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Poll: is your startup profitable?
Also - http://microha.us
- fxtentacle 13y agogot 3. one is profitable, two not
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- davidw 13y agoOther interesting options: * Yes - and we're making more than we would working elsewhere. * Yes - and it's at least "ramen profitable" and more or less self-sustaining. * Yes, but not enough to live on just yet.
- preinheimer 13y agoI like this, we're covering all direct costs, but we're not paying ourselves nearly what we're worth yet.
- MattBearman 13y agoDefinitely, mine would be "Yes, but not enough to live on just yet."
- qompiler 13y ago* Yes - but actually no, we are still in denial.
- jpdoctor 13y agoI would add: Yes, and our biggest problem is how to invest the profits.
- regal 13y agoHere's a vote for door #2: ramen profitable, bordering on door #1: more than would make elsewhere.
- gkumartvm 13y agonope..
- tyw 13y agoyep! just quit my job and went full-time on the startup this week, too!
- dkroy 13y agoYou might as well plug it now, I and others are probably curious about it now.
- tyw 13y agohttp://www.audiomack.com http://www.audiomack.com Built it in our spare time early last year, went live around the end of Feb 2012. Been growing like a weed ever since, and this year it's just been too much work to keep making progress on AudioMack in addition to having a full-time job. Never really plugged it on HN because it didn't seem like quite the right crowd and I feel awkward about shameless self-promotion. :)
- _yb 13y agoNot exactly a startup: our project [1] is making some revenue, but is far from profitable (edit: which is kind of on purpose, but that's a story for another time) [1] http://freelancersticker.com http://freelancersticker.com
- MattBearman 13y agoInteresting, I was thinking of doing something like this to my macbook recently.
- danmaz74 13y ago3 should be more like "no, and we don't have any revenue".
- nerdyglasses 13y agono revenue at the moment
- tpf10000 13y agoyes, http://toptestprep.com http://toptestprep.com
- agurha 13y agoNo, but we got revenue. http://urlbox.io http://urlbox.io - We are screenshot as a service.
- peacemaker 13y agoInteresting. This seems like the very definition of "a feature, not a product" yet you have revenue. Are you forecasting growth that will support you full time? I ask because I seem to have 100's of ideas like this but feel like they fall into the 'feature' category, rather than a full business. Anyway, good luck with it, the site and features look great!
- TheTaytay 13y agoYep! (I feel proud and lucky to say that) Bootstrapped on $60 in Adwords by my business partner when he was selling a finance spreadsheet in college. :) http://www.youneedabudget.com http://www.youneedabudget.com
- matthiaswh 13y agoHappy YNAB user here. I was impressed by the number and quality of the support and classes you offer. The philosophy behind YNAB aligns really well with my own. Also happy to see that one time purchase software can be profitable in the Age of SaaS.
- NKCSS 13y agoOff-Topic: but the site looks awesome and so does the video :)
- tluyben2 13y agoNo, but have revenue. If not for the crisis we would be making profit now, so it will soon happen :)
- massarog 13y agoYes we are profitable and we've always bootstrapped everything we do: http://viralsweep.com http://viralsweep.com
- suhastech 13y agoNot sure if it'd count (not really a startup) but could live on it in India. http://thehorcrux.com/ http://thehorcrux.com/ That makes me think, coders in India have an edge when it comes to quitting their outsourced job. Being ramen profitable (or idly profitable?) is actually quite easy compared to the first world counterparts. Call it reverse geo-arbitrage?
- RivieraKid 13y agoThose who are profitable are more likely to vote.
- lquist 13y agoAnybody willing to share profit ranges? We're in the $1-5M range. About 9 months old. Bootstrapped.
- olalonde 13y agoWow, that's pretty amazing. B2B or B2C? SaaS? Where do your revenues come from (monthly subscription, advertising, etc.)?
- lquist 13y agoB2C. Service, not product. But we don't have any recurring revenue (yet!). Can't say much more than that unfortunately!
- taf2 13y agoyeah that is really good after only 9 months - what business?
- bernatfp 13y agoWould love reading a blog post about your story so far.
- yesimahuman 13y agoYes. Quadrupled revenue over the last few months and are now 6 full-time people. Primarily bootstrapped apart from TechStars. http://drifty.com/ http://drifty.com/
- olalonde 13y agoIt's hard to believe that poll isn't heavily biased towares "yes". Looking at the results it's almost as if over 1/3 of startups are profitable which is pretty far from the stats I have seen before.
- pbo 13y agoI was lead tech (and first hire) at a hardware startup which launched two unsuccessful products then ran out of money (despite some seed funding). After that I left. Revenue and margins yes, but far from break-even.
- return0 13y agoOther option: Yes, one of them :)
- Ixiaus 13y agoProfit is funny for the startup scene. When first starting out building my company, my co-founder and I were often focused heavily on "profit" when talking to VC's and pitching. At a demo day we had a meeting with a partner from a big fund and pitched him. He turned us down and told us why but was kind enough to have a follow-on meeting with us to talk further about our pitching strategy and general business strategy. One of the key points I got out of speaking with him was this: VC's (institutional, not necessarily angels) generally want to see high-growth and not high-profit. If you've got revenue coming in and you're "profitable" on it, then you need to be growing more (spending it). To the point that most VC's believe you should grow so fast that you never reach profitability until you exit OR decide to "level out" the business.
- benjamincburns 13y agoIsn't this a huge burden on the economy as a whole? The vast majority of businesses which follow this strategy will go out of business without ever creating more value than they consumed. A significant percentage of those will over leverage and file bankruptcy, pushing their losses off onto those who helped finance them while driving up interest rates. How does it pan out long-term for a VC to advocate for this strategy and this strategy alone? Edit: My gut instinct is that this is an example of a VC valuing short-term gain at the expense of literally everything else. They don't want your business to succeed, they want their business to succeed. They don't want the economy to boom, they want to outpace the economy any way they can. Maybe I just lack experience in this realm (I have nearly zero experience dealing with VCs), and/or this is overly cynical, but this just pisses me off.
- olalonde 13y agoThey advocate this strategy if you (plan to) take VC money. They are probably not claiming every startup should follow this strategy.
- benjamincburns 13y ago> They advocate this strategy if you (plan to) take VC money. I understand that for some businesses accepting VC funding means more success than you could have ultimately achieved on your own, or even success where you would have otherwise failed. But to be overly snarky and simplistic, if I wanted to put someone else's benefit ahead of my own I wouldn't have started a [for profit] business. I say that because most businesses which follow this strategy won't just tank, they'll tank really hard [Edit: that's an assumption, of course, but is this incorrect?]. I wonder if anyone is tracking the impact of this? Is there anything that says that VCs make less by advocating strategies which promote the success of their entire portfolio? Are there VCs out there that do this?
- kiyanforoughi 13y agoThe problem with this poll is that all the folks who are unprofitable will keep quiet and all those that are will share it proudly :-) Useless poll
- magicmarkker 13y agoYes, doing at least a million in profit a year for the past 2 years.
- SZenith 13y agoForgive me, for I am ignorant. Why do some many of you not even get revenue? Is the aim to build a userbase before monetizing the site (or flipping it)?
- benjamincburns 13y agoIn my case my "startup" is a side project which doesn't cost me much to run. I started when my day job was rather soul-sucking. The day job has since improved, but I still work on the side gig from time to time. I'd say my strategy now, if I have one, is to build in some natural virality so that I don't have to exert too much effort to attract new users. Presently if I market I'll get a good number of users for a week or so, then traffic drops back to nil. Once I get a regular user base I'll look at monetizing.
- MicahWedemeyer 13y agoYou'll have to do a retrospective and let us know how this promotional campaign for microha.us goes.