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Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#51

Post by jarofgreen »

I started and work on a calendar listing tech events that is doing really well in Scotland. https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/ The project is almost 2 years old and I get a bit of income on advertising.

I'm just now seeing if the collaborative wiki calendar platform I've created could be used by other groups. I've made a platform where anyone can sign up for a calendar at https://hasacalendar.co.uk/ and Open Sourced the engine at http://ican.openacalendar.org/ This side of it has very little income currently. The next big task to do is redo the home page to make clearer what it does and work on the design, this side of things is not my strong point. :-/

I decided to Open Source it just because in the end that is what I'd rather do. There are a lot of pluses and minuses each way that are hard to compare, but both Open Source and Closed Source are a lot of work and as I'm doing the work I may as well have it the way I prefer. It already has it's first Open Source install, a live Jazz music calendar.

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#52

Post by isaacbowen »

I've been running http://gkapp.com/ since 2010 and http://uselocksmith.com/ since sometime last year - they're both content protection tools for Shopify.

Which is not a niche I expected to be in. I made what became Gatekeeper as a one-off for a client at the time, saasified it, and threw it on the Shopify app store. I got lucky, but its success (five figures annually since then) has pretty solidly convinced me: there's value in solving your own problems and sharing the solutions. (And also that Shopify is a solid platform to work with. I love you guys.)

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#54

Post by trillium »

I'm working on http://shobia.com.

It's going to be two things. First, a wiki for hobbies and interests like home improvement. That's the basic, ho-hum part.

The other, exciting part is that it'll provide a variety of finder and recommendation tools. At the moment, I'm working on a tool to help people find career matches. But in the long run, I hope the site will cover topics like finding apps and video games, cars, outfits and so much more!

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#55

Post by iamwithnail »

sourc3 wrote: post #19
iamwithnail wrote: post #10

I'm building http://test.gmbl.io as a side project - it'll be a nice stats site, I mainly built it for my own use and then decided to make it accessible on the web, rather than just replacing my spreadsheets. Might monetise it eventually, but I just want to finish it off in the end. (Excuse the designed-with-a-potato look, the prototype designs are at http://test.gmbl.io/static/prototype/1/index.html though!) Edit: w…

As a soccer fan, this makes me happy! When do you expect to finish? I would love to use this as a back-end API for a couple of app ideas I have. By the way the data side of the business is pretty tough to break into. What are your thoughts on that?

You might like www.kickdex.com as well... Rather cooler than what I'm doing.

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#56

Post by amitmathew »

My current business Cram Fighter (http://cramfighter.com), a study planner for standardized tests, started as a side project for me to learn iPhone programming. I didn't even plan to sell the thing. But over a couple years it has grown at a good clip and is well over ramen profitable, but not quite mortgage + 1 newborn profitable :) I'm hoping to get there by next year though. I'm pretty proud of it since it's ridiculously niche and very much an accidental business.

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#58

Post by rachelandrew »

Our side project (http://grabaperch.com) became our main source of income in January 2013 however it took almost four years to get to that point. Perch was profitable if you didn't take our salaries into account after 24 hours, in that it was paying for it's own expenses. However for it to become the entirety of our business was a much longer road.

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#59

Post by sourc3 »

iamwithnail wrote: post #55
sourc3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a soccer fan, this makes me happy! When do you expect to finish? I would love to use this as a back-end API for a couple of app ideas I have. By the way the data side of the business is pretty tough to break into. What are your thoughts on that?

You might like www.kickdex.com as well... Rather cooler than what I'm doing.

Thanks for the link. I have used an RSS based feed by a gent in the UK and he was charging about 20euros/month for the feed. It has been two years and I cannot get the link. Will keep looking for it.

Re: Poll: Is your startup or side project profitable?

#60

Post by a85 »

soofaloofa wrote: post #34
a85 wrote: post #29

I launched a paid upgrade for Postman ( http://getpostman.com ) last month and it's been doing pretty well. :)

Is this Jetpacks? Our test team has been using it at work. I would consider offering corporate plans if possible.

Yep. And great to hear that! I am working on corporate plans and gathering feedback from customers. Can I get in touch with you somewhere?
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