Post by RikNieu »

rwieruch wrote: post #133

It simply started out with blogging about web development, JavaScript, and React and writing a self-published book about it eventually. I didn't plan to do it in the first place, but now I teach many people online React.js on my own course platform [0]. It's an exciting adventure, because suddenly you have to handle customer support, marketing and sales. Yet your main priority is keeping the course content up to date…

That's cool, congrats!

May I contact you with some questions about doing something similar?

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

#138

Post by bulatb »

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.

Others take note: this is how you do a homepage.

- What it does and who it's for, in one clear sentence at the top

- How it works, in three clear steps

- A list of features that implicitly addresses common concerns

- Simple pricing

- Nice clean look

Really well done.

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

#139

Post by bulatb »

bulatb wrote: post #138
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.

Others take note: this is how you do a homepage. - What it does and who it's for, in one clear sentence at the top - How it works, in three clear steps - A list of features that implicitly addresses common concerns - Simple pricing - Nice clean look Really well done.

The only thing I'd change: At the very bottom, "Set up" should be "Setup", since it's used as a noun.

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

#140

Post by remind_me_again »

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,…

I doubt that this is legit story. No links, nothing to back-up the claims, no response to previous request of links.
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