[HN Gopher] Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven...
___________________________________________________________________
Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure
business
Author : jonkuipers
Score : 777 points
Date : 2025-07-07 22:58 UTC (2 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.
| vladmk wrote:
| Curious to how many projects you launched you personally
| resonated with before this one
| scubakid wrote:
| I've only published a small handful of things with a buy
| button, and all of them were things I used myself. I got
| into coding in middle school learning how to make simple 2D
| games to play with friends, and the vast majority of my
| personal projects over the years have just been for fun.
| 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.
| growbell_social wrote:
| If you can make 6k per month. You can probably get to 60k per
| month.
| wayoverthecloud wrote:
| Could you share what worked for you? Is it B2B/b2c? I guess
| that matters too for the type of marketing to focus on?
| conductr wrote:
| What is being validated though? I'd say it's your marketing
| efforts more so than your product
| 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.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > failure posts are way less interesting than the authors
| think they are.
|
| It depends; you can learn a lot more from a failure than from
| a success. Every success has some element of good luck in it
| but that element is difficult to identify.
|
| Every failure has a number of non-luck related reasons for
| failing, which are usually easily identified.
| dspillett wrote:
| They _can_ be very interesting, both in the now and
| historically. They often aren 't, when the problems were
| blindingly obvious and any mistakes ones that have been made
| countless times already, but the same can be said of success
| stories: without novel specifics there are only so many ways
| to say "we stuck at it and eventually pushed through and/or
| got lucky".
|
| Failure stories frequently aren't posted by the authors,
| _they_ don 't think it is interesting enough but someone else
| did. Such stories are often written as a post-mortem for
| those originally invested (in terms of intellectual interest,
| being a user of [thing-or-service], or financial investment)
| or even just as a therapy exercise before moving on, and not
| pushed to a wider audience by the author.
| cyral wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37903489
| 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.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >The willingness to doggedly show up every single day can
| take you to some really suprising and amazing places.
|
| >Caring is kind of a superpower.
|
| >the quality of work.
|
| >I was thrilled to spend my free time treating those early
| customers like royalty
|
| Well, the secret's out, thanks for that, now anybody can do
| it ;)
| mkatx wrote:
| Aw shit.
|
| *drawing-board
| eastbound wrote:
| On my million-dollars project (now 10 employees) I hired
| someone for the support. She wasn't in the startup
| ecosystem. What she was most surprised of / had to train
| most for was our requirement of benevolence: Always help
| the customer, even when it's not in our scope.
|
| She thinks I'm a superboss, but I keep repeating her: We
| have to be nice to customers, we also have to give benefits
| to employees, otherwise both would leave us. It's not a
| choice, it's market pressure.
| scubakid wrote:
| What ecosystem was she in before?
| 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
| aledalgrande wrote:
| > For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off
|
| Pretty sure parent was referring to gross profit, because
| that's what you'd look at to pay your salary. These examples
| are not relevant.
| 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.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| 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.
| 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.
| chatmasta wrote:
| 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.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| It's very much what Sahil Lavingia recommends doing in The
| Minimalist Entrepreneur
| katzgrau wrote:
| +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.
| scubakid wrote:
| ha I listened on Audible too. great audiobook for a walk
| after dinner. Charlie's advice really holds up. which part
| have you gotten the most out of so far?
|
| also, congrats!
| teiferer 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.
|
| As much as I like to agree with this message ... isn't there a
| big portion of luck involved here that makes the difference
| between the two sides of this line? In other words, aren't we
| seeing huge survivorship bias at play here?
|
| That's what makes the line so hard to walk. Surely skill helps,
| but more than most like to admit it's the unpredictability of
| outside forces that makes the line _really_ hard to walk.
| nl wrote:
| > isn't there a big portion of luck involved here that makes
| the difference between the two sides of this line? In other
| words, aren't we seeing huge survivorship bias at play here?
|
| Luck and survivorship bias may not be the same thing.
| rthrfrd wrote:
| Sure, but when you can't clearly attribute the survivor's
| survival, there's still no meaningful conclusion to draw.
| And given how many different ways there are for businesses
| to succeed or fail, that are never ever repeatable due to
| the passing of time in the market, then I think attribution
| is impossible, so having the humility to somewhat attribute
| luck is admirable.
| K0balt wrote:
| There is a fallacy in over application of the survivorship
| bias concept.
|
| Literal survival for early cultures was often a matter of
| luck. Agriculture was an innovation that improved the odds.
| Early cultures that practiced agriculture outperformed those
| that did not, and were more likely to survive black swan
| events. All major cultures in existence are now based in
| agriculture.
|
| Should we assume then that because we only see agrarian
| cultures that that is not useful information, because of
| survivorship bias in the resulting sample?
|
| On the contrary, survival itself is the signal that is
| useful... it's really a matter of what behavior the signal
| can be attributed to- was it the agriculture, or was it the
| human sacrifices? Was it the red ochre face paint? The
| storing of grain in pots instead of skins?
|
| Failure bias is just as large of a red herring. It's easy to
| imagine that it retrospect, we understand why failures
| happen, and sometimes the reasons are very clear. That's why
| there is often more to be learned from failures than from
| successes. But still, it's easy to look at the things they
| did right that successful example B also did, and then
| conclude those things weren't critical to success because
| they sometimes end in failure.
|
| The point is that we shouldn't judge the value of information
| based on ideas like "survivor bias" but instead look for more
| methodical and logical connections between causes and
| outcomes, and not fall victim to cargo-culting nor casual,
| hand wavey dismissal of potential lessons.
|
| Survivorship bias mitigation is a matter of determining which
| survivor signals are instrumental , and those which are
| coincidental.
|
| Many things are fraught with risk and low probabilities of
| success. That does not make them primarily a matter of luck.
|
| Aviation is a great example of an environment that is nearly
| 100 percent risk, where without knowledge and the correct
| tools the very small chance of not dying would be purely a
| matter of luck.
| xpe wrote:
| Even carefully thought out comments like the above are only
| hints and ideas relating to making sense of the world. They
| don't talk about building quantitative predictive or causal
| models to disentangle the many factors driving success,
| failure, and everything in between.
|
| I recommend The Book of Why by Judea Pearl as a starting
| point for digging into the lesser-known techniques of
| assessing causality. The causality work over the last
| couple of decades is still under-appreciated and not used
| often enough.
|
| One is unlikely to find anything close to rigor when it
| comes to business or entrepreneurial books. They can be a
| starting point for analysis, but their bias to tell an
| interesting story and sell copies often work at odds with
| truth seeking.
|
| At the risk of oversimplification, one decent model for
| acting comes from decision theory. (1) Look at the data
| probabilistically and act accordingly. (2) If you don't
| have enough data, assess the cost/benefit of acquiring
| more.
|
| But we don't have the time or the discipline to make all
| important decisions this way, do we? Probably not. So, (3):
| if you act on intuition, be honest with yourself about
| that. Be curious about yourself and your decisions and how
| you can do better. Focus on areas where improvement is
| likely to make an outsized impact. (This leads back to #2,
| except it is about seeking better knowledge and self-
| awareness instead of just data.)
|
| I try not to exaggerate, but these three principles might
| be sufficient to subsume all other business advice.
|
| Embrace the uncertainty and move forward anyway.
| K0balt wrote:
| Thanks for the book recommendation! I'll look at that.
|
| >> Embrace the uncertainty and move forward anyway.
|
| This. This is the key factor that prevents attempts at
| success, or leads to failure by a thousand cuts.
|
| There is no gain without risk. Significant gain usually
| comes through significant risk. Position yourself in life
| to be sufficiently resilient to take 10:1 bets with 100:1
| odds until you can weather the 100:1 bets with 100000:1
| odds. Avoid the 1:50 bets that pay at 1:50 odds like the
| plague... they are a comfortable quagmire of rotting
| aspirations.
| NotGMan wrote:
| If he wouldn't he wouldn't have make it.
|
| You have to take the risk in your life or you're gonna be
| stuck where you are.
|
| Was he lucky? Perhaps.
|
| Would he make it if he wouldn't risk it and put in all the
| work that he need with nothing to show if he would fail?
|
| He would not.
| immibis wrote:
| It's hugely about luck. We can look back on any success story
| and identify what made it successful (sometimes) but it only
| has a little predictive power. Success in startupping
| ultimately comes from either trying a lot of things
| (amplifying your luck until it approaches 100%) or
| survivorship bias when you get lucky on your first try and
| then write about how smart you are.
|
| It helps to have an idea of what might succeed, by studying
| things that succeeded before and the present business
| environment, but that increases each attempt's success chance
| to, like, 2% rather than 0.2%.
|
| (There's nothing wrong with getting lucky, we just probably
| shouldn't plan around it being the normal case. It has
| extreme variance by definition.)
| bruce511 wrote:
| Luck plays a huge part.
|
| But it's not the only part. All the luck in the world won't
| win me an Olympic medal. Yes, luck plays a part. But it
| also takes the right work, learning the correct skills,
| having the discipline and so on.
|
| Working on the right thing, at the right time, in the right
| way are all crucial ingredients. All the luck in the world
| though can't help you if you're playing the wrong game.
| immibis wrote:
| That's luck. No one knows the right thing, the right
| time, or the right way. Studying past right things, past
| right times, and past right ways can give you maybe a 2%
| chance of getting them right instead of 0.2%. Only after
| someone got them right (by chance) can we look back and
| say "Wow! That person got them right!"
| SenHeng wrote:
| Persistence and Stubbornness are just different words for the
| same personality trait. The former is used when looked at a
| positive light while the latter is used in the negative.
|
| You're persistent if your project succeeded but you're stubborn
| if you keep at it despite unfavourable outcomes.
| javcasas wrote:
| So the difference between the two is just luck?
|
| I apply to a thousand job offers, get rejected every time =>
| I'm stubborn.
|
| I apply for job #1001, I get the job => I'm persistent.
| y04nn wrote:
| I would say that you are persistent if you keep getting
| rejected but keep improving but using feedback and you
| would be stubborn if you don't change a thing while keeping
| being rejected.
| SenHeng wrote:
| Yes.
|
| You were stubborn for applying for jobs beyond you.
|
| Your persistence led you to finding that amazing job.
| esseph wrote:
| Got selected => lucky
|
| Would not have had a chance to be lucky if not =>
| persistent
| scubakid wrote:
| The way I see it, persistent founders keep looking for
| evidence and adapt / adjust course based on what they learn.
| Stubborn ones just keep going, even when there are clear
| signals that it's time to step back and refocus.
| amelius 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.)
|
| Strange analogy. I'd say stay away from that line and run into
| the direction of persistence.
| scarface_74 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.)_
|
| "Courage is knowing it might hurt and doing it anyway.
| Stupidity is the same thing.
|
| And that's why life is hard."
| 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!
| scubakid wrote:
| thanks, that means a lot. wishing you the best on your journey
| too!
| akomtu wrote:
| It would be just as interesting to hear what mistakes you have
| made and what you would do differently.
| scubakid wrote:
| One thing I'd do differently is quit my day job earlier. It
| shouldn't have taken 2.5 years to work up the courage to do
| that.
|
| Partly I was scared of putting my own projections at risk. But
| eventually I realized I'd have way more regret if I passed up
| the opportunity to go all-in on something I loved.
| 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 ;)
| noisy_boy wrote:
| The first sign of a good marketer :)
| anentropic wrote:
| What attracted you so much to the project at that time?
| jonkuipers wrote:
| I was a customer first. It was the product I had been
| searching for in my own financial planning, so I
| immediately saw the potential. When Kyle and I finally met,
| we hit it off right away. We aligned on the important
| things and shared a clear vision for where it could go. I'd
| always had the itch to bootstrap and help build something
| meaningful and sustainable, so I knew pretty quickly it was
| the right next move for me.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| To OP, does this focus on US customers or covers the context for
| international customers too?
| jonkuipers wrote:
| We noticed a lot of tools neglect international use cases, so
| from the beginning we've focused on building with global
| flexibility in mind. About 80% of our customers are US-based,
| but we have users all over the world and offer international
| tax presets and account types.
| danr4 wrote:
| kudos!
| montakaoh wrote:
| Congrats!! I can definitely relate to that roller coaster feeling
| of first internet money -> "its so over feeling" though
| definitely not as successful as you yet :D
| scubakid wrote:
| I hope the roller coaster takes you to a similar destination in
| the end :)
|
| What's your journey been like so far?
| yesimahuman wrote:
| 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
| scubakid wrote:
| 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.
| pixelmonkey wrote:
| To provide a data point from a long-time ProjectionLab user,
| I don't really need account linking. I use Monarch Money to
| link cash and CC accounts to track spending.
|
| I use a custom Google Sheet to track retirement portfolio
| performance. If =GOOGLEFINANCE isn't enough, there is a nice
| paid extension called WiseSheets, which adds a =WISE function
| that fills all the gaps.
|
| My monthly ProjectionLab process is to update the "Current
| Finances" values on the first of the month, using the values
| from the other tools. Works well enough for me!
| scubakid wrote:
| I'm glad to hear you have a workflow for updating current
| finances that's already serving you well. I do plan to add
| a lot more automation/integration options, it's just always
| a question of where to invest my time to deliver the most
| value to the community efficiently.
|
| Something people don't always realize instantly is that
| with a long-term planning tool, the point is to spend the
| bulk of your time focused on the future, not fixating on
| all the latest daily stock price fluctuations... in fact,
| those can sometimes be a source of noise/distraction.
| yesimahuman wrote:
| I don't need/want account linking, I just want $VTSAX etc
| recent prices. I know it can be noise but what you're
| saving me from is really annoying copy/paste work when I
| come in quarterly to update numbers and track my
| progress.
| scubakid wrote:
| sounds like that would also mean overhauling the data
| model to track individual positions within every account,
| not just balances?
|
| and then folks would expect every account's asset
| allocation to be automatically derived from those
| positions too I imagine? that would differ a lot from how
| asset allocation modeling and change over time currently
| works in the tool.
|
| maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like there
| could be a lot of complexity here that would need to be
| carefully weighed against the product vision and other
| things on the roadmap.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Account linking should be reasonably straightforward in the
| EU with PDS2 open data. I was able to hack together some
| python via one of the intermediary services to get up to date
| bank data. There is the complication that the _bank_ doesn 't
| always have fully live data.
|
| Approaches involving password sharing you're right to stay
| well away from.
| adventured wrote:
| Live is overkill, all they'd need is an every 30-60 minute
| update on equity prices, which is not an overly expensive thing
| to acquire. With a 65% profit margin in their business, this is
| a dead-obvious feature they should be automating away to save
| their users a sizable headache.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > live securities prices
|
| This is probably impossible in 2025. Many stock exchanges now
| make more money from selling data feeds than trading fees. It
| is a little bit crazy. The best that you can hope for is a
| delayed feed, or last closes.
| fullstackchris wrote:
| This is incorrect. Almost all brokers nowadays allow for
| OAuth connections where you can stream any data you'd see in
| your broker platform to any consuming web application (given
| the consuming web application does all the paperwork, dev
| work, and so on)
| yesimahuman wrote:
| That's the best part about VTSAX and chill: you only ever
| have last closes. Really though this does not need to be real
| time at all, just recent enough to save me toil
| nico wrote:
| 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
| scubakid wrote:
| 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)
| mNovak wrote:
| 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.
| jonkuipers wrote:
| Thanks! Supporting Basic users comes at a real cost, but we
| want planning to stay accessible for everyone. To us, one-off
| planning feels like a better alternative than stripping down
| the product or selling user data.
| combyn8tor wrote:
| 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?
| scubakid wrote:
| I think managing any community is time consuming, but I like
| that discord feels real-time and efficient, with fun emojis,
| easy media sharing, and a mix of text channels and forum
| channels.
|
| For the first few years, I was up at all hours answering
| questions. It feels amazing to offload some of that now that we
| have more of a team.
|
| Like he mentioned in another comment here, Jon actually found
| me.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Congrats! Great to see you succeed through perseverance and just-
| not-giving-up!
| dvrp wrote:
| Congratulations man, it makes me so happy to read this and I can
| relate to that dopamine rollercoaster phenomenon you are talking
| about.
| scubakid wrote:
| aww thanks, glad to hear it resonates.
|
| it seems like every founder has their own version of that
| rollercoaster.
|
| which moments from yours do you feel you learned the most from?
| neom wrote:
| Kyle and I talked when he wasn't full time on this yet, I wanted
| to invest in it, well, anyway we talked about it a lot. Sufficed
| to say: I am SOOO proud of him! Genuinely awesome and brilliant
| dude. :)
| scubakid wrote:
| Those conversations got me thinking about a lot of the right
| things early on. Really appreciate your encouragement and
| belief back then!
| ilamont wrote:
| _During the first few years, I was approached by dozens of
| potential "partners." Several wanted an outsize equity stake to
| essentially just make suggestions._
|
| A warning to others starting new ventures: once you get a whiff
| of traction, and sometimes even before then, the parasites will
| ooze out of various nooks and crannies, attempting to latch onto
| a fresh new host.
|
| HN loves to pound on MBAs weaseling their way into startups, but
| opportunists may come from unexpected quarters.
|
| I experienced a classmate sidling up to offer "translation
| services" for 2% of outstanding shares. Then there was a startup
| that proposed a "merger" which would basically allow them to walk
| away from failure in exchange for equity.
| Crisco wrote:
| Congrats! I've been a customer and have used it monthly since
| April 2021 when I first saw it here. It has been essential in
| planning out major life financial decisions as I've changed jobs,
| gotten married, and now as we consider children and purchasing a
| home.
|
| I've appreciated the addition of new features over time and have
| recommended the tool to many friends and relatives. Hope to see
| another post in a couple years when you've hit $10M/yr!
| scubakid wrote:
| I'm grateful to hear it's made such a difference for you, and
| that early support back in 2021 means more than you know. In
| the down months and challenging times, it's the encouragement
| from early adopters like you that kept me going.
| vladmk wrote:
| And now he's definitely gonna break 100k in MRR with this viral
| post keep going! :-)
|
| Wonder what the equity split ended up being with the growth
| partner probable 60/40 at best for Jon
| CalRobert wrote:
| I saw this, thought "wow this is great, I sure miss living in the
| US where good tools like this are available, everything in Europe
| is crap" but lo and behold, there's the Netherlands tax preset.
| Fantastic.
| scubakid wrote:
| I think there may be a few wrinkles in the nl tax code that are
| tricky to capture with the current framework, but it has been a
| goal from the beginning to be as inclusive as possible for
| international scenario modeling. I'm continually making
| refinements there, and always open to ideas and suggestions if
| you have some.
| CalRobert wrote:
| They're complex, especially with the thirty percent ruling
| and constant box three changes, but it's still better than
| some US only tool
| feizhuzheng wrote:
| it is like some bias where everyone is talking about it but no
| one actually did it except for very few people
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Wow, that whole thing was completely devoid of useful content.
| Does it even say what the product or service is?
|
| "We've also added a few contractors to the team. And these guys
| are legends. They come straight from the ProjectionLab user
| community"
|
| So... the product was obviously built, because it had a "user
| community;" so now they've added contractors? Whoop dee doo.
|
| Is there some advice or playbook we're supposed to take away from
| this? Or is it self-congratulatory spam?
| dvt wrote:
| Why are you being such a stick-in-the-mud? It's an interesting
| and inspiration post on HN about a successfull bootstrapped
| indie startup. HN is primarily a startup & tech-driven
| community, so obviously we're all interested in stories like
| this. In fact, I miss the days where HN was almost solely
| startup post-mortems or success stories. How is the post even
| remotely self-congratulatory spam?
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Because it doesn't provide insightful guidelines on how to
| avoid pitfalls or how to work around this or that impediment
| or, or, or.
|
| Whatever, man. I guess we have different standards for what
| constitutes "informative."
| dspillett wrote:
| _> Does it even say what the product or service is?_
|
| Do you really need spoon-feeding that directly?
|
| The whole site is about the product. Much more information
| about it is literally a click-or-two away. Describing it
| specifically on that page, given how much information is
| already around it on directly linked pages, would seem
| superfluously wordy (even to me, someone who just used
| "superfluously" instead of "overly").
|
| _> Or is it self-congratulatory spam?_
|
| Largely, yes. But no more than so people having anniversary
| parties are showing off, do you begrudge that sort of thing
| too?
|
| I much prefer that to a self-aggrandising comment essentially
| stating "I'm better than them because I wouldn't post something
| like that" (yes, as some may be wondering, I am self-aware
| enough to acknowledge the strong touch of hypocrisy in that
| comment!).
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| "Spoon-feeding?" Saying WTF the product is isn't spoon-
| feeding. Expecting people to run around and do Web searches
| (or even roam around other pages at the domain) because
| posters are too lazy to add three descriptive words is
| douchey as hell, and way too often accepted (and even
| actively promoted) here.
|
| "I much prefer that to a self-aggrandising comment
| essentially stating 'I'm better than them because I wouldn't
| post something like that'"
|
| I don't see anyone saying that. What I said was, why waste
| our time with empty blather masquerading as a how-to?
| ggap wrote:
| Congratulations! It always helps if you start with solving it for
| yourself. A marketer like Jon is every side project strength
| jonkuipers wrote:
| Thanks! Kyle solved it for me too, which is how I found him. He
| lit the fire and I'm just tossing on more logs.
| dvt wrote:
| Amazing story and huge congrats! It's funny how the tool itself
| seems quite niche-y, but bootstrapping to 1M ARR in 4 years
| definitely proves that hypothesis wrong; fantastic job :)
| scubakid wrote:
| Thanks! Initially I had been looking around for an existing
| tool to use myself, so I knew there was at least one person out
| there willing to pay for something like this. And
| r/financialindependence has 2.3m members, so I hoped there
| might turn out to be more than one.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| It's niche, but I wasn't really able to find anything else like
| it. I wanted to project our some retirement scenarios and my
| options seemed to be:
|
| - Any of a few dozen "retirement calculators," each consisting
| of 6 fields and very simple outputs
|
| - Building out a series of buggy spreadsheets
|
| - Projection Lab
|
| After messing around for it a bit, it was a "shut up and take
| my money" situation. It was cheap, it was powerful, it was nice
| to use, and it has been the foundation for my personal
| financial strategy for the last few years!
| AstroBen wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| Wondering if you have any tips for what worked well with
| marketing?
| scubakid wrote:
| after that first Show HN back in 2021, the majority of our
| growth has been product-led and word-of-mouth.
|
| some bloggers and thought leaders in the financial independence
| space also found the tool and shared it in the early years,
| which helped get some momentum going.
|
| we're finally starting to make a little headway now with SEO,
| and we're beginning to reinvest/experiment with some paid
| channels for the first time this year.
| bentocorp wrote:
| Great post and congratulations.
|
| Similar approach and story to myself, in that I started a side
| project for my own use and interest, and then released it to
| great feedback as a side hustle, went part-time and over the last
| 2.5 years managed to go full time.
|
| I've yet to reach your $1M ARR though.. but hopefully getting
| there one day!
|
| Recently wrote up a Year in Review which touches on similar
| learnings as you've written over the last year:
|
| https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/ad-blocker-year-in-review...
|
| Have also had a keen interest in FIRE over the years and hadn't
| heard of your product... personally I've just kept my own
| spreadsheet which runs through scenarios, progress etc.
| scubakid wrote:
| Congrats on 350k downloads, sounds like you had a good year!
| You mentioned SEO finally kicking in. Do you attribute that to
| anything in particular? Any strategic changes you made? Also
| curious how you incorporate AI tools into your workflow, if at
| all.
| bentocorp wrote:
| > You mentioned SEO finally kicking in. Do you attribute that
| to anything in particular? Any strategic changes you made?
|
| I attribute the search traffic growth to:
|
| 1. A critical mass of content, after a number of years of
| writing - without a lot of search traffic for the first few
| years
|
| 2. Re-wrote and polished some of my earlier articles so that
| they were improved
|
| 3. Wrote more guides related to my app which were helpful to
| users; such as:
|
| Safari Extensions Guide -
| https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/safari-extensions-guide/
|
| Best Web Browser - https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/best-
| web-browser-2025/
|
| > Also curious how you incorporate AI tools into your
| workflow, if at all.
|
| Not a lot myself, except for sometimes helping with polishing
| and checking of writing and sometimes coming up with options
| etc.
|
| In my experience AI tools are like having a junior assistant
| - they can be helpful but you always need to check and polish
| everything they do.
| scubakid wrote:
| In terms of scale/footprint, roughly how many articles did
| it take to achieve that critical mass of content?
|
| And yeah, with the state of AI tooling, I think junior
| engineers, assistants, new grads, etc, may currently have
| the most to worry about.
| bentocorp wrote:
| It's not a lot of articles in total - only 35, with the
| first being published over 7 years ago.
|
| You can see the full list here:
| https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/
|
| Perhaps the age of the content helps, though I haven't
| done a deep dive into SEO practices myself. In the last
| year, when search traffic increased, I've increased the
| output to almost 1 article per month.
| trcf22 wrote:
| Would you have the same strategy if you were to do it
| again?
|
| Do you have LLMs in mind in your SEO strategy (like
| really long articles bragging about how good your app are
| in a non human readable way?
|
| Would love to have your thoughts on that!
| bentocorp wrote:
| Thanks for the question.
|
| As I noted it took 7 years to actually get any
| substantial Google traffic - if I was to start again I
| would potentially change some of what I've written to be
| more effective or focus on different topics earlier.
|
| However my approach is always to write what will be
| useful and interesting for humans, if Google search also
| finds it relevant then that's a bonus. I never write just
| for machines... as I think that's a long term losing
| strategy.
| bigiain wrote:
| Not the OP, but a quick look at the /sitemap.xml shows
| about 55 pages, the oldest of which seem to be dated
| 2018.
| DougN7 wrote:
| How concerned are you about Google's AI summaries keeping
| people from going to your site as a lot of publishers are
| now seeing? Or maybe it does affect product sites as much?
| bentocorp wrote:
| The site's primary purpose is as a product site for my
| app. The content that I have written is for this purpose,
| with organic Google search traffic being a bonus.
|
| Due to this, Google AI summaries are not a huge
| consideration.
| agcat wrote:
| This is great.. thanks for sharing!
| plentysun wrote:
| Amazing, this is super cool!
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Co-founder of a somewhat complementary and somewhat competitive
| product. Just dropping in to say what Kyle has done with
| Projection Lab is nothing short of phenomenal. This is a tough
| space to build in, and he's built an amazing product.
| scubakid wrote:
| Thanks Ozzie, that means a lot coming from you. Building
| successfully in this space requires a passion for it, and that
| really comes through with the work you and your team are doing
| too.
| myflash13 wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder who makes more money: a VC backed founder
| like you with tens of millions in funding and 8 figure
| revenues, or a bootstrapped founder with a small team of
| contractors at $1m ARR.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| You don't have to wonder: the days that VC backed founders
| make shit tons of money is long gone imho.
| bz_bz_bz wrote:
| I like to think a portion of your success came from having such
| great OMSCS SDP group project partners ;)
|
| Congrats on what you've accomplished. Always fun to read the
| updates.
| scubakid wrote:
| haha yep it all traces back to designing that android app for
| solving cryptograms XD
| matesz wrote:
| I really like the ability to skip setup and go for sandbox
| presets with premium features paywalled - this seems like an
| obvious choice.
|
| Most SaaS products like these require you to go through their
| complicated setup just to see what they are about.
|
| Also, highly recommend "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick -
| https://www.momtestbook.com.
|
| It is so revealing, especially to people like me who naturally
| tend to think that just automation of processes is going to make
| something people want. This book is, by far, the best resource I
| found to get out of that mindset and learn how to get real
| feedback.
| k1t wrote:
| What I'd really appreciate is a demo/sandbox version where I can
| try out the functionality without having to enter anything
| personal.
|
| I appreciate that you have a (generous looking) free tier and
| various screenshots - but it just seems like something I'd want
| to play around with before taking the time to create an account
| and start entering personal data into.
| jonkuipers wrote:
| We do offer a sandbox with preset examples that lets you
| explore the app. No need to enter any personal data, but you
| will need to sign up.
| k1t wrote:
| Thanks - I'll check it out then!
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Small steps daily, big rewards personally and financially in the
| long-term.
|
| Well-written and speaks for every struggling entrepreneur out
| there.
|
| Congratulations, Kyle and his wonderful team!
| scubakid wrote:
| thanks! I'm not a fast blog post writer, and sometimes feel
| guilty taking time away from building to draft updates like
| this (took me a couple days to write and rewrite this one).
| glad to hear it turned out to be a decent read.
| konsalexee wrote:
| The parrot on the OGs shoulder is the goal (besides raising the
| ARR lol)
| scubakid wrote:
| Funny thing is he's my fiance's bird, which she's had for 20
| years, but somehow the only person he likes now is me. Kind of
| a bummer for her. But he's happy I guess haha
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| It is interesting how most comments talk about "the right way to
| do it" but the post mostly seems to say persisting and just
| developing more is the important thing
| 44za12 wrote:
| I love how these stories always start with "I just wanted to
| scratch my own itch" and end with "...and now I'm running a
| company with a payroll bigger than my old day job." It's
| inspiring, but also a little bit intimidating. Makes you wonder
| how many potential seven-figure ideas are just sitting in
| people's "maybe someday" folders. The real lesson here? Ship
| something, even if it's ugly. You can't optimize what doesn't
| exist.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| For me the lesson is: ship the thing that makes you feel like
| you are playing Golf doing it (assuming someone who plays Golf
| enjoys it alot).
|
| The golfer won't regret their day on the course. And if you
| fail on the passion project it won't feel like a fail.
|
| I have another idea too. It's the win anyway system. Pick
| something that if you fail you use those skills at work and get
| ahead. E.g. the side project is also the training for the gap
| in your career.
| taneq wrote:
| I don't really like golf but I'd imagine that if I did, I
| might stop liking it once I had to do it professionally every
| day even when I didn't feel like it.
| Croak wrote:
| Choose not to pursue CS because of that. I like coding a
| lot and can spend lots of brainpower and time coding things
| I am interested in. Once you start working as a programmer,
| coding becomes something else. Therefore I rather take a
| different career path and can keep enjoying my little
| projects.
| scubakid wrote:
| What career path did you pursue instead, and how does
| that fit into the framework of your life and goals? Do
| you ever wonder if you could have bounced around enough
| to find a CS role that might enhance rather than corrupt
| your passion? Or do the odds of that just seem too low in
| your experience?
| trcf22 wrote:
| Exactly! If you can get some exposure as a << specialist >>,
| build a network or just learn a ton of new skills (marketing,
| accounting, PR, devops) it tends to be a win/win. That's what
| I'm currently doing and by no mean would I have better myself
| as much in any other way.
|
| If you enjoy Charlie's, you will definitely enjoy Kahneman's
| Thinking Fast and Slow, especially the part about being an <<
| expert >>: a few talks in empty classrooms in a famous Uni, a
| radio show nobody knows and voila, you get some cred!
| teiferer wrote:
| To me, a lesson is: If you keep chugging along on your idea
| then you might get lucky and be the one out of 10,000 for whom
| this single-entrepreneur-bootstrap project works out, you get
| to be your own boss, have a big payroll and it ends up as a
| success story on HN. Without that luck, you are among the other
| 9,999 where it just died. But without trying, you are
| guaranteed failure (though with less frustration perhaps).
| Vinnl wrote:
| Well, you are at least guaranteed to not get _this kind_ of
| success.
| mattbuilds wrote:
| True but if you are building it for yourself then you will
| still have something useful in the end. Chances are that you
| also probably enjoyed or took satisfaction in the process of
| building it. Also, if it is truly a passion project and not
| just attempt to make money, it's probably more interesting
| than most of the stuff shared.
| themdonuts wrote:
| Yeah, this resonates with me. My side project for 6 years was
| generating very, very little. Enough for a few pints a month.
|
| Fun fact: The project survived a total destruction of the
| datacenter where it was hosted (remember the ovh incident?)
| which took it offline for maybe 4 months (no backups at the
| time). Luckily the server it was on didn't get melted.
|
| Also at some point I started questioning why was I still
| working on it for so little. My wife convinced me to keep
| going and to be honest I still enjoyed working on it.
|
| Then on year 7 things started to change, and on year 8 I was
| able to quit my daily job! I'm on year 10 now. It's not a 7
| figure business, but I enjoy every single day. Also the
| flexibility it gives me is excellent.
| scubakid wrote:
| That's an impressive number of years to stick with a
| product you questioned. Probably 2x longer than Google
| would have maintained it lol
|
| (who says products by indie devs always have higher long-
| term support risk?!)
|
| I'm really happy to hear it turned around for you. The 4
| months of down time sound terrifying. Can you share more
| about how you navigated that, how it impacted customers,
| and what you were able to restore vs what you couldn't, and
| what processes you changed in the aftermath?
| themdonuts wrote:
| My business is transactional where email is still king
| for all after sales support. I guess that makes it way
| easier to handle than a SaaS one.
|
| The biggest impact for the business was not making any
| sale during this period and my SEO rankings going down.
| Actually the site disappeared from search. I guess the
| biggest impact for me - personally - was psychological.
| All production data was gone and I was seeing it as a
| sign I should just let it go. I had all the source code,
| so in theory I could do it, but not sure I would have the
| motivation to.
|
| Then in the end my thingy was hosted in a section that
| was salvaged from the fire. I saw it as a sign that
| actually I SHOULD keep going, lol. I don't remember
| exactly how long it was off but yeah, 4-6 months.
| Everything was restored though.
|
| The only thing I did was to implement automatic backups
| and to a different datacenter. I remember from the
| incident, one issue for many was their servers were
| hosted in Strasbourg with backups also hosted there.
|
| I've touched on this in my last comment, but my wife is
| by far my biggest motivator. It's tough life for us
| working solo, with our minds playing tricks on us all the
| time. It always sounds so much easier to go and work for
| someone else again or to just start a new side project
| from scratch. Not sure if there's any Alex Hormozi fan
| here, but one thing he's always repeating is to not give
| up, not start anything new over and over and just keep
| pushing that one project.
| scubakid wrote:
| Ah so with this business model there was minimal impact
| to existing customers? That's fortunate.
|
| Out of curiosity, what kind of transactional product has
| a substantial production database that would be daunting
| to re-build in a 4-6 mo window given you still had the
| source code during that time?
|
| And I hope you've taken your wife out for some nice
| dinners (or whatever she likes). Totally agree that
| having a supportive and encouraging partner can make all
| the difference in challenging times.
| themdonuts wrote:
| The business is a car rental platform for niche
| destinations https://bonjourpaco.com/
|
| At the time I was working with maybe 30 providers and it
| would be doable to rebuild the server and reconfigure all
| providers, cars, insurance, etc. Content would probably
| take longer, but also doable. But at the time I took it
| as a sign to shift to something else.
|
| Glad I didn't and that the project came back from the
| ashes, literally.
| scubakid wrote:
| Neat, someday I'd like to see the Azores. I've heard good
| things.
|
| FYI if you click on a destination name, it's currently
| throwing a 500 error.
| vlod wrote:
| Can't help thinking that your business is somehow tied to
| your username. Now I'm intrigued! :)
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| "But without trying, you are guaranteed failure" >> But
| without trying you are limited to a relatively safe and
| certain affluent paycheck from your day job.
| chamomeal wrote:
| It's also entirely possible to make something that just gives
| you a little extra cash, which can be a huge difference. I
| imagine an extra $2,000 a month of fun, self-made income
| feels pretty incredible.
| esskay wrote:
| See to me the "running my own company with a payroll bigger
| than my old day job" isn't something I'd want - it actually
| sounds like a total nightmare to me.
|
| The whole point to me is getting to a stage where you can work
| when and where you want and only if you want to. Having it set
| up in such a way where its small enough to manage but big
| enough to self sustain if you wanted to go off on vacation for
| a few weeks at the drop of a hat.
| yibg wrote:
| There are probably tones of ideas that would be viable
| businesses if executed. One problem though is between
| "scratching my own itch" and "payroll bigger than my old day
| job" is working "4-6 hours every night after work, entire
| weekends, holidays". And even that is no guarantee of getting
| to a big payroll (another thread is discussing persistence vs
| stubborn).
|
| Not many people are even in a position to do this (family,
| health etc), or have the mental and physical energy to do this
| for years. This is one of the potential benefits of something
| like UBI. It allows people to pursue these ideas without having
| to work another 9-5.
| bisRepetita wrote:
| Thank you so much Kyle for sharing all this. This is very
| inspiring. I will put a few more extra hours today in my project
| thinking about you.
|
| I'd love to have some info about the hiring of Jon, anything you
| may feel like sharing, while I realize a lot of it is very
| confidential. For example:
|
| - I am wondering how the working relationship got started since
| you write that he "spent a year contributing real value", and he
| was not asking for equity upfront. Did you hire him as contractor
| initially, did he volunteer his time?
|
| - the structure of the deal with him, and of course the equity
| part, especially _if/while_ you are not planning to sell the
| business. Maybe you have some pointers on "possible deal
| structures" that you looked into without spilling the beans on
| the actual deal?
|
| I know I am asking a lot, I hope it does not hurt to ask, so
| realistically I don't expect any answer, but any breadcrumbs
| would be so valuable/helpful! In any case, thank you so much
| already.
| teiferer wrote:
| > I will put a few more extra hours today in my project
| thinking about you.
|
| And that's the recipe for failure right there. Your passion
| side project needs to be fueled by passion, not thinking about
| somebody else's success that you are trying to replicate.
| bisRepetita wrote:
| I find this such a strange comment, to be able to reach such
| a conclusion so quickly without any idea what my side project
| is, how much passion I have put into it, and how much still
| have in me, with no idea how many people I've helped already
| with it.
|
| Like Kyle writes _keep showing up to make it a little better
| every day_. Today again I will show up, but today I 'll think
| of him and it will help me.
|
| What's your passion project? How do _you_ keep the motivation
| every day? How long has it been?
| optymizer wrote:
| > Your passion side project needs to be fueled by passion
|
| Maybe he's in that valley of despair right now that the
| article shows occurs many times. Passion is fleeting and at
| times you just need a little inspirational jolt to get back
| into it and regain some of that passion.
|
| Also, to share a personal experience, passion is not
| sufficient. You need favorable conditions as well (or the
| ability to create them). For example, the article talks about
| working nights and weekends. I'm not sure if the author has
| kids or what the arrangement is in his family, but
| personally, as much as I wanted to work whole weekends on my
| passion project, I would feel like a shitty father if I
| ignored my kids over the weekend for months, so the project
| gets put on the back burner a lot while I'm biking with my
| kids outside and having fun.
| scubakid wrote:
| I was definitely fortunate to attempt this in a compatible
| stage of life (no kids yet).
|
| I'd like to think there will still be room for
| craft/creation if I become a parent someday. But I doubt
| this level of sustained focus (obsession?) over multiple
| years would have been possible or responsible in that
| scenario.
| alok-g wrote:
| Looks good!
|
| Am a potential customer.
|
| I would like to understand what all market data is built in for
| the historical simulations and future predictions. I currently do
| financial projections in Excel, the critical missing part for my
| own calculations being the market data.
|
| How long is the free trial for premium version? (I could not find
| on the website.)
|
| Thanks.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Wicked PMF there. Getting to 150 MMR right away is a good sign.
| Especially for a HN post.
| scubakid wrote:
| how do you define PMF? I keep hearing conflicting definitions.
| Seems like any time someone declares they've found it, there's
| another who jumps in to explain why they technically haven't
| yet.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| To me this is a wild success story but to someone else this
| may be meh that isn't much.
|
| I think 1M ARR shows you are on to something and getting
| sales off the bat is a good indicator.
|
| Not an expert but I feel PMF is a rear view mirror thing.
| scubakid wrote:
| lol so have we gone from "wicked PMF" to just being "onto
| something"?
|
| the rear-view thing sounds kinda like "you'll know it when
| you see it"... which I'm sure is true for some people, but
| idk if I would know when to declare PMF without a more
| precise definition.
| bravesoul2 wrote:
| Yes. I'm saying the first HN post was a great signal, but
| a probability. It could have flopped from there. But
| sales from a cold HN post to me is good pot odds, so stay
| in the game!
|
| The rear view mirror thing is of course true: you can
| only know the market by testing it by trying to sell your
| thing to it. Anything forward looking is a prediction.
|
| You are always making decisions that are like bets.
| scubakid wrote:
| Definitely agree on thinking in bets and probabilities.
|
| Is your sense that we're officially at PMF now? Or maybe
| last year even?
|
| Or do you think the question is fundamentally subjective
| and depends on who you ask and what numbers seem
| compelling to them, like you kind of alluded to before?
| conductr wrote:
| The question is really just how big of a market does this
| serve? You've made it to the point where anyone entering the
| FIRE market will likely stumble upon your product as a top
| recommended tool (just judging by the praise here). Maybe it
| can tap into the larger, but more generic,
| financial/retirement planning market. To me, it seems well on
| it's path to be a YNAB which has a high amount of word of
| mouth recommendations, but perhaps covers a larger market.
| scubakid wrote:
| one of the nice things about being lean and bootstrapped is
| there's less pressure to chase the mass market.
|
| so we need to worry less than a venture-backed company
| probably would about just how far outside of the FIRE
| community this has a lot of appeal.
|
| that being said, there are certainly a lot of people who
| would benefit from having a long-term financial plan.
| here's to hoping your ynab comparison turns out to be apt!
| senko wrote:
| Interesting to see the inflection point when Jon joined. I recall
| something similar when Marko joined Plausible as a marketing
| person, which also started as a solo effort by a developer.
|
| To my knowledge Pieter does both himself, but he built a sizable
| following online, which boosts all his marketing efforts.
| cbeach wrote:
| Great job on this webapp, it's a really easy-to-use platform.
| I've toyed with the same startup idea myself, having tracked my
| personal finances and life projection for years now using Google
| Sheets, Grafana and other tools.
|
| Just an annecdotal bit of feedback: I would like to continue
| using ProjectionLab but $109/year is beyond what I'm willing to
| spend, especially given ProjectionLab doesn't integrate with any
| live tracking of property prices / investment portfolio valuation
| etc.
|
| If it were $40/year I probably would subscribe. But $109 is too
| much to justify (and I am reasonably well off).
|
| Have you A/B tested different pricing levels to find the sweet
| spot that maximises revenue?
| codecutter wrote:
| I tend to agree with the sentiment. The only reason I
| subscribed to ProjectionLab was to appreciate the hard work of
| Kyle. Otherwise, "New Retirement" (now called Boldin) serves my
| purpose. It provides similar features and it provides automatic
| updates too.
| alittlebee wrote:
| As someone that has tried and failed at many attempts over a
| decade, I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate you. This
| is so wonderful, and I couldn't be happier for you. Thank you for
| sharing your journey, and lessons learned .
|
| I'm now a single working mom supporting 2 young kiddos on my own,
| so my time has become limited; but I'll be back :)
| scubakid wrote:
| Thanks so much, that means a lot. It's challenging when time
| and life pull you in so many directions. Wishing you and your
| kids all the best. When you jump back in, I'll be rooting for
| you.
| lvl155 wrote:
| You tried which is more than 99.9999999%. Keep at it and focus
| on learning from your experiences. It will eventually come.
| xwiz wrote:
| Glad to hear of your success! Projection Lab is such a great
| product.
| scubakid wrote:
| Thanks! It's interesting how easy it is to move the goalposts
| on product vision. It has come such a long way since the
| beginning, but I still wake up every day thinking about how
| much more I feel compelled to build.
| adkaplan wrote:
| Amazing - congratulations. I've been using the demo version of
| your product every six months or so since I first saw your post
| here. I Really appreciate that you've kept it available, and hope
| you will continue to do so even as the cash continues to pour in.
| If I was anywhere close to retirement, I'd be a subscriber
| instantly, but I just like financial planning as a hobby. I
| recommend it to family and friends. You've created a great,
| intuitive product and absolutely deserve your success.
| jonkuipers wrote:
| Thanks so much. Really appreciate that. We've always wanted the
| tool to be accessible to anyone interested in financial
| planning, even just as a hobby, so it's great to hear the basic
| version has been useful.
|
| Do you think it strikes the right balance between free access
| and a sustainable paid model?
| adkaplan wrote:
| I think your method is perfect. Having to make notes and re-
| enter my settings is just the right amount of frustrating,
| that each time I'm tempted to buy it. I think most people who
| are less stubborn (cheap) than I would pay the second time
| they need the tool.
|
| Having the free no-saving model as a public service is
| hopefully a win-win for you. The public has access to a
| financial planning tool, and if they need to take their
| finances more seriously they can start the paid model.
|
| I also like the prompt you've added which says something like
| /hey, you lost your settings because you're using the free
| mode, but we can recover them to save you time/. Good detail.
| jonkuipers wrote:
| glad to hear it. thanks for the feedback!
| commodorepet wrote:
| How do you differentiate between persistence or stuborness. I
| have been developing a SaaS product since 2020 which currently is
| at 3K ARR with a very slow growth (20%). It's a B2B and are we
| are still missing a bunch of features to make us on par with
| competitors. We did survive a couple of competitors that came and
| go as we still have our day jobs and running it costs peanuts
| ($$$).
|
| It often feels I should give up but having had customers who used
| us for years makes me think we have something that one day will
| make serious money.
| scubakid wrote:
| Are your existing customers vocal about what they love or wish
| you'd add? Do you know how they found you and what made them
| choose you over competitors? Is there a niche/segment within
| your larger TAM with a specific pain point you're solving
| really well? And how big is that segment?
|
| Either way, if your existing customers don't all come from paid
| channels, and they're loyal, and you've outlasted multiple
| competitors, that already sounds like a real achievement to me.
| My progress was slow for years before things started to really
| pick up, so don't discount signs of traction if there are some
| meaningful ones.
| commodorepet wrote:
| Very vocal, we do have a very solid TODO list for another 12
| months. They are also quite loyal and number of them are with
| us for 3+ years and they use software daily (its just a very
| small customer list overall). I do wonder sometimes why they
| stay with us given other competitors are much better. We
| mostly grew through word of mouth and cold emails. I believe
| we are already solving a fairly niche use case (TAM is few
| thousand customers in USA) and my idea is to grow revenue
| enough to go after larger TAM (several milion).
| scubakid wrote:
| Word-of-mouth growth sounds like a good sign. And depending
| on your goals, sometimes building a defensible niche
| business, maximizing ARPU, and minimizing churn can be
| better than chasing the mass market. Could something like a
| referral program potentially move the needle?
| commodorepet wrote:
| How do you differentiate between persistence or stuborness. I
| have been developing a SaaS product since 2020 which currently is
| at 3K ARR with a very slow growth (20% YoY). It's a B2B and are
| we are still missing a bunch of features to make us on par with
| competitors. We did survive a couple of competitors that came and
| go as we still have our day jobs and running it costs peanuts
| ($$$).
|
| It often feels I should give up but having had customers who used
| us for years makes me think we have something that one day will
| make serious money.
| mattfrommars wrote:
| Amazing stuff. I think I'm in the boat as you OP except I just
| can't get myself to commit to a project since 1) no idea if it
| works or is unique 2) look for better opportunity and spend time
| doing LC/apply for job.
|
| There is only so many hours after work.
|
| > Once you've validated your idea,
|
| Could you really break this down. I feel you overlooked this
| part. How do you filter through tons of ideas into idea that for
| sure or has good chance for success. For example, to build a yet
| another crypto exchange is both super technical and far too
| regulated. What is a known strategy how founder/dev nail down and
| commit to a project?
| scubakid wrote:
| There are many frameworks and approaches, but here are two of
| my filtering criteria:
|
| 1. I don't start a project unless it's something I deeply want
| to exist for my own personal use. That way I know there's at
| least one person who would pay for an elegant solution. And
| even if no one shows up, at least it's useful to me.
|
| 2. I don't start a project unless I can envision the solution
| top to bottom and feel confident about the scope of the
| technical work. I'm not the most brilliant person at data
| structures & algorithms, and I prefer solutions where a simple
| architecture can get the job done. If there are foggy areas in
| the technical design, or parts I struggle to visualize clearly,
| to me that's a red flag.
| bprater wrote:
| ProjectionLab offers a lifetime plan. How does this factor into
| profitability - as they'll never be able to bill this subset of
| customers again (for the same product)? At what point does this
| group of users start to degrade the performance of the business -
| simply because there is no more input for their required output?
| jonkuipers wrote:
| The lifetime plan is priced higher than expected LTV, so it's
| profitable upfront.
|
| We wanted to offer an option for early adopters with
| subscription fatigue. From the start, it has been a way to
| reinvest in the project: initially to support Kyle's time, and
| now to fund growth that drives recurring subscriptions.
|
| We may sunset new lifetime sales in the future, since a one-
| time payment model doesn't align as well with our goal of
| building and maintaining PL over the long term.
| apparent wrote:
| Congrats on building a business that is both profitable and has
| over $1M in ARR.
|
| Do you share any info on margins/profit, which could vary widely
| for a business like this (depending, for example, on how much is
| spent on customer acquisition)
| agcat wrote:
| So happy to hear about your story! Congratulations rooting for
| you! :D
| buildItN0w_ wrote:
| the "Working nights & weekends after corporate job" period is
| probably why you made it!
|
| Very inspiring and kudos for not giving up! Congratulations!
| scubakid wrote:
| thanks! consistently putting in those hours wasn't easy. it
| became the only time in life I've had elevated blood pressure.
| but you're right that I probably wouldn't have gotten here
| without burning the candle at both ends like that.
|
| at the time, I was too risk-averse to go all-in right away, and
| this was the best de-risking strategy I came up with. luckily,
| my schedule is now more balanced again. (a little lol)
| RonSkufca wrote:
| Congratulations. I will be checking it out as I am a big fan of
| FIRE. Also my daughter has 2 cockatiels one for each shoulder.
| But they usually end up on one as they like to hang out together.
| scubakid wrote:
| oh neat! I was surprised how long their lifespan is -- my
| fiance has had ours for over 20 years... although for some
| reason his allegiance flipped a few years ago, and now he only
| flies to me, not her.
| RonSkufca wrote:
| Yes bird ownership can be a multi decade responsibility.
| jonkuipers wrote:
| so can a great bootstrapped business ;)
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I haven't used the tool, but what's the most against AI/LLM
| models? I ask, because I've used ChatGPT for similar, and it
| spits out decent answers. More so, the more data you feed to it.
| scubakid wrote:
| GPT is not bad at high-level guesstimates, but there's a LOT
| that goes on under the hood to make a detailed, accurate,
| responsive, and tax-aware long-term planning system with a good
| UX for nuanced scenario comparisons and what-ifs. At current
| capability levels, AI tools aren't a great replacement for that
| in my experience. But we'll see if that changes as they
| continue to evolve...
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