Ask HN: Small product, single founder success stories?
I have read some small product, single founder success stories on HN over the last few years. Can you share some stories/links even though it has been shared before on an unrelated thread?
On HN, patio11, edw519, peldi & jacques have all shared success stories before. I am interested to know more.
EDIT : By success, I mean happiness in life & financial independence to do interesting things in life.
154 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 214 ms ] threadIf you get to know some of the people personally you will find a lot of successes.
The real question is: what would be a success for you? If you want to do something, when would be the point where you could say: Success! If you can really answer this question, the path to reach this point is not that complicated, but the question is hard to answer and you will change your mind quite often (at least, this was/is my case).
I wrote the code, designed the websites, wrote the documentation, and once supported all of the products myself. Some took weeks, others took years (Hero, formerly Caribou CMS), but I'm very happy with where they are at now. We have our niche - e-commerce and recurring billing for small business - and it's been growing well.
I humbly consider it a success because, at 23 years old, I've been able to delegate the everyday stuff to a hired developer/support tech, take a nice salary, and do my PhD in Cognitive Psychology!
I technically have what some people might consider a co-founder, but he's more of an investor/advisor as I've been the only person that's involved day-to-day.
I also created a presentation recently that summarized what the experience has been like and what we've done right or wrong for our situation. (http://bootstrapping.sifterapp.com)
Finally, I'd also recommend Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard as a good source. He discusses a little bit of his experience on the Pinboard blog. (http://blog.pinboard.in/)
http://unstoppablefamily.com/ is one example
Bloggers can do a lot with a little notebook -- even if a child is drawing on the right side of the page while the blogger writes on the left side -- in ways that aren't possible for someone doing software development, for example (my world).
Coding while interacting with a baby/toddler/child doesn't generally work well. We've navigated our way through to agreement on what my daughter can do safely while Daddy is working (and sometimes I take breaks from coding so she can do a bit of typing as well... she loves doing whatever I'm doing, of course). But I still do quite a lot of my work while she's asleep, or while my wife has her and I can disappear for a bit.
Trying to get serious work done in any kind of large blocks is significantly harder than before; possible, but harder. I'm still glad we have her -- it's well worth the trade-offs, for me, but the fact that it's possible doesn't mean it's not hard.
My wife and now-two-year-old and I mostly live in the French countryside now, but travel together frequently to Malaysia, the US, UK, and around Europe (for various reasons, sometimes work, sometimes family, sometimes fun... though alas that's less often than we'd like).
We got the baby a passport before she could even sit up (the photo was tricky), and as long as we just plan a little better than we would with just adults, it's not hard.
A few things helped an awful lot, for anyone considering this.
Nurse instead of using formula/bottles/sterilizers/warming up/etc..
Buy a good carrying sling and learn to tie it; strollers are a PITA in so many places and ways.
Put time into associating peeing/etc. with a noise or word. Long before a baby is potty-trained, you can still save tons of diapers by holding them over toilets frequently and letting them go.
Let the baby sleep in your bed. It's hard for little ones to adjust to different sleeping environments -- in our case, changing to a new bed half-way around the world still looks almost the same, because her parents are still there just like always.
YMMV (all kids are different, I imagine; I've only parented one so far!) but this has worked great for us, and our daughter enjoys the new places and people. And she can already swear in at least 4 different languages....
Learn more here: http://developer.yahoo.com/fantasysports/
I was (and still am) hugely inspired by DHH's presentation at Startup School 08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY
I want to switch my current development job, among other things, because I don't get to interact with the customers having the business problems, and I want to solve them (not to mention it's where the money is, but I honestly like solving business problems too).
Being empowered to solve them should be gratifying too.
Thanks for sharing.
Background: I've been working for a couple of months on a Facebook Page app called FanBldr.com and I've found it fairly difficult to operate.. it's hard to get feedback from users, Facebook is always updating the platform, and I'm not even sure what percentage of my users will upgrade to paying once I drop the paywall bomb. I find traditional web app development easier to manage and operate in the long term.
OAuth is all I use, i keep facebook integration to the absolute minimum. Working as an external website means it's completely portable. Minor changes are needed to turn it to a G+ application.
I think he mentioned 30M installations. Also, 15% conversion rate from ad-supported free to ad-free premium version of the app. Also, Apple featured him in a TV commercial.
Also, very humble guy. People basically had to pull the conv. rate info and the fact that Apple featured his app out of him. Massive respect.
I just visited your website, I was wondering whether you manually create all the quizzes, or whether you have started outsourcing it seeing that you have been at it since the beginning of time?
Also, I am assuming that all your revenue at this point is from the ads on the website?
Kudos to both of you!
I ended up going that route to stop trying to frankenstein WordPress into doing things it wasn't meant to do. WPReviewSite did help me get started though :)
Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487
Ask HN: Anyone making a living from just 1 app? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199
Ask HN: Inspirational money making web apps made by hackers. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682
I've been living off Scribie for the past two years and it's been fun. It pays my bills and I've learnt a hell lot--didn't know anything about web development when I started--and I consider it a success. There's a lot to do still and I hope I'll be able to grow it into a big business some day.
In the start it was mostly SEO mini sites then its more PPC arbitrage and then when search marketing got tough i started creating sites that depend on word of mouth/viral traffic. At my peak i was making $400k per month!
BTB, Most people with my kind of track record start to develop their personal brand and become a "Make money online Guru" and start sellimg systems and ebooks. But that life is not for me :)
They've funded my travels across the world for the past few years. Right now I'm living in Germany with my German girlfriend whom I met in Australia.
Scribophile has since become one of the largest writers communities online, and we're about to have our 100,000th critique written (sometime in the next 5 days if usage numbers stay average). There's been over 35.2 million words of critique written on the site.
I'm not making a million bucks and companies aren't knocking down the door in a rush to buy me out, but so far I've managed to pay off my student loans, save a little cash, and not worry too much about where my next rent payment will come from.
You don't have to take my word for this either. Some basic (free) analytics can give you a ballpark estimate of how often this is happening. It's probably a non-negligible ratio of your incoming new viewers.
FWIW, it used to be visible to the public for a long time, and I would constantly get complaints from my members.
He lives here in Bangalore, India and his monthly income from the sales of his software is very very good. The software itself sells on its own, do not need much maintenance and it just works.
Bulkr - http://clipyourphotos.com/bulkr/
Disclaimer: I'm helping him spread more awareness about his awesome software and if you ever felt the need to buy, it sells for 50% through my website.
I did an interview with The Startup Foundry a few months ago that is way too long but does a good job of telling my story: http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/02/one-day-one-job-how-...
E-mail is great, but face to face interaction has always been way more effective for me.
You can e-mail me from the sidebar on the site.
I hate ads my self, so I try to minimize the screen real estate used for them.
Like many of you I designed, developed and marketed the app myself. (Although I've just recently hired some help for coding.) Biggest challenge is just to find more time to work on it, since I have other work that takes precedence.
Peldi and Rob Walling are big inspirations.
I cannot live off FantasySP completely, though it certainly more than pays for itself to the tune of a few thousand per month. I currently do have a day job for a startup company. However, this month my site got more pageviews than my day job.
So successful? Yes, to some degree but not like the other folks here. There are still mountains to climb.
I'm working on a web 'startup' now that launched about a month ago, but it's not profitable yet, although I'm still moving it past MVP and I've received some good feedback.
You should do it. Think of something that you would love to use and make the hell out of it. Passive income _rules_.
My apps are paid, ranging from 2.99 to 4.99. Some hits, some misses. I don't do any marketing whatsoever.