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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

#121

Post by esskay »

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…

See to me the "running my own company with a payroll bigger than my old day job" isn't something I'd want - it actually sounds like a total nightmare to me.

The whole point to me is getting to a stage where you can work when and where you want and only if you want to. Having it set up in such a way where its small enough to manage but big enough to self sustain if you wanted to go off on vacation for a few weeks at the drop of a hat.

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

#122

Post by taneq »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #113
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…

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.

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

#123

Post by Vinnl »

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)…

Well, you are at least guaranteed to not get this kind of success.

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

#124

Post by y04nn »

javcasas wrote: post #120
SenHeng wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Persistence and Stubbornness are just different words for the same personality trait. The former is used when looked at a positive light while the latter is used in the negative. You're persistent if your project succeeded but you're stubborn if you keep at it despite unfavourable outcomes.

So the difference between the two is just luck? I apply to a thousand job offers, get rejected every time => I'm stubborn. I apply for job #1001, I get the job => I'm persistent.

I would say that you are persistent if you keep getting rejected but keep improving but using feedback and you would be stubborn if you don't change a thing while keeping being rejected.

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

#125

Post by senko »

Interesting to see the inflection point when Jon joined. I recall something similar when Marko joined Plausible as a marketing person, which also started as a solo effort by a developer.

To my knowledge Pieter does both himself, but he built a sizable following online, which boosts all his marketing efforts.

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

#126

Post by anentropic »

jonkuipers wrote: post #29
braden-lk wrote: post #27

Nice! How did you go about finding a growth marketer that was a good fit with your business?

I found him and he originally told me to get lost ;)

What attracted you so much to the project at that time?

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

#127

Post by trcf22 »

bravesoul2 wrote: post #113
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…

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…

Exactly! If you can get some exposure as a « specialist », build a network or just learn a ton of new skills (marketing, accounting, PR, devops) it tends to be a win/win. That’s what I’m currently doing and by no mean would I have better myself as much in any other way.

If you enjoy Charlie’s, you will definitely enjoy Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, especially the part about being an « expert »: a few talks in empty classrooms in a famous Uni, a radio show nobody knows and voila, you get some cred!

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

#128

Post by trcf22 »

bentocorp wrote: post #89
scubakid wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of scale/footprint, roughly how many articles did it take to achieve that critical mass of content? And yeah, with the state of AI tooling, I think junior engineers, assistants, new grads, etc, may currently have the most to worry about.

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!

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

#129

Post by throwaway2037 »

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.

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

#130

Post by pjc50 »

scubakid wrote: post #43
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

Account linking for automated balance updates is our most upvoted and most controversial feature request. I agree it would be really nice if it worked well, but my understanding from other founders is that aggregator reliability still leaves a lot to be desired in 2025, and is always a huge expense and support burden. As a small, bootstrapped team building a long-term planning tool where current balances are only a s…

Account linking should be reasonably straightforward in the EU with PDS2 open data. I was able to hack together some python via one of the intermediary services to get up to date bank data. There is the complication that the bank doesn't always have fully live data.

Approaches involving password sharing you're right to stay well away from.

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