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SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

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Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#31

Post by jason-grishkoff »

Delmania wrote: post #29
mathgeek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which translates to "after years of work to establish a brand, this founder turned that brand into a successful business opportunity." A great story and excellent business sense, to be sure. The "10 months" part is typical headline speak.

It's almost like creating a successful business is something that takes a few years of focused effort as opposed to something you can do on the side.

Almost. I built Indie Shuffle on the side, so it applies for business #1 :)

I think building a business is always going to take a lot of focused effort. That said, I also think that getting an early start -- doing it on the side -- is a much smarter idea than quitting everything you have and launching into it head on.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#32

Post by wyc »

Kudos! I get really excited when I learn about people working hard at creative and useful things like this. I also think it's important to note that, while this is surely no small feat, it sounds like this is the fruition of the author's accumulated experiences, network, and reputation "[over] the course of my ~7 years running a blog", and probably even longer with a strong passion for music and the people in music.

This comment is not to downplay the author's accomplishments--I think keeping to something for even 5 years is ridiculously hard, and that should be commended, especially if it resulted in something that people find valuable. Rather, I hope that people reading this won't lose hope when, 10 months into their own businesses, they don't see the same levels of popularity or financial success. This project seems to be the tip of an iceberg. I think luck is also a strong component, but it definitely favors the prepared.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#34

Post by jason-grishkoff »

rhizome wrote: post #27
jason-grishkoff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stumped. Not sure why that would be happening.

Hold fire, it just happened on an unrelated site. I had updated Debian Testing this morning and it turns out a couple other things are hinky, so it's likely not to be your fault.

Fire held :-D

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#35

Post by dwightgunning »

cantbecool wrote: post #25
mathgeek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which translates to "after years of work to establish a brand, this founder turned that brand into a successful business opportunity." A great story and excellent business sense, to be sure. The "10 months" part is typical headline speak.

Right, and it doesn't hurt to say he worked for Google either.

On the contrary, I thought this was a strange and irrelevant fact to include in the article. There's no indication that his role at Google had any bearing on the success of the business.

Perhaps if he'd worked on Google Music (or other music related area of the business) or the referenced exposure to "top brass" opened some doors... but it seems unlikely this is the case.

There's certainly correlation between Google employees and successful initiatives... but not much beyond that.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#36

Post by jason-grishkoff »

textread wrote: post #33

Congratulations Jason Why did you pick Digital Ocean over Meteor Galaxy hosting ? Would you point me to some resources that you looked into while setting up Digital Ocean for Meteor hosting ?

1) price; 2) they had a really good tutorial for setting up Meteor on Digital Ocean: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-depl...

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#37

Post by trymas »

scribu wrote: post #23

Actual tl;dr: Founder built a webapp for streamlining music submissions made by artists to music blogs. One important element of success was having a popular music blog himself.

It reminds me of a story how Red Digital Cinema Camera Company was born.

Few years ago I've found a motivational article that everyone can make a successful business out of their garage even in the field of high end technology. I googled RED camera's founders name - multi-billionaire founder of Oakley. Probably his garage looked like a high tech version of Jay Leno's car garage and not like the Jobs' and Wozniak's garage.

Dude have been building his blog business/image/trademark for many years and successfully capitalised on that. Kudos to him.

We do not say that Apple successfully reached 1 million dollars in phone sales in 10 minutes. No - it took them 30 years to reach that point.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#38

Post by edoceo »

dwightgunning wrote: post #35
cantbecool wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and it doesn't hurt to say he worked for Google either.

On the contrary, I thought this was a strange and irrelevant fact to include in the article. There's no indication that his role at Google had any bearing on the success of the business. Perhaps if he'd worked on Google Music (or other music related area of the business) or the referenced exposure to "top brass" opened some doors... but it seems unlikely this is the case. There's certainly correlation between Google…

After working at BigCo and saving steady pay while nurturing your startup at night for a few years. You have a visibility to traction. And a cushion against failure. So you can take the "risk". It's easy to take a "risk" when it's not really there.

It's not like this founder started with $100 and made an ongoing business employing a few others.

Started on second, scored on as RBI and media talks about your Grand Slam.

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#39

Post by napoleoncomplex »

jason-grishkoff wrote: post #2

SubmitHub founder weighing in here -- thanks for sharing, Courtland! If anyone has any questions about SubmitHub or Indie Shuffle (technical or business), feel free to ask :) Edit: in case you're curious, here's what the dashboard looks like for bloggers - http://i.imgur.com/mJG1LP5.png

Just wanted to chime in and say Indie Shuffle is one of the best resources I've found for new music out there (for my taste).

While I have no need for SubmitHub's main purpose, the Popular tab looks like it can serve as another source of fresh stuff.

All in all, massive respect for your work promoting new music. As a sidenote, I'd happily donate some money through Patreon/whatever to support an ad-free version of the site (I know, I know, one in a million :).

Re: SubmitHub: how a solo founder built a $46k/mo SaaS business in 10 months

#40

Post by [deleted] »

jason-grishkoff wrote: post #9
dboreham wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you pay in transaction fees to take that $1 user payment?

Payments are powered by Braintree (using their securely hosted iframes feature). Fee is 2.9% + $0.30. Same as Stripe and PayPal - they've all pretty much set this as a "standard" for the fee. Probably worth noting that the minimum transaction on SubmitHub is $5. https://www.braintreepayments.com/

[deleted]
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