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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

#81

Post by towelr34dy »

existencebox wrote: post #78
andy_adams wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So I'm going to chime in as a perpetual pessimist. I've found tremendous utility in expecting negative outcomes. I'm wording this very pedantically, because my father and I used to argue past each other for hours re: "being negative vs saying something is negative." Perhaps it's just that I've been in Ops/distributed system maintenance and development, but I've found expecting a worst case/pessimistic outcome pretty…

As a fellow pessimist, I thank you for such a well written piece.

To add to this: I'm pessimistic that any of my individual efforts will succeed... I have 0% doubt that if I keep trying eventually something will work for me.

I see everything else the same way. 99% of the time people are wasting their time. Though I'm not a Debbie downer, I tend to keep this opinion to myself.

In general it is harder for me to cut loses than it is to join new projects. So I guess that's also why pessimism works for me.

As someone once said:

You've got to know when to hold 'em Know when to fold 'em Know when to walk away And know when to run You never count your money When you're sittin' at the table There'll be time enough for countin' When the dealin's done

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

#82

Post by kevinyun »

PhilipDaineko wrote: post #79
sahillavingia wrote: post #26

Add Gumroad? It started out as a Show HN weekend project and I release the numbers every month: https://mobile.twitter.com/shl/status/1083805607201669120 Gumroad in December: Volume processed: $5.4M (down 4%) Revenue: $341K (down 3%) Gross profit: $135K (up 9%)

As far as I understand creativetim.com uses gumroad for payment processing. Creative team has self-reported their revenue to about 1M per year. So kind of 20% from a single customer

That's a very interesting insight. I'd love some verification, but with the openness of all these numbers, it seems very plausible. If 20% is truly from a single customer, that seems very fragile, no?

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

#83

Post by bjelkeman-again »

existencebox wrote: post #78
andy_adams wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So I'm going to chime in as a perpetual pessimist. I've found tremendous utility in expecting negative outcomes. I'm wording this very pedantically, because my father and I used to argue past each other for hours re: "being negative vs saying something is negative." Perhaps it's just that I've been in Ops/distributed system maintenance and development, but I've found expecting a worst case/pessimistic outcome pretty…

My biggest successes have come from teaming up with people like you and people who are way more optimistic than me and cover both sides and balance them well.

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

#84

Post by napoleond »

PhilipDaineko wrote: post #79
sahillavingia wrote: post #26

Add Gumroad? It started out as a Show HN weekend project and I release the numbers every month: https://mobile.twitter.com/shl/status/1083805607201669120 Gumroad in December: Volume processed: $5.4M (down 4%) Revenue: $341K (down 3%) Gross profit: $135K (up 9%)

As far as I understand creativetim.com uses gumroad for payment processing. Creative team has self-reported their revenue to about 1M per year. So kind of 20% from a single customer

Per month vs per year.

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

#85

Post by karussell »

jv22222 wrote: post #41
shubhamjain wrote: post #22

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…

Post about that: https://baremetrics.com/blog/long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death

The title, especially the "of death", is a bit misleading like you wrote at the end. Good read though :)

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

#86

Post by indemnity »

martin-adams wrote: post #47
Malfunction92 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pulled that number from an older post. Updated!

Just remember, $12K a month means zero growth in 2018. So it is probably higher. I totally get that you don't know what that figure is instead though.

How do you figure that? He doubled revenue from 2017, or am I missing something?

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

#87

Post by nostrademons »

existencebox wrote: post #78
andy_adams wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So I'm going to chime in as a perpetual pessimist. I've found tremendous utility in expecting negative outcomes. I'm wording this very pedantically, because my father and I used to argue past each other for hours re: "being negative vs saying something is negative." Perhaps it's just that I've been in Ops/distributed system maintenance and development, but I've found expecting a worst case/pessimistic outcome pretty…

I think there's a happiness vs. success tradeoff with optimism vs. pessimism, and it works in counterintuitive ways.

In my experience (both personal and with close family members), pessimists are happier but less successful than optimists. They're happier because if you already think the worst is going to happen, it doesn't take much to exceed expectations. It's the old "happiness = reality - expectations" saying: set expectations at zero and anything that happens makes you happy. There's also an aspect of taking control of risks and actively working to avoid them that you mention, which makes near term, immediate reality more likely to go their way.

They're less successful because if you believe that most risks will turn out badly, you are less likely to take "leap of faith, have no idea what's going to happen" risks. Why would you, if the outcome is already known and will likely be bad? But in today's economy, many of the great successes come from taking big risks where you don't know the outcome and nobody else has the balls to try them. (This is a feature of markets: gains accrue to the people who supply what nobody else is willing to supply but which many other people demand.) So pessimists tend to make great technicians but shitty visionaries, while optimists tend to make great visionaries but shitty technicians.

I've fallen on both sides in my career. I've found my biggest successes usually have come from leaps of faith that I was was willing to suspend my "This is totally gonna blow up in my face" belief for, but those opportunities come from and must be followed by periods of actually thinking about and managing all the ways that it could blow up in my face.

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

#88

Post by brobdingnagians »

puranjay wrote: post #77
brobdingnagians wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My side project just broke $1k/month and I already count that as a success. My success metric is "freedom". If this side project could net me $3k/month, it would net me a lot of "freedom points" I reckon everyone has a different metric for success

Thank you, that's pretty cool

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

#89

Post by SZJX »

existencebox wrote: post #78
andy_adams wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So I'm going to chime in as a perpetual pessimist. I've found tremendous utility in expecting negative outcomes. I'm wording this very pedantically, because my father and I used to argue past each other for hours re: "being negative vs saying something is negative." Perhaps it's just that I've been in Ops/distributed system maintenance and development, but I've found expecting a worst case/pessimistic outcome pretty…

I think eventually the point is "just carry on doing what you have to do and get things done regardless of what happens". a stoic, stable and confident mentality which entails a lot of planning and calm decisionmaking helps. Either blind optimism or blind pessimism would be to the extreme and counterproductive.
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