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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

#131

Post by mattbuilds »

teiferer wrote: post #114
44za12 wrote: post #107

I love how these stories always start with “I just wanted to scratch my own itch” and end with “...and now I’m running a company with a payroll bigger than my old day job.” It’s inspiring, but also a little bit intimidating. Makes you wonder how many potential seven-figure ideas are just sitting in people’s “maybe someday” folders. The real lesson here? Ship something, even if it’s ugly. You can’t optimize what doesn…

To me, a lesson is: If you keep chugging along on your idea then you might get lucky and be the one out of 10,000 for whom this single-entrepreneur-bootstrap project works out, you get to be your own boss, have a big payroll and it ends up as a success story on HN. Without that luck, you are among the other 9,999 where it just died. But without trying, you are guaranteed failure (though with less frustration perhaps)…

True but if you are building it for yourself then you will still have something useful in the end. Chances are that you also probably enjoyed or took satisfaction in the process of building it. Also, if it is truly a passion project and not just attempt to make money, it’s probably more interesting than most of the stuff shared.

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

#132

Post by scubakid »

konsalexee wrote: post #104

The parrot on the OGs shoulder is the goal (besides raising the ARR lol)

Funny thing is he's my fiancé's bird, which she's had for 20 years, but somehow the only person he likes now is me. Kind of a bummer for her. But he's happy I guess haha

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

#133

Post by K0balt »

teiferer wrote: post #96
bruce511 wrote: post #19

It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) Congratulations for walking this line correctly. I agree that some sort of market validation is necessary to at least pretend you are on the former not the latter. Those early usage spikes are helpful reminders that there is a business here somewhere. I'll also m…

> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) > Congratulations for walking this line correctly. As much as I like to agree with this message ... isn't there a big portion of luck involved here that makes the difference between the two sides of this line? In other words, aren't we seeing huge survivorship…

There is a fallacy in over application of the survivorship bias concept.

Literal survival for early cultures was often a matter of luck. Agriculture was an innovation that improved the odds. Early cultures that practiced agriculture outperformed those that did not, and were more likely to survive black swan events. All major cultures in existence are now based in agriculture.

Should we assume then that because we only see agrarian cultures that that is not useful information, because of survivorship bias in the resulting sample?

On the contrary, survival itself is the signal that is useful… it’s really a matter of what behavior the signal can be attributed to- was it the agriculture, or was it the human sacrifices? Was it the red ochre face paint? The storing of grain in pots instead of skins?

Failure bias is just as large of a red herring. It’s easy to imagine that it retrospect, we understand why failures happen, and sometimes the reasons are very clear. That’s why there is often more to be learned from failures than from successes. But still, it’s easy to look at the things they did right that successful example B also did, and then conclude those things weren’t critical to success because they sometimes end in failure.

The point is that we shouldn’t judge the value of information based on ideas like “survivor bias” but instead look for more methodical and logical connections between causes and outcomes, and not fall victim to cargo-culting nor casual, hand wavey dismissal of potential lessons.

Survivorship bias mitigation is a matter of determining which survivor signals are instrumental , and those which are coincidental.

Many things are fraught with risk and low probabilities of success. That does not make them primarily a matter of luck.

Aviation is a great example of an environment that is nearly 100 percent risk, where without knowledge and the correct tools the very small chance of not dying would be purely a matter of luck.

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

#134

Post by SenHeng »

javcasas wrote: post #120
SenHeng wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Persistence and Stubbornness are just different words for the same personality trait. The former is used when looked at a positive light while the latter is used in the negative. You're persistent if your project succeeded but you're stubborn if you keep at it despite unfavourable outcomes.

So the difference between the two is just luck? I apply to a thousand job offers, get rejected every time => I'm stubborn. I apply for job #1001, I get the job => I'm persistent.

Yes.

You were stubborn for applying for jobs beyond you.

Your persistence led you to finding that amazing job.

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

#135

Post by DougN7 »

bentocorp wrote: post #86
scubakid wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on 350k downloads, sounds like you had a good year! You mentioned SEO finally kicking in. Do you attribute that to anything in particular? Any strategic changes you made? Also curious how you incorporate AI tools into your workflow, if at all.

> You mentioned SEO finally kicking in. Do you attribute that to anything in particular? Any strategic changes you made? I attribute the search traffic growth to: 1. A critical mass of content, after a number of years of writing - without a lot of search traffic for the first few years 2. Re-wrote and polished some of my earlier articles so that they were improved 3. Wrote more guides related to my app which were hel…

How concerned are you about Google’s AI summaries keeping people from going to your site as a lot of publishers are now seeing? Or maybe it does affect product sites as much?

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

#136

Post by scubakid »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #112

Wicked PMF there. Getting to 150 MMR right away is a good sign. Especially for a HN post.

how do you define PMF? I keep hearing conflicting definitions. Seems like any time someone declares they've found it, there's another who jumps in to explain why they technically haven't yet.

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

#137

Post by scubakid »

shahzaibmushtaq wrote: post #103

Small steps daily, big rewards personally and financially in the long-term. Well-written and speaks for every struggling entrepreneur out there. Congratulations, Kyle and his wonderful team!

thanks! I'm not a fast blog post writer, and sometimes feel guilty taking time away from building to draft updates like this (took me a couple days to write and rewrite this one). glad to hear it turned out to be a decent read.

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

#138

Post by bravesoul2 »

scubakid wrote: post #136
bravesoul2 wrote: post #112

Wicked PMF there. Getting to 150 MMR right away is a good sign. Especially for a HN post.

how do you define PMF? I keep hearing conflicting definitions. Seems like any time someone declares they've found it, there's another who jumps in to explain why they technically haven't yet.

To me this is a wild success story but to someone else this may be meh that isn't much.

I think 1M ARR shows you are on to something and getting sales off the bat is a good indicator.

Not an expert but I feel PMF is a rear view mirror thing.

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

#139

Post by fullstackchris »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #129
yesimahuman wrote: post #40

Congrats! I'm a customer. Haven't used it too much but so far I like having it to check in periodically. One wish list item: live securities prices to avoid having to copy/paste values all the time. For example, with that you can have a live snapshot of the values in most brokerages

> live securities prices This is probably impossible in 2025. Many stock exchanges now make more money from selling data feeds than trading fees. It is a little bit crazy. The best that you can hope for is a delayed feed, or last closes.

This is incorrect. Almost all brokers nowadays allow for OAuth connections where you can stream any data you'd see in your broker platform to any consuming web application (given the consuming web application does all the paperwork, dev work, and so on)

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

#140

Post by scubakid »

SenHeng wrote: post #119
bruce511 wrote: post #19

It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) Congratulations for walking this line correctly. I agree that some sort of market validation is necessary to at least pretend you are on the former not the latter. Those early usage spikes are helpful reminders that there is a business here somewhere. I'll also m…

Persistence and Stubbornness are just different words for the same personality trait. The former is used when looked at a positive light while the latter is used in the negative. You're persistent if your project succeeded but you're stubborn if you keep at it despite unfavourable outcomes.

The way I see it, persistent founders keep looking for evidence and adapt / adjust course based on what they learn. Stubborn ones just keep going, even when there are clear signals that it's time to step back and refocus.
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