I did Etude by myself, which was recently acquired: http://steinway.com/news/press-releases/steinway-sons-debuts...
Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
41–50 of 156 posts
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#42I did Etude by myself, which was recently acquired: http://steinway.com/news/press-releases/steinway-sons-debuts...
nice app. can I ask what the price range of the acquisition was? Always wondered what apps go for when they are sold.
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#43I'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…
Very nice idea! I have one technical question - do you also use some speech-to-text software, or is it 100% human labor? I believe the utilization of such software (even if it gives crude results) can be of great use to a service like yours.
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#44Built, sold, and just reacquired fleaflicker alone. Have ambitious plans to grow. If you're an NYC hacker and want to build and scale a fantasy sports application to take on ESPN, Yahoo, and the NFL, contact me!
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#45I recently got a very positive review for my new take on to-do:
http://lifehacker.com/5835720/folderboy-is-a-simple-folder+b...
Not quite success yet, but we (aka "I") have traction. And have built something that people want :).
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#46About 3 years ago I wrote an online payroll system (http://smallpayroll.ca) for people that hire a nanny. I have 3 young kids, there was a year where we couldn't get any childcare, and I realized there was a big problem with having to pay the nanny in a compliant manner that I could solve with a web app.
The application didn't bring in a whole bunch of money but it caught the eye of some other companies. I recently sold my company to another startup and am working on it full time.
"Financial independence" no, but I'm 35, mortgage free, and am working from home at a job that I love. And if things go well there's a bunch more money in it for me.
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#47I'm a single founder who have run Iconfinder.com alone from 2007 until 2011, where I got a new business partner. The site reached 1,7 M monthly visits and gives me almost a full income. I won't define it as success since I haven't reached my goal yet, but I guess it shows you can build a large website alone.
I've used IconFinder lately. Nice work.
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#48I'm the single founder of Bignoggins Productions. I do sports apps for mobile devices. My apps have been pretty successful, reaching as high as #32 overall paid on iPhone and #60 overall paid on iPad. Been full time for about 9 months now. Made 75K last year, and on track for 250K+ this year. Almost all profit as my overhead is insanely low. Currently traveling the world with my wife while working on apps (our travel…
Would you elaborate on how you promote your app? Is it solely through word of mouth and the app store itself, or through blogs, paid search, etc?
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#49I'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…
WPReviewSite is responsible for about 1/2 my income in the first year I became a full-time affiliate. Thanks for making that :)
Re: Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
#50I '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?
Own. Given the speed with which you can test new ideas on the platform, i don't see why anyone would want to work on the cheap making apps for others.