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Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

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Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#81

Post by gingerlime »

jaredtking wrote: post #16

I launched Invoiced [1] as a private beta in June of 2013 while in college. In November I took it out of private beta and have since been fortunate enough to be able to focus on it full time. Invoiced provides simple invoicing for the small business/freelance crowd. It is bootstrapped, profitable, and currently producing 4-figures of MRR. I learn something new every day and get to work with awesome people (customers)…

looks neat. And kudos for being profitable.

How does getting paid via stripe / paypal work? Do your customers provide their own stripe / paypal details? or does the payment from your customers' customers go through you? is there any commission involved?

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#83

Post by jaredtking »

gingerlime wrote: post #81
jaredtking wrote: post #16

I launched Invoiced [1] as a private beta in June of 2013 while in college. In November I took it out of private beta and have since been fortunate enough to be able to focus on it full time. Invoiced provides simple invoicing for the small business/freelance crowd. It is bootstrapped, profitable, and currently producing 4-figures of MRR. I learn something new every day and get to work with awesome people (customers)…

looks neat. And kudos for being profitable. How does getting paid via stripe / paypal work? Do your customers provide their own stripe / paypal details? or does the payment from your customers' customers go through you? is there any commission involved?

Thank you. Our Stripe integration works through OAuth aka Stripe Connect. Basically, you click the Connect with Stripe button, create an account or sign in, and then confirm that you want to give Invoiced access to your account. We then generate a payment form for your invoices that your customers can pay you with, i.e. https://invoiced.com/username/cust_no/inv_no/payment. The payment goes directly to your Stripe account and we do not add any commission on top of Stripe's fee. This setup is ideal because you can revoke access from our service at any time and we only have access to your account through a unique token that Stripe provides us.

Our PayPal integration is even simpler. Just provide your e-mail address and we generate Pay via PayPal buttons for your invoices. Again, no commission.

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#84

Post by stevekemp »

coderholic wrote: post #49

I launched http://ipinfo.io back in 2013 and when it hit 50M API requests a day early this year I decided to launch the paid plans, and it's been profitable ever since. It's now hosted across 2 providers in 3 different cities, and handles almost 100M requests per day with a p99 of less than 1s and p50 of less than 100ms. Expect more services and features later this year!

That traffic is pretty impressive, I've seen your site before and even though I don't have an obvious need for it I've had it bookmarked for a while.

Congratulations :)

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#86

Post by gingerlime »

jaredtking wrote: post #83
gingerlime wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

looks neat. And kudos for being profitable. How does getting paid via stripe / paypal work? Do your customers provide their own stripe / paypal details? or does the payment from your customers' customers go through you? is there any commission involved?

Thank you. Our Stripe integration works through OAuth aka Stripe Connect. Basically, you click the Connect with Stripe button, create an account or sign in, and then confirm that you want to give Invoiced access to your account. We then generate a payment form for your invoices that your customers can pay you with, i.e. https://invoiced.com/username/cust_no/inv_no/payment . The payment goes directly to your Stripe ac…

Very well executed! Thanks for the info.

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#87

Post by abhimir »

joshdance wrote: post #63
abhimir wrote: post #3

Our mobile games startup started in Dec 2013 is profitable. Our monthly revenues are 3-4X our monthly expenses (which includes market salary for Co-Founders.) In fact in the last 2-3 months, we have been able to save up almost 18 months worth of runway for our team of 8. Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rate…

What platform? What are your games?

We have games on iOS, Google play and Amazon app stores. Mostly trivia games, but some arcade games too. As an example, this is our most popular game across the 3 stores, with 1 million+ downloads https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.froods.dwt...

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#88

Post by abhimir »

ashishk wrote: post #12
abhimir wrote: post #3

Our mobile games startup started in Dec 2013 is profitable. Our monthly revenues are 3-4X our monthly expenses (which includes market salary for Co-Founders.) In fact in the last 2-3 months, we have been able to save up almost 18 months worth of runway for our team of 8. Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rate…

pretty awesome accomplishment. are your users in india as well? how are you monetizing?

Most of our users are in US, UK and Europe. We monetize via In App Purchases (IAPs) and Ads. On average we monetize close to industry standards, 2% of people pay for hints, powerups and other IAPs, while ads give a decent $2 eCPM ($2 for 1000 impressions)

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#89

Post by abhimir »

dsugarman wrote: post #41
abhimir wrote: post #3

Our mobile games startup started in Dec 2013 is profitable. Our monthly revenues are 3-4X our monthly expenses (which includes market salary for Co-Founders.) In fact in the last 2-3 months, we have been able to save up almost 18 months worth of runway for our team of 8. Bear in mind that the team is based in India, so our salary and other expenses cannot be compared to Silicon Valley, but in India we pay market rate…

very smart to keep a large runway in the mobile game industry

The first lesson I had in this industry was to always prepare for a lean patch. In a hit driven business, you can never be sure when the next hit will come, so always good to have as large a runway as possible. Having said that, this has been my largest worry in this startup, and has caused many a sleepless nights.

Re: Ask HN: Who started something in 2013/14 which is already profitable?

#90

Post by gpinkham »

I launched http://BeatsImporter.com a few weeks ago.. like some others it's a side project so profitable is a bit different for me. in a month of "operation" it's paying for itself using Adsense. really not sure how else to monetize something like this (maybe a 99 cent app kind of thing?) At any rate I have done a few small sites that scratched an itch for me and none ever went any further than scratching my own itch. this one (BeatsImporter) is the first to go beyond that.. so pretty excited.. :-)
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