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Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

projectionlab.com

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Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#71

Post by aledalgrande »

FredPret wrote: post #18
mdorazio wrote: post #13

Congratulations! But I’m disappointed with no mention of profit level in this post or another one linked. My last business I scaled to 500K ARR in less than two years, with $20K in total annual profit including the $0 my cofounder and I paid ourselves for many hours of work. I shut it down a year later and strongly regret the amount of work I put into it. There’s an ARR metric trap in the founder community where peop…

If ARR grows enough, there should be plenty of room in there to pay the founders. For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off, look at Uber, Amazon, and ServiceNow. I know these are very much outliers. All three had rapid revenue growth but profits at (or far below) zero. But for all three, the founders are sitting pretty today. https://valustox.com/NOW https://valustox.com/UBER https://valustox.com/AM…

> For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off

Pretty sure parent was referring to gross profit, because that's what you'd look at to pay your salary. These examples are not relevant.

Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#72

Post by DidYaWipe »

Wow, that whole thing was completely devoid of useful content. Does it even say what the product or service is?

"We’ve also added a few contractors to the team. And these guys are legends. They come straight from the ProjectionLab user community"

So... the product was obviously built, because it had a "user community;" so now they've added contractors? Whoop dee doo.

Is there some advice or playbook we're supposed to take away from this? Or is it self-congratulatory spam?

Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#74

Post by scubakid »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #66
scubakid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Account linking for automated balance updates is our most upvoted and most controversial feature request. I agree it would be really nice if it worked well, but my understanding from other founders is that aggregator reliability still leaves a lot to be desired in 2025, and is always a huge expense and support burden. As a small, bootstrapped team building a long-term planning tool where current balances are only a s…

To provide a data point from a long-time ProjectionLab user, I don't really need account linking. I use Monarch Money to link cash and CC accounts to track spending. I use a custom Google Sheet to track retirement portfolio performance. If =GOOGLEFINANCE isn't enough, there is a nice paid extension called WiseSheets, which adds a =WISE function that fills all the gaps. My monthly ProjectionLab process is to update th…

I'm glad to hear you have a workflow for updating current finances that's already serving you well. I do plan to add a lot more automation/integration options, it's just always a question of where to invest my time to deliver the most value to the community efficiently.

Something people don't always realize instantly is that with a long-term planning tool, the point is to spend the bulk of your time focused on the future, not fixating on all the latest daily stock price fluctuations... in fact, those can sometimes be a source of noise/distraction.

Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#75

Post by dvt »

DidYaWipe wrote: post #72

Wow, that whole thing was completely devoid of useful content. Does it even say what the product or service is? "We’ve also added a few contractors to the team. And these guys are legends. They come straight from the ProjectionLab user community" So... the product was obviously built, because it had a "user community;" so now they've added contractors? Whoop dee doo. Is there some advice or playbook we're supposed to…

Why are you being such a stick-in-the-mud? It's an interesting and inspiration post on HN about a successfull bootstrapped indie startup. HN is primarily a startup & tech-driven community, so obviously we're all interested in stories like this. In fact, I miss the days where HN was almost solely startup post-mortems or success stories. How is the post even remotely self-congratulatory spam?

Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#78

Post by scubakid »

dvt wrote: post #76

Amazing story and huge congrats! It's funny how the tool itself seems quite niche-y, but bootstrapping to 1M ARR in 4 years definitely proves that hypothesis wrong; fantastic job :)

Thanks! Initially I had been looking around for an existing tool to use myself, so I knew there was at least one person out there willing to pay for something like this. And r/financialindependence has 2.3m members, so I hoped there might turn out to be more than one.

Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#79

Post by jonkuipers »

ggap wrote: post #73

Congratulations! It always helps if you start with solving it for yourself. A marketer like Jon is every side project strength

Thanks! Kyle solved it for me too, which is how I found him. He lit the fire and I'm just tossing on more logs.

Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

#80

Post by scubakid »

AstroBen wrote: post #77

Congrats! Wondering if you have any tips for what worked well with marketing?

after that first Show HN back in 2021, the majority of our growth has been product-led and word-of-mouth.

some bloggers and thought leaders in the financial independence space also found the tool and shared it in the early years, which helped get some momentum going.

we're finally starting to make a little headway now with SEO, and we're beginning to reinvest/experiment with some paid channels for the first time this year.

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