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Thank HN: My bootstrapped startup got acquired today

2246 points by paraschopra ↗ HN
Hello HN,

I'm Paras Chopra, founder of VWO. We're an A/B testing platform that was born here as a Show HN in 2009: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141

Today, I sold the company to a private equity firm for $200mn.

It's covered on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/23/everstone-acquires-bootstr...

I was a 22 year old fresh graduate when I launched VWO on HN and got initial users. Feedback from people like @patio11 helped me get to PMF. And now, 15 years later, "site:ycombinator.com" is what I appended when I wanted to search for advice on what to keep in mind while selling my company.

Thank you HN for sharing inspiration and wisdom all along. I honestly don't think I would have been an entrepreneur had it not been for hacker news.

Every single day, HN is the first website I open! I'm feeling very grateful towards the community. Thanks @dang, and thank you Paul Graham for your essays and for creating this beautiful corner of the internet!

410 comments

[ 0.48 ms ] story [ 464 ms ] thread
toomuchtodo
Congrats on the successful exit and your journey to it!
arey_abhishek
Congratulations! This is such a great story. I’ve followed you for years and your success is inspiring
ignoramous
Great run, Paras!

If I may:

- Did VWO ever apply to YC?

- Do you foresee PE asset stripping (crashing & burning) VWO eventually?

- What's next (5y time period)?

Thanks.

paraschopra
- No, never applied to YC.

- Not expecting this to happen

- I plan to explore starting a fundamental AI lab from India (China has Deepseek, US has OpenAI and Anthropic, Japan has Sakana - India doesn't have one yet!)

ignoramous
> explore starting a fundamental AI lab from India

I saw the back & forth between you and Aravind (pplx.ai) on Twitter. Impactful if you'd go down the FOSS route [0]. How soon are you expecting to start working on this? Are you hiring?

[0] I co-develop FOSS security tools for Android and considering building more to counter fraud (local languages is a barrier): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42785568

srirangr
Congrats Paras! Great to see a bootstrapped success story from someone that I have been following for over a decade. Kudos!
guynamedloren
Incredible. Congrats, enjoy the fruits of your hard work!
duxup
Congratulations.

I'm curious... what do people do after something like this?

Vacation?

dylan604
I would hope some time off is possible, but I could totally see myself self-funding the next thing immediately after that time off. I'm guessing the bootstrapping types would get bored and look for the next thing
klik99
I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had. A year on he hadn’t moved out of his small apartment, still contracted, still used the same cheap phone, and hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc. it struck me as the smartest move, take your time to come up with a plan and don’t just dive into recklessly spending it.

I also know a founder couple I was close friends with who had a sizeable exit, who moved to Costa Rica where they could spend little and focus on writing, a side interest that ended up leading to their next company.

I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.

criddell
> I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.

It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do.

When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money. Lots of it would be spent on hiring experts to teach me things.

mrsilencedogood
Imo, it's mostly because our brains are still hunter-gatherer brains. While things like language acquisition and culture-instilling do fundamentally change us, our base hardware is still pre-currency pre-agriculture (pre-pretty-much-everything) hunter-gatherer. In Sapiens, it's noted that if a homo sapiens from 100k years ago ended up on an autopsy table in the modern day, you would never know anything was amiss anatomically. You might notice the teeth are unusually straight and free of decay (pre-grain diet, with huge amounts of chewing strengthening the jaw and allowing teeth to properly align), well-trained body with low body fat, and similarly free of many of the scourges of our modern diet and lifestyles). But that's it.

So, people suddenly get taken out of "the grind" which was their only approximation of the drive-reward cycle that their brain depends on. So what now? Unfortunately, they've been freed to confront man's ultimate foe: philosophy. And lots of people aren't cut out or ready for that. (One could even say most philosophers aren't, given how much many of them suffered).

conductr
As somewhat of a counterpoint, my experience was we often romanticize these things that we’d like to do if only we had the time/money/etc. But sometimes you’ll find once you do have the opportunity to explore those things, it’s not as interesting as we had hoped. It might keep you busy for a year or so, but then boredom and lack of fulfillment rear their head again. I think this is why serial entrepreneurship is a pretty common thing.
dr_kiszonka
> When the lotto gets to be above $1 billion, I'll usually buy a ticket because it's fun to imagine the life I could have with that money.

I buy lotto tickets for the same reason! Their expected value is very low but the maximum value is thought-provoking. For me, $50k would be life-changing. One billion is hard to imagine.

applied_heat
What would you do with $50k that would make such a difference in your life?
Dansvidania
I’d buy a house, myself..
WJW
For 50k?
tasuki
Yes why not. Hell, there are places in the world where you can buy whole villages for $50k!
20after4
Found a place in a rural part of Missouri for $60k at the end of 2019. Everything has more than doubled in value since then. I had no idea what was about to happen when I signed that paper… but I’m sure glad I didn’t wait even a few months. Literally moved in February 2020 just in time to get really familiar with the new surroundings.
projektfu
Decent new houses are USD 30k in Natal, RN, Brazil. More like USD 100k for beachfront property.
mschuster91
50k is enough to comfortably live on for a year even in Germany, much more so in other countries. Allows you to completely change perspectives or to pivot your entire career.
ge96
Sadly for me it'd pay half my debt off

edit: with that in mind, leanfire is on my mind since I'm single/don't actually need much to live

dr_kiszonka
It feels strange to write about this, but resolving a health issue, paying off debt, and escaping the nerve-wracking cycle of short-term, low-paying gigs would be life-changing. I am the sole breadwinner, working 50-60 hours a week just to stay afloat, so I don't have the time to prepare for interviews and pursue a stable career.

There are many people like me.

Sohcahtoa82
Likely drowning in debt.

When you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, even just $10K in credit card debt at 30% is enough to keep you down. ~$250/month merely pays the interest.

Maybe there's medical stuff that needs to get done. Maybe the car needs fixing. Maybe you haven't gone on vacation in YEARS and it's taking a huge toll on mental health. I mean, consider how many people work jobs that don't offer ANY PTO, so even going on a stay-cation costs money due to lost wages.

climb_stealth
I know someone who paid off their credit card debt with an inheritance of roughly that size. It completely changed their outlook on life. Before every month was a struggle to just stay on top of the credit cards. Now they are debt-free and are actually able to save a bit of money every month. And for example able to go eat out without struggle.

Mind you by hn standards this is on a miniscule income. Still, many people are struggling hard and a windfall like this can make a huge difference in quality of life.

csomar
I'd use that money to pay for private math lessons.
duxup
Agreed, I think I could find things to dedicate my time to that would be fulfilling. I'm not surprised, but maybe I do wonder what is in those folks lives who can't find something.

Having said that ... I'm also not in that situation, you never know.

servercobra
I buy lotto tickets because my friends do a pool. I'm not sure I'd be happy with the money, but I am very sure I'd be very unhappy if I was a schmuck who didn't put in a very small amount (to me) of money to be in the pool. I consider it insurance more than anything!
sky2224
It's almost analogous to having a video game totally completed for you in a way. Everything is "done" for you essentially since you just buy your way out of problems at that point.

Before coming into that amount of money, you can be distracted by the survival aspects of living in society where you're just trying to make money and live comfortably. There isn't any necessity to have to figure out what you truly want out of life or what your passions are.

Once you do have money, now you have to face that. You have to truly find who you are. Otherwise, you're depressed or you go and blow all the money on things to distract you from finding who you are.

criddell
> There isn't any necessity to have to figure out what you truly want out of life or what your passions are.

I most certainly don't have life figured out and I'm not particularly passionate about much but I do know as a 54 year old, I'm on the downward side of this mountain and there's so many things that are interesting to me. I'd love nothing more than to be a full time dilettante, living my life quarter-by-quarter, exploring a new topic every 3 months.

I guess what I'm really wondering is how some people with more money than they will ever need don't wake up in the morning excited to work on some topic they find interesting. A certain portion are just depressed or dealing with some other mental illness, but isn't the typical person interested in lots of stuff that they don't pursue due to life getting in the way?

9rx
> isn't the typical person interested in lots of stuff

They might be, but is the typical person interested in doing it alone? Everyone else still has their lives getting in the way. They can't realistically skip going to work because you want to spend time with them. While some people are comfortable exploring life by themselves, I suspect the typical person is not.

You could use that newfound wealth to buy friends, but then you're effectively back to managing a business again, assuming business is the source of money per the grander discussion here. If that is what drives you, you are apt to do everything you can to avoid the exit in the first place and thus not ending up in this situation. Like Zuckerberg once said, if he sold Facebook he would focus on building another tech company and therefore there is no point in selling the one he already has.

Even still, if you do go down that road, and you want people of quality rather than grifters trying to scam you, to fill that role you are going to need some semblance of marketable goals for them to get behind. "Played friend for Richie Rich" doesn't advance their career or look good on a resume. They don't have the luxury of not having to worry about that kind of thing. Now you are truly back where you started, which, again, questions why walk away in the first place?

It might not be impossible to find something to keep you going, but it is easy to see how it could be really hard.

pton_xd
> It seems so strange to me to hear stories about people suddenly coming into a bunch of money and not finding contentment or even ending up depressed. If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do.

Different goals. If your goal is pursuing hobbies or a certain lifestyle, work is a means to achieve that. Getting money just lets you skip the work part.

Their goal is creating a successful business. Having money and leaving the business means now they have no goal.

sevensor
Talk to some retired people. The loss of identity can hit you right in the ego. You might think retirement sounds great, but I’ve known several people who thought that, and then un-retired. Other people seem to do just fine; I’m not sure if it’s temperament or something else. And then again, there are some people who just fade away…
WA
> If I could afford to retire today, I would do it in a heartbeat and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't run out of things I want to do.

You probably underestimate the little voice that will show up at some point, aksing what is the point in doing that thing?

thwarted
> I met someone who was an early employee at King about a year after they were acquired for 5.9b - it’s a little different since he wasn’t involved with the sale, but he was still processing the insane amount of money he had

Is there a word missing in this? How did they join after acquisition and have a meaningful financial windfall? And being an early employee?

klik99
It's very ambiguously phrased in multiple ways because I don't edit my HN posts, but it is technically correct, just vague! He was one of the first employees at King, and I met him a year after King was acquired. The "they" in "after they were acquired" is ambiguous which I think led to your confusion.
nojvek
> hadn’t started investing beyond just the normal mutual funds/bonds/etc

You'd be surprised how far you get ahead with S&P 500 + Treasury inflation adjusted securities.

It's really hard to beat S&P500. Most funds after fees don't beat it. If S&P500 goes to shit, inflation adjusted securities give you guaranteed returns.

The richest IMO people are those who live a modest lifestyle only from their interest, never having to touch the principle. Maximizing who and what they spend their time on.

klik99
Yeah I didn't mean to talk that down, it's just the most no-brainer thing to do. As in, it's so obviously a good idea that any good portfolio will have a chunk devoted to that.
Take8435
> I find it’s really interesting how people act when the financial pressure gets suddenly removed.

Agreed. It should happen to more & more people.

gregschlom
I have a couple of friends in this exact situation. In their mid-thirties, no kids. They bought a very very nice house in the mountains after their startup got acquired, and spend most of their time travelling around the world. It's pretty awesome.
jborden13
I bought a steel bike, grabbed my hammock, and went on a 4 day 250 mile solo adventure through the Texas hill country.

Riding through empty valleys at sunset with a herd of deer pacing alongisde me was enough to break me into tears. It's what I needed to move on.

duxup
It is interesting how many stories in a way involve running or moving away from the lifestyle that ... bought them a new lifestyle.
hipadev23
Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he's broke, don't do shit.
sebmellen
There is a luxury class at both ends of the economic spectrum, as Veblen observed.
tasuki
*leisure, I suppose. I'd love to read more on that. Is that from "The Theory of the Leisure Class"?
klik99
I don't remember that particular observation being in the book since it's very much about the upper class, but that book is amazing. I used to keep an rss feed of new project gutenberg books and when that popped up I read it just based on the name and was amazed how pertinent it was a hundred years later. I haven't read anything else by him, but that one is absolutely worth it. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833

Also since it was written when the vestiages of european feudal system still had some tiny amount of power, some of the observations about lords who owned massive estates but had no money and would refuse to take on any work, considering it "beneath them" while they starved was fascinating. It's both of it's time and timeless

sebmellen
Thank you for correcting. I can no longer edit the parent comment and was sleep deprived while writing it.

But yes!

taneq
The trick is to attain leisure while also having the resources to live safely and comfortably.
tasuki
Is it? I have friends who have very little money. Ok, they live safely, but not comfortably by any stretch. They value their leisure and live a good life.

I'm also friends with people who became very rich. In their own ways, they all continue working hard.

taneq
> Ok, they live safely, but not comfortably by any stretch.

> They value their leisure and live a good life.

There's an inherent contradiction here unless you believe you can live a 'good life' (which I would expect to be free from excessive discomfort?) while also living 'not comfortably by any stretch'.

You also have to consider what 'safely' means here. Sure, it means walls and a door so that you don't freeze to death or get eaten by dingoes or (insert local hazard here), but beyond the immediate, it also means having resources to obtain medical aid if required, ensure food supply and other necessities even in the face of unforeseen circumstances, etc.

It's possible to 'live a good life' with no resources while everything goes in your favour but it rapidly gets awful if that changes.

On your second point, I'd imagine that the people who became very rich did so because they're constitutionally unable to just relax and coast.

tasuki
I don't see the "inherent contradiction". Discomfort, as long as it's chosen and not imposed, is not much of a problem.

Yes, wrt safety it's hazy. Eastern Europe, so it's reasonably safe, and also we don't take safety as seriously as the Westerners. Our medical aid is all right. They have enough money to eat, but you'd be surprised how cheap and basic a diet can be.

> It's possible to 'live a good life' with no resources while everything goes in your favour but it rapidly gets awful if that changes.

Oh. It's possible to suffer even with infinite resources. Things can go horribly wrong. Health problems. Death. Other kinds of trauma.

> On your second point, I'd imagine that the people who became very rich did so because they're constitutionally unable to just relax and coast.

Yes, though some are learning and have improved a lot :)

mewmew
Haha, I almost never reply on HN. But the Office Space ref made my day <3
Grosvenor
Yeah but if you had a million dollars you could do two chicks at the same time.

and if you were a millionaire, I bet you could hook that up. Chicks dig dudes with money.

jborden13
When something consumes you so rabidly and ferociously for so long, and then is just gone (poof), it leaves you searching. Searching for recovery and meaning.

It's 4 years later, and I'm still searching...

csallen
My discovery having gone through something similar: If something made you happy and gave you purpose before, it probably will again. So just do it again.

The second time around, you may discover that finding success, getting rich, etc., wasn't actually the reason you were doing it.

jborden13
Getting rich was never the reason. I was a solo bootstrapper who rarely got paid for a decade+. If it was about the $ I would've dipped week one of the startup.

My issue is product market fit. I've been building different ideas for the past few years, but traction has eluded me.

csallen
Out of curiosity, what have you built? Also, do you enjoy the process of building things?
jborden13
I love building things - it's my passion in life. I loathe when I build something and it doesn't get traction. I'm all for learning, but I'm truly here for the traction. Here's a list of some things I built in the past few years:

- AI Agent Generator: Created no-code platform for customizable AI agents with a MidJourney & RAG/VectorDB document and crawled website integration.

- AI-Enabled Town: Crawled all of my tourist town's destinations, retail stores and their products and then tied them into a React Shopify sales channel. Built an agent to interact with and it links to products and locations as it chats.

- Job-Matching Browser Extension: Developed Chrome/Firefox extension to analyze job fit and generate multilingual resumes/cover letters in 26 languages.

- Job-Searching Agent: Developed MacOS and Winows Electron app to perform a number of searches on popular job website and stream a list of jobs and a % of how the user matches up, so they can focus their time applying instead of sifting through job descriptions.

jacob_rezi
Zuckerberg said something along the lines of if he would have sold facebook, he would have gone on to build another facebook Is that how you feel? Ive spent the past 10 years building my company, I dont feel like another venture could compare (for now)
jborden13
I wouldn't, at least not in its current incarnation. I started mine in 2008, after a 2007 Supreme Court decision. For cpg brands, we built a SaaS for e-commerce dealer base compliance and management.

Ultimately, because competition eventually grew like crazy, I don't think the market timing is worthy of trying to rebuild it at this point. Maybe some analog for AI instead of e-commerce.

Oddly, after looking at your profile, it looks like I've been building the last few years in the same space as you. But product market fit has been elusive.

JALTU
Steel is real. And comes in colors other than black! :)
misiti3780
Did you read Caro's books on Lyndon Johnson yet? If you have not, stop what you are doing and read them, especially the first two. He spends a lot of time talking about Hill Country. I suspect you will find them very interesting having spent so much time there.
samiv
Just because the company was sold for a bunch of money doesn't mean the people (yes even the founders) got a huge payout. Liquidation preference and other schemes can make sure that when the investors get their money there's nothing to left to share between other share holders including the founders.

(Not saying that this is the case here, just pointing that out)

EDIT: As some are already pointing out, yes the title says "bootstrapped". I missed that initially, so apologies.

Klonoar
This particular OP notes they were bootstrapped. That term might mean any number of things here, but I would imagine they had less exposure to losing out.

Or at least, I hope they did. What a fantastic win for them.

fourseventy
The title of this post literally says "bootstrapped"
robryan
To note as well the Techcrunch article specifically says 71% ownership.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
anonzzzies
I had this 25 years ago when I was 25; the amount was lower but it was enough to never do anything ever again. I went hiking, got 1 billion ideas during walking for new companies and products, so started making some of them. Still am.
joering2
please share if there is something you can show to public.
soheil
Typically PE deals require the founders to very much stay involved in the daily operations of the business unless they are near retirement age and that is the primary motive they are selling in the first place.
paraschopra
I'll be involved as a director on the board, but won't have operational involvement.
amrrs
He is already running a hacker house in bangalore with cohorts of researchers and practiontioners getting together - https://turingsdream.co/

so probably it's picking one of those ideas or investing in it!

mooreds
I know one founder that worked a few days a week at the company and took a lot of vacations.
paraschopra
Well, I posted a thank you note on HN and went to sleep!

I was financially independent even before this sale (benefit of running a bootstrapped company is that it _has_ to be profitable). Moreover, I had been gradually reducing my operational involvement in the company for years by grooming the team.

So, day to day, not much changes.

But I do have a nice chunk to do crazy-ass experiments in future, which I fully intend to do.

zafka
Congratulations Paras!! When I first started this post I was going to comment: Congratulations on your overnight success!! but held off :) Anyhow, I love that your plan is to do crazy ass experiments. I hope to read about them in the near future. I plan to do similar things, albeit with a slightly smaller budget-but sometime constraints can make you more creative. All the best!!!
tikkun
Awesome. For others, I see that Paras is now running https://turingsdream.co/ "an AI hackhouse running a six-week residency for coders and researchers who're interested in AI. The hackhouse is in Bangalore, India and you can join it either in-person, or in a hybrid fashion."
paraschopra
Thanks for linking it here.

If there are any AI researchers or engineers in Bangalore/India lurking here, please consider applying.

crypto2025
Hey paras I'm a doctor sitting in Australia. But have some analytical and coding skills and can have 3 startups which all failed to scale. I'm full time grinder and wokring on 505b2 FDA approval system. Off patient medications into market a knowledge graph system designed to convince the fda. I'd like to Jon the 6 week finger bleeder.
captn3m0
I attended Paras’a talk at the last graduation day for the residency. I’m amazed at how he was able to do all that, while dealing with the acquisition due diligence.
lazyeye
Off to /r/fatfire for you
amendegree
So happy for you! Great job on growing to 50mil! I’m curious how this process got started, did you approach them or did they reach out? Are you still gonna be involved day to day, or are you taking a much deserved break?
paraschopra
I had been reducing my day to day involvement for a few years, and then we hired an investment banker who drove the process. I won't be involved day to day anymore.
croes
Is it the final goal to get acquired?
handfuloflight
Perhaps we can change the goals if death wasn't going to acquire us all.
dinkumthinkum
Congratulations to you! It's great to see the hard work coming to fruition.
senordevnyc
I really appreciate this post, especially after some of the recent ones about how we're in a startup winter. I'm bootstrapping a project on the side (although I acquired it as a POC, didn't build from scratch), and whether it's "realistic" or not, stories like this are still inspiring. Thank you!
kylehotchkiss
Congrats! Since it seems you're based in India, I hope you can continue to invest in other promising Indian startups in the coming years!
sandeep_kamble
Congratulations Paras, you made it! Looking forward to your next gig!
nexarithm
Are you planning to write blog post of the journey? It is always joyful to read about process and details about such acquisitions. I remember couple shared in HN and got lots of interest such as waze.

Congratulations!

paraschopra
What would you like to know about the process?
rexreed
I'd love to learn about PMF and which posts from HN were most helpful. Even a few pointers in the thread here would be awesome.
paraschopra
I've written a lot of my lessons here: https://invertedpassion.com/free-book-mental-models-for-star...
rexreed
This is great, thanks both for writing these down and sharing!
sillysaurusx
Your post https://invertedpassion.com/your-30-second-pitch-shouldnt-be... applies not just to business but to life in general. Talking about someone else and focusing on what they want is how to make friends (and other benefits).

I really like your site. It’s kind of the inverse of pg: not really essays, but still focused and numerous, even if short. It manages to be general without being shallow: there are so many interesting topics that it’s hard not to get pulled in, which for me was reminiscent of stumbling on pg’s essays in 2007.

Thanks!

paraschopra
Comparison with PG's essays is a great honor. His essays are what inspired me to go down the startup journey myself.
phtrivier
Good for you ! Are you completely exiting the company, or will you still run the product, if only in part ? Are you leaving a team behind ?

I'm very curious about how to approach such a moment. There are so many horror stories where an acquisition ends up being "bad news" for teams and users alike - I hope this won't be the case here !

dowager_dan99
linked TC story says "owned 70%... retaining a small ownership"
speakfreely
It's very common in transactions of this size that the seller "rolls" some equity, I.e. retains some ownership moving forward. The buyer likes this because it theoretically keeps them invested in the future of the company and the seller potentially gets a second bite when the PE firm flips the business.
adeptima
Inspiration for all of us. Congrats!
sainib
Congratulations Paras! Great milestone. Please share more details for your journey and learnings as a blog post.
devops000
Could you share your Revenue and EBITDA of last 3 years? I am interested to understand multiplies. Did you sell all-cash or 51% cash + other?
packetslave
what an intrusive, nosy question!
wnolens
I mean.. the guy posted on a public forum "I just made $142M!"
s1artibartfast
Some founders are very open about these things. It doesn't hurt to ask. They might even have a public blog about they can link to.
myflash13
Wow, what an inspiring story? Care to share any stats, such as team size, when you hit your first ARR milestones, or anything else?
ignoramous 

  Today, we're a team of 250+ people and seen that initial "Show HN" grow into a $20mn+ bootstrapped business (no VC funding). If anyone's interested in reading more, I've blogged this journey (from launch to now) on our website [0]
from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23466470 (2020)

[0] clicky: https://vwo.com/blog/vwo-evolution-10-years/

sureglymop
I checked out the explainer video from 15 years ago in the linked blog post. It's crazy but this would still get me interested even today! Wow.
paraschopra
We hit our first million in 18 months when we were ~10 (I think).

My first milestone was $1000 (my salary before starting Wingify). The first month I launched, made $4000 and it kept doubling from there for a while.

I remember being glued to the customer and revenue chart for the first few years. I had even coded a small utility to make a small ka-ching sound on my laptop whenever we get a new customer :)

sebastiennight
Ha ha, I had coded the same kind of utility in 2007 in my first business, to send me an SMS whenever there was a purchase. (and my phone was set up to go "ka-ching!" for SMSes from that number)

Turns out I had a bug in my code, and I got a text every time someone visited the page, which meant at the end of launch day I had lost money by paying more in SMS fees than I made in sales for the day!