101–110 of 197 posts
I have built Iconfinder into a profitable service while having a day and studying at business school. I still do some work next to the startup, but it is basically paying for servers etc. plus a salary for me.
Iconfinder is great, I use it every times I need to get icons. Icons are very well picked. Do you manually select each one ?
I built review site ten years ago and sold it. It was profitable within 6 months off organic traffic and lead gen. Approximate revenue by year: $10k, 40k, 70k, 100k, 150k, 250k, 500k, 750k, 1.5M, 2.5M. Built entirely while working for another startup (unrelated), first 3 years I was in graduate school, year 4 I was a product manager for another startup. Year 5 I finally took the leap to run it full-time. I was the so…
The question I have is, how much more beneficial was it to have your SO involved at some meaningful level? Sales is an interesting spot because it makes a case for itself to justify the time required.
Are there any pros / cons of involving your SO directly and at the core of your business that you'd be able/willing to share? I'd be really interested to know. Thanks for sharing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some small tips that can make it more doable. * If you can, take the train into work. That's about 1.5 hours of additional productive startup time. Sitting in a car is dead time. * Get rid of your lunch hour. Park yourself at a nearby Starbucks and add an extra hour each day of productive startup time. Do this every day. * Given your spouse's variable work schedule, my guess is that your most productive time is in th…
About the lunch hour, one always needs to be careful of the rules of the company they work for regarding intellectual property. Working from a Starbucks shields you from using company equipment/network, but I'm sure in some cases, lunch time is not exactly your own time. But otherwise, great points! As far as I'm concerned, my commute doesn't allow me very convenient public transportation. (though I should look into…
I wanted to do this so jumped in and read the comments to this post to try to get some ideas on how to do this. They made me a bit depressed: Most people achieved this while working as a consultant (i.e. flexible hours, etc.), not as a big company employee, like me. Also from what I gather, many data points come from young people, unencumbered with a family life and kid(s). So, my more specific question is: Has anybo…
I hear ya... This is something I struggle with too. Long workday at Mega Corp., 45min+ drive-commute each way, 3 kids (7, 5, 2), a spouse with a highly variable work schedule, and ongoing charity work. It's really, really hard to make time for a side business in there too. Are you working on something? How are you making the time for it? How's your progress?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some small tips that can make it more doable. * If you can, take the train into work. That's about 1.5 hours of additional productive startup time. Sitting in a car is dead time. * Get rid of your lunch hour. Park yourself at a nearby Starbucks and add an extra hour each day of productive startup time. Do this every day. * Given your spouse's variable work schedule, my guess is that your most productive time is in th…
great tips. Anything for me?? I work in a typical IT services company in India. 1Hr commute one way, have teleconference calls till 11pm. then eat and sleep. But should be in office by 10AM. The problem is my wife also works in the same project. :-( Fortunately we are in a joint family. food, my sweet baby, cleaning, washing etc.. are all taken care.
I built review site ten years ago and sold it. It was profitable within 6 months off organic traffic and lead gen. Approximate revenue by year: $10k, 40k, 70k, 100k, 150k, 250k, 500k, 750k, 1.5M, 2.5M. Built entirely while working for another startup (unrelated), first 3 years I was in graduate school, year 4 I was a product manager for another startup. Year 5 I finally took the leap to run it full-time. I was the so…
Thanks
You mean "profitable side-project"? "Startup" usually means a company that fulfills a few of the below: - something the founders do full-time - less than 3 years old - in a bootstrap phase or burning VC money - in search of a business model (not yet profitable) - has the potential to grow
I think that you're talking about a very specific type of startup business. People start and build businesses while employed all of the time. Some of those businesses require that the owners devote their full energies to them at a certain milestone. Others do not -- plenty of software and consulting roles do not require 100% commitment, particularly if you have a flexible employer and can bootstrap. Many college prof…
Starting a business has been done in many ways. Having been in business for 15 years I have gotten to meet a lot of other small business owners and there is as much variety in how established businesses came to be.
Having this delusion of its only a "real" startup if you do it this way is hogwash. So many great businesses were built on hard work, sacrifice, long hours, juggling more than one thing at once, until the new business could stand on it's own two feet.
Knowing when, and what your new business needs (more time, stepping away from other obligations) is a critical skill. Simply committing all of your time to one thing without a wider business, or varied experience can in some cases be a detriment.
It brings in a small amount of money each month and it pretty much requires no maintenance. However I would not say that it is profitable (yet), there is a fair way to go before it brings in enough money to have justified the time.
I would spend more time implementing new features if I thought it would result in a significant increase in paying users.
...not sure what to do with it now really!?!? Suggestions welcome!!!
I started http://www.justunfollow.com as a way to learn Google Appengine. Sent a tip to TechCrunch, @arrington seemed to like it and profiled it. It started making profits but I did not quit. I finally had to quit after about 1 year of this product going live because it started making me more money in 2 months than my day job was paying me for an entire year! I quit my job around 9 months ago. Finding too much of tim…
Am I reading that correctly that that site is making 25k+ a month? How is that possible? Do people pay for the site or is it from ads only?
It took me 10 years of working on a few apps on the side, but today they are a $600K/year business and my full time job. Not the shoot-for-the-moon social apps everyone wants to do, but I'm quite happy.