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Ask HN: How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?

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Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?

#11

Post by access_denied »

idlewords wrote: post #9
asyazwan wrote: post #4

This question is kind of general. It depends on your niche market and luck. I do suggest you follow Seth Godin's blog as he gives a lot of insightful advice you can use as startup. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/ It might help though if you give more details.

Seth Godin makes his living by giving advice to others, rather than acting on it himself. I think it's better to solicit advice from the people who have succeeded in what you are trying to do.

Godin sold his startup to Yahoo. He is now 'acting on it with his bootstrapped 'user generated content'-startup Squidoo. I doubt as a millionaire he needs the revenue from his books and speaking gigs to make a living.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?

#12

Post by idlewords »

access_denied wrote: post #11
idlewords wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seth Godin makes his living by giving advice to others, rather than acting on it himself. I think it's better to solicit advice from the people who have succeeded in what you are trying to do.

Godin sold his startup to Yahoo. He is now 'acting on it with his bootstrapped 'user generated content'-startup Squidoo. I doubt as a millionaire he needs the revenue from his books and speaking gigs to make a living.

That's kind of the point. If you want to know what it takes to eke out a living from your web project, it's good to ask other people eking out a living from their web projects, rather than a very talented marketing guru who is a couple of decades removed from having to worry about that class of problem.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?

#14

Post by kellishaver »

Well, my "startup" is not a web site, but a brick & mortar business, so the dynamics are a bit different. The business managed to pay for its own operating expenses from day one, thanks to some careful budgeting on our part. We broke even our first year (making back all of the initial money we had invested in opening, which, again, had been carefully budgeted and kept as low as possible) and started making a profit our second.

We just finished our 5th year in business and last year's earnings were down, thanks to the economic problems plauging, well, everyone. We ended up making less than we did in year 4, but only by a very small margin, and it was still more than we had made in year 3, and still profitable.

We've been very careful about how we manage finances from day one and given a lot of other local businesses that didn't make it through the year, I'm calling 2009 a success.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?

#15

Post by towndrunk »

kellishaver wrote: post #14

Well, my "startup" is not a web site, but a brick & mortar business, so the dynamics are a bit different. The business managed to pay for its own operating expenses from day one, thanks to some careful budgeting on our part. We broke even our first year (making back all of the initial money we had invested in opening, which, again, had been carefully budgeted and kept as low as possible) and started making a profit o…

Interesting. What kind of brick and mortar business have you started? I have though about something outside of software and I'm curious what others have done.

Re: Ask HN: How long did it take you to get ramen profitable?

#16

Post by kellishaver »

towndrunk wrote: post #15
kellishaver wrote: post #14

Well, my "startup" is not a web site, but a brick & mortar business, so the dynamics are a bit different. The business managed to pay for its own operating expenses from day one, thanks to some careful budgeting on our part. We broke even our first year (making back all of the initial money we had invested in opening, which, again, had been carefully budgeted and kept as low as possible) and started making a profit o…

Interesting. What kind of brick and mortar business have you started? I have though about something outside of software and I'm curious what others have done.

We do PC repair and hardware retail, custom built PCs, etc. in a small town of about 20k (half of which are college students). I also pick up the occasional web design project through there, but it's rare.
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