I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business • Hacker News Board

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#111

Post by busterbenson » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:28 PM UTC

countryqt30 wrote: post #2

Not trying to downtalk, but it took you 11 years to pull this off? This is some massively slow growth :D

It is slow! No question about it. :) To be honest, most of my projects have either gotten popular fast or died slow deaths. Slow, steady growth is the anomaly and it's taken me 10 years to really appreciate how weird and special that is.

And wow, the other comments to this comment really made my day. I haven't been to Hacker News in a while but it's amazing to see that it's turned into a positive environment.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#112

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:30 PM UTC

vbsteven wrote: post #96

One of the main takeaways is that it’s still running on a very old version of Rails and JQuery. Maybe not great from a security standpoint but it shows that you do not need a Kubernetes cluster and a big HA setup and a modern language/framework for a profitable project. Btw, the site does not load past the initial splash quote in Firefox on iOS with Tracking Protection enabled. Disabling tracking protection fully loa…

[deleted]

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#113

Post by buboard » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

vbsteven wrote: post #96

One of the main takeaways is that it’s still running on a very old version of Rails and JQuery. Maybe not great from a security standpoint but it shows that you do not need a Kubernetes cluster and a big HA setup and a modern language/framework for a profitable project. Btw, the site does not load past the initial splash quote in Firefox on iOS with Tracking Protection enabled. Disabling tracking protection fully loa…

This is the difference between hacker news and indiehackers. People here are still dissecting the javascript virtues of the website in disbelief. Most indie hackers would agree it doesn't matter.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#114

Post by busterbenson » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

blorenz wrote: post #11

I'm curious why with $20K MRR it will take a Kickstarter to create a mobile app.

The other responses were accurate. Part of it is to be able to afford a little extra help, part of it is to re-spark excitement in the project with people, and part of it is to buy a little extra time to work on it full-time since the sad truth is that without my other income we're not actually able to live in the Bay Area with a family of four even on this revenue. An alternative is to move somewhere cheaper, which we're also considering.

I also added a breakdown of costs to another comment deeper in this thread, in case that's of interest.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#115

Post by buboard » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

egwynn wrote: post #106

pmoriarty wrote: post #103

Is there any way I could read this article without enabling javascript?

Probably not. Looks like the contents is loaded from Firebase after the main page loads. Not taking sides on whether this is a good/bad thing, just answering the question.

the maker of indiehackers has said in the past that he probably wouldn't make it a SPA if he started over.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#116

Post by soneca » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

busterbenson wrote: post #99

I’m the creator of the site in question and am just seeing this thread. Happy to answer questions about motivations, costs, etc if you give me a minute to finish lunch and get back to my computer!

Congrats on the success!

The dominant advice for bootstrappers is to make a B2B product. Do you agree with this advice?

Any tips for bootstrapping going B2B? What are the biggest differentiators that a bootstrapper that really wants to go B2C should include in their product?

How can I work for you at 750words? :)

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#117

Post by codezero » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

aiisjustanif wrote: post #94

> The words you write are saved and locked away, only for you to ever look at, so you can write whatever's really on your mind without fear of it getting out. Hmmm... Is it wrong I don't trust anyone with the data of my private ramblings.

Probably not wrong, but maybe over thinking it. I say that mainly to convince myself, as I feel the exact same way. I want something I can write in that's easy to access, digital, allows some free-form writing/scribbling (if possible), and is encrypted and stored in a cloud but can also be taken with me.

I've been thinking of using Apple's notes exclusively for this, but it'd be nice to have something more self contained.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#118

Post by busterbenson » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:55 PM UTC

soneca wrote: post #116

busterbenson wrote: post #99

I’m the creator of the site in question and am just seeing this thread. Happy to answer questions about motivations, costs, etc if you give me a minute to finish lunch and get back to my computer!

Congrats on the success! The dominant advice for bootstrappers is to make a B2B product. Do you agree with this advice? Any tips for bootstrapping going B2B? What are the biggest differentiators that a bootstrapper that really wants to go B2C should include in their product? How can I work for you at 750words? :)

Thank you! I'm a firm believer that I agree with all advice sometimes, including my own. In that spirit, my advice that is sometimes useful is to ignore B2B and B2C labels and to look instead at what you think you can build that people would be willing to pay for. Then to test that hypothesis as early and as many times as possible. The biggest difference between bootstrapping and VC-strapping is that every step on the path of bootstrapping has to be able to sustain itself long enough to get to the next step. SaaS models are great for this because they can scale with the revenue. I'm happy to go into more detail about any of this but it's a huge topic so we'd need to narrow it down a bit more to prevent this from turning into a novel.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#119

Post by hinkley » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #101

hinkley wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He mentions mobile and internationalization. In both cases hiring consultants may be more reliable than trying to build the expertise in-house. I've become the de facto internationalization expert at several companies and it's always rough. Everyone wants sentence structure to be simple and will fight you when you insist on something like interpolation instead of fancy string concatenation. Like Yoda, you will sound.…

> And then there are straight up dodges like using Arabic numbers for everything in Japan because they have multiple counting systems. Apples and humans use different words when counting. In Chinese, the Arabic numerals wouldn't get you out of this, as they replace the number, but not the measure word: 3 apples -- 三个苹果 -- 3个苹果 3 people [needing to sit in a restaurant, or being honored, or what have you] -- 三位 -- 3位.…

Thus illustrating the difference between de facto expert an actual expert. And that you often get what you pay for.

For every four things I can catch that other people wouldn’t, There’s at least one thing I haven’t even heard of. Though in this case as long as the noun isn’t being interpolated I think there’s a simple in a fix for it.

You are much better off hiring someone with experience, and if you can afford it, a proper specialist.

Re: I bootstrapped my private-journaling project into a lifestyle business

#120

Post by blorenz » Tue, Jun 25, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

busterbenson wrote: post #110

blorenz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I, for one, would be keenly interested in this. I think it would enlighten about the operating costs and expenditures that are associated with this service and where they go. I'm hoping that the scrutiny of this might serve you well and you are able to get some takeaways to increase your profits. I appreciate your candidness and willing to be transparent to those ( at the head of the line, myself ) who you…

Okay, I looked over our financial statement from 2018, summed a few things up that would be way too boring to provide in detail, and turned the numbers into percentages so that you don't have to do all the math in your head. Here's what I have: 2018 costs: 48% to salaries and contractors (my wife and I are the only people on payroll, and draw $60k salaries for ourselves) 12.1% to operations (health insurance, renting…

I see that you have 4220 members that are subscription holders. I'm supposing that you have more that are active users but not Member/Patron status. What's average sessions? Is there anything you can do with the AWS allocation (ie. AWS configurations or infra swapping)? From my vantage point of what I perceives as your Service model, I'm not readily seeing any component of it that would be CPU intensive, but I'm just another guy on the Internet. I'm happy to continue my prodding in an another channel.

And yes, PayPal fees are taking money from your children.