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Creative Tim: Growing a side project into a $17k/month business

445 points by csallen 10y ago

axelut 10y ago
Hi everybody, here is Alex, the co-founder of Creative Tim. Hope the information from this interview will help you achieve more with your current business or give you the courage to start your own business. If you have any suggestions or feedback I would be glad to talk with you. Best, Alex
- jim_d 10y ago
  Hi Alex, Great work. I'm curious how did you get your affiliate programs in place, did you reach out to folks or did they reach out to you?
  - axelut 10y ago
    Thank you for the kind words! In the beginning, we started to talk with different bloggers or website owners that were sharing content for our audience, then with github repos' owners in order to get some of our affiliates, then we created a dedicated page on our website where we receive affiliates requests.
- wheelerwj 10y ago
  Hey Alex! Thanks for sharing about creative-tim! You have an excellent business on your hands.
  - axelut 10y ago
    Thank you! Glad that you like it :D
- rahrahrah 10y ago
  Hi Alex, thanks for sharing. I was wondering, what you pay your affiliates is missing from the break down of costs. Why is that?
  - axelut 10y ago
    Glad that you like it! It is missing from the cost because we use a payment processor (Avangate) who is taking care of all our payments and also the affiliates commissions + European VAT and other taxes, what we have there in revenue is our net revenue after we pay all the VAT, affiliates and commissions of our payment vendor. So the Gross revenue is bigger than 17k/month, around 20-21k/month.
- JamesSwift 10y ago
  I came across your site a couple months ago and was really impressed with the design. I was also pleasantly surprised at just how permissive your licensing was. I'm now happily using paper-dashboard for some internal admin areas. Thank you!
- hbcondo714 10y ago
  Hi, Alex. Nice new material design templates and open sourcing them! It looks like the developer wrote their own code[1] to achieve the material design look and feel; will your team be using Google's Material Design Components in HTML/CSS/JS [2] in the future? [1] https://github.com/creativetimofficial/material-dashboard https://github.com/creativetimofficial/material-dashboard [2] https://github.com/google/material-design-lite https://github.com/google/material-design-lite
rfrey 10y ago
I devour indiehacker's interviews and I love the transparency - thanks to both sides of the table. According to the numbers here, 42% of the 17,000 monthly revenues are spent on 6 people. That's $1190 per person per month if everyone is paid equally. Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? If not, how are your employees making ends meet? Edit: that last sentence sounds accusatory - I don't mean it to. I just mean: do you have a strategy of part-timers who have other income streams, do you take side contracts, etc.
- eugeneionesco 10y ago
  >Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? It's a very good living wage for Romania but low for what other IT people are earning, ~$2k monthly.
  - emilburzo 10y ago
    > It's a very good living wage It's a very good wage for _surviving_. After taking care of rent/utility bills there's not much left to go around for actually living.
    - hueving 10y ago
      >After taking care of rent/bills there's not much left to go around for actually living. Are you implying rent/bills in Romania are $1k/mo?
      - user5994461 10y ago
        The rent in UK (not London), Germany, France (not Paris), Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc... are under $1k a month. Romania is eastern Europe. It should be way cheaper than that.
        emerongi 10y ago
        Rent most likely ~200, food ~100-200, misc ~100. You can get by with 300-500/month in eastern Europe, but you will have to monitor your expenses really closely. 300 if you live with friends/parents, cook at home and don't really do much else other than eat, sleep and work. Get a decent apartment, have some fun in your free time and 1000 does turn into a "barely getting by"-wage. 1.5k-2k is comfortable wage, but median is around 500-600 in most of eastern Europe afaik.
wheelerwj 10y ago
here's a link to the other HN thread with no comments or anything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696
- rahrahrah 10y ago
  No one cares.
- ensiferum 10y ago
  The indiehacker guy is known for aggressively beating his own drum and posting and reposting his blog links. Appears effective.
  - jasim 10y ago
    Speaking from personal experience - nothing magically happens even if you create something valuable and put your heart and soul into it. You have to beat that drum, even if you hate every note that comes out of it. Which is why there are roles called Sales and Marketing. Being a salesman is an under-appreciated, arduous but honorable job. They create mutually beneficial relationships between parties that might otherwise never find each other.
    - ensiferum 10y ago
      Oh yes I know this. Sadly great products don't sell themselves, but proper sales people can make shit sell like gold.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
morgante 10y ago
I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?
- merpnderp 10y ago
  If you can make more than $17k/month from straight consulting, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter please.
  - morgante 10y ago
    I don't have a newsletter, but if you send an email to me@morgante.net I'll let you know if I ever start one.
  - ffumarola 10y ago
    At a modest $200/hr, that's 85 hours. It definitely can be hard to line up that much work month after month, but I've had a few months in a row where I achieved that level of consulting revenue. The key is to keep raising your rates.
    - zump 10y ago
      I'm a new grad, but since when do consultants get to charge > ~double the hourly rate of what wages would be? Did I miss the memo?
      - kleinsch 10y ago
        Happens all the time. As a consultant you're responsible for self employment tax (7.5%), benefits, vacation, sick leave, etc. You also have no job security, so you need to make enough that you can cover gaps in between gigs that ended. You price it into your hourly rate accordingly. So yes, your hourly rate is significantly higher than a comparable salaried employee. No, you're not actually ending up with double the money at the end of the day.
gigatexal 10y ago
17k a month is only 204k a year which is awesome don't get me wrong but I'm not sure that supports 6 employees.
- bond 10y ago
  In Romania they do..
- jdboyd 10y ago
  Does that take into account that they are in Romania?
- freyr 10y ago
  Average gross salary in Romania is $740/month, so $17k/month should be able to pay 6 salaries.
gfosco 10y ago
This worked very well on me, as I just bought one of their developer licenses for a pro package... Beautiful stuff.
vyoming 10y ago
They make great templates. We have used their chart templates in our BI tool - https://drilldb.com https://drilldb.com Their pricing is also very affordable compared to many alternatives. You don't have to think twice before making a purchase.
znewman 10y ago
Another site that offers the same cookie cutter bootstrap templates you can find for free? The worst part is they all just give you a pretty front-end with absolutely no back-end support. Just try actually interacting with the live demos.
ensiferum 10y ago
With all these "success" stories flying about I'd absolutely love to know how many losers there are for each "Creative Tim". 10x, 100x, 1000x ?
nkkollaw 10y ago
I read some of the comments, many saying that $17,000/mo. isn't a lot of money, but don't forget that Creative Tim is based in Romania. Salaries in Romania aren't as good as in the States. I'm currently based in Italy and a programmer can make as little as 1,200/mo. (salaries in Italy are much higher than in Romania, possibly 100-200% more). I make more than that freelancing, but I don't think 17,000/mo. is bad, both in general and for a company based in Romania.

445 points by csallen 10y ago

Hi everybody, here is Alex, the co-founder of Creative Tim. Hope the information from this interview will help you achieve more with your current business or give you the courage to start your own business. If you have any suggestions or feedback I would be glad to talk with you. Best, Alex

jim_d 10y ago
Hi Alex, Great work. I'm curious how did you get your affiliate programs in place, did you reach out to folks or did they reach out to you?
- axelut 10y ago
  Thank you for the kind words! In the beginning, we started to talk with different bloggers or website owners that were sharing content for our audience, then with github repos' owners in order to get some of our affiliates, then we created a dedicated page on our website where we receive affiliates requests.
wheelerwj 10y ago
Hey Alex! Thanks for sharing about creative-tim! You have an excellent business on your hands.
- axelut 10y ago
  Thank you! Glad that you like it :D
rahrahrah 10y ago
Hi Alex, thanks for sharing. I was wondering, what you pay your affiliates is missing from the break down of costs. Why is that?
- axelut 10y ago
  Glad that you like it! It is missing from the cost because we use a payment processor (Avangate) who is taking care of all our payments and also the affiliates commissions + European VAT and other taxes, what we have there in revenue is our net revenue after we pay all the VAT, affiliates and commissions of our payment vendor. So the Gross revenue is bigger than 17k/month, around 20-21k/month.
JamesSwift 10y ago
I came across your site a couple months ago and was really impressed with the design. I was also pleasantly surprised at just how permissive your licensing was. I'm now happily using paper-dashboard for some internal admin areas. Thank you!
hbcondo714 10y ago
Hi, Alex. Nice new material design templates and open sourcing them! It looks like the developer wrote their own code[1] to achieve the material design look and feel; will your team be using Google's Material Design Components in HTML/CSS/JS [2] in the future? [1] https://github.com/creativetimofficial/material-dashboard https://github.com/creativetimofficial/material-dashboard [2] https://github.com/google/material-design-lite https://github.com/google/material-design-lite

rfrey 10y ago

I devour indiehacker's interviews and I love the transparency - thanks to both sides of the table. According to the numbers here, 42% of the 17,000 monthly revenues are spent on 6 people. That's $1190 per person per month if everyone is paid equally. Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? If not, how are your employees making ends meet? Edit: that last sentence sounds accusatory - I don't mean it to. I just mean: do you have a strategy of part-timers who have other income streams, do you take side contracts, etc.

eugeneionesco 10y ago
>Is everyone in Romania, and is that a living wage there? It's a very good living wage for Romania but low for what other IT people are earning, ~$2k monthly.
- emilburzo 10y ago
  > It's a very good living wage It's a very good wage for _surviving_. After taking care of rent/utility bills there's not much left to go around for actually living.
  - hueving 10y ago
    >After taking care of rent/bills there's not much left to go around for actually living. Are you implying rent/bills in Romania are $1k/mo?
    - user5994461 10y ago
      The rent in UK (not London), Germany, France (not Paris), Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc... are under $1k a month. Romania is eastern Europe. It should be way cheaper than that.
      - emerongi 10y ago
        Rent most likely ~200, food ~100-200, misc ~100. You can get by with 300-500/month in eastern Europe, but you will have to monitor your expenses really closely. 300 if you live with friends/parents, cook at home and don't really do much else other than eat, sleep and work. Get a decent apartment, have some fun in your free time and 1000 does turn into a "barely getting by"-wage. 1.5k-2k is comfortable wage, but median is around 500-600 in most of eastern Europe afaik.

wheelerwj 10y ago

here's a link to the other HN thread with no comments or anything: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13272696

rahrahrah 10y ago
No one cares.
ensiferum 10y ago
The indiehacker guy is known for aggressively beating his own drum and posting and reposting his blog links. Appears effective.
- jasim 10y ago
  Speaking from personal experience - nothing magically happens even if you create something valuable and put your heart and soul into it. You have to beat that drum, even if you hate every note that comes out of it. Which is why there are roles called Sales and Marketing. Being a salesman is an under-appreciated, arduous but honorable job. They create mutually beneficial relationships between parties that might otherwise never find each other.
  - ensiferum 10y ago
    Oh yes I know this. Sadly great products don't sell themselves, but proper sales people can make shit sell like gold.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

morgante 10y ago

I really love these IndieHackers interviews but surprisingly find them somewhat demotivating. Even the more successful interviewees make less revenue per month than I can make through straight consulting. And they're the success stories—most people (including myself) make far less per month from their products. How do people keep motivated to work on side projects when consulting is so much more profitable?

merpnderp 10y ago
If you can make more than $17k/month from straight consulting, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter please.
- morgante 10y ago
  I don't have a newsletter, but if you send an email to me@morgante.net I'll let you know if I ever start one.
- ffumarola 10y ago
  At a modest $200/hr, that's 85 hours. It definitely can be hard to line up that much work month after month, but I've had a few months in a row where I achieved that level of consulting revenue. The key is to keep raising your rates.
  - zump 10y ago
    I'm a new grad, but since when do consultants get to charge > ~double the hourly rate of what wages would be? Did I miss the memo?
    - kleinsch 10y ago
      Happens all the time. As a consultant you're responsible for self employment tax (7.5%), benefits, vacation, sick leave, etc. You also have no job security, so you need to make enough that you can cover gaps in between gigs that ended. You price it into your hourly rate accordingly. So yes, your hourly rate is significantly higher than a comparable salaried employee. No, you're not actually ending up with double the money at the end of the day.

gigatexal 10y ago

17k a month is only 204k a year which is awesome don't get me wrong but I'm not sure that supports 6 employees.

bond 10y ago
In Romania they do..
jdboyd 10y ago
Does that take into account that they are in Romania?
freyr 10y ago
Average gross salary in Romania is $740/month, so $17k/month should be able to pay 6 salaries.

gfosco 10y ago

This worked very well on me, as I just bought one of their developer licenses for a pro package... Beautiful stuff.

vyoming 10y ago

They make great templates. We have used their chart templates in our BI tool - https://drilldb.com https://drilldb.com Their pricing is also very affordable compared to many alternatives. You don't have to think twice before making a purchase.

znewman 10y ago

Another site that offers the same cookie cutter bootstrap templates you can find for free? The worst part is they all just give you a pretty front-end with absolutely no back-end support. Just try actually interacting with the live demos.

ensiferum 10y ago

With all these "success" stories flying about I'd absolutely love to know how many losers there are for each "Creative Tim". 10x, 100x, 1000x ?

nkkollaw 10y ago

I read some of the comments, many saying that $17,000/mo. isn't a lot of money, but don't forget that Creative Tim is based in Romania. Salaries in Romania aren't as good as in the States. I'm currently based in Italy and a programmer can make as little as 1,200/mo. (salaries in Italy are much higher than in Romania, possibly 100-200% more). I make more than that freelancing, but I don't think 17,000/mo. is bad, both in general and for a company based in Romania.