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Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

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Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#51

Post by celestialcheese »

upen946 wrote: post #36
bkovacev wrote: post #32

In a sea of startups/products, where everything feels as if it is already created - how does one come up with a product idea? I feel that every problem I try to tackle is not a real problem. It’s a vitamin and not an ibuprofen. The real problems already have a solution - which means that I’d need to spend a few years and a few hundred thousand dollars to just get a chance to maybe make a profitable product.

I agree with your vitamin vs painkiller analogy. There are successful products that started catering to a finite set of audience and still making a lot of money. For example, one from my list is ChurchCo making $45K/month just by doing websites for Churches. Can you believe? So, just by picking unique features and niching down the audience, you can still place a safe bet without spending a few years and hundreds of d…

Agreed

"There’s only two ways I know of to make money: bundling and unbundling." - Barksdale

https://hbr.org/2014/06/how-to-succeed-in-business-by-bundli...

ChurchCo is just an unbundling of Squarespace it seems like with a specific niche. I guess we've reached the point where Squarespace is now big enough, with so much configuration options, that it's confusing for people who "Just want a good looking church website".

Small fish in a huge market seems like a great strategy.

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#52

Post by upen946 »

corry wrote: post #48
segmondy wrote: post #37

$1k MRR is nothing to brag about. Seriously, we need to start aiming much higher. If this was "My 1hr a day side project hitting $1kMRR in 12months", then it's impressive. But I often see these non side projects and I just want to voice that it's absolutely not impressive. If you started a business mowing lawn, cutting hair, you better be way past $1K revenue in 6 months. If you're fully committed to building a start…

I had the same initial reaction. A SaaS product taking that long to get to $10K ARR is not exciting from an ambition perspective - maybe from a side-project POV, though, it would be. While the traditional VC yardsticks* are both way too reductionist AND now well out-dated, they at least provide a rough sense of how good of an opportunity you have. * I've heard these are the perquisites for VC SaaS funding rounds (not…

Right, for something at VC-sclare ofcourse it should in millions of $$$.

Here we are talking about purely small indie hacking companies that are growing big. :)

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#53

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

segmondy wrote: post #37

$1k MRR is nothing to brag about. Seriously, we need to start aiming much higher. If this was "My 1hr a day side project hitting $1kMRR in 12months", then it's impressive. But I often see these non side projects and I just want to voice that it's absolutely not impressive. If you started a business mowing lawn, cutting hair, you better be way past $1K revenue in 6 months. If you're fully committed to building a start…

15$/hr * 40 hr/wk * 50 wk/yr / 12 months/yr = $2500 MRR. Assumes 2 weeks unpaid vacation. And that's assuming $0 expenses, so all revenue can go into your own crap salary. $1k MRR is $6/hr, below minimum wage anywhere in the US. If all you're getting is $1kMRR, you might as well just get a job at McDonalds, you'll have a nice pay raise.

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#54

Post by cj »

segmondy wrote: post #37

$1k MRR is nothing to brag about. Seriously, we need to start aiming much higher. If this was "My 1hr a day side project hitting $1kMRR in 12months", then it's impressive. But I often see these non side projects and I just want to voice that it's absolutely not impressive. If you started a business mowing lawn, cutting hair, you better be way past $1K revenue in 6 months. If you're fully committed to building a start…

> $1k MRR is nothing to brag about.

Going from $0 to any number greater than $0 is an accomplishment IF your product is genuinely something new, where product market fit is unknown. It means you've found a customer. Which is very difficult. Many startups never find even a single customer.

Obviously finding your first customers is nothing to brag about if you're mowing lawns, because everyone on the planet is aware that anyone with grass in front of their house knows someone occasionally needs to mow it. Same with anyone who has hair on their head.

> even $10k a month isn't impressive after 24 months

> might be better of leetcoding and getting a job at one of the FAANGs

I don't think the point is to maximize lifetime income. But you're absolutely right that if your life goal is to maximize lifetime income, statistically speaking, you shouldn't start a startup.

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#55

Post by cvhashim »

bkovacev wrote: post #32

In a sea of startups/products, where everything feels as if it is already created - how does one come up with a product idea? I feel that every problem I try to tackle is not a real problem. It’s a vitamin and not an ibuprofen. The real problems already have a solution - which means that I’d need to spend a few years and a few hundred thousand dollars to just get a chance to maybe make a profitable product.

Rarely does someone come up with a solution in a domain space they know nothing about — it happens sometimes but still rare. Don’t forget that business is ultimately just selling a solution to a problem. This is very simplified but my thoughts: Find an interesting niche domain or area of interest, dive deeply and learn about the problems and challenges, find vendors and individuals in that domain and talk to them about their problems, research some solutions, create landing pages and validate some of the ideas and solutions you come up with, get a nice customer pipeline who will pay you real money for a solution, build the solution and ship the solution, profit off that solution.

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#56

Post by upen946 »

wenbin wrote: post #49

This is an awesome list! $1k MRR may not sound impressive in Silicon Valley / New York etc., but 1) it's actually pretty good in other places in the world - the world is just too big, too diverse; 2) not many people have the skill to make $1k MRR without working for an established companies, and not many people have the time / energy to do side hustles or have guts to quit their job to find time to do so. $1k MRR is…

Thankyou.

Exactly. This is for all those people who would love to have their first sweet spot of achieving $1K MRR to start with.

For Silicon Valley/New York, ofcourse $1K MRR is nothing. But we have lot examples who went on nomad life style travelling countries and working from places with cheaper cost of living and in those case $1K MRR is still big.

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#57

Post by encoderer »

segmondy wrote: post #37

$1k MRR is nothing to brag about. Seriously, we need to start aiming much higher. If this was "My 1hr a day side project hitting $1kMRR in 12months", then it's impressive. But I often see these non side projects and I just want to voice that it's absolutely not impressive. If you started a business mowing lawn, cutting hair, you better be way past $1K revenue in 6 months. If you're fully committed to building a start…

$12k a year sounds like a terrible job but that’s because you’re comparing it with an entirely different job and career path. It’s like saying, why be a math professor, just go work on Wall Street. Different pursuits!

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#59

Post by upen946 »

55555 wrote: post #58

If it takes you 24 months to hit 1k MRR you are working on the wrong thing. Just stop and move onto a better opportunity.

Not really. Most people trying to reach $1K MRR in 24 months might have been already working in a day job.

So, infact, apart from their day job, this $1K MRR is an add-on if not life changing.

Re: Startups that have hit more than $1K MRR in about 12-24 months

#60

Post by upen946 »

amelius wrote: post #41
unreal37 wrote: post #28

As someone who loves a good domain name and collects them, your domain name just gave me a small brain aneurysm.

You shouldn't go into computer programming. Typical code looks way worse.

Well, I would suggest nocode then :)
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