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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

#201

Post by immibis »

bruce511 wrote: post #191
immibis wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hugely about luck. We can look back on any success story and identify what made it successful (sometimes) but it only has a little predictive power. Success in startupping ultimately comes from either trying a lot of things (amplifying your luck until it approaches 100%) or survivorship bias when you get lucky on your first try and then write about how smart you are. It helps to have an idea of what might succee…

Luck plays a huge part. But it's not the only part. All the luck in the world won't win me an Olympic medal. Yes, luck plays a part. But it also takes the right work, learning the correct skills, having the discipline and so on. Working on the right thing, at the right time, in the right way are all crucial ingredients. All the luck in the world though can't help you if you're playing the wrong game.

That's luck. No one knows the right thing, the right time, or the right way. Studying past right things, past right times, and past right ways can give you maybe a 2% chance of getting them right instead of 0.2%. Only after someone got them right (by chance) can we look back and say "Wow! That person got them right!"

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

#202

Post by chamomeal »

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)…

It’s also entirely possible to make something that just gives you a little extra cash, which can be a huge difference. I imagine an extra $2,000 a month of fun, self-made income feels pretty incredible.

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

#203

Post by DidYaWipe »

dvt wrote: post #75
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?

Because it doesn't provide insightful guidelines on how to avoid pitfalls or how to work around this or that impediment or, or, or.

Whatever, man. I guess we have different standards for what constitutes "informative."

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

#204

Post by DidYaWipe »

dspillett wrote: post #118
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…

> Does it even say what the product or service is? Do you really need spoon-feeding that directly? The whole site is about the product. Much more information about it is literally a click-or-two away. Describing it specifically on that page, given how much information is already around it on directly linked pages, would seem superfluously wordy (even to me, someone who just used “superfluously” instead of “overly”).…

"Spoon-feeding?" Saying WTF the product is isn't spoon-feeding. Expecting people to run around and do Web searches (or even roam around other pages at the domain) because posters are too lazy to add three descriptive words is douchey as hell, and way too often accepted (and even actively promoted) here.

"I much prefer that to a self-aggrandising comment essentially stating 'I'm better than them because I wouldn't post something like that'"

I don't see anyone saying that. What I said was, why waste our time with empty blather masquerading as a how-to?

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

#205

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

chatmasta wrote: post #44
scubakid wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. For a while there, it wasn't clear to me which side of the line I was walking. Something that stuck with me from Poor Charlie’s Almanack is that low expectations are a cornerstone of a happy life. I built this for myself first, so when people actually signed up and paid, it was incredibly motivating. I was thrilled to spend my free time treating those early customers like royalty and building more of what the…

Another lesson here: you built for a specific community who is passionate, money-motivated, and concentrates in specific social spaces (forums, reddit, etc.) where you can promote your business. This isn't always a recipe for success, but it's a damn good starting point. You need to adjust to the sensitivities of the community to avoid overly self-promotional content, but you always have a clear channel to promote yo…

It’s very much what Sahil Lavingia recommends doing in The Minimalist Entrepreneur

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

#206

Post by bravesoul2 »

scubakid wrote: post #192
bravesoul2 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

lol so have we gone from "wicked PMF" to just being "onto something"? the rear-view thing sounds kinda like "you'll know it when you see it"... which I'm sure is true for some people, but idk if I would know when to declare PMF without a more precise definition.

Yes. I'm saying the first HN post was a great signal, but a probability. It could have flopped from there. But sales from a cold HN post to me is good pot odds, so stay in the game!

The rear view mirror thing is of course true: you can only know the market by testing it by trying to sell your thing to it. Anything forward looking is a prediction.

You are always making decisions that are like bets.

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

#207

Post by yibg »

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…

There are probably tones of ideas that would be viable businesses if executed. One problem though is between "scratching my own itch" and "payroll bigger than my old day job" is working "4-6 hours every night after work, entire weekends, holidays". And even that is no guarantee of getting to a big payroll (another thread is discussing persistence vs stubborn).

Not many people are even in a position to do this (family, health etc), or have the mental and physical energy to do this for years. This is one of the potential benefits of something like UBI. It allows people to pursue these ideas without having to work another 9-5.

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

#208

Post by scubakid »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #206
scubakid wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol so have we gone from "wicked PMF" to just being "onto something"? the rear-view thing sounds kinda like "you'll know it when you see it"... which I'm sure is true for some people, but idk if I would know when to declare PMF without a more precise definition.

Yes. I'm saying the first HN post was a great signal, but a probability. It could have flopped from there. But sales from a cold HN post to me is good pot odds, so stay in the game! The rear view mirror thing is of course true: you can only know the market by testing it by trying to sell your thing to it. Anything forward looking is a prediction. You are always making decisions that are like bets.

Definitely agree on thinking in bets and probabilities.

Is your sense that we're officially at PMF now? Or maybe last year even?

Or do you think the question is fundamentally subjective and depends on who you ask and what numbers seem compelling to them, like you kind of alluded to before?

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

#209

Post by bentocorp »

DougN7 wrote: post #135
bentocorp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The site's primary purpose is as a product site for my app. The content that I have written is for this purpose, with organic Google search traffic being a bonus.

Due to this, Google AI summaries are not a huge consideration.

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

#210

Post by bentocorp »

trcf22 wrote: post #128
bentocorp wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a lot of articles in total - only 35, with the first being published over 7 years ago. You can see the full list here: https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/ Perhaps the age of the content helps, though I haven't done a deep dive into SEO practices myself. In the last year, when search traffic increased, I've increased the output to almost 1 article per month.

Would you have the same strategy if you were to do it again? Do you have LLMs in mind in your SEO strategy (like really long articles bragging about how good your app are in a non human readable way? Would love to have your thoughts on that!

Thanks for the question.

As I noted it took 7 years to actually get any substantial Google traffic – if I was to start again I would potentially change some of what I've written to be more effective or focus on different topics earlier.

However my approach is always to write what will be useful and interesting for humans, if Google search also finds it relevant then that's a bonus. I never write just for machines... as I think that's a long term losing strategy.

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