I Bootstrapped My Side Project to $6k/Month (2017)
Published in 2018, this chronicle by @WD-42 details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $6k/Month.
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 Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 228 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 66 comments
Holy shit. I have so mixed feelings.
First of all, thank you for sharing this story. Secondly, I envy your grit and the ability to just go and sell, instead of being stuck in impostor syndrome mode.
Thirdly, shame on you for building a product which sole point is to make money by destroying the Play Store. And shame on you for working on it after you realized this.
Foruthly, and this is the part I don't understand - how on Earth were you able to make money on that first app of yours? And how your customers are able to repeat that? I mean, who on Earth downloads this kind of stuff? I'm very confused about this. By your description, that app is "simple app with a list of videos, targeting a specific trending niche", i.e. not much more than a YouTube playlist. So who are the people downloading cookie-cutter apps when an universal one-stop app is available?
The most valuable point for me: Gamification! A friend of mine wrote his master's thesis on that topic. And yeah, turns out it works really well if done right ;-)
Regarding the rest of the text: I wonder what value people using these apps get out of them?
I share some of his sentiment: The aim is to onboard a bunch of people with a "get rich quick"-kind-of-mentality and flood a platform with content of questionable content (I mean, the content could be good - but somehow I doubt it if a single person creates a thousand apps). On the other hand: Living on 6k$ in Morocco? Could be a worse life...
damn, this guy built a tool for growth hackers to make android app store spam, added gamification when it started failing, then added a pyramid MLM referral system for users to market it by word of mouth. he's obviously very smart and motivated. it's just kind of sad to me that the ad economy has grown so large that this is the best way for smart young people to make money.
i doubt he really hates his product at the end of the day, it's just a catchy way to market it. if he did, he would've walked away when his partner did to freelance some more or do another startup.
I don't know if cryptocurrency is going to solve this problem, but whatever does solve it is going to generate an enormous amount of wealth.
Okay. I ultimately liked this posting. It started out rocky because he exposed he had accomplished so much at a young age (#imverysmart). Sounded like at several times he wanted to spend money he didn't really have. I liked the reflection and how he tried several different strategies to grow revenue.
And the posting itself is a good way to boost visibility.