Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank • Hacker News Board

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#51

Post by rwillystyle » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 7:02 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #36

bdunn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. AMAZING advice Jason. I took Amy Hoy's 30x500 course, which opened my eyes to how a 10% month to month growth rate can be crazy in just a few years. The chart shown in a recent post of hers is mind boggling: http://unicornfree.com/2012/3-years-of-bootstrapping-half-a-...

Thanks for the link :) That graph is nice but this is the real graph you want to see: https://img.skitch.com/20120331-ft3faju2jpqseq3ucff1fgi31h.p... That's the "estimated" (all open trials) revenue growth for Freckle over its whole life time. Look how stagnant it was, then slow, and for how long. And compare that to now :) NB: real billing, trailing a month behind any given date, is 5-15% less than the estimate (due…

I hope people are skeptical of these results. I wouldn't be surprised if you made most of your money from your get rich quick program.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#52

Post by muhfuhkuh » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 7:23 PM UTC

rwillystyle wrote: post #51

ahoyhere wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link :) That graph is nice but this is the real graph you want to see: https://img.skitch.com/20120331-ft3faju2jpqseq3ucff1fgi31h.p... That's the "estimated" (all open trials) revenue growth for Freckle over its whole life time. Look how stagnant it was, then slow, and for how long. And compare that to now :) NB: real billing, trailing a month behind any given date, is 5-15% less than the estimate (due…

I hope people are skeptical of these results. I wouldn't be surprised if you made most of your money from your get rich quick program.

I'm going to assume that it's because you're new here that you have a chip on your shoulder. Understandable.

But, simply by looking at how long it took her to get to that revenue number, why would you think her program is "get rich quick"? Years is not quick, in Internet, Business, Internet Business or any other metric of time.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#53

Post by davidedicillo » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

whileonebegin wrote: post #42

jasonkester wrote: post #20

Awesome. And definitely don't be discouraged that you're only bringing in $100/month. The product that I'm currently living comfortably off of made me less than half that much after its first month. Don't think of it as $100/month, think of it as $100/month/month. That's your current acceleration, and it extrapolates out quite nicely! Here's a more carefully worded version of my take on products like this: http://new…

Do you think recurring billing makes more sense to web apps than desktop apps? I think users are entrenched with the idea of "buying" a desktop app and "subscribing" to a web app.

The upcoming Adobe Creative Suite will be offered also as subscription.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#54

Post by dasil003 » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 7:37 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #46

monsterix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story from Amy, is super awesome stuff. Not many have made it to that point - 3 years - however. On the other hand, all this discussion seems more like a silver lining towards disruption in angel investing space too. Sublime for entrepreneurs, disastrous for others may be. It's threads like these that make my day at HN :)

Not many have made it to that point - 3 years - however. This is true, but there are only 2 reasons I see: 1. Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable." Something I teach against in my class, called Idea Quicksand. My philosophy about this is explained the first 3 free samples avail…

> Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable."

I think about this a lot. Much like a writer, developers do the best work objectively when they "write what they know". What this means in practice is that the market is flooded with products that are at the union of common developer knowledge. That is why there are so many products for consultants out there. Basecamp, Freckle and Projector are all examples of this. Obviously there's always room for a new product, especially when you have used many of these products and decided exactly why you don't like them so you can come up with a uniquely better product.

But when I get outside of the tech bubble, I see that the majority of the business world has pathetic technical vision, but a lot more money. Now obviously you will never be a Facebook or a Twitter in an established market, but if you can combine some domain knowledge with cutting edge tech skills, there is a lot more low-hanging fruit than fighting over early adopters for the latest tech toy.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#55

Post by ahoyhere » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #54

ahoyhere wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not many have made it to that point - 3 years - however. This is true, but there are only 2 reasons I see: 1. Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable." Something I teach against in my class, called Idea Quicksand. My philosophy about this is explained the first 3 free samples avail…

> Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable." I think about this a lot. Much like a writer, developers do the best work objectively when they "write what they know". What this means in practice is that the market is flooded with products that are at the union of common developer know…

I see that the majority of the business world has pathetic technical vision, but a lot more money.

Careful. They may have more money in aggregate, but a lot of them don't buy tech solutions, don't want to change, aren't actually business-minded (e.g. always looking for improvements). This goes double for local biz like bars, restaurants, salons, and stores, and triple for education and nonprofit and NGOs.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#56

Post by monsterix » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 8:16 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #48

monsterix wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh oh! Didn't know you were here too. It's nice to see entrepreneurs like you, coming out openly with business figures. Helps newbies like me, to go on and keep focus only on the product. Unabated by tiny bubbles we see in funding side of story - aka "herd mentality".

Hi. That's what I'm here for. Why "Uh oh"? I'm not the boogeyman ;)

Hi, yep. It's just that I wasn't aware of your presence before I wrote that compliment on your work. :)

Is it possible for me to connect over email with you?

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#57

Post by alexknowshtml » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 9:21 PM UTC

philip1209 wrote: post #14

Worth it to discover Intercom - looks quite useful. I just wish it could directly access my tables.

Another huge vote for Intercom. I use them every day to get to know our customers at http://beanstalkapp.com and the product has saved me a TON of time and made my work much more easy to gain insights from.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#58

Post by patio11 » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 9:40 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #20

Awesome. And definitely don't be discouraged that you're only bringing in $100/month. The product that I'm currently living comfortably off of made me less than half that much after its first month. Don't think of it as $100/month, think of it as $100/month/month. That's your current acceleration, and it extrapolates out quite nicely! Here's a more carefully worded version of my take on products like this: http://new…

Ditto what Jason said. I was similarly a little dissapointed with the early numbers on AR before I realized that $100 in one-off sales means $100 of booked revenue for the year but $100 of subscription revenue means ~$1,000 for this year and almost as much next year, too.

The graph for the first year of AR and BCC turned out to prove this out in a very dramatic fashion. Recurring revenue: the best kind of revenue.

P.S. Charge more. I just got a very uneventuful email about a particular customer hitting their 30 day mark w/o canceling including my system's guesstimate of their likelihood to stay a customer and their LTV. Probabilistically counting my chickens before they hatch, they're worth like a whole month of bingo cards and we've never even exchanged an email.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#59

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 9:47 PM UTC

bdunn wrote: post #28

jasonkester wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, but the only person who considers the "root" of your product blog to be the blog home is you. Everybody else thinks they're reading a blog on your product site, and that clicking the logo will take you to the root of that. In other words, the homepage for your product. When it doesn't, they tend to simply hit the back button enough times to leave.

Agreed. BTW, I just changed this. Clicking the logo while at the blog now returns you to /

Is it a Wordpress blog? I recently installed Wordpress and noticed the same problem but I haven't figured out where to change it yet.

Re: Building a Product: One month later, $119.50 in the bank

#60

Post by toumhi » Tue, Apr 03, 2012, 9:47 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #55

dasil003 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Choosing the utterly wrong product. Smart people like us are drawn like moths to the flame of "great ideas," rather than "things which could help people and be really profitable." I think about this a lot. Much like a writer, developers do the best work objectively when they "write what they know". What this means in practice is that the market is flooded with products that are at the union of common developer know…

I see that the majority of the business world has pathetic technical vision, but a lot more money. Careful. They may have more money in aggregate, but a lot of them don't buy tech solutions, don't want to change, aren't actually business-minded (e.g. always looking for improvements). This goes double for local biz like bars, restaurants, salons, and stores, and triple for education and nonprofit and NGOs.

I'm actually realizing that now.

I'm also finding hard to motivate myself to make something for people that are very different from me (I have a file sharing solution catered to small businesses in France). I imagine it's easier when you care naturally more about your end users.

When all my friends think this market is super-saturated, what I find out is that most of these small business people are just happy to use emails and the occasional FTP.