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Going from $0 to $500k in 1 Year with no VC Money
- Sukotto 15y agoInspiring, though short on details. Hope they do a Mixergy interview.
- Mz 15y agoAnd/or additional articles. Given my health issues, organic growth and reasonable work hours are my only hope of achieving some kind of financial success. So I, too, would love to see more of the back story.
- auston 15y agoMetaLab is very high on my list of "people who do awesome work". They've been plugging away at products for years now, I remember Billy He / Ali Bosworth announced one of their first products on HN - ballpark (http://getballpark.com http://getballpark.com) + (hn thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557028). You can catch an interview with Andrew Wilkinson here: http://5by5.tv/founderstalk/28 http://5by5.tv/founderstalk/28 I've had the opportunity of having the Flow product lead (Luke Seeley) speak at my conference - seriously smart guy. Congrats to them for growing to $500k+ per year on their own!
- joering2 15y agore HN post: I know it was 4 years ago, but regarding to patio11 first post over there, even 4yrs ago SSL was really cheap. Having your customer decide whether they want to have their data securely transferred or not over such a minimal cost-difference made me wonder what were the owners thinking? yes, I know there is additional cost involved in encrypting/decryption but 4 years ago servers were not that much more expensive as today; plus they created MVP product and started with 0 users, I assume. Nothing stopped them from adding extra $5 to every plan they sell and set it aside for a stronger server given userbase will keep growing. Its like giving users extremely fast rocket to fly on and telling them "there is no windshield and seatbelts are extra $5". Bottom line: I would rather have less customers and everyone with minimum security over their data, than safe extra couple bucks. IF they would ever get their data sniffed and shit would hit the fan, guess who would media blamed for it?
- mattmanser 15y agoIt used to be a 'premium' feature of 37 signals products if I recall correctly. At the time it felt like others copied them, perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly. So I'm not surprised to see that. I believe it was just a way to get people to upgrade. Views have changed in the meantime as it's dawned on everyone how bad an idea it is not to have SSL on for everyone given how negligible the cost is.
- CodeCube 15y agowho else read that as, "MethLab is very high ..."?
- AVTizzle 15y agoWell now I can't un-see it.
- joelhaasnoot 15y agoIs it just me or is the space of project/organization tools getting really swamped these days? Seems like every day I hear of a new one. I guess it is something that comes down to preference alot, and some are too opinionated to be flexible and offer all the options (i.e Basecamp), others too simple. But maybe they're all the "MS Project" of this generation. (Oh, and personally use Pivotal Tracker and love it)
- debacle 15y agoMS Project is the MS Project of this generation. All of these new offerings are in response to that obese, demanding, high maintenance bitch.
- hackNightly 15y agoI think that companies are just trying to be too broad about project management. It appears that they all want to be the "go to" tool for task management. However, I feel that there's opportunity in the project management space if some of these apps would cater to more of a niche audience. Think, "Task management for dog owners"
- bdunn 15y agoI built Planscope (http://planscope.io http://planscope.io) - very specific (freelancers) and so far successful after only being live two months. Most products, including PM apps invent the tool and then try to find a customer, which ends up resulting in generalized products. There's a lot of opportunity for products to capitalize on a specific customer and their workflows.
- sprobertson 15y agoThey've always been popular, I suspect a big influence from the well publicized success of 37signals in this area. And still it seems there's never a final answer to what the "best" option is. (That's why I'm making one myself!)
- Jun8 15y agoI still haven't found an ideal solution. The problem with most, including Flow, is that companies won't allow you to put data on the Internet (e.g. my office blocks Dropbox), which cuts most solutions. So you have to convince your IT to install it locally (for large corps don't try, you can't). What I'm looking for is a nice personal proj/org tool that would interface with email and calendar and would give a snapshot of my multiple projects. Do you know anything like that?
- syed123 15y agoPerfect example of a great team work. 25% of their team worked on consulting projects to fund it. An example for Silicon Valley companies who raise million dollar fundings just based on prototype!
- KaanSoral 15y agoVery inspiring and in my opinion easier to achieve since you have no responsibility
- cluda01 15y agoI've been playing around with flow. It looks like a cocoa app. Did they use Cappuccino by chance? Wondering what their stack was/is
- nullmeatbag 15y agoFrom their technical lead on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Flow-web-application/What-JavaScript-framework-does-Flow-use-for-its-web-frontend/answer/Jason-Webster-2 http://www.quora.com/Flow-web-application/What-JavaScript-fr... jQuery, (customized) Backbone.js, socket.io, and a fair amount of other custom JS.
- e-dard 15y agoThis is great. However, did I read the article right - by the time they launched they had spent 300K? Here's a question - is it possible to ever do something like this without the requirement of finding 300K via consulting gigs first? I assume that given there were 3 of them and they spent only a few months building it, they didn't need all of the 300K on salaries. I suppose you would have to grow the product from a smaller stage, rather than build it and launch?
- mattmanser 15y agoI wonder if that price was the opportunity cost of not being billed out at $x per day.
- Estragon 15y agoThat's how I interpreted it. They do attribute it all to "development costs," so it must mean something like that unless they brought in outside help.
- redguava 15y agoI recall that had a fairly impressive marketing video on their page previously. This could have cost $50k alone. I think the main unexpected cost that you can incur is advertising/marketing. You can build the software cheaply, but it's very hard to get the word out without spending money (and it can add up very fast). Considering their fast growth, I would also assume significant spend in this area. As long as you are getting a positive ROI from this spend, then it's worth throwing as much as you can at it, but obviously you need to have it to throw... that may be one the keys to their success.
- metalab 15y agoThe video cost us way, way less than that.
- Jun8 15y ago"By the time we launched, the price tag on Flow came in around $300,000." That's peanuts compared to VC funding but still quite a sizable sum for a lot of people (e.g. me).
- metalab 15y agoOf course, definitely a lot of money. We funded using cash from doing client work part-time.
- guynamedloren 15y agoI'm assuming most (all?) of the work was done in house, so did the $300k go to paying employees? Thanks for sharing your story.
- hiccup 15y agoI'm betting this is the calculation: hours of product development X hourly bill rate = $300k
- aytekin 15y agoI wonder how much having a existing popular brand helped them on their success.
- dave1619 15y agoHow is Flow different than Basecamp?
- Bamafan 15y agoNice product and the team seems very talented. But whenever I read these stories (from 0 to $8 billion in 3 monthz!1!!!11), lots of important details are left out. #1 How are you able to connect to 4,000+ paying customers so quickly? Actually, that's it. I'm guessing any number of HN guys could create this product. But we don't know how to get people to buy it.
- acabal 15y agoThat's what I'd like to know. How did they get so many people interested in yet another project management app (I swear I hear about a new one every month)? That's the most crucial piece of info they could possibly share, anything else is not really useful at all, frankly.
- bdunn 15y agoPeople manage projects, and usually get paid for it. The audience is use and wildly segmented. You see a lot of apps in this space for two reasons: a lot of people need project management tools, and most of these people will pay for one that works well for them.
- angryasian 15y agoBy itself its a great story, but the background context is metalabs is a very successful company thats well connected prior to launching this product. This type of product is much more successful with the right sales people and connections.
- ricardobeat 15y ago> we were tuned-in to what our users wanted because we built it for ourselves That only works if there are people with the exact same expectations on the market (which seems to be the case).
- dkrich 15y agoSorry, this is just a shameless ripoff of 37Signals and Rework. This whole "you only have to work a few hours a day" philosophy will only take you so far. That's just simple economics. If something is that easy to build it means there are very low barriers to entry. When there are very low barriers to entry, profits eventually get squashed to zero. The only exception to this is when you are first to market with something unique. It is virtually impossible to be first to market with something unique in the bloated project management saas space. Actually, this site is a perfect example- from what I can tell they went from nothing to competing with 37Signals in one year.
- dkrich 15y agoAww, I guess I hurt some feelings. Sorry about that. (Not really, downvote away!)
- marknutter 15y agoAlways a good idea to follow up a negative post with a post bitching about down-votes.
- TDL 15y ago"The only exception to this is when you are first to market with something unique." The "first mover" advantage is largely a myth. Many successful companies that dominate their market segments weren't the first entrants in that segment.
- speg 15y agoThe sign up form is broken on my iPad. After I enter my name and move to the email field it loses focus.
- juddlyon 15y agoOne detail left from the analysis: these guys are already well-known for their UX work amongst the crowd most likely to purchase Flow. Reminds me of when Guy Kawasaki launched Alltop for "only 10K." Yeah, 10K + 500K worth of PR that comes with having an enormous following. This is not to diminish what Metalab or Guy Kawasaki do, I'm admire both. But it's not like these results are as reproducible as they infer without significant connections.
- redguava 15y agoIt's not luck that they are already well known for their UX work. That is part of their hard work to get them to that point. You say these results aren't as reproducible without significant connections... but getting significant connections is reproducible. I guess you could consider that step 1 in their process. I would also say that you can build an audience and get connections with some hustle and/or money. A well designed pre-launch page and some paid advertising will get you an audience for launch day.
- robryan 15y agoYeah, the article glossed over that step 1 though, lots of similar articles do. Once you have a big network of the right people have have your work well known and respected lots of things become easy.
- nhangen 15y agoThis is true, not to mention guys like Merlin Mann talking about them on 5by5. Nothing wrong with that, but it does certainly help.
- paparoger 15y agoPretty sweet!
- vgurgov 15y agoAm I only one having this question: what is 500k states for? Is it 500k/month /year or total revenue? If its not montly, how can they hire 10 ppl?
- ebaysucks 15y agoIt is very likely that the run rate of last month is more than 1/12th of the total annual revenue, as they are growing rapidly. So let's estimate their run rate of last month at $75K and it becomes realistic - albeit a bit tight - to have 10 people on the payroll.
- pakitan 15y ago500K/month would mean 50,000 paying users and I'm pretty sure they don't have that. How can they hire 10 people? The same way other cash-strapped startups can - by giving equity instead of big salary.
- systemtrigger 15y agoHe said it was recurring revenue and the context in which he said it implied annual. He also said they kept the team down to three until right before launch and only once they had predictable revenue did they start bringing the remainder onboard. He further explained that during development the team performed client work, which would have further offset their costs.
- leovinci 15y ago> By the time we launched, the pricetag on Flow came in around $300,000. can someone explain what that means? Who did and how was the company evaluated?
- jasonkester 15y agoIn case the Flow guys are reading this, please please please put out a simple HTML version of your thing. Flow sits at the top of my "most annoying web app ever" list, because it follows the pattern of loading an empty shell, then populating it. I bet this works amazingly well for the guys developing it from their local dev server, but for those of us across the Atlantic from your servers it's really really painful. Workflow involves clicking a link to look at a task. Then hitting the back button. Then waiting several seconds for the list to slowly repopulate itself. Then trying to scroll down (which is no easy feat since there's no scroll bar), and just before you get back to where you wanted to be, the list jumps back to the top. Repeat (scroll/jump/scroll/jump) several times before the page settles down, usually cutting the last item in half with no way to see it. So yeah, Step One: HTML in a table. So that the back button works, and the page otherwise behaves like a web page. Step two: Un-reinvent the scrollbar. The javascript thing you have in place that only works with the mousewheel just plain doesn't work. Glad to see you're doing well for yourselves, but I'm sorry to report that I'm one of the people in your "churn" column.
- marknutter 15y agoI'm guessing you don't actually use flow day to day. I'm also guessing that if they made an HTML version you probably wouldn't use that either; you probably have your own way of managing your projects and todos. I'm also guessing you're using this post as a sounding board for your gripes with single page javascript applications. Are any of these guesses accurate?
- leptons 15y agoMy guess is you sound like a troll.
- NeutronBoy 15y agoJust because he doesn't use it any more doesn't mean the feedback is any less valuable. It's great feedback. It points out specific problems and solutions. Ways that, from his point of view, the UI could be improved.
- Zakuzaa 15y ago>>"Going from $0 to $500k in 1 year.." Congrats. Great work. >>"..with no VC Money" What makes it something to be proud of? Doesn't that imply taking VC money is bad? Why?
- ericd 15y agoIt's more challenging to make and grow a business without much money than with.
- andyl 15y agoThe best fundraising you can do is from your customers! You retain more equity and more control. And by the way, customer revenues is the only way to sustain a real business over time. Might as well get good at it early-on.
- guynamedloren 15y ago> We usually clock between four and six hours a day, and most of us don’t even get to the office before noon. Realllly interested to hear more about this. Can anybody from Flow elaborate? How well does this work? How did 4-6 hours come about? Why not 5-7 hrs? Or 3-5? How do salaries work - is everybody full time? > We believe in working smart, not hard, and having lives outside the office. Why can't you work smart and hard? Couldn't you accomplish in 8 hours what other teams could accomplish in 8-16 hrs? Please share :)
- TamDenholm 15y agoOne of the problems with old school thinking is that working hard means working long, which is absolute rubbish. Personally I can't be productive for 8 hours a day and I'm pretty sure nobody can, all the time you're not being productive you're generally wasting time by making coffee, checking emails, attending meetings etc. So why not actually just work the time that you're productive and then go and enjoy the rest of the time instead of just using up time doing things of little consequence. That's working smart, IMO working longer just for the sake of it is working stupid because long and constant working hours aren't just wasted time, they negatively impact the time you wouldve been productive.
- kevincennis 15y agoAmen to that. I imagine the percentage of developers who can write legitimately good code for 8 hours a day is pretty low.
- guynamedloren 15y agoI totally agree with you. I feel like I can produce a huge amount of good work over a 4-6 hour period of 100% focus; significantly more (and better) work than I can accomplish over an 8-10 hour period littered with distractions/meetings/etc. I was just hoping somebody from Flow could weigh in with a first-hand account. Since everybody obviously has different work needs/environments for productivity, I was wondering how they managed to build an office culture that fosters these types of work habits.
- 15y ago
- dgudkov 15y agoQuestion to founders -- how did you get your first 1000 users?
- metalab 15y agoWe managed to get some nice launch press and a lot of organic word of mouth/referrals.
- tbergeron 15y agoI really love Metalab, I always looked at them for inspiration and seriously I'm proud of those guys. They took the other road, the road which is in my opinion the best and the wisest. You must work hard to get to your point, being funded is not working hard (opinions may vary that while you're funded you can focus on your project instead of money but I think this is a very good part of the startup concept). Once again, Metalab inspires me, my projects are starting to get real and I'm doing it the Metalab's way. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one and that this method is successful as well. (I couldn't care less about having 4.2m or 500k, at least you have enough fund to back up your dreams and projects). That was my 2cents. Keep up the good work guys!
- cjmauthor 15y agoWe believe in working smart, not hard, and having lives outside the office It is very difficult to not give every single minute to a startup. There is always so much to do. My first question is, if these guys were able to accomplish this with short days, would they have gone further and achieved even better results if they worked just a little bit harder. How do you know when you are giving too much, and is there really an amount of hours of work per day where you go from progress to regress? Does somebody say hey I can see your project and at this stage you can add a little bit at a time? My second question is would this company have received so much more than the 500k had they had investors, and ultimately be better off? I would appreciate any feedback or suggestions. My startup is http://1800businesscards.com http://1800businesscards.com and it is all self funded. Do I continue to put exhaustive hours in or do I step back and let it mature slowly. Should I seek venture capital or do I move slowly? There is just no resource or place for advice on these issues in my very small world. Thanks all.
- bzloe 15y agoGood stuff guys