It's amazing and gives me energy to do the same
Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
251–260 of 264 posts
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 pos…
> Expecting people to run around and do Web searches (or even roam around other pages at the domain)
One. Single. Click.
Two if you go via one of the menus not clicking the main logo.
> because posters are too lazy to add three descriptive words
As far as the writer is concerned, if you are looking at the blog you are already interested and know what you are looking at. Is it their fault that someone deep-ish linked without providing extra context for you?
> why waste our time with empty blather masquerading as a how-to?
You could have just moved on and read something else, accepting that not everything is written for everyone, and not wasted more time moaning about it…
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, literall…
Btw, there is a typo: renogiate should be renegotiate
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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 pos…
> Expecting people to run around and do Web searches (or even roam around other pages at the domain) One. Single. Click. Two if you go via one of the menus not clicking the main logo. > because posters are too lazy to add three descriptive words As far as the writer is concerned, if you are looking at the blog you are already interested and know what you are looking at. Is it their fault that someone deep-ish linked…
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Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#255Always encouraging to see that ideas can work out. I'm not quite managing the "let's build a team" aspect just yet but otherwise similar journey and outcome over a (slightly) longer period. I just wanted to not deal with certificates, now I deal with certificates all day every day lol: https://certifytheweb.com
Congrats on 100k organizations, that's impressive. How much of a pain point is support? At that scale, is it becoming a burden without more of a team in place? I'd be curious to hear more about what the ups and downs on your journey have been like.
Probably a couple of hours on support per day on average, some days less, some days more. The vast majority of users don't ask for support, they prefer to read the docs, read the community forum, goggle stuff or hunt-and-peck options in the app. Roughly 90% use the free version. If everyone used the paid version I could have a very large team, but the reality is the product competes with many free tools.
If you update the app or refine docs in response to previous support questions it does streamline the experience but there are always folks who just don't read docs and there are many who will purchase the app just for access to support so they can figure something out.
I'm sure some apps are more support heavy than others, but ours is aimed at system administrators and with that comes an assumed level of competence (in reality, many people are only in the role because nobody else could/would do it but even they are quite independently resourceful).
The disadvantage of users helping themselves is that you don't get feedback from them or learn about their use cases. Knowing how/why people are using your stuff is really valuable for development, so if I had the team for it then dedicated support engineers would follow up with customers early on even if they don't have issues.
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#256It'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…
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…
Congrats. A word of warning: I scaled my SaaS site to $1M in AAR in a few years, but then a lot of competition appeared and a decade later it's still at only $1.5M. I have a good time running it and I can live comfortably while feeding my team, but with my initial success I had hoped it would go up further faster. So keep those expectation low, the next million may not come as easily as the first.
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congrats on 100k organizations, that's impressive. How much of a pain point is support? At that scale, is it becoming a burden without more of a team in place? I'd be curious to hear more about what the ups and downs on your journey have been like.
Probably a couple of hours on support per day on average, some days less, some days more. The vast majority of users don't ask for support, they prefer to read the docs, read the community forum, goggle stuff or hunt-and-peck options in the app. Roughly 90% use the free version. If everyone used the paid version I could have a very large team, but the reality is the product competes with many free tools. If you updat…
Did you consider adding an optional survey (or just an input or two) somewhere in setup or the onboarding flow? I bet some % of people would willingly tell you how/why they are using the software.
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#258Earlier 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…
Congrats. A word of warning: I scaled my SaaS site to $1M in AAR in a few years, but then a lot of competition appeared and a decade later it's still at only $1.5M. I have a good time running it and I can live comfortably while feeding my team, but with my initial success I had hoped it would go up further faster. So keep those expectation low, the next million may not come as easily as the first.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything strategic you would have done differently after reaching that 1M ARR milestone?
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Congrats. A word of warning: I scaled my SaaS site to $1M in AAR in a few years, but then a lot of competition appeared and a decade later it's still at only $1.5M. I have a good time running it and I can live comfortably while feeding my team, but with my initial success I had hoped it would go up further faster. So keep those expectation low, the next million may not come as easily as the first.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything strategic you would have done differently after reaching that 1M ARR milestone?
Good question. The main problem I had was being too slow scaling up from 1 person. Building a good team is tricky, it's very hard to convince great devs to join you when you are by yourself at a time when they had a pick of jobs from FAANG. Even if you can match the salary of well funded startups, other companies can offer working with a larger team.
So you have three options: 1. hire sub-par people, 2. get VC funding to hire an entire team, or 3. continue doing most stuff by yourself.
I tried hiring sub-par people. That was a mistake, they took way more effort and negative energy than I got in return from the salary I paid them. I did not want to take on VC funding to be able create a large team at once, and in hindsight I think that was a good idea because several of my competitors did, and then had to fold 5 years later when they ran out of funding and their revenue was not high enough. (Also, the freedom of being a 100% owner and not having anyone tell you what to do was a major quality of life improvement for me that I never want to give up again once I tasted it. I hope you savor it as I do!)
So being smarter about hiring is what I would do differently, but that's easier said than done. I think the job market today probably does have more high quality devs available that don't mind being employee number two.
Edit: to add, once competitors appeared it became much more of a marketing game than a web dev game, because customers just tend to click the first three google hits. Getting good at marketing, and hiring the right people for that, is a whole other ballgame if you're a dev.
Re: Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Knowing what you know now, is there anything strategic you would have done differently after reaching that 1M ARR milestone?
Good question. The main problem I had was being too slow scaling up from 1 person. Building a good team is tricky, it's very hard to convince great devs to join you when you are by yourself at a time when they had a pick of jobs from FAANG. Even if you can match the salary of well funded startups, other companies can offer working with a larger team. So you have three options: 1. hire sub-par people, 2. get VC fundin…
I think there's a certain type of engineer that actively prefers working in a small team where you can make an outsized impact and wear many hats. I'm one of them lol.
I wonder if you could bring on just one really good dev who matches that description vs scaling up to a larger team. In many cases, a very small team of A+ players can beat a large team of B players.
Although it sounds like you're saying marketing/distribution may have played a larger role in your trajectory? In hindsight, do you think focusing your team-building efforts on the marketing side would have been a better strategy?