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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

#151

Post by optymizer »

teiferer wrote: post #115
bisRepetita wrote: post #109

Thank you so much Kyle for sharing all this. This is very inspiring. I will put a few more extra hours today in my project thinking about you. I'd love to have some info about the hiring of Jon, anything you may feel like sharing, while I realize a lot of it is very confidential. For example: - I am wondering how the working relationship got started since you write that he "spent a year contributing real value", and…

> I will put a few more extra hours today in my project thinking about you. And that's the recipe for failure right there. Your passion side project needs to be fueled by passion, not thinking about somebody else's success that you are trying to replicate.

> Your passion side project needs to be fueled by passion

Maybe he's in that valley of despair right now that the article shows occurs many times. Passion is fleeting and at times you just need a little inspirational jolt to get back into it and regain some of that passion.

Also, to share a personal experience, passion is not sufficient. You need favorable conditions as well (or the ability to create them). For example, the article talks about working nights and weekends. I'm not sure if the author has kids or what the arrangement is in his family, but personally, as much as I wanted to work whole weekends on my passion project, I would feel like a shitty father if I ignored my kids over the weekend for months, so the project gets put on the back burner a lot while I'm biking with my kids outside and having fun.

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

#152

Post by codecutter »

cbeach wrote: post #142

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 t…

I tend to agree with the sentiment. The only reason I subscribed to ProjectionLab was to appreciate the hard work of Kyle. Otherwise, "New Retirement" (now called Boldin) serves my purpose. It provides similar features and it provides automatic updates too.

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

#153

Post by scubakid »

alittlebee wrote: post #150

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 :)

Thanks so much, that means a lot. It's challenging when time and life pull you in so many directions. Wishing you and your kids all the best. When you jump back in, I'll be rooting for you.

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

#154

Post by K0balt »

xpe wrote: post #148
K0balt wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

Thanks for the book recommendation! I’ll look at that.

>> Embrace the uncertainty and move forward anyway.

This. This is the key factor that prevents attempts at success, or leads to failure by a thousand cuts.

There is no gain without risk. Significant gain usually comes through significant risk. Position yourself in life to be sufficiently resilient to take 10:1 bets with 100:1 odds until you can weather the 100:1 bets with 100000:1 odds. Avoid the 1:50 bets that pay at 1:50 odds like the plague… they are a comfortable quagmire of rotting aspirations.

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

#155

Post by themdonuts »

scubakid wrote: post #147
themdonuts wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My business is transactional where email is still king for all after sales support. I guess that makes it way easier to handle than a SaaS one.

The biggest impact for the business was not making any sale during this period and my SEO rankings going down. Actually the site disappeared from search. I guess the biggest impact for me - personally - was psychological. All production data was gone and I was seeing it as a sign I should just let it go. I had all the source code, so in theory I could do it, but not sure I would have the motivation to.

Then in the end my thingy was hosted in a section that was salvaged from the fire. I saw it as a sign that actually I SHOULD keep going, lol. I don't remember exactly how long it was off but yeah, 4-6 months. Everything was restored though.

The only thing I did was to implement automatic backups and to a different datacenter. I remember from the incident, one issue for many was their servers were hosted in Strasbourg with backups also hosted there.

I've touched on this in my last comment, but my wife is by far my biggest motivator. It's tough life for us working solo, with our minds playing tricks on us all the time. It always sounds so much easier to go and work for someone else again or to just start a new side project from scratch. Not sure if there's any Alex Hormozi fan here, but one thing he's always repeating is to not give up, not start anything new over and over and just keep pushing that one project.

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

#156

Post by amelius »

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.)

Strange analogy. I'd say stay away from that line and run into the direction of persistence.

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

#158

Post by scubakid »

themdonuts wrote: post #155
scubakid wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My business is transactional where email is still king for all after sales support. I guess that makes it way easier to handle than a SaaS one. The biggest impact for the business was not making any sale during this period and my SEO rankings going down. Actually the site disappeared from search. I guess the biggest impact for me - personally - was psychological. All production data was gone and I was seeing it as a…

Ah so with this business model there was minimal impact to existing customers? That's fortunate.

Out of curiosity, what kind of transactional product has a substantial production database that would be daunting to re-build in a 4-6 mo window given you still had the source code during that time?

And I hope you've taken your wife out for some nice dinners (or whatever she likes). Totally agree that having a supportive and encouraging partner can make all the difference in challenging times.

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

#159

Post by scubakid »

xwiz wrote: post #157

Glad to hear of your success! Projection Lab is such a great product.

Thanks! It's interesting how easy it is to move the goalposts on product vision. It has come such a long way since the beginning, but I still wake up every day thinking about how much more I feel compelled to build.

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

#160

Post by themdonuts »

scubakid wrote: post #158
themdonuts wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My business is transactional where email is still king for all after sales support. I guess that makes it way easier to handle than a SaaS one. The biggest impact for the business was not making any sale during this period and my SEO rankings going down. Actually the site disappeared from search. I guess the biggest impact for me - personally - was psychological. All production data was gone and I was seeing it as a…

Ah so with this business model there was minimal impact to existing customers? That's fortunate. Out of curiosity, what kind of transactional product has a substantial production database that would be daunting to re-build in a 4-6 mo window given you still had the source code during that time? And I hope you've taken your wife out for some nice dinners (or whatever she likes). Totally agree that having a supportive…

The business is a car rental platform for niche destinations https://bonjourpaco.com/

At the time I was working with maybe 30 providers and it would be doable to rebuild the server and reconfigure all providers, cars, insurance, etc. Content would probably take longer, but also doable. But at the time I took it as a sign to shift to something else.

Glad I didn't and that the project came back from the ashes, literally.

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