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Who is living off their startup fulltime?

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Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#121

Post by paraschopra »

Sephr wrote: post #105
jasonkester wrote: post #32

S3stat ( http://www.s3stat.com ) brings in enough to live on, and funded me while I was traveling last year and bootstrapping the next thing. It also has the advantage of pretty much running itself on autopilot, so I can sometimes go entire months without opening the IDE or doing anything beyond responding to the odd customer email. I'd highly recommend building something like that (a low-maintenance income generatin…

"Copyright 2011"? Are you a time-traveler?

Maybe he is smart! He may be travelling for whole of 2011 after all :)

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#122

Post by paraschopra »

http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/

I have been living full time on this since I launched paid plans in May this year. My annual revenue goal was surpassed in first two months. But to be honest, I was very scared the week paid plans were launched. Thoughts of what if I don't even make equivalent to my previous salary haunted me (I had left my full time job 2 months before launching paid plans -- so my family and friends thought I was doing nothing for 2 full months). But, it has been profitable (touch wood!) and I am very happy about it. Been approached by investors a couple of times, but the revenue generated is good enough to expand the team by itself so I don't see a reason to take any outside investment.

But before getting to this point, I had toyed with numerous ideas and coded a bulky conversion optimization platform for more than a year. http://www.wingify.com/product/tour.php Showed it to patio11 and others who all said: "you know what it has to be simple". So, redone the whole thing and that's how Visual Website Optimizer came about to be.

I have been lucky to have learnt many great lessons: what to make, how to make and how to get covered in TechCrunch even if you are bootstrapped :)

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#123

Post by Andrenid »

kylebragger wrote: post #6

Forrst ( http://forrst.com/ ) makes more than enough to cover all costs, including some of my salary. The rest comes from a seed round I took in March.

I'm a big Forrst fan, thanks for the site! It has become my new place to go for inspiration/motivation when I need it.

Now when do we find out what Acorns are for? ;)

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#124

Post by kaib »

TamDenholm wrote: post #27
kaib wrote: post #22

TinkerCAD ( http://tinkercad.com ). Self funded and in soon-alpha mode, 3 FT founders. Quit Google a few months ago after five great years at the place.

If you're self funded and not even launched yet you're not actually living off the business. I'm not having a go at you or anything, just saying thats what the question was.

You are obviously right. As per mkramlich definition the startup is currently living off us (given only founders have invested in the corp) and we will live off non founder investors before being in the black.

I initially hesitated to reply but as the original post did not differentiate between type of investor I assumed it would be acceptable. I stand corrected.

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#125

Post by toast76 »

HackrNwsDesignr wrote: post #108
toast76 wrote: post #64

http://usabilityhub.com (including http://fivesecondtest.com ) was originally a free app. We introduced subscriptions in August. It's now getting close to being able to support two of us full-time. At the moment, we're both still doing consultant work to fill the gaps. I would certainly think in the next 6-12 months it'll be covering both of us. We're entirely self-funded from 3 years of contracting/consulting. If I…

Toast,I am pretty decent at graphic/web design, but have trouble finding consulting work in order to make this work. Mind if I ask where do you look? Craigslist seems saturated, and elance seems too much of a hassle with outsourcing companies and others with years reputation on the site.

I'm a programmer (and in Australia), so maybe that makes it a bit easier.

I think it's mostly a case of knowing people. Nearly all of my work is from people who already knew me before they needed the work, or knew someone who I had previously done work for.

Referrals and recommendations are worth more than anything else, and people will pay more for someone they know will do a good job. My two current side projects are for an old client of a company I used to work for and had worked with previously (they referred me), and a friend of a friend of my father. Previous work has all been via referrals from friends or clients. Once you do a job for someone, give them a stack of business cards and ask them to refer you to others. If you've looked after them, they'll be more than happy to do it. Since starting my business 3.5 years ago, I've never once had to actually look for work.

I'd strongly avoid looking for work on any website, you end up competing on price, and that's no way to make a living.

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#126

Post by eurohacker »

jasonkester wrote: post #32

S3stat ( http://www.s3stat.com ) brings in enough to live on, and funded me while I was traveling last year and bootstrapping the next thing. It also has the advantage of pretty much running itself on autopilot, so I can sometimes go entire months without opening the IDE or doing anything beyond responding to the odd customer email. I'd highly recommend building something like that (a low-maintenance income generatin…

what technology you are using for it - Ruby , Python etc,

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#127

Post by derefr »

mkramlich wrote: post #102
icey wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not necessarily the case. There are many niches that aren't obviously profitable. From the outside, it seems like they'd be a waste of time until someone discovers a way to make money with them.

also, certain niches may have limited time windows where it's relatively easier to make profits and/or there are no competitors active in it or only a few. after this window, profits are driven down to commodity levels and/or a large number of strong competitors enter the same space and bite off some percentage or all of the market that was previously yours

It'd be fun if, every once in a while, a post was just dropped on HN pointing out a time-limited niche as it begins. The result would be somewhere between a flash-mob and a gold-rush: hundreds of competitors popping into existence in the same space over the course of a weekend.

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#128

Post by paraschopra »

sr3d wrote: post #101
dangrossman wrote: post #31

I created/run a couple web apps ( http://w3counter.com http://w3roi.com and a few more). Everything is profitable and I've lived off it for the past 6 years. All bootstrapped, no outside funding.

Dan, I really admire your products and your business sense. Your post on "Step by step to launching a new product" is spot on. Keep up the good work!

Can you please share the URL for that post?

Re: Who is living off their startup fulltime?

#129

Post by ashleyw »

paraschopra wrote: post #128
sr3d wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dan, I really admire your products and your business sense. Your post on "Step by step to launching a new product" is spot on. Keep up the good work!

Can you please share the URL for that post?

http://www.dangrossman.info/2009/07/02/step-by-step-of-launc...
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