[HN Gopher] Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven...
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Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure
business
Author : jonkuipers
Score : 137 points
Date : 2025-07-07 22:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (projectionlab.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (projectionlab.com)
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >I'm still processing that this is real.
|
| >that only counts recurring revenue.
|
| >monthly revenue has consistently been 20 to 50 percent higher.
|
| That's the way to do it.
|
| Where you virtually have to go back and figure how much earlier
| you had actually reached a major milestone.
| rvz wrote:
| > Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure
| business in four years.
|
| Good. But I think this is the most important piece of advice that
| one should follow:
|
| > Actually show up every day.
|
| It is the easiest thing anyone can do, however, it is the hardest
| for anyone to do every. single. day. nonstop.
| johncole wrote:
| Wow congratulations!
| ipaddr wrote:
| 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.
| pan69 wrote:
| Maybe validation isn't one big moment, but maybe validation
| could be many small moments. So, those first 5 users: small
| validation. First 1K MRR: small validation. Etc. I think the
| point of the article is to be persistent and if you're getting
| small validations along the way, then those are indicators to
| keep going. At least, that's my take.
| scubakid wrote:
| I think it can vary from person to person depending on your
| goals. For me, an important signal was that complete strangers
| were willing to pay. That first Show HN post made all the
| difference. Without that, this could have ended up in my side
| project graveyard with 100 other projects.
| xyzzy9563 wrote:
| 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.
| malpani12 wrote:
| Congratulations!!
| joak wrote:
| Survivor bias
|
| Failures don't get on HN front page
|
| Hey, btw congrats :-)
| tomhow wrote:
| People do post their failure stories, or "post mortems", on HN
| and elsewhere. We should be able to make space for both as both
| offer valuable lessons.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Not true. This post made the front page (in the distant past):
|
| https://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-f...
| owebmaster wrote:
| failure posts are way less interesting than the authors think
| they are.
| rorylaitila wrote:
| It's an impressive accomplishment. I've always struggled to get
| through the valley of despair in a new project. I've decided that
| I can only build and sell things that I regularly use. Otherwise
| the signal is just too weak, and I eventually get burned out. But
| if I'm always a user of one, then at least it's validated for me.
| scubakid wrote:
| Caring is kind of a superpower. And not just in terms of
| signal, but also the quality of work. I don't think this would
| have gone anywhere if I hadn't cared deeply about solving the
| problem in an elegant way.
|
| Earlier in my career, I worked on some things as a corporate
| engineer that were hard to care about, and there's just no
| comparison.
| davidw wrote:
| Congratulations!
|
| > Back in 2021, I was inspired by the financial independence
| movement and wanted a better way to plan my own life. I couldn't
| find the right tool, so I started building.
|
| That sounds a bit like selling shovels to the miners. Which is
| not a, uh, dig at the project, just an observation.
| suriya-ganesh wrote:
| Everything can be modeled as selling shovels to the miners.
|
| We're all building tools for other people. As long the users
| like a product, I think it's moot to call it shovel selling.
| davidw wrote:
| I think it depends on what the people are hoping to
| accomplish with the shovels and how realistic it is.
|
| In this case it seems legit.
| mdorazio wrote:
| 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 people
| focus on revenue rather than on reaching a level of take-home
| income comparable to what they could make at a normal job. The
| former is a lot easier than the latter (especially in the US for
| people who can take home $250K fairly easily working in tech) -
| as the saying goes, you can make infinite revenue by selling
| dollars for 99 cents.
| scubakid wrote:
| Profit margin started out around 90% in the early years, but is
| looking more like 65% this year now that we're making a
| concerted effort to reinvest into growth, building a team, etc.
| FredPret wrote:
| If ARR grows enough, there should be plenty of room in there to
| pay the founders.
|
| For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off,
| look at Uber, Amazon, and ServiceNow. I know these are very
| much outliers. All three had rapid revenue growth but profits
| at (or far below) zero. But for all three, the founders are
| sitting pretty today.
|
| https://valustox.com/NOW
|
| https://valustox.com/UBER
|
| https://valustox.com/AMZN
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I share your frustration with the endless focus on revenue,
| rather than profit (looking at you, indiehackers.com). I
| suspect in many cases it is because they are embarassed to
| disclose their profit.
|
| But congrats to the OP. It is impressive growth for a
| bootstrapped business.
| bruce511 wrote:
| 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 make a note that you spent time on marketing from the
| early days. Writing blog posts, promoting said posts, having a
| Discord server, committing to answer emails, all of this is
| marketing and its likely lead to success more than the code.
|
| I notice whenever there was a dip in revenue, marketing (in the
| form of more blog posts) was the response. I suspect that was
| intentional, and definitely a better approach than "let me go
| away and silently code more features."
|
| So there are valuable lessons to others here. Congratulations not
| just on the current success but also on sharing the path that
| leads to success. Ultimately you can show the way, but you can't
| make people learn from it.
|
| Oh, and I like the bootstrapping approach. I did the same, and
| I'm not sorry. It's longer and harder but also skips an enormous
| amount of extra work.
| scubakid wrote:
| 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 they wanted.
|
| If I had instead come into this with the expectation of quick
| success, I doubt I would have made it through those early
| years.
|
| And cheers from one bootstrapper to another. It's not easy, but
| I can't imagine a more rewarding way to build.
| artur_makly wrote:
| great timing. In fact, I was just looking for somethin like this.
| Was going to vibe-code this into life, but your price point is
| spot on and frankly I prefer supporting other fellow
| entrepreneurs.
|
| The struggle is real, thank you for being a positive light to all
| who are on this path. Best to you!
| akomtu wrote:
| It would be just as interesting to hear what mistakes you have
| made and what you would do differently.
| braden-lk wrote:
| Nice! How did you go about finding a growth marketer that was a
| good fit with your business?
| jonkuipers wrote:
| I found him and he originally told me to get lost ;)
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