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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

#41

Post by growbell_social »

xyzzy9563 wrote: post #16
ipaddr wrote: post #6

The validation piece I don't understand. From first sale to first dip to each peak and fall when was the validation reached? First sale, 1k revenue? You can find 5 users who will pay but that doesn't validate a million a month. What does product validation mean here.

I only have a product that makes $6k per month, but from my point of view, the validation is how many paying users sign up per day. Even one per day can add up. Hope this helps.

If you can make 6k per month. You can probably get to 60k per month.

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

#42

Post by chrisweekly »

mdorazio wrote: post #13

Congratulations! But I’m disappointed with no mention of profit level in this post or another one linked. My last business I scaled to 500K ARR in less than two years, with $20K in total annual profit including the $0 my cofounder and I paid ourselves for many hours of work. I shut it down a year later and strongly regret the amount of work I put into it. There’s an ARR metric trap in the founder community where peop…

I don't think I'd call earning $250k "easy". Yes a significant % of us on HN are there, but we're still in the minority.

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

#43

Post by scubakid »

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 small piece of the picture, we need to be really careful about what we choose to take on. Currently there are still dozens of other high-priority feature requests that will also deliver real value but without those downsides.

I do go back-and-forth on this though. And I think eventually there will come a time for it.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the tool, and thanks so much for your support!

p.s. also might be worth noting that there is a plugin system, and community members have built integrations that can pull in balance updates automatically from some of the popular budgeting tools.

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

#44

Post by chatmasta »

scubakid wrote: post #22
bruce511 wrote: post #19

It'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…

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 your very specific product that meets their needs.

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

#45

Post by nico »

Great success story. Congratulations

Also, thank you for sharing the ups and downs. Seeing the details of the monthly bars chart was super enlightening. I usually only see the nice looking overall positive growth chart without any nuance, so I really appreciate the transparency

Hope you keep going and growing

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

#46

Post by mNovak »

I remember seeing this on HN years ago. Congrats on the growth! I think this is still an underserved field (shockingly, considering how many people it impacts).

I really wish just saving a basic plan to refer back to didn't cost $100/yr. The one-off 'Basic' plans never made sense to me, considering it takes hours to set up a relatively complete model -- might not even have time to do it all in one sitting.

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

#47

Post by combyn8tor »

How has your experience been running a discord server? I imagine it's useful for feedback but time consuming to manage? I'm reluctant to start one as I'm concerned about the time consumption.

Also, how did you find Jon and what was their skillset when you met? Did they come on as a contractor in the beginning?

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

#49

Post by scubakid »

nico wrote: post #45

Great success story. Congratulations Also, thank you for sharing the ups and downs. Seeing the details of the monthly bars chart was super enlightening. I usually only see the nice looking overall positive growth chart without any nuance, so I really appreciate the transparency Hope you keep going and growing

Thanks! Seeing indie hackers building in public transparently about the ups and downs like pieter levels, danny postma, jon yongfook, etc, really inspired me early on. So I decided to try to emulate that. (Well, partly: idk how some of those guys post 100x a day)

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

#50

Post by katzgrau »

scubakid wrote: post #22
bruce511 wrote: post #19

It'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…

+1 from someone who also bootstrapped a side project into a 7 figure business, and just happens to be absorbing some lessons from Poor Charlie’s Almanac on Audible recently.
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