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Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#21

Post by hoodoof »

I know this goes against accepted wisdom and I cannot yet prove that it works, but I no longer believe I am capable of the "build something small, fast and succeed". Niftylettuce in this thread has shown it an be done, but I have not succeeded in doing so.

I am now working on big, highly functional, fully working on launch utilities for DevOps people. Hopefully this will result in building something people want.

It seems the startup world is made up primarily of people pumping out easy to build shit.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#22

Post by hugs »

5 years. (2011-2016) While working on my first startup (Sauce Labs), I made a robot that plays Angry Birds as a side/art project in the autumn of 2011. The serious part of the project is that you can use the robot for testing mobile apps and devices. I started to sell the robots (still as a side project) on Tindie when that first launched in the summer of 2012. I made a couple of thousand dollars the first few years, but basically broke even profit-wise. I got my first "big" enterprise order of robots in late 2014 and that made me start wondering if I should ramp things up. I formally incorporated (http://www.tapster.io) in May 2015 and took some seed funding (Indie.vc) to sell the robots full-time. Since incorporating, it's now veeeery close (this summer) to ramen profitable while paying a few salaries.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#23

Post by laksmanv »

niftylettuce wrote: post #2

Here's a brief list! * Wakeup.io - Simple Phone Wake-up Calls @ https://wakeup.io and it is fully automated and runs itself with actually really good profits. It was built in 2-3 days. * GetProve, Simple Phone Verification @ https://getprove.com and it is fully automated and runs itself with again, really good profits. It was built in a week or so. * Teelaunch, Kickstarter/Indiegogo Fulfillment Service (exited/sold)…

Great post. What's your email?

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#24

Post by warewolf »

niftylettuce wrote: post #13
niftylettuce wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, though I'm really just trying to focus on ONE project now as opposed to running ~30 side projects. An immense amount of time... Email me if you want to chat more! Let people tell you you're crazy if and when you say you're going to build this this this and that. Then go and build it. You will awe them.

I want to put together a timeline like @yegg had once, not sure where it went since his blog switched to Medium. But I've been working on side projects since I was at least 16, I have tried to build competitors to services like MailChimp, Facebook, etc. It's a ton of failure honestly, but it has been a fun ride. My biggest failure is due to lack of focus on ONE project, which I have changed recently and built the hab…

You sound like me haha, always working on different things what I have found works best for me is working with others who have skills or experience in those projects directly. People who can help scale and maintain the product. I think of it as a investment.

I'm currently working on 3 projects in all different areas. Looking for a partner for 4 which is a Saas for life automation.

Also drewwilson.com has a cool timeline for his projects check it out

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#25

Post by niftylettuce »

hoodoof wrote: post #21

I know this goes against accepted wisdom and I cannot yet prove that it works, but I no longer believe I am capable of the "build something small, fast and succeed". Niftylettuce in this thread has shown it an be done, but I have not succeeded in doing so. I am now working on big, highly functional, fully working on launch utilities for DevOps people. Hopefully this will result in building something people want. It s…

I don't consider these really startups haha. No way. I think you have not succeeded YET because you need to find something fun to work on that you want to build for yourself.

I honestly built the wake-up call service for MYSELF and nobody else. I couldn't wake up for classes in college even with an alarm clock (didn't sleep much since I was hacking all the time). I thought having someone call me made the world of difference in signaling my brain to move. So I built the wakeup thing for myself, then maybe a year or two later I added international support after I realized people were paying like $2 a week with it. People actually paid for it? That blew my mind.

The other services and things I built were again just because I wanted them for myself. Just have fun with it. True, these are easy to build projects, but the real skill comes in when you can pump one out in a day!

* I mean pump one out in the sense that you build it, both front-end and back-end, and then release it on the internet. A lot of these projects I didn't do any fancy deployment stuff with, I popped open `screen -DR`, did a GitHub deploy key to the server, cloned repo, installed deps, and ran `node app`.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#26

Post by niftylettuce »

laksmanv wrote: post #23
niftylettuce wrote: post #2

Here's a brief list! * Wakeup.io - Simple Phone Wake-up Calls @ https://wakeup.io and it is fully automated and runs itself with actually really good profits. It was built in 2-3 days. * GetProve, Simple Phone Verification @ https://getprove.com and it is fully automated and runs itself with again, really good profits. It was built in a week or so. * Teelaunch, Kickstarter/Indiegogo Fulfillment Service (exited/sold)…

Great post. What's your email?

niftylettuce@gmail.com

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#27

Post by boyter »

https://searchcode.com/ is my serious side project. It has been profitable (If you ignore my time) for several months now. However it took 5 years to get there. I am planning on making it unprofitable again soon to allow it to scale up to the load requirements it needs. Most of the profit is though ads and the fact I run it on a shoestring budget (less than $100 a month).

If the downloadable version takes off that would really help as well.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#28

Post by brianpgordon »

hugs wrote: post #22

5 years. (2011-2016) While working on my first startup (Sauce Labs), I made a robot that plays Angry Birds as a side/art project in the autumn of 2011. The serious part of the project is that you can use the robot for testing mobile apps and devices. I started to sell the robots (still as a side project) on Tindie when that first launched in the summer of 2012. I made a couple of thousand dollars the first few years,…

It's interesting to me that your approach to automated testing includes a real, physical device.

How well do you think your robot offering is positioned versus fast and free virtual automated testing within an Android/iOS simulator? I assume there must be some material advantage to testing on a real device, but I don't know a lot about the domain. What happens if the layout of the app changes slightly- are your testing programs purely based on physical coordinates?

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#29

Post by warewolf »

hoodoof wrote: post #21

I know this goes against accepted wisdom and I cannot yet prove that it works, but I no longer believe I am capable of the "build something small, fast and succeed". Niftylettuce in this thread has shown it an be done, but I have not succeeded in doing so. I am now working on big, highly functional, fully working on launch utilities for DevOps people. Hopefully this will result in building something people want. It s…

Sometimes it's better to have smaller self running projects to help fund the big ones.

Re: Ask HN: Do you have a profitable side project? How long did it take to achieve?

#30

Post by bduerst »

niftylettuce wrote: post #8
soulbadguy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am really curious about which software stack (especially the backend) you are using to iterate this fast

I just released Glazed, my latest boilerplate that I use for this stuff. You can find it here https://github.com/glazedio/glazed . However I have a HUGE absolutely STELLAR update coming probably in the next week for Glazed. I basically dog fed this on my own startup/project and have a ton of little but important updates to the project.

What's the benefits of using Nunjucks, in your opinion?
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