5 ms·

Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our undergrad internship earnings

110 points by n9com 15y ago

rudiger 15y ago
If two incredibly talented Indians can't find a way to outsource their development to India, I doubt any small team can. I've also had good luck with finding top programming talent in Germany. Great job, guys!
- todsul 15y ago
  I think it's hit and miss like everything else, but maybe a little more 'miss' in this case. I just spent 5 months in India working on my startup. I'm not Indian, but I absolutely loved it. New York is a bore compared to the sensory overload of most Indian cities. I hit the railroad for 2 weeks and circumnavigated the country. Used a GSM dongle to work from my train berth. There was some 3G, but mostly slow going up in the Northern states (lots of time to write code). Can't wait to go back.
scottkrager 15y ago
Interesting post, but I'm not a fan of these multi-part blog posts, I rarely end up seeing the 'Part II' post that I really wanted to read about in the first place. Why not just write the whole story in one post?
- dpcan 15y ago
  Maybe to get people to subscribe to their blog or follow them with an RSS feed :)
  - cmurphea 15y ago
    agreed. while typically i dont follow multi-part blog series, i'd also probably never visit the site/blog again were it not for the the cliff hanger and i found this interesting enough that ill flag it and follow up. good stuff guys!
- n9com 15y ago
  Thanks Scott. It's a very long story about how we got FIPLAB to the stage it is at today. There is so much advice we want to give and it would just be information overload if we tried to fit it into one post. I'll write up Part 2 over the weekend, which is going to be a lot more interesting, covering how we got mainstream media coverage for our 2nd app (London Cycle: Maps & Routes), including a large front page banner feature on the iTunes App Store itself. The really good stuff is still to come, but we had to start at the beginning to add context to everything else.
  - idlewords 15y ago
    Speaking as someone who tends to go on and on in early drafts, feeling like you need to split stuff into multiple articles is a good sign that you should edit things down.
  - swombat 15y ago
    Well, don't forget to let us know when the full article is out. I'll happily post it up on swombat.com - it's a great story - but I have to say I'm not too fond of the multi-part post format either.
    - n9com 15y ago
      that's awesome, thanks - will hit you up once all the 'parts' are out.
dpcan 15y ago
The most interesting part to me was that they are designers who considered the programming to be the most important part. As a programmer, I find the design to be the most important part. The perspectives are very interesting. From a programming standpoint, I can pound out the code to just about anything, but when it comes time to create the awesome graphics for the game, well, that's where I either have to cut corners or pay a lot of money. I liked the cliff-hanger he left us with too. Day 4: Disaster! And that it was Apple's fault ... But what happened? Did the glitch get fixed? Did sales pick back up? Where's his Twitter feed so I can see when the next post comes out?
- petercooper 15y ago
  The most interesting part to me was that they are designers who considered the programming to be the most important part. As a programmer, I find the design to be the most important part. Maybe the perspectives change because if you're not good at something, but it's important, you need to make it priority #1 otherwise your project will fail. The thing you're already good at may still be important but since you could do it in your sleep, it's not priority #1.
- jbp 15y ago
  >> they are designers who considered the programming I got the impression that they are bankers from the post, where do they say they are designers?
  - dpcan 15y ago
    You are right, I read that they finished the graphics first but read right over the part where they hired someone. So, also interestingly, they found the process of having graphics designed easier than finding programmers. I've found it very difficult to find a good designer-for-hire when it comes to games.
- leon_ 15y ago
  > As a programmer, I find the design to be the most important part. As a programmer (teamed up with a designer) I consider marketing to be the most important part. We sank so many good looking (and well programmed) apps in the app store because our marketing sucked. And then I see crappy apps dominating the charts simply because their makers know how to get their marketing right.
georgieporgie 15y ago
No name-drop for the German?
- fjordan 15y ago
  My guess is James Long. If you look at their "About Us" page it names who they have worked with. http://www.fiplab.com/aboutus/ http://www.fiplab.com/aboutus/
  - n9com 15y ago
    It's not James Long, but you'll learn about James later (he's American and played an instrumental part in the early days of our business). The german CS graduate was a guy called Mike Weller - who afaik decided to live a less stressful life with his girlfriend at an organic farm.
    - MaysonL 15y ago
      He seems to still be doing iOS stuff, and is active on stackoverflow.
marcuswestin 15y ago
Nothing worth doing is easy - inspirational stories like your's always seem to involve near crash-and-burn dips (whether that part of the story actually gets told, or not). Here's to not giving up - keep up the great work guys!
bignoggins 15y ago
I'm skeptical of the 30k profit/month title. I think it's just linkbait to promote their game. If you look at their app ranking history (registration needed): http://www.appannie.com/copterkid/ranking/history/#start_date=2009-07-26&end_date=2011-09-01 http://www.appannie.com/copterkid/ranking/history/#start_dat... they are nowhere to be found in the overall rankings, and even their rankings in the games category tops out at 700ish. Plus, they only sell the game for 99c. I've had apps that sell for 2.99 that are in the top 200 overall paid list on iphone, and I've never come close to 30K/month for a single app. My most recent sales data (for an app that has gone as high as #97 on the iPhone top paid list) indicates that the #200 top paid app on iphone gets about 300 sales per day. If you factor in Apple's 30% thats about $210/day. So even if their app was in the top 200 (which they were never even close to), it would only generate $6300/mo in revenue at 99c. It just doesn't add up. Unless the 30K/month is talking about a completely different app?
- nonane 15y ago
  Yes, it's probably a dozen or so different apps if you go over their website: http://www.fiplab.com/ http://www.fiplab.com/
  - n9com 15y ago
    exactly :) - hence the point "Lesson #3: Don't put all your eggs in one basket"
- dkrich 15y ago
  Agreed. There's something about his bravado that screams to me "full of shit." From the inane I-banking references to the needless jab at Indian developers, I just have a hard time buying it. I hope they do well, but I'm predicting a future HN post "How I achieved a real $30k profit by creating an attention-grabbing series of blog posts about how I bootstrapped to a fake $30k profit."
  - n9com 15y ago
    you guys are so cynical, CopterKid isn't the app that is making us $30k profit/month. We have a lot of other very successful iOS and Mac apps (and their profit combined adds up to $30k profit/month) - check out our main website before jumping to conclusions: http://www.fiplab.com http://www.fiplab.com everything is going to be explained in detail in the next few parts, we are not going to hold anything back.
marknutter 15y ago
I don't find this as interesting as an app or website that makes money while you sleep. In fact, I don't even consider it bootstrapping. By this metric, I "bootstrapped" a similar business myself, along with every other freelancer out there.
- n9com 15y ago
  Our apps do make money whilst we sleep. bootstrapping is using your own money to start a business and reinvesting the revenues to fuel growth - that's exactly what we are doing.
  - marknutter 15y ago
    My bad, I thought you were just a software development shop.
ja27 15y ago
Was CopterKid your first app? You talk about building a following of 1000 FIPLAB fans before CopterKid's launch. How did you engage them if that was the first app?
- n9com 15y ago
  Yes, it was our first app. We engaged them by involving them in design decisions, naming the characters, selecting the various islands (country side, city, desert, snow), picking the app icon from a selection of 3 choices etc...

110 points by n9com 15y ago

If two incredibly talented Indians can't find a way to outsource their development to India, I doubt any small team can. I've also had good luck with finding top programming talent in Germany. Great job, guys!

todsul 15y ago
I think it's hit and miss like everything else, but maybe a little more 'miss' in this case. I just spent 5 months in India working on my startup. I'm not Indian, but I absolutely loved it. New York is a bore compared to the sensory overload of most Indian cities. I hit the railroad for 2 weeks and circumnavigated the country. Used a GSM dongle to work from my train berth. There was some 3G, but mostly slow going up in the Northern states (lots of time to write code). Can't wait to go back.

scottkrager 15y ago

Interesting post, but I'm not a fan of these multi-part blog posts, I rarely end up seeing the 'Part II' post that I really wanted to read about in the first place. Why not just write the whole story in one post?

dpcan 15y ago
Maybe to get people to subscribe to their blog or follow them with an RSS feed :)
- cmurphea 15y ago
  agreed. while typically i dont follow multi-part blog series, i'd also probably never visit the site/blog again were it not for the the cliff hanger and i found this interesting enough that ill flag it and follow up. good stuff guys!
n9com 15y ago
Thanks Scott. It's a very long story about how we got FIPLAB to the stage it is at today. There is so much advice we want to give and it would just be information overload if we tried to fit it into one post. I'll write up Part 2 over the weekend, which is going to be a lot more interesting, covering how we got mainstream media coverage for our 2nd app (London Cycle: Maps & Routes), including a large front page banner feature on the iTunes App Store itself. The really good stuff is still to come, but we had to start at the beginning to add context to everything else.
- idlewords 15y ago
  Speaking as someone who tends to go on and on in early drafts, feeling like you need to split stuff into multiple articles is a good sign that you should edit things down.
- swombat 15y ago
  Well, don't forget to let us know when the full article is out. I'll happily post it up on swombat.com - it's a great story - but I have to say I'm not too fond of the multi-part post format either.
  - n9com 15y ago
    that's awesome, thanks - will hit you up once all the 'parts' are out.

dpcan 15y ago

The most interesting part to me was that they are designers who considered the programming to be the most important part. As a programmer, I find the design to be the most important part. The perspectives are very interesting. From a programming standpoint, I can pound out the code to just about anything, but when it comes time to create the awesome graphics for the game, well, that's where I either have to cut corners or pay a lot of money. I liked the cliff-hanger he left us with too. Day 4: Disaster! And that it was Apple's fault ... But what happened? Did the glitch get fixed? Did sales pick back up? Where's his Twitter feed so I can see when the next post comes out?

petercooper 15y ago
The most interesting part to me was that they are designers who considered the programming to be the most important part. As a programmer, I find the design to be the most important part. Maybe the perspectives change because if you're not good at something, but it's important, you need to make it priority #1 otherwise your project will fail. The thing you're already good at may still be important but since you could do it in your sleep, it's not priority #1.
jbp 15y ago
>> they are designers who considered the programming I got the impression that they are bankers from the post, where do they say they are designers?
- dpcan 15y ago
  You are right, I read that they finished the graphics first but read right over the part where they hired someone. So, also interestingly, they found the process of having graphics designed easier than finding programmers. I've found it very difficult to find a good designer-for-hire when it comes to games.
leon_ 15y ago
> As a programmer, I find the design to be the most important part. As a programmer (teamed up with a designer) I consider marketing to be the most important part. We sank so many good looking (and well programmed) apps in the app store because our marketing sucked. And then I see crappy apps dominating the charts simply because their makers know how to get their marketing right.

georgieporgie 15y ago

No name-drop for the German?

fjordan 15y ago
My guess is James Long. If you look at their "About Us" page it names who they have worked with. http://www.fiplab.com/aboutus/ http://www.fiplab.com/aboutus/
- n9com 15y ago
  It's not James Long, but you'll learn about James later (he's American and played an instrumental part in the early days of our business). The german CS graduate was a guy called Mike Weller - who afaik decided to live a less stressful life with his girlfriend at an organic farm.
  - MaysonL 15y ago
    He seems to still be doing iOS stuff, and is active on stackoverflow.

marcuswestin 15y ago

Nothing worth doing is easy - inspirational stories like your's always seem to involve near crash-and-burn dips (whether that part of the story actually gets told, or not). Here's to not giving up - keep up the great work guys!

bignoggins 15y ago

I'm skeptical of the 30k profit/month title. I think it's just linkbait to promote their game. If you look at their app ranking history (registration needed): http://www.appannie.com/copterkid/ranking/history/#start_date=2009-07-26&end_date=2011-09-01 http://www.appannie.com/copterkid/ranking/history/#start_dat... they are nowhere to be found in the overall rankings, and even their rankings in the games category tops out at 700ish. Plus, they only sell the game for 99c. I've had apps that sell for 2.99 that are in the top 200 overall paid list on iphone, and I've never come close to 30K/month for a single app. My most recent sales data (for an app that has gone as high as #97 on the iPhone top paid list) indicates that the #200 top paid app on iphone gets about 300 sales per day. If you factor in Apple's 30% thats about $210/day. So even if their app was in the top 200 (which they were never even close to), it would only generate $6300/mo in revenue at 99c. It just doesn't add up. Unless the 30K/month is talking about a completely different app?

nonane 15y ago
Yes, it's probably a dozen or so different apps if you go over their website: http://www.fiplab.com/ http://www.fiplab.com/
- n9com 15y ago
  exactly :) - hence the point "Lesson #3: Don't put all your eggs in one basket"
dkrich 15y ago
Agreed. There's something about his bravado that screams to me "full of shit." From the inane I-banking references to the needless jab at Indian developers, I just have a hard time buying it. I hope they do well, but I'm predicting a future HN post "How I achieved a real $30k profit by creating an attention-grabbing series of blog posts about how I bootstrapped to a fake $30k profit."
- n9com 15y ago
  you guys are so cynical, CopterKid isn't the app that is making us $30k profit/month. We have a lot of other very successful iOS and Mac apps (and their profit combined adds up to $30k profit/month) - check out our main website before jumping to conclusions: http://www.fiplab.com http://www.fiplab.com everything is going to be explained in detail in the next few parts, we are not going to hold anything back.

marknutter 15y ago

I don't find this as interesting as an app or website that makes money while you sleep. In fact, I don't even consider it bootstrapping. By this metric, I "bootstrapped" a similar business myself, along with every other freelancer out there.

n9com 15y ago
Our apps do make money whilst we sleep. bootstrapping is using your own money to start a business and reinvesting the revenues to fuel growth - that's exactly what we are doing.
- marknutter 15y ago
  My bad, I thought you were just a software development shop.

ja27 15y ago

Was CopterKid your first app? You talk about building a following of 1000 FIPLAB fans before CopterKid's launch. How did you engage them if that was the first app?

n9com 15y ago
Yes, it was our first app. We engaged them by involving them in design decisions, naming the characters, selecting the various islands (country side, city, desert, snow), picking the app icon from a selection of 3 choices etc...