Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

$8600 MRR business on Airtable

founderbeats.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 90 posts

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#41

Post by andycloke »

z9znz wrote: post #38

He had/did the perfect combination: - right place at the right time (almost certainly a factor here) - actually building and releasing something - promoting it, letting the world know about him/it These success stories are really nice, but it's important to recognize that it usually takes all three of these key elements to be successful. Obviously if you don't do anything, you cannot get success. But if you do someth…

Founder here - that's a great analysis.

The way I manufactured right place/ right time was using this framework: https://twitter.com/clokehead/status/1340949414081392640?s=2...

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#42

Post by z9znz »

andycloke wrote: post #41
z9znz wrote: post #38

He had/did the perfect combination: - right place at the right time (almost certainly a factor here) - actually building and releasing something - promoting it, letting the world know about him/it These success stories are really nice, but it's important to recognize that it usually takes all three of these key elements to be successful. Obviously if you don't do anything, you cannot get success. But if you do someth…

Founder here - that's a great analysis. The way I manufactured right place/ right time was using this framework: https://twitter.com/clokehead/status/1340949414081392640?s=2...

Awesome. Thanks for the advice!

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#43

Post by andycloke »

callmekatootie wrote: post #36

I have always wondered how does one go about restricting user actions based on which pricing plan they have selected? Do they have to code it manually or is there a SaaS / library that does the job?

I coded it manually as the business logic is so Data Fetcher specific I don't think a library would help much. This blog post does an amazing job of explaining the approach you need: https://blog.checklyhq.com/building-a-multi-tenant-saas-data...

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#44

Post by mehphp »

z9znz wrote: post #38

He had/did the perfect combination: - right place at the right time (almost certainly a factor here) - actually building and releasing something - promoting it, letting the world know about him/it These success stories are really nice, but it's important to recognize that it usually takes all three of these key elements to be successful. Obviously if you don't do anything, you cannot get success. But if you do someth…

I think this is mostly right, but it makes it seem like successful apps are more of a crap shoot than they really are.

Too many (most?) apps are built without spending any time researching whether it solves a real problem people have (and are willing to pay for). I get it, we want to build things, not do market research.

Most people think that to build a successful app, you just have to "come up" with a brilliant idea and then go build it. That's not the case at all (while it does occasionally work, THAT is pure luck). Successful apps usually happen because the founder(s) saw a real pain point or gap in the market, and then build something to solve that.

You'll notice that the approaches are almost completely opposite:

- Build something and hope that people need it - Find a problem that people actually have and build a solution that solves it well

Of course, this doesn't guarantee success (nothing does), but it vastly increases your chances of not wasting time building something nobody wants.

Also, I'm not naive about the different backgrounds/privileges people have; of course luck plays a factor here. I'm speaking directly about people who are already in a position to create an app (i.e. a lot of HN readers)

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#45

Post by mritchie712 »

z9znz wrote: post #38

He had/did the perfect combination: - right place at the right time (almost certainly a factor here) - actually building and releasing something - promoting it, letting the world know about him/it These success stories are really nice, but it's important to recognize that it usually takes all three of these key elements to be successful. Obviously if you don't do anything, you cannot get success. But if you do someth…

> So, the best policy is to just stay in forward motion.

forget who said it, but I like the quote "Action produces information". If you just try a lot of stuff, at the very least you will learn what works and what doesn't.

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#46

Post by ssharp »

I'm curious how much time customer support takes for products around this price and how much impacts the viability of a business this size.

At $8600 MRR * 12 ~= $103k. Obviously some level of expenses here but let's assume very high margins.

$8600 / $40 plan = 215 customers.

Given all that, how much time does it take to service 215 customers' support needs? Assuming profit would be in the $80-90k range, that's multiples lower than what a developer could make in a job, so is this a full-time work load or is it pretty minimal and could operate as a side-gig? It sounds like the plan here is to continue to grow well beyond the current state but just curious about this particular moment in the business and how sustainable it is if it doesn't grow.

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#47

Post by mritchie712 »

andycloke wrote: post #39
emptysea wrote: post #35

I’m curious if you worry about Airtable incorporating your add on into their core offering? I feel that’s always my worry about building on top of someone else’s platform.

(Founder here) That's definitely the biggest risk to the business (other than competition). Airtable seem committed to being a platform that third-party developers can build businesses on, in the same way Shopify are. So I think (hope) they'd acquire me, rather than just cloning it, to maintain their reputation as a platform. But they definitely could do this and it's pretty scary! For now, my strategy is to try and…

you can probably worry about this less. I had the same worry when building seekwell.io and it turned out to not matter at all. Google did eventually launch some things you could use instead of us, but they sucked and by the time they launched it we were way ahead in features.

They also had a ton of restrictions that made sense for Google (e.g. mostly only supporting their own cloud products as a source), but didn't make sense for most customers. Not a single one of our customers has said "we're using the built in Google features" as a reason for cancelling.

Airtable is likely better then Google is this respect (will listen more closely to their customers), but probably not much. They are still a big company and you can do better.

ps - charge more!

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#48

Post by rexreed »

andycloke wrote: post #29

Founder here! Happy to answer any questions people have. I'm also building in public here: https://twitter.com/clokehead A couple of people have been confused by 'on Airtable' in the title. Data Fetcher ( https://datafetcher.com/ ) is an extension built (with code) on Airtable's marketplace in the same way you'd build on the App/ Play Store. It's not a no-code app built using Airtable. MRR is up to $9400 since I did…

Do you handle payments outside of Airtable? Just curious how the payment system works and who controls the customer relationship and what Airtable takes as a cut, who handles the recurring payments, etc.

Re: $8600 MRR business on Airtable

#50

Post by mkl »

noasaservice wrote: post #49

Reminder: Just because this person did it, does not mean his actions are reproducible. If it was reproducible, then every VC would be doing this.

So nobody should try anything that anyone else has had success with? An awful lot of successful companies wouldn't exist if people followed your thinking. These aren't the kind of numbers VCs like, anyway.
Post reply on HN