Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

indiehackers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 125 posts

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#81

Post by dboreham »

jason-grishkoff wrote: post #9
dboreham wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you pay in transaction fees to take that $1 user payment?

Payments are powered by Braintree (using their securely hosted iframes feature). Fee is 2.9% + $0.30. Same as Stripe and PayPal - they've all pretty much set this as a "standard" for the fee. Probably worth noting that the minimum transaction on SubmitHub is $5. https://www.braintreepayments.com/

>Probably worth noting that the minimum transaction on SubmitHub is $5.

Ahhh, thanks. I was wondering how you were doing a service with a $1 charge (I didn't see the $5 minimum mentioned in the portion of the article I read).

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#82

Post by sgdesign »

Something that I think is worth pointing out: that site doesn't have a recurring revenue model and also charges very low fees, two things that go against the common wisdom of "just get people to pay you every month, and add an enterprise plan in there for good measure".

The truth is that the classic three-tiered SaaS business model is just one of many possible business models, yet many developers-turned-entrepreneur adopt it without stopping to think whether it's a good fit or not for their product.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#83

Post by csallen »

wallace_f wrote: post #80
csallen wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SubmitHub as a product is 10 months old, and Jason's only been charging for the past 7 months. So saying that "under as year" is a "very disingenuous" timeline is... very disingenuous. Yes, having a successful blog helped Jason identify and understand the problem, and it saved him from having to partner with someone else's blog. But learning to code was probably pivotal, too. Where do we draw the line?

Headline would be more precise had it claimed to have built an app in 10 months, not a business Still impressive, but not the same thing Edit: just to be extra clear, the reason why this is true is because, the customer base he generated was not in the 10 months he used to build his app, that was done over the years of blogging

The app itself is the business, and is separate from his blog. (Although it works together with his blog and with many other blogs, his particular blog is not a necessity.)

EDIT: To respond to your edit, I agree he was able to leverage his blog's popularity. But his blog is only one out of 231 listed on SubmitHub. Thus, his blog's readers account for what's likely a negligible fraction of SubmitHub's users. That's not to say his blog wasn't helpful. It's just a totally separate business. The reason SubmitHub is doing so well is because he added to his blog AND to those 230 other blogs, and he did that in 10 months.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#84

Post by fourstar »

paulsutter wrote: post #64
fiatjaf wrote: post #45

The guy had a very successful music blog and used that to kick off the network effect needed to make SubmitHub work. There is zero chance SubmitHub would work without the music blog, so unless you have a very successful blog yourself this article will not help you in any practical manner.

Or maybe the lesson is to develop a following first before developing a product. The music blog didn't happen by random chance, and his overall approach seems better than developing a product and hoping for a following.

I did this with the intention of promoting the product.

The issue was that I built it on someone else's platform. Something I've known to be a cardinal sin and a disaster waiting to happen.

Alas, I built /r/lifeprotips and it quickly became a default on reddit. I started building the site (lifeprotips.com which is no longer up) around the same time.

Some moronic moderator named reddit.com/user/krispykrackers banned me because I was promoting the site on the subreddit. They still use artwork I paid an illustrator to design for my site that I re-used there.

tl;dr: don't build a following on someone else's platform. You will be penalized because in 2016 there is no loyalty to the game anymore (I've been building sites since the late 90s so I know how corporate this environment has gotten).

Also, big middle finger to reddit for trying to be a big boy corporation but failing to address issues like mine -- I spent so much time and energy getting that subreddit to where it is today and I get rewarded with a punch in the face.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#85

Post by asenna »

jason-grishkoff wrote: post #60
copperx wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid question: any particular reasons you picked Meteor and React? Also, can you give us details on the backend/infrastructure? Thanks!

Because it seemed cool. I think I'd seen it pop up on HckrNews and Reddit a few times, so I wanted to give it a whirl. The stack is something along the lines of: nginx + docker + Meteor (node/mongodb) + React.

+1 for Meteor.

I'm pretty sure Jason uses Mupx for deployment to DigitalOcean (https://github.com/arunoda/meteor-up/tree/mupx).

For anyone interested, this package makes it super easy to setup all the tools and deploy to the servers (almost as easy as pushing to Heroku!).

I've had good experience in scaling using Mupx and Cluster (another package from the same team - https://github.com/meteorhacks/cluster)

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#86

Post by fiatjaf »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #72
swedish_coder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting take on the concept. Do you have any experience with this? Know where I can read more about this sort of thing? :)

Facebook might qualify with their third-party apps leveraging the social netsork and FB targeting.

Are you serious? Facebook developer ecosystem is horrible, and it stinks more in this case.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#87

Post by fiatjaf »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #66
paulsutter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the lesson is to develop a following first before developing a product. The music blog didn't happen by random chance, and his overall approach seems better than developing a product and hoping for a following.

Alternatively you can partner with a community and build a product for them on revenue share.

I tried to do this, but since the "community" had no leader, I couldn't talk to no one except its single members, and individually they didn't seem to be too interested in the product I had already built.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#88

Post by sp527 »

I think another important lesson to draw from this is that you should build things for domains and problems in which you have a legitimate interest/curiosity. That was something I took away from this that's difficult to accept, because it means you're probably going to be limited if you want to work solo.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#89

Post by fiatjaf »

fourstar wrote: post #84
paulsutter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the lesson is to develop a following first before developing a product. The music blog didn't happen by random chance, and his overall approach seems better than developing a product and hoping for a following.

I did this with the intention of promoting the product. The issue was that I built it on someone else's platform. Something I've known to be a cardinal sin and a disaster waiting to happen. Alas, I built /r/lifeprotips and it quickly became a default on reddit. I started building the site (lifeprotips.com which is no longer up) around the same time. Some moronic moderator named reddit.com/user/krispykrackers banned m…

Thank you for sharing.

Do you think you would be as successful in developing an audience outside Reddit as you were inside it? Where? In a blog?

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#90

Post by sundvor »

fourstar wrote: post #84
paulsutter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe the lesson is to develop a following first before developing a product. The music blog didn't happen by random chance, and his overall approach seems better than developing a product and hoping for a following.

I did this with the intention of promoting the product. The issue was that I built it on someone else's platform. Something I've known to be a cardinal sin and a disaster waiting to happen. Alas, I built /r/lifeprotips and it quickly became a default on reddit. I started building the site (lifeprotips.com which is no longer up) around the same time. Some moronic moderator named reddit.com/user/krispykrackers banned m…

I like that advice; don't build a following on someone else's platform. It could be extended to not building something that relies entirely on service X's API being open, because the moment they see the value in what you're doing, they'll want to shut it down and do it themselves.

Also - great work, congrats on the success!

Post reply on HN