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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

#141

Post by themdonuts »

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)…

Yeah, this resonates with me. My side project for 6 years was generating very, very little. Enough for a few pints a month.

Fun fact: The project survived a total destruction of the datacenter where it was hosted (remember the ovh incident?) which took it offline for maybe 4 months (no backups at the time). Luckily the server it was on didn't get melted.

Also at some point I started questioning why was I still working on it for so little. My wife convinced me to keep going and to be honest I still enjoyed working on it.

Then on year 7 things started to change, and on year 8 I was able to quit my daily job! I'm on year 10 now. It's not a 7 figure business, but I enjoy every single day. Also the flexibility it gives me is excellent.

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

#142

Post by cbeach »

Great job on this webapp, it's a really easy-to-use platform. I've toyed with the same startup idea myself, having tracked my personal finances and life projection for years now using Google Sheets, Grafana and other tools.

Just an annecdotal bit of feedback: I would like to continue using ProjectionLab but $109/year is beyond what I'm willing to spend, especially given ProjectionLab doesn't integrate with any live tracking of property prices / investment portfolio valuation etc.

If it were $40/year I probably would subscribe. But $109 is too much to justify (and I am reasonably well off).

Have you A/B tested different pricing levels to find the sweet spot that maximises revenue?

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

#143

Post by NotGMan »

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…

If he wouldn't he wouldn't have make it.

You have to take the risk in your life or you're gonna be stuck where you are.

Was he lucky? Perhaps.

Would he make it if he wouldn't risk it and put in all the work that he need with nothing to show if he would fail?

He would not.

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

#144

Post by Croak »

taneq wrote: post #122
bravesoul2 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the lesson is: ship the thing that makes you feel like you are playing Golf doing it (assuming someone who plays Golf enjoys it alot). The golfer won't regret their day on the course. And if you fail on the passion project it won't feel like a fail. I have another idea too. It's the win anyway system. Pick something that if you fail you use those skills at work and get ahead. E.g. the side project is also the…

I don’t really like golf but I’d imagine that if I did, I might stop liking it once I had to do it professionally every day even when I didn’t feel like it.

Choose not to pursue CS because of that. I like coding a lot and can spend lots of brainpower and time coding things I am interested in. Once you start working as a programmer, coding becomes something else. Therefore I rather take a different career path and can keep enjoying my little projects.

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

#145

Post by yesimahuman »

scubakid wrote: post #74
pixelmonkey wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fu…

I don't need/want account linking, I just want $VTSAX etc recent prices. I know it can be noise but what you're saving me from is really annoying copy/paste work when I come in quarterly to update numbers and track my progress.

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

#146

Post by yesimahuman »

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.

That's the best part about VTSAX and chill: you only ever have last closes. Really though this does not need to be real time at all, just recent enough to save me toil

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

#147

Post by scubakid »

themdonuts wrote: post #141
teiferer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)…

Yeah, this resonates with me. My side project for 6 years was generating very, very little. Enough for a few pints a month. Fun fact: The project survived a total destruction of the datacenter where it was hosted (remember the ovh incident?) which took it offline for maybe 4 months (no backups at the time). Luckily the server it was on didn't get melted. Also at some point I started questioning why was I still workin…

That's an impressive number of years to stick with a product you questioned. Probably 2x longer than Google would have maintained it lol

(who says products by indie devs always have higher long-term support risk?!)

I'm really happy to hear it turned around for you. The 4 months of down time sound terrifying. Can you share more about how you navigated that, how it impacted customers, and what you were able to restore vs what you couldn't, and what processes you changed in the aftermath?

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

#148

Post by xpe »

K0balt wrote: post #133
teiferer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 onl…

Even carefully thought out comments like the above are only hints and ideas relating to making sense of the world. They don’t talk about building quantitative predictive or causal models to disentangle the many factors driving success, failure, and everything in between.

I recommend The Book of Why by Judea Pearl as a starting point for digging into the lesser-known techniques of assessing causality. The causality work over the last couple of decades is still under-appreciated and not used often enough.

One is unlikely to find anything close to rigor when it comes to business or entrepreneurial books. They can be a starting point for analysis, but their bias to tell an interesting story and sell copies often work at odds with truth seeking.

At the risk of oversimplification, one decent model for acting comes from decision theory. (1) Look at the data probabilistically and act accordingly. (2) If you don’t have enough data, assess the cost/benefit of acquiring more.

But we don’t have the time or the discipline to make all important decisions this way, do we? Probably not. So, (3): if you act on intuition, be honest with yourself about that. Be curious about yourself and your decisions and how you can do better. Focus on areas where improvement is likely to make an outsized impact. (This leads back to #2, except it is about seeking better knowledge and self-awareness instead of just data.)

I try not to exaggerate, but these three principles might be sufficient to subsume all other business advice.

Embrace the uncertainty and move forward anyway.

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

#149

Post by scubakid »

Croak wrote: post #144
taneq wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really like golf but I’d imagine that if I did, I might stop liking it once I had to do it professionally every day even when I didn’t feel like it.

Choose not to pursue CS because of that. I like coding a lot and can spend lots of brainpower and time coding things I am interested in. Once you start working as a programmer, coding becomes something else. Therefore I rather take a different career path and can keep enjoying my little projects.

What career path did you pursue instead, and how does that fit into the framework of your life and goals? Do you ever wonder if you could have bounced around enough to find a CS role that might enhance rather than corrupt your passion? Or do the odds of that just seem too low in your experience?

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

#150

Post by alittlebee »

As someone that has tried and failed at many attempts over a decade, I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you. This is so wonderful, and I couldn’t be happier for you. Thank you for sharing your journey, and lessons learned .

I’m now a single working mom supporting 2 young kiddos on my own, so my time has become limited; but I’ll be back :)

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