Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
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Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#2I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#3I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!
do you see deep learning artistic services as competitors to real artists? e.g. https://deepart.io/
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#4Ug, is it just me, or does that he took money before actually having anyone to paint the pictures seem unethical? Would people have ordered if they had of known there were no artists as yet, or for that matter the artist were going to be friends of the website owner?
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#5I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!
I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.)
You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes."
How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#6I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!
do you see deep learning artistic services as competitors to real artists? e.g. https://deepart.io/
To real artists, perhaps, but we currently only offer direct photo to painting services, which mean the only services offered by artists on our site are directly copying photos and turning them into physical artworks.
So unless deepart.io is combined with a painting robot, we don't feel threatened.
And in fact we already released both a painting robot and the first free-to-use neural network style transfer demo.
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#7Ug, is it just me, or does that he took money before actually having anyone to paint the pictures seem unethical? Would people have ordered if they had of known there were no artists as yet, or for that matter the artist were going to be friends of the website owner?
They ordered under the promise that I would deliver the product, somehow, and I did. I hired my friends who were artists in San Francisco to do them—at a loss too.
That being said, worse case scenario would have been a refund, and most people paid via credit card which is interest free for 30 days anyways.
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#8Ug, is it just me, or does that he took money before actually having anyone to paint the pictures seem unethical? Would people have ordered if they had of known there were no artists as yet, or for that matter the artist were going to be friends of the website owner?
TBH there's many cases where people sell things before actually having the capability to deliver them, as long as the customer gets the goods at the end of the day, I don't really see the problem.
Heck if you look at the idea of Kickstarter and Indiegogo they're a whole market predicated on the idea of buying things that don't exist yet (and in many cases those things are harder to deliver than the creators suggest in their pitches)
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#9"acquiring artists turned out to be far from the hardest part of the business."
This.
I consulted many businesses as an engineer and often times technology can get you so far. You have to "get your hands dirty" and do the work.
Tech is rarely the bottleneck, it's often sales, understanding needs, contracting work to 3rd parties etc...
Kudos to the owner, great job
Re: Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees
#10Love reading such stories.
Also every interview I've read on indiehackers always has this one advice as the most important one: build quickly, iterate later.