Live data from Hacker News

6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

lunchbag.ca

71–80 of 169 posts

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#71

Did you struggle in convincing people to share their account details with an unknown startup? What if you are fraudster and not a real company?

I didn't see anything on the Plaid flow authorizing the ability to charge my accounts or make transfers, so I'm assuming it's only limited to to Transaction data.

Really wish Plaid showed what APIs were being authorized in the flow...

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#72
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way, and it's part of why I made spendweek.com (a privacy-first, easy-to-use competitor to Lunch Money, YNAB with a single focus on saving money instead of keeping track of all your accounts). I am sort of proud of my privacy policy, so it's a link right at the top of the home page. Here's the basic manifesto of the SpendWeek framework in case anyone's interested: https://www.spendweek.com/blog/you-ne…

Nice domain and nice concept. I too am among those with a home-grown approach to managing the budget. Mine is more of a spending journal than it is about planning or reconciling the entire budget, with motivations similar to those who would have a meal journal. I focus on the decision making process and self-evaluate spending according to my budget and my overall values. My approach won't appeal to a lot of folks, bu…

Yes! This is awesome. Looking at all the budget software that uses monthly time frames, I was wondering why no one uses weekly. This quote is a great way to say it, "Even though most bills are paid monthly, discretionary spending is more naturally tracked on a weekly basis."

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#74
post #17

"A $5 monthly membership adds up to $72 per year." Nope. Might want to fix that. https://lunchmoney.app/features/recurring

Comical. A budgeting app that can't get basic math correct.

Guess it's a good thing I'm not calculating totals by hand within the app! :)

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#75

This was super interesting! The design really helped as well. I liked this one: "Lesson learned: People care about the narrative behind your product, so don't be afraid to tell your story!" As someone who finds new things on HN all the time, I always check the "about" page, especially if it's something that isn't free. I'm surprised at how often the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone", there's no names, it's all…

Thanks for reading and great point. I toyed with the copy here, too, but mainly it looked weird to have "About Me" on a professional landing page. Also I figured if they cared enough to know more about the company behind the product, I guess they'd found out soon enough that it's just one person behind it. If not, we can leave it at "Us"/"We" and keep it professional.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#76

This was super interesting! The design really helped as well. I liked this one: "Lesson learned: People care about the narrative behind your product, so don't be afraid to tell your story!" As someone who finds new things on HN all the time, I always check the "about" page, especially if it's something that isn't free. I'm surprised at how often the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone", there's no names, it's all…

> I'm surprised at how often the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone", there's no names, it's all just "Us" and "We". I tend to assume that a lot of times this is because "We" is a lie, it's "Me" and they want to avoid revealing that it's someone's side project. I could be completely wrong. I am a lot.

I wouldn't go as far as to say "We" is a lie especially with malicious intent. In short, "we" can be an appropriate way to refer to a company as a whole. Btw this is a hotly discussed topic among solo founders (whether to use "I" or "We") so it's nothing you can be "wrong" about!

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this changes anything? If they had attempted to do a production import of their live bank account, it would have been denied, same as what happened to their customers, and they would have caught it before the mistake affected real users.

My understanding was that it would have worked for her because she still would have been under the 100 user limit. So the test env still worked for production data, for the first 100 users.

Yeah, exactly. And running a payment through wouldn't have revealed anything since those two systems aren't connected.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#78
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice domain and nice concept. I too am among those with a home-grown approach to managing the budget. Mine is more of a spending journal than it is about planning or reconciling the entire budget, with motivations similar to those who would have a meal journal. I focus on the decision making process and self-evaluate spending according to my budget and my overall values. My approach won't appeal to a lot of folks, bu…

Yes! This is awesome. Looking at all the budget software that uses monthly time frames, I was wondering why no one uses weekly. This quote is a great way to say it, "Even though most bills are paid monthly, discretionary spending is more naturally tracked on a weekly basis."

Ages ago, my tool tried to do both weekly and monthly but then I had the realization out that almost all of the monthly items were not ones I was having trouble with in the budget. The fixed expenses were (obviously) fixed. And consumption-based utilities would vary month to month, and that was easy enough to track and reconcile every so often.

In other words, the budget would get "broken" more often in the week-to-week habits than the monthly ones... hence, the resulting focus of my tool.

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#79

Hey Lunch Money founder, if you are reading these comments, a big congratulations on reaching $1K so quickly! I loved reading your story so far. IMO getting to that first $1K is harder than getting from $1K to $10K. Most first timers never make it to $1K at all.

Thanks for the kind words! And that's encouraging to hear seeing as getting to $1k was quite the journey to me!

Re: 6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far

#80
post #60

I like the look of this. I would think about switching but I've paid a year of YNAB and I don't have the time to switch budgets right now. But I will probably re-evaluate in 11 months when my YNAB expires. Onboarding with the kind of products may take longer than the author realises. People like my self will need reminders that this product exists. It took years of YNAB ads for me to switch from HLedger and that real…

Thanks! In a year, the product will likely be more fleshed out, so it'll be a good time.

IMO, onboarding with YNAB specifically would take longer than most other budgeting apps, since on top of getting used to the interface, you also need to get used to their very specific method of budgeting. With Lunch Money, I've heard from users coming from YNAB that it's easier to get set up likely because we've approached organizing transactions and budgeting in a more pragmatic and flexible way.

Love to hear what you think when/if you ever decide to join Lunch Money!

Post reply on HN