ROUNDTABLES ★ 5 upvotes 2015

Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?

Shared by @duked · Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019) · 2 community discussions

ORIGINAL RETROSPECTIVE

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @duked on Hacker News:

A thread similar to this was posted ~1 year ago by gillis. I tried last month but timing wasn't right. I think it's time for an updated 2015 version and may be making it a monthly post like the whoishiring ?

If you have any side projects that you've built and that you no longer have time for, list them here and let's see if others want to buy it from you.

SYNTHESIS & DOSSIER

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2015 where @duked convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:

Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.

Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.

Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.

Community Debate Themes:

Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.