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

openstartups.listt.xyz

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

#81

Post by segmondy »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #67
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…

This seems like totally random and unfocused feedback. The fact is, for ANY business $1mm MRR is SOMETHING, which could be brought to the bank for a loan to continue business, as well as a proposal to investors. It's a sign that a least at some level your business is WORKING. I fail to see the point of this negativity.

Are we talking about $1,000 or $1,000,000?

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

#82

Post by fxtentacle »

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…

You're underestimating the profit margin and the benefit of not having to do the work yourself.

Mowing lawns, I'll be busy for those $1k MRR. If I have a SaaS with optimized implementation and a halfway solid foundation, those $1k MRR might be equivalent to $950 gross profit. And I'll get those $950 even if I don't do a thing.

So those $950 are additive. I can still mow the lawn to turn them into $1950 monthly.

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

#83

Post by peterwoerner »

corry wrote: post #50
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…

Forgot to say in my other comment: a huge difference between those businesses and a SaaS product is margin. A $10k MRR SaaS product at 85%+ margins, requires no equipment other than a laptop to maintain, is vastly superior to a lawn mowing company IMO, which will have a truck, a mower, labour, etc. So from a margin perspective, you'd vastly prefer the SaaS product.

In the case of the lawn mowing company, you don't have employees showing up at customer houses drunk. You don't have to deal with your employees running into houses and cars with their trailers, trucks etc.

Lots more head aches with in person businesses than SaaS. I have a neighbour who switched from lawn care to SaaS (selling other peoples tools), says it doesn't matter how much you pay him, he wouldn't go back.

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

#84

Post by d33lio »

upen946 wrote: post #76
d33lio wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but in 2020 expecting to grow "entirely organically" or by word of mouth without ads is a falsehood. This is honestly one of my biggest qualms with Indie Hackers. They claim that design and marketing isn't needed if you just "try long enough" and tell dev friends about your project. Granted, this depends on your target audience, but if your product isn't targeting developers the calculus just doesn't quite c…

There are still many people who are Indie Hacking and still seeing some success. For example, one of my SAAS products starting making revenue this month without spending a dime on ads until now. Agreed it takes some time. I am not disagreeing on Ads part. These days most people are spinning landing pages, spending money on ads and validating real quick.

That's awesome! I totally agree that in certain cases a passive approach can be better, however given you can write off advertising as a business expense certain projects can benefit substantially from relatively small targeted ad campaigns. Granted, as a developer it's been incredibly tough to learn how to advertise and write effectively for marketing.

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

#85

Post by Grustaf »

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…

It IS a milestone, but 1k a month is not a meaningful amount in any rich country. Remember, it's revenue for your company, not your net salary. Not even your gross salary.

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

#86

Post by carnivor »

DVassallo wrote: post #80
carnivor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes. This is all real data. No false data. All data taken from various sources like stripe, paddle, baremetrics data. I get that, but the owner of the site reiterating the validity does not really verify anything. At least a page on the website that explains the methodology of arriving at these numbers would be better, maybe with some anonymized screenshots even.

The methodology is in the sentence you quoted.

Listing payment processors does not explain methodology. Did the startup owners send screenshots of their revenues from these processors to listt.xyz? Or did listt.xyz reach out to stripe, paddle, baremetrics ask to verify revenue data?

If the whole premise of listt.xyz is showcasing financials of private businesses, I wouldn't trust the data integrity so blindly without at least some credible explanation of how those numbers came to be.

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

#88

Post by reader_mode »

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…

Depends on how much time you have to spend to make it work - if it's a full time thing 1k MRR is >7$/hour if you spend 160 hours a month on it - if you can code anywhere in the world that's below lowest tier remote coding gigs, triple that and you approach low end remote gigs.

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

#89

Post by rmah »

sho wrote: post #6

Wow. There's a lot of projects here that must have taken a lot of work - and look really good - but the MRR is just dismal. There's one there that's pretty close to a side project of mine - not even a grand. Somewhat offputting. Does this mean that many of these projects could stand to put a lot more effort into sales? Would that make a reliable difference? Or is it really just this hard? Or a bit of both? I feel lik…

I wouldn't consider the revenue streams of any of these companies to be meaningfully representative of potential market size in any way. Pretty much any niche market you can think of will be 100's of times larger. You can literally put pretty rocks you pick up in a streambed and generate higher revenues. With a little hard work and luck, some of the companies listed will grow 1000's of times in the future (but they'll still be considered "small businesses").

To argue the other side, an old boss of mine would say that some of the products listed are really features. One of his favorite mantras was: "A feature is not a product and a product is not a company."

To respond to the "is it really just this hard", well... yes and no. If you are unwilling to market/promote/sell your product or just give most of the value away, then sure, it's very very hard. However, if you're willing to hustle on the "business" side of things, then it may not be that hard. One thing that too many techies get wrong is that they try to be innovative in everything. Don't -- just innovate along one axis. For everything else, just copy best practices and you'll be fine.

Side note: commission driven sales is a viable strategy for some product categories in some markets. But for most, it's not. Remember, in business, almost everything is context dependent. Any good tactical advice of "do X" is also bad advice in a different context. And vice versa.

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

#90

Post by tima101 »

The Church Co - $199/month for ultimate package. You can probably charge churches more since there is lack of technical knowledge. Are founders and employees of Church Co religious or not? Is there any moral barrier in helping churches to collect donations?
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