[HN Gopher] Remote OK Open Startup
___________________________________________________________________
Remote OK Open Startup
Author : enjoyyourlife
Score : 354 points
Date : 2021-10-15 03:40 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (remoteok.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (remoteok.io)
| tinyhouse wrote:
| This is another great example (even an extreme one) that in
| software, a small team can build great things. But it's a good
| thing for society that most companies are not like this.
| Otherwise, many of us won't have jobs.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Build great things? Come on, it is a job board depending on
| network effect. I mean it seems fine and all but it is not a
| great thing.
| rafaqueque wrote:
| Not sure how you define great, but as long as you provide a
| platform for people to find new opportunities and is quite
| successful for both parties, I'd say it's great and quite an
| achievement.
| tinyhouse wrote:
| It provides value for many companies and people. It's very
| profitable. Hence it's great in my book. The founder also
| built NomandList (also mostly by himself I believe) which
| helps many nomads out there to socialize and connect. Both
| qualify as great things.
| pieterhg wrote:
| Thank you. And yes Nomad List is also 99.9% hand built by
| me.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I was just looking for this site yesterday. Thanks Hacker News!
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Might want to look at Pieter Levels' open revenue for NomadList,
| he created both these sites: https://nomadlist.com/open
|
| I believe he's pulling in ~2 million USD ARR with both combined.
| When I asked him about both ventures on the NomadList Slack
| group, he said that while NomadList originally made more money,
| RemoteOK started to make a lot more simply because it's B2B while
| NomadList is B2C. The difference between companies and
| individuals paying for stuff is vast. So he said to target B2B
| for startups in general.
| cko wrote:
| I remember following his blog ten years ago when he was doing
| some YouTube music thing in Thailand. There was an post where
| he got burglarized in Amsterdam at one point.
|
| Then he does the Nomadlist and RemoteOK thing. Because I
| followed him before he was a smashing success ($$$), it made me
| question the whole survivorship bias thing.
|
| Then again it shows he was always a prolific content creator
| and always interacted with his audience.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Check this video out where he goes over his past projects:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=6reLWfFNer0
|
| The truth is, out of the dozen or so products he made, only
| two had real commercial success, NomadList and RemoteOK. So
| there is survivorship bias present, he just kept trying until
| he succeeded.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Pretty standard for an entrepreneur. I have a friend that's
| finally hit success, on his 19th attempt.
|
| Me, I've had my first failure and I'm in the process of
| starting my second.
| giarc wrote:
| Starting your second failure, or second entrepreneurial
| project? :)
| andi999 wrote:
| Very good point. Here is my take: maybe beiing able to build
| an audience is the main driver for success for a business (of
| course you also need a product). So the survivorship bias
| happened before you followed him.
|
| Or more positive: maybe anybody who can build a big audience
| and knows to code will probably be successful in business.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Being a bit eccentric also. I discovered nomadlist after
| hearing what being a nomad was all about (whilst
| accidentally being one).
|
| He had already been a nomad and made a pretty slick page.
| As more and more people became nomads it was always there
| to tie it all together.
|
| For example, each city you go to will have a different
| crowd of nomads, different vibe, different meetup style,
| whatsapp or facebook, monthly weekly or casual events etc
| etc. However, this website ties it all together in a
| consistent fashion, I want to pick where I go next, how do
| I compare interesting things to me about a place I've never
| been.
| samstave wrote:
| How get invite to nomad slack?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Buy a NomadList subscription
| hwers wrote:
| Holy shit this is the most inspiring thing I've seen in a long
| while.
| hello4353 wrote:
| Nice site.
| privacyonsec wrote:
| I'm wondering how much time do you put in contacting prospects
| and looking for customers ? and how big your team is ? I already
| heard of single person startups that are working very well but
| what about remoteok ?
| pieterhg wrote:
| None. I don't contact prospects, I don't look for customers. My
| "team" is just me doing almost everything from coding the site
| to making the database to the design to the logo to the
| marketing and PR.
|
| Most of my traffic is word-of-mouth (look this guy made his own
| startup with just a PHP script and no team, eg this HN thread
| is marketing too) and from Google for "remote jobs".
|
| Recently, I hired a part-time contractor for customer support
| on Remote OK. And @daniellockyer has been a very-part-time
| contractor to keep the VPS secure and fast over the years. But
| that's it.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| 94.3% net profit margin?!? I am in the wrong business.
| stanislavb wrote:
| My shameless plug of trying to "ride" the remote job boards trend
| https://99remotejobs.com.
|
| What differentiates it from other similar job boards - it's free
| and job offers are syndicated to both SaaSHub and LibHunt.
|
| My target is to keep it free until it get's some traction. And it
| seems it might be getting there. Last 2 days, job offers have
| been receiving about ~1,000 views.
| pieterhg wrote:
| I think doing the same might not work because the problem is
| pretty solved now. I recommend trying new niches like for ex
| crypto and web3 jobs or whatever trend is next.
|
| I started Remote OK in 2015 when remote work was still HEAVILY
| frowned upon. Perfect time to start something. After COVID,
| remote work is now almost the default.
|
| So go to a trend that's nascent and jump in, then strap on and
| ride it for years until it hits mainstream.
| langitbiru wrote:
| I'm jumping into the part-time jobs niche:
| https://parttime.careers
|
| I am building this because I don't want to work full-time. So
| I want to collect all the part-time jobs.
|
| We'll see whether I can turn it into a successful business.
| Even if I got 10% of the revenue of Remote OK, I would be
| very happy. Haha.
| pieterhg wrote:
| Godspeed to you!
| woutr_be wrote:
| Good luck, I've tried to do a niche job board as well before,
| but it never took off sadly.
| sails wrote:
| The VS Code view is quite a nice touch :)
| https://remoteok.io/vscode
| rozenmd wrote:
| If you're interested in a survivorship bias-less(?) write up on
| trying to be like Pieter, I've been at this for years:
|
| - https://maxrozen.com/2018-review-starting-an-internet-busine...
|
| - https://maxrozen.com/2019-further-reflections-trying-to-star...
|
| - https://maxrozen.com/indiehacking-3-year-review
| ianjakobs wrote:
| Great reads, thanks for posting. I've very recently been
| inspired to start being more open about my projects, so it's
| good to have a few more real-life examples of others doing it.
| ornornor wrote:
| Thanks, I enjoyed reading these.
|
| Did you see value in the 30x500 course? Would you say it's
| worth the price tag (I think it was 4K last I checked)?
|
| I'm in a similar spot where I'm mostly disillusioned from
| salaried work. I enjoy writing quality and long term code and
| companies tell me it's what they want when they hire me, but
| when the rubber meets the road, what they want is quick and
| dirty quality be damned.
|
| But I can't think of anything that I could sell for myself
| (either a course or a SaaS). I've had ideas before but always
| ran out of steam before they were useable. I usually spend a
| lot of energy on the project setup (deploy from git push,
| tooling config, etc)
|
| And honestly, it doesn't feel like I have the stamina to work
| so hard for year for maybe a payoff in the future.
|
| Any thoughts on the above? How would you tackle it?
| rozenmd wrote:
| I did see value - and after accounting for the tax deduction,
| I've reached a positive ROI after about 9 months of work. I
| mean it when I say work, researching and publishing a new
| article weekly and also coming up with a product to sell was
| challenging.
|
| In terms of raw money earned per hour, it hasn't been
| particularly impressive, but 30x500 taught me to see customer
| pain in a completely different way, and to stop continuously
| reaching for SaaS as a solution to every problem.
| amotinga wrote:
| 30x500?
| kjksf wrote:
| https://30x500.com/academy/
|
| It's online course that teaches (or at least tries to
| teach) how to come up with ideas for products by getting
| better at spotting problems.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| Thank you for candidly sharing your thoughts & experiences.
|
| As a fellow bootstrapped entrepreneur (& programmer), I
| sympathize with what you're going through. Maybe it's the
| survivorship bias but I think you could try some things
| differently. I'm not sure you're open to receiving advice but I
| hope you find it at least well intentioned.
|
| My biggest piece of advice is that only the sales channel
| really matters. People talk about product-market fit but that's
| kind of ambiguous. What you need to do is really understand
| some sales channel. Your real goal isn't to create the best
| product in the world, it's to own some sales channel for a
| particular category. Take movie theater food for example. It's
| shitty & expensive but keeps selling because it's the only
| thing available. It may even be helpful to ignore the actual
| product part and learn about understanding and identifying
| opportunities in sales channels first. Then you build the
| product to dominate that category.
|
| Sales channels can be content marketing, google, facebook,
| amazon, trade shows, in person meetings, and more. For example,
| if you wanted to do content marketing. Instead of building a
| product and hoping that content marketing would work, you
| should learn about how content marketing actually works. Things
| like link building, content optimization, technical SEO, and
| keyword research. Then you could find categories you're
| interested and start seeing where the competitiveness is
| relatively low compared to the volume. You may also learn that
| content marketing usually takes 5-figure investments + months
| to work even in niche categories.
|
| If you really understand a sales channel, the opportunities
| become obvious. Most people don't really understand why Gitlab
| succeeded or how it's different from Github. If you're running
| a dev ops team with a requirement for an on-prem OSS solution,
| then it starts to make a lot more sense. Another example is the
| dozens of companies working to port Wordpress apps to Shopify.
| They're not making the apps any better, they're just making
| them work on shopify by owning their category in the Shopify
| App Marketplace. Here's one idea I posted on Shopify hoping
| someone would build it:
| https://community.shopify.com/c/shopify-apps/how-to-add-a-ta...
|
| All in all, I wish you the best. It seems like your heart is in
| the right place but you need improvement on strategy. You want
| to build something that people use but thought experiments
| aren't the way to figure it out. Coming up with more ideas
| probably isn't going to work out if you don't understand why
| the other ones didn't work out. An idea without understanding
| the context of how it will be sold is only a prayer. Talking to
| customers is great & reaching out manually is a sales strategy
| as old as time, but it's hard to build a company out of this
| without 4+ figure deals.
|
| For me, it was figuring SEO and micro influencers. My first
| business was CBD products got to ~$500K/month in 2.5 years
| before selling it. I'm now investing in (and helping build for
| a few months) a cardboard cat homes business. It's completely
| unrelated except for the sales channels. It sells exactly the
| same ways and it hit $10K in its 2nd month of sales. After this
| 3rd month, it should be profitable and I can step away to help
| other founders start more ecommerce businesses.
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| I agree. Something to add for anyone starting a B2B SaaS,
| here's 2 big take aways:
|
| - Pick an uncomfortably narrow niche and stick with it until
| you reach $10k-$100k MRR
|
| - There are 4 main growth channels:
|
| 1. Inbound
|
| 2. Outbound
|
| 3. Partners
|
| 4. Ads
|
| Pick only 1 for the first 12 months and master it.
|
| If you're pre-revenue, I'd suggest to stay away from inbound
| & ads. You didn't prove yet there's demand for the problem
| you solve and that you provide value. And SEO takes too much
| time to get ROI back.
|
| I personally suggest to start with outbound. Identify your
| niche, start reaching out (LinkedIn/emails/groups/forums/etc)
| and speaking with them. Get their advice on how big the
| problem you think is and how you're solving it. After giving
| their advice, if it is a valid problem, they'll be interested
| to learn more about your product and give it a go.
|
| (Ideally do demos/onboarding for every customer <$10k MRR.
| You'll get invaluable amount of feedback by doing this)
|
| Partners is another great channel for early stages B2B SaaS
| because of very low CAC. Find companies that share same
| customer profile and where each of you can provide value to
| each other.
|
| P.S. - Going back to Inbound. SEO is not only inbound
| channel. One that is being very big right now and I recommend
| is LinkedIn. E.g. lemlist added 1m ARR via LinkedIn, just by
| building their personal brands there, posting and sharing a
| lot of valueable content. While doing outbound, you can also
| start posting on LinkedIn and building a network of your
| ideal customers and position yourself as an expert in the
| niche/problem you solve.
| OJFord wrote:
| What do you mean by inbound and outbound? Based on
| 'outbound' description, I can sort of guess 'going out to
| find people' vs. 'waiting for people to come in', but that
| can't be quite right because then I don't see the
| distinction between ads and inbound, or rather surely ads
| is a (dominating!) subset of the latter?
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| Outbound - reaching out to people, whether it's email,
| cold calling, linkedin, what not. This is your sales team
| (SDR).
|
| Inbound - blogs, vlogs, podcasts, guides, templates,
| checklists, webinars, content, answering quora, guest
| blogging, case studies, organic LinkedIn/social media.
| It's all about people stumbling on your content/online
| presence whether directly or indirectly, and then coming
| to you.
|
| Ads - is a completely different beast. You're actively
| spending money to advertise your product.
|
| > surely ads is a (dominating!) subset of the latter?
|
| Dominating in what sense?
| OJFord wrote:
| Most common/obvious/popular method of 'inbound' I
| suppose.
| rexreed wrote:
| I'd like to understand more about SEO and micro influencers.
| Do you write or share much on this topic or have advice?
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| I don't personally write much about it. There are many
| resources available though. The SEO ones are particularly
| easy to google.
| rexreed wrote:
| I have not found much that can provide useful advice. And
| indeed, lots of conflicting advice. I wish those who were
| more successful at SEO could share what the top 3-4
| things that really need to be done to turn SEO into
| actual conversions and revenue generation. Lots of fluff
| out there.
|
| And what do you mean by microinfluencers?
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| SEO is much deeper than that and what's needed for your
| use case, depends entirely on your situation. At it's
| simplest, it's content + backlinks but to do it well, you
| have to get into the weeds.
|
| I think https://backlinko.com/ is a pretty good resource.
|
| Microinfluencer is the fancy internet word for free
| samples online to specifically chosen people. Either for
| direct conversions or some small level of word of mouth.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Great comment, especially liked what you had to say on sales
| channels.
|
| You mentioned companies working to port Wordpress apps to
| Shopify. Do you know of any resources for learning more about
| that niche? Seems like it could be a fairly lucrative and
| low-friction pipeline for a solo dev trying to bootstrap.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| Step 1. Get a list of the most popular woocommerce apps
|
| Step 2. Look at the Shopify app store. Can find one with
| the features you need? Or one sucks? Build a better one.
|
| I've already given an example of a table of contents
| generator for Shopify and how it should be specifically
| built.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| > In my experience, getting your first 10 customers from
| content marketing alone is: 1) Extremely difficult to get right
| 2) Kind of a waste of time (unless you've got thousands of
| people in your mailing list). Talking to customers is the
| fastest way to figure out if the problem you're solving is even
| a problem at all.
|
| Golden advice for many people launching things on HN who get
| this wrong.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Pieter had a successful YouTube before starting online
| businesses
|
| His Twitter account was powerful and perfect for reaching
| wannabe nomads and remote workers.
| jslakro wrote:
| Sure, in that sense, how anybody could consider his case
| replicable? additionally, each job post cost 600 bucks,
| unbelievable
| bckr wrote:
| Wow, i loved the first link. Raw, like a field journal summary
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It's definitely difficult, I started a remote work site before
| covid but it didn't take off. Couldn't solve the 'chicken-or-
| egg' marketplace problem, I couldn't get enough companies to
| post jobs and people found an empty site apalling.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Posting in case people haven't come across this advice: the
| trick to a two sided market startup is usually to find a way
| to provide value to one side without the other side being
| present.
|
| So, for example, you build a free platform that helps remote
| contractors manage their hours, billing, invoices, leads etc.
|
| Then, once you've built up an audience of contractors you say
| to the companies "hey, I have a million people working on
| here, I think they'd be interested in job opportunities, so
| I've made an opt in jobs board / newsletter" and go from
| there.
|
| Of course, it might not succeed, but AFAICT this is the
| general strategy for solving this problem.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| This is great advice, but you also have to be really
| strategic about this as the solution you create to try to
| acquire one side of the market can easily become a full-
| time burden that distracts from what you really want to
| offer.
|
| Using your example, the market for time tracking,
| invoicing, etc. is very mature and highly competitive, so
| if you launched a solution in this space, you'd have a
| steep uphill battle to gain traction.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Make it free then
| bsenftner wrote:
| Plus, "free" customers are very demanding, far more so
| than paying customers.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Making something free doesn't automatically guarantee it
| will be competitive or appealing, especially in mature
| markets where the entrenched competitions' offerings are
| hard for upstarts to come close to parity with. Sometimes
| "free" makes a product less appealing.
|
| In the example market, there are already established
| players with free tiers.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Yeah this, people come for the utility, and community then
| arises naturally. Unfortunately it's very hard to lure
| users from the big platforms with community only.
| DelTaco wrote:
| It would be nice if you could filter by salary
| pieterhg wrote:
| Will add this soon!
| warent wrote:
| I've been thinking about doing something similar with my SaaS
| business that does about $2k mrr, but did NOT consider something
| this comprehensive. Seeing this just inspires me even more to do
| the same.
|
| Too bad the link to the open startup website is broken:
| https://open-startup.com/
|
| would love to see this become a real collective. I'd join!
| sealthedeal wrote:
| I love this, my company, Routefusion, which is not bootstrapped
| :(, is going to be posting quite a few jobs on here. Not only
| because we need to hire, but because this business is so open and
| transparent with everything, it makes me happy + makes feel like
| I understand exactly where my money is going. It also helps that
| the candidates on this board are probably very engaged which
| leads to better reply rates for the posters :)
|
| Thank you for building this and inspiring even the non-
| bootstrapped people to do cool things like this!
| maxekman wrote:
| Awesome looking dashboard! Really inspiring.
| janvdberg wrote:
| Earlier this year he tweeted: "http://remoteok.io is a single PHP
| file called "index.php""
|
| https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1381709793769979906
|
| This could theoretically be the most complex PHP file you have
| ever seen, but it's probably not. The message here is that's not
| what counts (number of files, complexity etc.). The message is:
| create something of value. If one PHP file does that, great.
| roofwellhams wrote:
| You can create the most valuable thing, if you have no eyeballs
| is useless. You need marketing, an audience to show to. That's
| key.
|
| You can even pre sell a product you don't have yet to an
| audience.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but he's also not an experienced
| engineer (or at least wasn't), he was self/google taught and
| focused on just making the vision he had, copying copious
| amounts of code from places like SO.
|
| So it completely makes sense in his context. How was he ever
| going to focus on the other code qualities?
|
| If on the other hand you're experienced it's probably about
| finding that trade off between perfectly orchestrated software
| and having something that delivers your vision in an acceptable
| amount of time.
| jmstfv wrote:
| > How was he ever going to focus on the other code qualities?
|
| Even if you can, you shouldn't expend a non-trivial amount of
| brain cycles on that, especially early on.
|
| > If on the other hand you're experienced it's probably about
| finding that trade off between perfectly orchestrated
| software and having something that delivers your vision in an
| acceptable amount of time.
|
| Don't.
|
| As someone who built (and sold) a business before and is
| building a new one, I'd say it _really_ doesn 't matter
| before you get traction. Just ship the damn thing however you
| can!
|
| The chance of a first-time founder succeeding is incredibly
| slim anyway. So, you're better off spending your time
| figuring out distribution and finding a _good enough_ market.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| I think engineers gonna engineer though, even if it's
| subconsciously or small stuff, hell it might be half the
| fun.
|
| You could ask me to build a project with no trade offs
| regarding time to deliver, it's still not going to be in
| one single file, primarily because it's one of many "quick
| wins".
| jmstfv wrote:
| The key is not to go overboard. As a first-time founder,
| you don't know when to draw the line and focus on
| _valuable_ stuff. It 's very, very easy to get sucked
| into minutiae that don't matter at all (been there, done
| that). That's why I think first-time founders should
| ignore most engineering best practices and ship the
| prototype as fast as possible.
|
| > primarily because it's one of many "quick wins"
|
| Be careful with that, though. You might have an illusion
| that you're making progress, while in reality, you
| aren't.
|
| I'm with you on having the fun part!
| ipaddr wrote:
| The best language to use is rarely the hot language at the
| moment. You have to choose if you want to learn a business or
| learn a stack.
|
| Not using php or something simple for you it will hold you
| back. Setting up a top of the line container devops system
| will slow you down and gives you a false sense that you are
| doing anything.
|
| It is nice to start with the cleanest best office with a desk
| but if you spend your time focusing on making your office
| better you never focus on the actual job.
|
| Years ago I worked for a guy who fell into this. Successful
| career in insurance industry but going through a failed
| mariage he pivoted and quit his job and started a
| recruitoring firm. The office he rented was near my college
| and he offered me a job.. I was employee #1. First day we
| decided to skip work and we went on a bonding trip playing
| golf and go by his exes house to steal a chair. Everyday he
| would find something to do from making business cards, to
| buying office supplies to going to colleges to randomly meet
| people and tell them what we did. He hired two more college
| students to make a website. Everyday he found something to
| do.. but he never sat in the office and made the calls he
| needed to. There was always something else to do. When the
| money ran out (very soon) and he crashed his car drunk. No
| one got paid (aside from me) in the backrupacy. In the end he
| ended up back in insurance in a new relationship he found
| along the way.
|
| He was playing CEO. Don't play CEO or CTO. Sit down and make
| the difficult calls.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > The message is: create something of value.
|
| I've learned that lesson when working on a $100M ARR product
| that was basically thrown together PHP spaghetti code that was
| launched as a prototype and never was refactored again. Most
| terrible code I've ever seen, yet made a LOT of money.
| mike_d wrote:
| If it makes sense to you, and you don't expect to grow an
| engineering team - go for it.
|
| Some of my best stuff was built by embracing "done beats best
| practice."
| ziansopian9 wrote:
| https://t.me/Kejutandana_bot?start=r03836883511
| kfk wrote:
| I was trying to figure out how support works for remote.ok and
| nomadlist.com, both Pieter's products, short story: there is
| none. I got caught by lack of support for these SaaS multiple
| times for my company, it's not fun. As a company owner I expect
| support. I don't get why we would do our best to completely
| remove any kind of human interaction from the equation, I mean I
| get why, but then be very upfront about it and mention it clearly
| somewhere that your pricing cannot cover support.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| What do you mean by lack of support? Lack of a person to talk
| to or just lack of reliability in the software?
| pieterhg wrote:
| I'm Pieter and that's simply not true. I have after sale
| customer support for both Nomad List and Remote OK.
|
| What I don't have is support for people that aren't customers,
| because I don't have the resources to manage that.
|
| If you're a paid customer on Nomad List or Remote OK you can
| report bugs which I'll fix, or request features, and if I like
| them I'll build them. That's most of my work every day. See
| Nomad List's bug reports channel for an example of it.
|
| I'm also very lenient with giving refunds, if people cancel
| their membership on Nomad List they automatically get a refund
| if it's within 7 days. Without even asking for it. Anyone who
| posts a job on Remote OK and isn't happy I can re-post it for
| you or get you a refund etc.
| sebst wrote:
| RemoteOK is a one source of my Python job aggregator
| https://news.python.sc/jobs/
|
| As other commentators here pointed out, it's obvious that a "job
| board" isn't a product per se, but needs a solid audience: either
| through constant interaction with your followers (like Pieter
| does) or by corporate marketing spent (like monster.com)
| panorama wrote:
| Slightly off-topic but it was Pieter's dashboards like these,
| specifically the robots downtime grid, that inspired to build my
| own internal metrics and status dashboard for my SaaS. I have
| beautiful 3rd party UIs for superfluous stuff like my stock
| portfolio, why not my own business's data? It's one of those
| things that can take some time to build and doesn't add much
| value for customers at first, but delights me each time I visit
| it. And now that I've started measuring a bunch of different
| stuff, it has ultimately translated into indirect better user
| experience because I spot anomalies earlier.
| pieterhg wrote:
| Remote OK Founder Pieter here, thanks for submitting this and I
| hope everyone enjoys seeing it.
|
| All of this is possible because I've been a HN reader since 2010
| and was inspired by all of you and especially @patio11 on here to
| bootstrap my own things and do it VERY publicly. My entire
| marketing strategy is just sharing all my ups and downs, instead
| of paying for ads. A lot like @patio11 did in his blog posts.
|
| This /open page is just another part of that besides my incessant
| tweeting about every little feature I built for years at
| https://twitter.com/levelsio.
|
| I still can't understand it's over $1M/y, it's an insane number
| for me and I think I would have never believed I'd ever get there
| if you told me years ago. COVID had a lot do with making remote
| work suddenly big and my site benefits from that a lot.
|
| Thank you Hacker News!
|
| P.S. This wouldn't be possible without my server guy
| @daniellockyer, who has helped keep my VPS up for years.
|
| P.S.2. I donate 5% of all revenue to https://stripe.com/climate,
| with about $75,000/y being donated now.
| JonoBB wrote:
| What you have achieved is amazing Pieter. Right place, right
| time, right execution.
|
| There is some irony in @patio11, who I think has/had some of
| the best writing/talking on the subject of SaaS. He has helped
| a LOT of other people in their SaaS (and even salaried
| careers), but was never successful in his own SaaS business.
| agustif wrote:
| Well, he moved on to selling shovels no?
|
| He works at stripe. Encouraging people to build SaaS and
| online business seems like what he should be doing?
| atatatat wrote:
| All SaaS are shovels -- including his.
| atatatat wrote:
| (This is a good thing, to be clear.)
| agustif wrote:
| Yeah and if all SaaS are shovels, probably stripe is a
| friggin bulldozer?
| pieterhg wrote:
| Thank you! He's swimming in Stripe stock that'll IPO soon, I
| think he's doing OK
| falafelite wrote:
| Thanks for being so open, its helpful and outright cool to see
| as someone just starting a bootstrapped endeavor. Big +1 to
| your P.S.2. note!
| rexreed wrote:
| Can you share insights into how you are using Twitter? How is
| the revenue per follower a relevant and useful metric?
| pieterhg wrote:
| I tweet everything I make or think
| https://twitter.com/levelsio almost every day
| rexreed wrote:
| I tip my virtual hat to you on that. I need to somehow
| aggregate all those tweets into topics / chapters so I can
| dive deep in each area. Has anyone curated those tweets
| into something that can be read in a single go? If not I
| might have to do that myself ;)
| pieterhg wrote:
| P.S.3. I forgot to thank all the companies that ever posted on
| Remote OK, thank you. And sponsors like SafetyWing (a YC
| company at the top of every page on my site) who have been very
| beneficial to revenue too.
| dotsam wrote:
| I have enjoyed following your projects for some years. Thank
| you for sharing your work.
|
| I very much admire your 5% revenue donation, although I wonder
| if Stripe Climate is the most effective way to deliver positive
| impact.
|
| If you haven't already, I would encourage you to check out
| www.givingwhatwecan.org/donate to see research on optimising
| charitable giving for doing the most good.
| dubcanada wrote:
| Do you have any information to state otherwise? Giving What
| We Can stopped doing research on charities about 5 years ago,
| so now it's nothing more than an advertisement.
| dotsam wrote:
| I do not have information to state otherwise. Giving What
| We Can provides links to research (see below), and is
| described as 'the best overall resource on effective
| giving' at https://www.effectivealtruism.org/get-
| involved/give-to-outst... which is why I linked to it.
|
| If I were donating $75,000 a year to tackle climate change,
| I would want to feel like my donation was going to be put
| to the best possible use. I appreciate that not everyone
| takes this attitude towards their gifts, but personally I
| would feel most comfortable making my donation towards
| funds / organisations / charities that have been
| scrutinised for evidence-based effectiveness.
|
| I would encourage anyone who wants to donate and cares
| about maximising the effectiveness of their gifts to read
| up on Effective Altruism before making a donation decision.
|
| Giving What We Can has a page on climate change:
| https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/research/other-
| causes/climat...
|
| Which links to research by the Founders Pledge published
| last year: https://founderspledge.com/stories/climate-
| change-executive-...
| dubcanada wrote:
| Not to argue but
|
| > In 2017, Giving What We Can stopped conducting original
| research but rather started to recommend to its members
| to follow the advice by charity evaluators such as
| GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators and Founders Pledge.
|
| Is what Wikipedia says, so all that is is advertisements
| for other charities. Unless Stripe Climate has a negative
| report I am missing it is very easy to see exactly what
| you are supporting when you donate to Stripe Climate
| (unlike other companies) and do your own research.
| meigwilym wrote:
| I've been following you for years, this is fantastic. Are you
| still using SQLite?
| pieterhg wrote:
| Yes 100% SQLite on all my sites, no other db.
| goforbg wrote:
| I've seen your talk on starting a startup and how you built
| this! Great talk, inspired me a lot. All the best.
| plehoux wrote:
| I'm the co-founder of a pretty lean & 100% word of mouth >1.5M
| ARR SAAS [1], but god, I'm jealous of the success of Peter, who
| got to this point with a simple tech stack.
|
| Pretty sure a lot of people here have the same feeling. It's
| one I had before, and I still have after my success. There is
| always something else, something better you wish you had.
|
| In my hometown, there is an entrepreneur; one everyone knows
| who started a 3D studio with now more than > 300 employees; a
| massive success. He lives in my neighborhood, so we happen to
| discuss from time to time on walks. He, at one point, stopped
| me when I told him how much I admired his work and how envious
| I was of his abilities to scale smoothly; he told me: "Phil,
| there is nothing I would love more than running a small
| profitable web business like yours with just two of my
| buddies."
|
| When success hits for the first time, it's a disturbing feeling
| realizing your desires and insecurities are pretty much still
| all there. You are still an envious bag of meat.
|
| Anyway, congrats Peter on the success and fantastic journey!
| Yes, I'm still a bit jealous, like most here :) But I work on
| this. I got to go; I got my Yin Yoga class in 20 minutes. It
| will surely help me realize how lucky I am to live a life of
| beauty and experiments. It will help me recognize this burning
| jealousy, accept it, as it is simply part of this beautiful
| game of life.
|
| [1] https://missiveapp.com/blog/how-we-built-1m-arr-email-
| client
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| One of the open secrets in the startup world is that builders
| like building, but large businesses require operators who
| like to operate. The two skills aren't always found in the
| original founder.
|
| Some builders grow into large-scale operators, but not all of
| them really enjoy it.
|
| One of my most memorable experiences in my early college
| years was getting a small meeting with the CTO of a well-
| known tech company. All of us college kids wanted to talk
| technology with him, but I vividly remember him sighing
| heavily and lamenting that his role had become very removed
| from the technology and implementation details long ago. He
| was clearly successful, but I could tell he missed the
| exciting days of doing hands-on engineering work and getting
| things done directly.
| pieterhg wrote:
| > "Phil, there is nothing I would love more than running a
| small profitable web business like yours with just two of my
| buddies."
|
| I even heard this from more than a few VC-funded founders of
| famous startups that they'd rather be in my position as it's
| a simpler life with higher profit margins and less drama than
| managing big teams. I don't know if that's true because I
| never did it but I am happy with my simple life right now.
|
| And thank you for all the nice words, I don't know why you'd
| have to be jealous, Missive looks great and you're doing
| amazing!
| koverda wrote:
| This resonates a lot with me. I'm hitting revenue metrics
| that I used to dream about, but still feel like success is
| something so far away. I see other businesses (and think of
| business ideas) that I consider much simpler than dealing
| with hardware issues, chip supply problems, etc.
|
| I guess the grass is always greener, and it is hard to get
| off the hedonic treadmill. Hitting milestones used to give me
| such a rush when we were just starting out, but by now
| milestones have become "table stakes".
|
| When did you consider that success hit? How did you recognize
| it? How do you acknowledge the fact that success hit, yet
| still feel insecurities / desires / jealousy of other
| business?
|
| PS. thanks for answering my tweets about cross platform
| development a couple of years ago! We've got our native apps
| out there now.
| plehoux wrote:
| I don't know if it's related or not (still trying to figure
| this out), but I personnally went into a bizarre mental
| state of mind after hitting the two big milestones I had in
| life since I was a 20 years old young adult, having 4 kids
| and creating a recognized SaaS with > 100K$ revenue.
|
| The "now what?" I kept asking myself, is a strange question
| to ask yourself, when you've been so dedicated for so long.
| djbusby wrote:
| > now what?
|
| Easy. Time to go play with the kids.
| plehoux wrote:
| Seems like a good plan. :)
| rexreed wrote:
| What robots are you using? Do you have a post or two about
| this?
| staticelf wrote:
| I like following your work and you are a big inspiration for
| me!
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| Why bust my ass at FAANG when I can just make a janky job portal
| and make 10x more.
|
| Sigh. I wish I was street smart and not book smart.
| basisword wrote:
| If you truly think you can just throw together a 'janky' job
| portal and make 10x more you should stay at the FAANG.
| jerrre wrote:
| Yup, there's a lot more bootstrappers who think the opposite:
| "why bust my ass doing 20jobs at once trying to get a
| business going when I could just show up and do plumbing and
| earn 10x more at FAANG."
| going_to_800 wrote:
| You can try building similar sites as much as you want, you
| won't get to that level. It's about timing, marketing, etc not
| just building something and done.
| jordanmoconnor wrote:
| It's all about responsibility and ownership.
|
| Pieter is responsible for everything - product, design, sales,
| marketing, documentation, customer support, etc.
|
| At a job, you do your job and someone else does the other jobs.
| Less responsibility, less income.
|
| I do recommend starting something like this on the side, and
| learning all of the skills listed above. In 5 years or less you
| can have a side project that makes more than your job with only
| an hour or two a day.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Yeah, right? I feel for some us at FAANG, our current comp is
| pretty hard to leave, but at least for me, the hardest point is
| to figure out something that people would pay for and that's
| not too hard to build alone. I feel like I'm living in a bubble
| with very little idea what non-tech people need. Is sad.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| it's a lot less about building and much more about marketing.
| corobo wrote:
| Wishing is a goal without clarity, goals are plans without
| preparation
|
| Literally go for it
| sombremesa wrote:
| First, life isn't all about money. Although, If you don't enjoy
| what you do you, it's probably best to find something else.
|
| Second, people make things like this all the time (anyone
| remember the million dollar web page where ads sold by the
| pixel?) - that doesn't necessarily mean anything for you or me.
| It certainly doesn't mean we should all be endeavoring to
| create the next PR sensation.
|
| Finally, be careful what you wish for.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| Maybe Pieter can chime in, but I don't think he's necessarily
| making 10x more than a FAANG engineer :)
| pieterhg wrote:
| $3M/y now with ~ 1/3 being investments. I don't know how much
| FAANG avg is but if it's $300k/y that's 10x
| cweill wrote:
| Speaking as someone who just quit their FAANG job to go out
| on my own, your comment is inspirational!
|
| Thank you for your transparency.
| Aulig wrote:
| What do you mean with investments? You reinvest 1/3 of the
| profits into the business?
| andrethegiant wrote:
| Pieter, why do you use the same font across all of your sites?
| pieterhg wrote:
| I like the font :D, and I like that red color too so I use it
| everywhere. Also to keep things simple
| jerrre wrote:
| I'd guess: because it's easy and it works, and it is far from
| the most important thing to work on?
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I think the font does not need to be same across different
| sites if they are giving different value/objectives.
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