Small business stories

sifter

Source:
Just the facts
- single founder
- built web-based bug tracker https://sifterapp.com/
- started in 2008, part-time
- full time in July 2010
- after 3 years the business was bringing full-time salary, a bit below market
- sold after 8 years (March 2016) on FEI (https://garrettdimon.com/2016/the-journey-of-selling-sifter/)
https://medium.com/@christosconst/building-apps-for-passive-income-c96144185e5f
- built Stripe integration for Magento, eventually 2x his previous salary
https://barnacl.es/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-pivot-140-paying-customers-ten-months-andrei-soroker
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030863 : list of what happened to some Show HN projects
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355 : list of one person businesses

HN threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14437921 (Ask HN: What are some examples of highly successful single-person businesses?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7367243 (Successful one-person online businesses)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13326535 (Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083 (Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6980554 (How did you launch your product)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11658873 (Ask HN: Anyone making a living off of desktop applications?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14039135 (Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703425 (Why Founders Fail To Market Their Products)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14296732 (Ask HN: Who is building “long lived” software?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14267717 (Ask HN: What was your product’s biggest marketing win?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14030149 (Ask HN: What are you working on?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13485257 (Ask HN: How to finish personal projects?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14191161 (Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8098908 (The Financial Side of Building Mac Apps)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355 (Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14146850 (Ask HN: Best business advice for software developers)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13656192 (I started a one-man biz that’s beating VC-backed startups)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13213871 (Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13167156 (Ask HN: Is the concept of a one-person software shop still viable?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387789 (How do you generate passive income?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358111 (Ask HN: Are you working on any side projects that make “small/passive” income?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868 (Ask HN: Passive income ideas?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271 (Ask HN: Your best passive income sources?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255 (Ask HN: How to start earning $500/month in passive income in next 12-18 months?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2547254 (Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588 (What was your best passive income in 2014?)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402 (Your best passive income? (2014))
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3581791 (Ask HN: What are the good old ideas that still make money on the web?)

HN people:

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jasonkester s3stat guy
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=SyneRyder photoshop plugins guy
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=steveridout readlang guy
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ldenoue Laurent Denou, the pdf guy
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dangrossman w3counter and improvely guy, $50 k / month
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hemancuso expan drive guy
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=20years has a couple of apps
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dr_win BinaryAge (TotalFinder guy)
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=andrewljohnson (https://www.gaiagps.com/, $30+k/month)
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bdunn (planscope.io guy)
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=raffi (penetration testing software guy)
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ahoyhere (amy hoy)

Are you interested in starting a boostrapped, indie software business?

This is a collection of stories about how some bootstrapped, indie businesses started. Learn about what worked, get inspired and start your own business!

CodePen

3 cofounders who worked at SurveyMonkey started CodePen as a side project.

First version took a month to build. Got 1,000 signups first week, didn’t expect that.

Early marketing: Chris Coyier drove 70% of early traffic via tweet. He already had a big following on Twitter at the time.

Timeline:

launched alpha in April 2012 (http://blog.codepen.io/2012/04/17/alpha/)
launched beta in June 2012 (http://blog.codepen.io/2012/06/18/beta/)
launched PRO plans in December 2012 (http://blog.codepen.io/2012/12/22/codepen-pro-is-here/)
went full-time in May 2013 (http://blog.codepen.io/2013/05/06/codepen-full-time/)
in August 2014 started accepting PayPal payments (http://blog.codepen.io/2014/08/11/now-accepting-paypal/)

Written in Ruby. Started on RackSpace, moved to AWS.

Sources: