From 0 to Startup: How We Made $70,000 in Revenue in Our First 6 Months – Part 1
Published in 2013, this chronicle by @kevinyun details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $70,000.
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 ★ 72 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 33 comments
I'm not a laywer, but this scared me: " There’s really no need to worry about setting up the business logistics from the onset since these are all secondary activities in comparison to what really matters: the business. Also, no need to initially worry about incorporation, but do assume that anything government-related will take longer than expected."
You're already pulling in $70K in 6 months and you're clearly operating what looks to be a company. Seems to me you're putting yourself up to some serious liability if something were to go wrong. Also, getting all your IP and other legal issues sorted out will save you massive headaches later on. Sure if this fails and no one cares to fight over equity, IP, and no customers sue, you might be fine. But what if it's a rousing success? You could be setting yourself up for some undue stress and some tax ramifications that outweigh putting it off.
I'm very wary of hearing you made $xyz of revenue.
My current company (multi-million dollar telco) is continually chasing revenue, and it's driving us into the ground. We recently did a $4 million dollar expansion to our cable infrastructure to accommodate a new little community, involving many kilometers of fiber, a few expensive switches, etc, etc. After all of that, we got less than 20 customers paying ~$100/mo. The expected break-even for this project? Over 200 years.
The kicker? The people in charge got raises and promotions because they netted the company more revenue.
Tell me about your profits.
Over 4 grand for a course. How many units at a university would you compare your course to? Time wise it looks like about 2 classes for a quarter system school (which works well to compare because they are also 10 weeks long per class). That puts your cost per unit much higher than a UC school. Must be good stuff you're teaching.
The real story is that you found a market with huge demands which didn't have much competition (not many design schools) that you could fulfill.
Everything else is irrelevant except for "keep going".
I guess someone has to bring it up, but a digital design school is not a startup.