4 ms·

The "indie hacker" part is underselling the value of hooking into these marketplaces. The Atlassian marketplace is how we're able to make draw.io/diagrams.net

The "indie hacker" part is underselling the value of hooking into these marketplaces. The Atlassian marketplace is how we're able to make draw.io/diagrams.net free everywhere else. We don't have to handle any licensing or billing and it's a commercial market where users expect to pay. We generate 8 digits annually there with 5FTE people, you can build a medium sized company around just one of these marketplaces.

moltar 6y ago
Thank you for keeping draw free. Love your product.
alex_duf 6y ago
That's pretty cool. Is it scary though to have revenue depending on a low number of clients?
- davidjgraph 6y ago
  We have 20k in-maintenance customers. Is the Atlassian marketplace a single point of failure? Yes, that's the main risk. But this is a $2B annual company, it would take time to disappear. We still have many fingers in many pies. If that revenue stream went we'd be able to bring up $1M a year from one or more of the other marketplaces within 12 months, which is enough to keep us in the black.
orolle 6y ago
Funny enough, I reversed engineered your numbers a few days ago. I guesstimated at least 3 million ARR with 2 - 10 FTEs. From revenue per FTE perspective you have the most impressive numbers I have ever seen!
tixocloud 6y ago
It’s a smart move for entrepreneurs who aren’t VC-backed to leverage marketplaces. How was your experience with the Atlassian Marketplace in terms of integration and marketing? I’ve seen many big companies advertise that they help with marketing resources but I assume it’s exaggerated. I presume you’d still have to do the legwork, which is fine.
- davidjgraph 6y ago
  Atlassian's ecosystem is really good. Nothing is perfect, but we tested Google, Salesforce (horrific, but a _lot_ money in there), Dropbox and MS. Atlassian just hit the sweet spot for us.
shostack 6y ago
How do you feel about the platform risk factor? Ie. Building this thing where your platform gets essentially free product research data and can decide you are a feature they will build themselves at any time? Are there agreements in place that provide meaningful protection against this?

moltar 6y ago

Thank you for keeping draw free. Love your product.

alex_duf 6y ago

That's pretty cool. Is it scary though to have revenue depending on a low number of clients?

davidjgraph 6y ago
We have 20k in-maintenance customers. Is the Atlassian marketplace a single point of failure? Yes, that's the main risk. But this is a $2B annual company, it would take time to disappear. We still have many fingers in many pies. If that revenue stream went we'd be able to bring up $1M a year from one or more of the other marketplaces within 12 months, which is enough to keep us in the black.

orolle 6y ago

Funny enough, I reversed engineered your numbers a few days ago. I guesstimated at least 3 million ARR with 2 - 10 FTEs. From revenue per FTE perspective you have the most impressive numbers I have ever seen!

tixocloud 6y ago

It’s a smart move for entrepreneurs who aren’t VC-backed to leverage marketplaces. How was your experience with the Atlassian Marketplace in terms of integration and marketing? I’ve seen many big companies advertise that they help with marketing resources but I assume it’s exaggerated. I presume you’d still have to do the legwork, which is fine.

davidjgraph 6y ago
Atlassian's ecosystem is really good. Nothing is perfect, but we tested Google, Salesforce (horrific, but a _lot_ money in there), Dropbox and MS. Atlassian just hit the sweet spot for us.

shostack 6y ago

How do you feel about the platform risk factor? Ie. Building this thing where your platform gets essentially free product research data and can decide you are a feature they will build themselves at any time? Are there agreements in place that provide meaningful protection against this?