5 ms·

Wow. There's a lot of projects here that must have taken a lot of work - and look really good - but the MRR is just dismal. There's one there that's pretty clos

by sho 6y ago

Wow. There's a lot of projects here that must have taken a lot of work - and look really good - but the MRR is just dismal. There's one there that's pretty close to a side project of mine - not even a grand. Somewhat offputting. Does this mean that many of these projects could stand to put a lot more effort into sales? Would that make a reliable difference? Or is it really just this hard? Or a bit of both? I feel like for some of these, giving the best salesperson you know a huge commission, just getting the ball rolling, could make quite a big difference.

sushshshsh 6y ago
Is it not also possible that there simply aren't many people who want to pay for things, but will happily use it for free?
- upen946 6y ago
  There are different models. For example tools like social media automation or website builder, in a free plan they display the actual product url. So sometimes, free plan also bring in users and some of them can turn into paid customers.
upen946 6y ago
People always say "A bad product still survives with good marketing but a good product can't survive with bad marketing" May be correct that a good salesperson could make a diff. Would love to hear the product that came close to your side project. Interested to know.
- sho 6y ago
  Sure! Sheet2api is sort of thinking along the same lines (but different enough, don’t worry, founder...) Not even close to launch but think data transformation & automation, but for BAU, not analytics. So yeah automatic APIs is part of it.
  - upen946 6y ago
    Interesting. I built https://siteoly.com https://siteoly.com - Build websites from Google sheets and it got good traction with happy paying customers. In fact I used Siteoly to build this page. Would be happy to help if you need. You may reach me on Twitter too at https://twitter.com/upen946 https://twitter.com/upen946
Edmond 6y ago
Or it could just be that so many of them are fishing in the same pond? A lot of them seem like run of the mill productivity software, it is a crowded market with big incumbents. The ones with unique offerings may just be too marginal to garner a large enough customer base, business customers ultimately want full feature suite products.
- upen946 6y ago
  I think the reverse is true in current days. Run of the mill doesn't work anymore I guess. Most products now needs some unique features or build something for a niche.
  - z3t4 6y ago
    Entering a market that has economy of scale (serving 1000 users cost the same as serving 1 user) need a big marketing budget and a sales team and it can take years until you have enough users to become profitable. So unless you have a lot of money beforehand compete at something that doesn't scale (for anyone right now). So it will cost the same ballpark to serve your first user as it will cost an established business to serve +1 user.
    - upen946 6y ago
      What about the popular indiehacking phrase - "Do things that dont scale"?
      - troughway 6y ago
        That used to work back when more people were building things to scratch an itch and didn't have a good sense of business and marketing. Today, you can expect a product that launches to be extremely polished and have a very calculated marketing strategy from the original pitch, to some kind of an invitation list of early adopters, a lot of blogging time invested, and lastly, a sales team of some sort. A lot of them will have some kind of financial backing. And best of all, you won't even know to what degree their image and branding is curated to sell one story ("We're a small shop") vs reality ("We are very well connected with decision makers at important companies", etc). Basically, it was taken from a fun side project and perfected to a business science on an industry-wide scale when the sharks smelled how much money was on the table.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>There's one there that's pretty close to a side project of mine - not even a grand. I mean quite a few are significantly more than a grand, and there are a few that if I got that much for my side project I think it totally makes sense to go for it.
- upen946 6y ago
  In my view, if someone is indie hacking first time and still makes about $400-$500MRR in 12 months, its still a success.
throw03172019 6y ago
Depends on what the price point is. I don’t think it makes sense to do sales for a product under $49-99/mo. Huge time sync. Better off marketing self service and scale from there.
- upen946 6y ago
  In my view, until you make $500-$1K MRR, do it safe without burning a lot of money. Once you hit your sweet spot of $1K MRR, doubledown on sales/marketing either by brining in someone or allocating more time yourself.
rmah 6y ago
I wouldn't consider the revenue streams of any of these companies to be meaningfully representative of potential market size in any way. Pretty much any niche market you can think of will be 100's of times larger. You can literally put pretty rocks you pick up in a streambed and generate higher revenues. With a little hard work and luck, some of the companies listed will grow 1000's of times in the future (but they'll still be considered "small businesses"). To argue the other side, an old boss of mine would say that some of the products listed are really features. One of his favorite mantras was: "A feature is not a product and a product is not a company." To respond to the "is it really just this hard", well... yes and no. If you are unwilling to market/promote/sell your product or just give most of the value away, then sure, it's very very hard. However, if you're willing to hustle on the "business" side of things, then it may not be that hard. One thing that too many techies get wrong is that they try to be innovative in everything. Don't -- just innovate along one axis. For everything else, just copy best practices and you'll be fine. Side note: commission driven sales is a viable strategy for some product categories in some markets. But for most, it's not. Remember, in business, almost everything is context dependent. Any good tactical advice of "do X" is also bad advice in a different context. And vice versa.
danjac 6y ago
There's one which seems to be a planning tool for junior military officers: https://mgrs-mapper.com/ https://mgrs-mapper.com/ I mean the Pentagon spends billions on things like latrines and office supplies. Assuming this does what it says it does, why is it making pennies?
- Drdrdrq 6y ago
  Because Pentagon is not one of its clients?
  - danjac 6y ago
    Well obviously not, but that's the point - it seems a few products in this list actually do provide something valuable but are either not being sold to the right customers, or if they are are being sold for peanuts given their worth.
- legerdemain 6y ago
  Because this is one of the (thousands of) features in Palantir's government product? And this one is manual, just dragging things around a canvas -- Palantir's software places them automatically and intelligently based on available data.

by sho 6y ago

sushshshsh 6y ago

Is it not also possible that there simply aren't many people who want to pay for things, but will happily use it for free?

upen946 6y ago
There are different models. For example tools like social media automation or website builder, in a free plan they display the actual product url. So sometimes, free plan also bring in users and some of them can turn into paid customers.

upen946 6y ago

People always say "A bad product still survives with good marketing but a good product can't survive with bad marketing" May be correct that a good salesperson could make a diff. Would love to hear the product that came close to your side project. Interested to know.

sho 6y ago
Sure! Sheet2api is sort of thinking along the same lines (but different enough, don’t worry, founder...) Not even close to launch but think data transformation & automation, but for BAU, not analytics. So yeah automatic APIs is part of it.
- upen946 6y ago
  Interesting. I built https://siteoly.com https://siteoly.com - Build websites from Google sheets and it got good traction with happy paying customers. In fact I used Siteoly to build this page. Would be happy to help if you need. You may reach me on Twitter too at https://twitter.com/upen946 https://twitter.com/upen946

Edmond 6y ago

Or it could just be that so many of them are fishing in the same pond? A lot of them seem like run of the mill productivity software, it is a crowded market with big incumbents. The ones with unique offerings may just be too marginal to garner a large enough customer base, business customers ultimately want full feature suite products.

upen946 6y ago
I think the reverse is true in current days. Run of the mill doesn't work anymore I guess. Most products now needs some unique features or build something for a niche.
- z3t4 6y ago
  Entering a market that has economy of scale (serving 1000 users cost the same as serving 1 user) need a big marketing budget and a sales team and it can take years until you have enough users to become profitable. So unless you have a lot of money beforehand compete at something that doesn't scale (for anyone right now). So it will cost the same ballpark to serve your first user as it will cost an established business to serve +1 user.
  - upen946 6y ago
    What about the popular indiehacking phrase - "Do things that dont scale"?
    - troughway 6y ago
      That used to work back when more people were building things to scratch an itch and didn't have a good sense of business and marketing. Today, you can expect a product that launches to be extremely polished and have a very calculated marketing strategy from the original pitch, to some kind of an invitation list of early adopters, a lot of blogging time invested, and lastly, a sales team of some sort. A lot of them will have some kind of financial backing. And best of all, you won't even know to what degree their image and branding is curated to sell one story ("We're a small shop") vs reality ("We are very well connected with decision makers at important companies", etc). Basically, it was taken from a fun side project and perfected to a business science on an industry-wide scale when the sharks smelled how much money was on the table.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

>There's one there that's pretty close to a side project of mine - not even a grand. I mean quite a few are significantly more than a grand, and there are a few that if I got that much for my side project I think it totally makes sense to go for it.

upen946 6y ago
In my view, if someone is indie hacking first time and still makes about $400-$500MRR in 12 months, its still a success.

throw03172019 6y ago

Depends on what the price point is. I don’t think it makes sense to do sales for a product under $49-99/mo. Huge time sync. Better off marketing self service and scale from there.

upen946 6y ago
In my view, until you make $500-$1K MRR, do it safe without burning a lot of money. Once you hit your sweet spot of $1K MRR, doubledown on sales/marketing either by brining in someone or allocating more time yourself.

rmah 6y ago

I wouldn't consider the revenue streams of any of these companies to be meaningfully representative of potential market size in any way. Pretty much any niche market you can think of will be 100's of times larger. You can literally put pretty rocks you pick up in a streambed and generate higher revenues. With a little hard work and luck, some of the companies listed will grow 1000's of times in the future (but they'll still be considered "small businesses"). To argue the other side, an old boss of mine would say that some of the products listed are really features. One of his favorite mantras was: "A feature is not a product and a product is not a company." To respond to the "is it really just this hard", well... yes and no. If you are unwilling to market/promote/sell your product or just give most of the value away, then sure, it's very very hard. However, if you're willing to hustle on the "business" side of things, then it may not be that hard. One thing that too many techies get wrong is that they try to be innovative in everything. Don't -- just innovate along one axis. For everything else, just copy best practices and you'll be fine. Side note: commission driven sales is a viable strategy for some product categories in some markets. But for most, it's not. Remember, in business, almost everything is context dependent. Any good tactical advice of "do X" is also bad advice in a different context. And vice versa.

danjac 6y ago

There's one which seems to be a planning tool for junior military officers: https://mgrs-mapper.com/ https://mgrs-mapper.com/ I mean the Pentagon spends billions on things like latrines and office supplies. Assuming this does what it says it does, why is it making pennies?

Drdrdrq 6y ago
Because Pentagon is not one of its clients?
- danjac 6y ago
  Well obviously not, but that's the point - it seems a few products in this list actually do provide something valuable but are either not being sold to the right customers, or if they are are being sold for peanuts given their worth.
legerdemain 6y ago
Because this is one of the (thousands of) features in Palantir's government product? And this one is manual, just dragging things around a canvas -- Palantir's software places them automatically and intelligently based on available data.