Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 4)
Published in 2011, this chronicle by @n9com details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $30k.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 163 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 20 comments
Really enjoyed these posts/discussion. Here are the HN discussions to the first three parts of this series:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2955214 (Part 1)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2965929 (Part 2)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978598 (Part 3)
The new age street market merchants. If you don't hustle, you don't make it. My favorite quote of the post:
"The App Store is a most vicious yet glorious technological battlefield, where your apps are your soldiers. One can either moan, shut shop and disappear when their soldiers are hit, or one can ruthlessly battle it out till the end with every last one of them."
Good for these guys for having hustle, working hard, and making a product people want.
Still, I can't help but think these "Facetab for Facebook" apps are kind of scammy; it's basically squatting on Facebook's name on the App Store. Try taking "Facebook" out of the app's title (leaving it in the description) and see how sales do. Overall, I'm conflicted.
I listened to the App Teardown[1] podcast the Fiplab team started with Colin Plamondon (of "Free Books" app and HN fame), and it drills down on some of the basics of App store marketing. Good supplement to this series!
[1]http://www.appteardown.com
Do you have any advice/insight into picking a category for your app? I've noticed that some of the rarer categories are pretty dead... is the easier path to the top-10 more advantageous than a 'properly' categorized app? How much leeway does Apple give you in picking a category?