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Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

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Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#61
post #29

Funny thing is I have known about some of these companies since about a few years. I distinctly remember seeing Ghost's revenue (around $40K) and thinking, "umm.. that doesn't seem much to go around five people."; watching Hubstaff numbers (which was ~$80K/month, I believe), and saying to myself, "that's a very niche software. Would it ever go to make revenue that justifies expenses of a team?" (I think the CEO menti…

In SaaS, the road can be especially long... Bootstrapped SaaS north of $1M a month is damn impressive.

I'm curious how it breaks out to lower tiers. How impressive is $20,000/month, $100,000/month etc. and what percentage of SaaS get there, how long it takes, etc. Is there anywhere that has a nice table of that data for tech SaaS? That's the kind of info that would be quite fun and informative to look at.

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#62
post #45

Funny thing is I have known about some of these companies since about a few years. I distinctly remember seeing Ghost's revenue (around $40K) and thinking, "umm.. that doesn't seem much to go around five people."; watching Hubstaff numbers (which was ~$80K/month, I believe), and saying to myself, "that's a very niche software. Would it ever go to make revenue that justifies expenses of a team?" (I think the CEO menti…

Don't want to personalize this but, since we're mutually reflecting on the sociology of talking about running a company and dealing with external perceptions: the specific names of the pessimists may change but there is absolutely no level of success at which folks will stop saying "Pfft, that's not a real business." I think the takeaway for founders is being prepared for this and learning to not weight external pess…

I had a friend who said the same thing about Google when they first IPOed. His suggestion was that they should take their new cash and just go buy a real business so they're real (specifically suggested AOL Time Warner). This was a trader at one of the world's biggest hedge funds. He went on to have a very successful career in finance nonetheless. It's hard to make predictions about things we don't understand. A lot of our expertise isn't transferable to other domains and we sometimes overestimate the generalizability of our expertise.

Doubters and cheerleaders are both likely to be wrong and there is also so much you can't predict about the boarder environment businesses must operate in. Sometimes even the best of us fail and the most incompetent of us get lucky once in a while.

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#63
post #45

Funny thing is I have known about some of these companies since about a few years. I distinctly remember seeing Ghost's revenue (around $40K) and thinking, "umm.. that doesn't seem much to go around five people."; watching Hubstaff numbers (which was ~$80K/month, I believe), and saying to myself, "that's a very niche software. Would it ever go to make revenue that justifies expenses of a team?" (I think the CEO menti…

Don't want to personalize this but, since we're mutually reflecting on the sociology of talking about running a company and dealing with external perceptions: the specific names of the pessimists may change but there is absolutely no level of success at which folks will stop saying "Pfft, that's not a real business." I think the takeaway for founders is being prepared for this and learning to not weight external pess…

As a pessimist for the first 30 years of my life, I've finally realized just how little utility there is in being negative. On the flip side, being positive:

1. Helps you get more done 2. Helps other people get more done 3. Makes you more friends

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#64

Funny thing is I have known about some of these companies since about a few years. I distinctly remember seeing Ghost's revenue (around $40K) and thinking, "umm.. that doesn't seem much to go around five people."; watching Hubstaff numbers (which was ~$80K/month, I believe), and saying to myself, "that's a very niche software. Would it ever go to make revenue that justifies expenses of a team?" (I think the CEO menti…

If one had only pessimists as enemies business would be easier! =]

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#65
post #27

Looks interesting! I see Buffer in the list with 100+ Companies with Remote Open Positions and I guess that important to see real information about a company that you'd like to be hired. When you see Key Metrics of a company, you know how you can grow there and help it to be better. PS Just for info. I found it here. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Sr0vy3eDn2fcEhxOdkPv...

Great doc - thanks

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have number of employees for any of those startups? That's also fascinating, especially for the really small shops.

Never thought of that honestly. Most of these companies have information about their employees, so maybe I can add them.

If you link to the corporate linkedin profile, it can tell you how many employees self-identify with each via linkedin profiles.

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#67
post #46
post #38

Wow, what a wasteland of garbage. Hard to believe that any of these are getting investment or making money—-none of them produces anything remotely of value to the human condition. Where are the startups making actual valuable innovative products and solving real problems?

If you’re ever interested in real garbage look at how much some “creators” make on patreon for absolutely stupid things.

Examples?

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#68
post #58
post #38

Wow, what a wasteland of garbage. Hard to believe that any of these are getting investment or making money—-none of them produces anything remotely of value to the human condition. Where are the startups making actual valuable innovative products and solving real problems?

Please just post substantively. You've been breaking the guidelines a whole lot and eventually we ban accounts for that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This guy is an asshole, +1 on banning him.

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#69
post #55

I made an open revenue page for https://geocode.xyz/open It is hard to keep it up to date when there are 4 different revenue sources, but it is a good signal to send to customer s saying "hey, we are growing, so you can be more confident working with a company that's going to be still around down the road."

Yeah, a part of "open" community is to provide MRR, or at least Annual revenue, so potential makers can have an insight on how business in a given niche performs.

Re: Show HN: Open startups with their revenue, metrics, and stories

#70
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't want to personalize this but, since we're mutually reflecting on the sociology of talking about running a company and dealing with external perceptions: the specific names of the pessimists may change but there is absolutely no level of success at which folks will stop saying "Pfft, that's not a real business." I think the takeaway for founders is being prepared for this and learning to not weight external pess…

As a pessimist for the first 30 years of my life, I've finally realized just how little utility there is in being negative. On the flip side, being positive: 1. Helps you get more done 2. Helps other people get more done 3. Makes you more friends

Love this comment. I do a lot of self-reflection and one thing I've realized and still trying to change about myself is that I'm a huge pessimist and those 3 things you listed are things I'm terrible at.
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