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Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

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Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#91

Post by spectramax »

quelsolaar wrote: post #85
ivalm wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That'a pretty cool work; I've worked with UV mapping a bit and if this works this is beast. Side note, the top/hero video crashed mid animation for me (chrome/win10/modern hardware); everything else works fine.

Thanks! There are a lot of things that I could improve on my website but I don't think any of it matters that much. There are a lot of people in the startup community talking about metrics, marketing and having the right color on the download button, but its all kind of BS. It matters on the margin, but what really matters is delivering for your customers. Spend your time making the core offering good and if you do i…

I think good design/presentation and solid approach towards attention to detail on everything you do - it only adds and it doesn't take away from the core functional aspects of the product or service. Uber-functionalism, which is what you seem to be obsessed with, has its drawbacks. Imagine if Apple didn't care about design or aesthetics or presentation of their products.

At the sametime, I see some contradiction to your philosophy - there is just so much pizzaz in the product you've built. It goes against the grain of what you just said - all those animations, futuristic aesthetic of your product, giant clock with Tron-like fonts, etc...all those things are unnecessary. You could just sell the command line tool, you know :)

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#92

Post by quelsolaar »

codesternews wrote: post #87
quelsolaar wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much! Its pretty good but its not even close to as good as the version I have in R&D.... SSL is coming, thanks for reminding me.

Could you tell us more about yourself and project. How would you able to do without any coworkers when many big companies tried.

I kind of did it by accident. It was a side project that people started getting in touch over.

I think I'm very suited to solve this problem for a few reasons. I used to be a 3D artist so I know what artists want. I'm a C programmers so I can make complex things go fast, and I have done a lot of procedural 3D stuff so I know a lot of mesh processing tricks. The complexity of this is substantial. its currently around 1.5 megs of source code, not counting UIs loaders and savers or any of that. So I would say many long hours and being very focused is key. You can find more of my work at www.quelsolaar.com and @quelsolaar on twitter

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#93

Post by batt4good »

dannyw wrote: post #81
batt4good wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still blown away that Key Values (as cool an idea as it is) manages to pull that kind of revenue. One thing I'd be curious to see is if the site actually can maintain revenue past year one?

Recruiting really, really pays.

So surely Key Values takes a share of recruiting fees, not just a fee to list on their platform? Idk, it seems like this site wouldn't help cut down on candidates that are completely not qualified to work at a given company, which to me seems like a much more daunting hiring challenge for small companies / startups.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#94

Post by lucasverra »

thrw202001 wrote: post #58

I run a small MOOC helping country side municipalities/rural communities in Scandinavia with teaching their youth and young adults about IT, networking and cloud technologies. It started as a pilot project in a small municipality north of the arctic circle and I sold my first license in February. It then quickly gained attraction in similar types of municipalities when the results came in. It was a lot of work in the…

Hey there, congrats! How to reach you ? I run a digital product consultancy in Paris and we help SMB’s to increase performance on internal processes

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#95

Post by quelsolaar »

spectramax wrote: post #91
quelsolaar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! There are a lot of things that I could improve on my website but I don't think any of it matters that much. There are a lot of people in the startup community talking about metrics, marketing and having the right color on the download button, but its all kind of BS. It matters on the margin, but what really matters is delivering for your customers. Spend your time making the core offering good and if you do i…

I think good design/presentation and solid approach towards attention to detail on everything you do - it only adds and it doesn't take away from the core functional aspects of the product or service. Uber-functionalism, which is what you seem to be obsessed with, has its drawbacks. Imagine if Apple didn't care about design or aesthetics or presentation of their products. At the sametime, I see some contradiction to…

I'm a graphics nerd so that stuff is just fun for me, and most of it is part of existing toolkits I have already written for things like font rendering and UI.

I used to think that quality was attention to detail and polishing everything, but now I think its a hump you have to get over. People stand in line for hours, in the rain and cold, and jump through a lot of hoops the stuff they really want. As a creator your goal is to make them want it that much, rather then worrying about the rough edges.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#96

Post by kesor »

Evan You is making Vue.js financed by Patreon donations. Looks like about 19k/mo, which is 230k/y. Although there are most probably people who help him, he is doing it mostly on his own. And I suspect that Patreon is just one of his income sources. https://www.patreon.com/evanyou

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#97

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Strom wrote: post #63
friedman23 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't comprehend how you could judge someone negatively for wanting to provide for their family. So yes there does seem to be a huge cultural gap here and in this case I don't think Scandanavia does it better. Even if I lived in a country with a good safety net I would want to share my success with my family.

I know several Scandinavians personally who help their friends & family monetarily. It's also real common in Estonia, which is about a hundred miles from Scandinavia. Thus I don't think helping family is something that is missing in the region. More likely it's just a blind spot for spottybanana.

Most of Canada (population wise) is about a hundred miles from the USA. They even speak the same language! Yet ... assuming a similar set of moral archetypes and social behaviors on that basis would be a mistake.

Geography is interesting, but not deterministic.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#98

Post by stanmancan »

aerovistae wrote: post #56
stanmancan wrote: post #3

I’m a one man show. I made a SaaS targeted towards a specific company. I did all the work up front, got them to trial it, and when they loved it they singed a contract for just over $100k/year. I have a site with ads on it that makes ~$1500–2000/m in ad revenue. I also do some hosting/maintenance for clients. 4 clients and it’s about $1,000/m. All in it’s about $130k/year and it requires about 5 hours a week of my ti…

The "site with ads" is the one that really interests me. Can you give some details on that? What kind of site it is, how you grew traffic, what you use for ads? (Just AdWords?)

I made an API for myself in 2011 that I could consume at work. I made a site that lets people query it from a web app and docs on the API. Didn’t think anyone would actually use it though. Tossed an ad on it and forgot about it.

The API has been rewritten a few times now, it gets over 300 million requests a month. All organic growth, I can’t take any credit for it because I honestly have done nothing to aid it. Only use Google AdWords and it runs on a $40/m VPS.

We introduced paid plans a year ago and had a few sign ups. I think the paid accounts are about $440MRR but I split it with a friend who did all the work around paid accounts. (I didn’t think it would be worthwhile, he did, so he did the work around paid subscriptions)

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#99

Post by paggle »

spottybanana wrote: post #19
101008 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, those number sound so high for a third world country that I can't help thinking that if I were in your situation I would give half of that salary (5k monthly) to my brother and father so they wouldn't have to worry about money again. Congratulations for being in that situation!

Coming from scandinavian welfare state, it is really difficult for me to understand why someone would give to their relatives some of their income. Especially if you earn it by working, and the reasoning being so that they don't have to worry about money = have less pressure to work. I don't want to judge anyone, just wanted to state that there is clearly quite a big cultural gap here. I don't know anyone around here…

Coming from a different country it is really difficult to understand why someone would keep their money for themselves instead of helping their families. Over here families thrive and fail together.

Re: Ask HN: Which is the most successful one-person business you heard of in 2019?

#100

Post by nosettones »

csallen wrote: post #37

Ben Tossell of Makerpad. He made about $200k in the past year from a site that teaches others how to build interactive sites and apps without writing code. Lynne Tye of Key Values. She made about $400k in 2019 from a site that connects software engineers with companies that that share their intangible values, e.g. diverse team, good for parents, fast or slow-paced, etc. Robert James Gabriel of Helperbird. He struggle…

I found out about Lynne and Key Values last year. At the time, I was feeling particularly unsure about my path. I sent Lynne a brief email on a total whim after reading the story behind how she came to create Key Values, and feeling inspired. Lynne actually took the time to respond and offer me advice in an email, and that made a strong impression on me. Wish her continued success in 2020 and many years to come !
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