Ask HN: One-person SaaS apps that are profitable? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
Do you know any one man SaaS app that are profitable?
I'm asking this because I'm considering starting a SaaS app as a side project, and I'm looking for some inspiration.
Thanks!
Note: this is was previously on HN here[1], but it's been few years, and I'm sure a lot of one person startups are thriving than before.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11924009 <comment><USER3> Key Values ([https://www.keyvalues.com](https://www.keyvalues.com)) is a one- woman show (oh hi!). I started Key Values as a side project two years ago, but it quickly turned into my full-time passion and business. I'm doing ~$30k/month and it's almost all profit since I don't have an office or any employees. I recently talked to Courtland of Indie Hackers (already mentioned in the comments) about how I got here: [https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key- va...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/086-lynne-tye-of-key-values)

I would never have started Key Values w/o Indie Hackers, so I highly recommend you spend some time there. It's a bottomless treasure chest of inspiration.

<comment><USER4> Really good website. However, I'm wondering as to why this is a full-time business. Is most of your time taken by marketing and sales?

<comment><USER5> A common belief on HN is that any SaaS/tech business is constrained by the complexity of its code and product. Famously, the top comment[0] on Dropbox's HN launch was about how it's not a valuable business because the commenter could build it for himself. There were similar comments here about Asana recently, too, and I'm sure many other startups.

If I had to guess, this is due to a combination of two factors. First, some kind of "visibility bias," where we all tend to overvalue things that are highly visible. And second, "man with a hammer" syndrome. We're programmers, so we tend to overvalue the importance of code.

But the reality is just as you guessed — marketing, sales, partnerships, content, customer service, etc all play a huge role in a business' success. They require a lot of time, too.

Not understanding this is one of the reasons many developer-founders make the mistake of taking on overly ambitious product ideas and not allocating enough time to the rest of their business.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

<comment><USER3> ^^^ This.

Key Values is not valuable because of its code. In fact, it's a simple static site that I could rebuild in a couple of days if I wanted to.

I meet a lot of technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else. They run the risk of building a lot of fancy features that no one wants or needs.

<comment><USER6> > technical founders who love coding and avoid doing everything else.

the truth is that these tech co-founders are really looking for a playground to have fun with code/tech, the same way a kid wants to play lego.

Building a business is not fun at all. There are tonnes of mundane stuff, and these are fairly important. A technical co-founder is quite likely to have quit their previou job because they want to create an environment where they aren't restricted by the "business people" for doing technical exploration and play.

This is why i think finding a business partner who isn't technical is quite important. They can reign you back in.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I once saw a line that went something like, "to a systems programmer, all users and applications serve merely to provide a test load". There are plenty of people who just want to build stuff, and oh by the way it would be handy if we had some users to test the technology:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I started [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io) as a side project, and then ran it fulltime as a one-person SaaS app for over a year. We're now a team of 8, profitable, and growing quickly. We're still 100% bootstrapped, and I have zero plans to raise any outside funding.

We started with a simple IP geolocation API, which now handles over 20 billion API requests per month. We've added new data to that service, such as IP type classification (hosting, isp, or business, and soon education too), IP to company, and carrier detection. And we've also launched some other products, like hosted domain API (all domains hosted on an IP, sometimes called reverse IP), IP ranges belonging to an organization, and an ASN API. We've got a lot in the pipeline too, including some domain related offerings (see [https://host.io](https://host.io) for an early preview).

So it's definitely possible :) What sort of SaaS product are you thinking of launching? Would be happy to chat! Shoot me an email at email@example.com

<comment><USER8> You got my GPS coordinates almost exactly correct. That's incredibly worrying.

I mean, it's impressive from a technical standpoint; but still, worrying.

<comment><USER9> It puts me hundreds of miles out, in the wrong country.

I find these IP lookup tools vary greatly - some will match certain IP blocks better than others.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, accuracy definitely varies by ISP, and region. If you'd be willing to share your IP or ISP with me (firstname.lastname@example.com) I'd love to look into it and see what we might have been able to do / be able to do in the future to get a more precise location for you.

<comment><USER9> No offense, but I'd rather it wasn't too accurate ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Go for it!

I'm working on NanaGram ([https://nanagram.co](https://nanagram.co)) solo and bootstrapped. Although I'm not making a full-time income yet, it's generating a profit. It's mostly automated.

NanaGram is the 3rd greatest generator of happiness and fulfillment in my life (after my wife and my dog). I get a constant stream of good vibes from customers, most recently voicemails from grandmothers! ([https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback-by-vm](https://nanagram.co/blog/feedback- by-vm))

Good luck :)

<comment><USER11> Love your site! My story is very similar with my project VidHug ([https://vidhug.com](https://vidhug.com)). Helping people spread joy & love is definitely a great motivator!

<comment><USER12> this is a cool idea. are you making money/profitable?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This may not qualify as SaaS but I built makerpad.co to show people how to build products/businesses without code. Currently $27k over the last month. One person, not my full time gig.

Wtf am I talking about?! I'm basically showing people the power of not needing to code to build something. I built an Airbnb "clone" by linking webflo, Airtable and zapier. Basically trying to show people they can build their first version without the classic "needing a technical cofounder" or "learning to code". Tools out there right now are insane and can help you get to a place you couldn't previously.

Okay Lynne is a recent friend and been huge in helping me the last couple weeks.

I did the normal shit of b2c (and still do) but the power of b2b is huge. I flipped my strategy and went from ~10k one month to now 30k (yes got 3.5k more since my initial comment).

<comment><USER14> How did you market to businesses ?

<comment><USER13> I've built up an audience around no code building and think I'm one of the first people others think of in this space. I understand the audience as I'm a non technical maker too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yes, PartsBox is (Electronic parts inventory & production: [https://partsbox.io/](https://partsbox.io/)). Some key points I would have told my former self:

* Do not expect any kind of explosive growth, especially in B2B. Expect linear growth. Search for "slow SaaS ramp of death" for a pretty good description of what to expect.

* Marketing is a huge problem. If you look around, you will see lots of marketers talking about marketing. In. Short. Sentences. With. Deep. Meaning. But then you'll notice that they mostly talk about marketing marketing apps for marketers. Unless you are building apps that help marketers market, much of this advice will be useless. And the short sentences are annoying.

* Paid ads are a waste of money, though I heard that with 4-5 digit budgets you can make them work. I never could.

* It is extremely difficult to get a working SaaS business at price points below $20/month. If you look around, businesses with these price points are VC-sponsored and are burning through investor money. I would not start a sustainable SaaS with price points below $40/month.

* When thinking about pricing, remember about support. There is no such thing as "no support", every product needs it, and it costs time and money.

* It's hard. Everything is hard. And there is always too much to do.

* Anxiety eats at you. No matter how good you are at keeping it at bay (I was pretty good), it will eventually catch up with you. I still don't have a good solution to that.

* If you pick a good niche, you can live in a world with nice and smart customers. It's a good world!

* When planning, be careful to set goals based on realistic financial assumptions. If this is to be your full-time job, it needs to support your business (including all hardware and office costs), you (your salary, insurance, retirement savings) and your family. People tend to vastly underestimate how much revenue is needed, especially if their past experience is mostly living with parents or surviving on ramen as a college student.

* I would not trade this for a "normal" job, ever :-)

<comment><USER16> We're waiting for an on-premise version of PartsBox to be released :-) Is that wishful thinking???

<comment><USER15> I'm afraid so. On-premises is expensive (VERY expensive). I tried to estimate the necessary pricing for on-premises deployment and the final price was never attractive to customers. In all cases it turned out the need for on-premises deployment was not a business need (we must deploy this locally because of X and Y, which implies a value of Z in USD), but rather a point of view (I'd rather have this locally because that's what I prefer).

Why is it expensive? On-premises deployment means maintaining a separate version of the software, a complex arrangement to make upgrades, inability to fix potential upgrade problems by modifying the database, having to maintain deployment documentation, having to always have code that creates a database from scratch (rather than migrating an existing one), extending legal arrangements for third-party services, additional configurations that need to be tested and much more. It constrains development in many ways.

<comment><USER17> You are very wise. The last company I worked for started as a SaaS product but in an industry that was on-prem. They were unable to resist customer demands for on-prem, so now have mostly hybrid solutions that are very costly and terrible to support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Depending on how you define SaaS: I started Tarsnap in 2006 (launched in 2008) and it was a profitable one-person company for many years. (Now it's a profitable two-person company.)

Mind you, it isn't a side project -- this has been my full time job for a dozen years. Starting a successful SaaS company as a _side_ project is much harder.

<comment><USER19> Did you ever take patio11's advice about charging more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have been running [https://webhookrelay.com/](https://webhookrelay.com/) as I side project for the last two years and since last March it's quite profitable. Environment is highly automated, running on GKE, builds and testing on drone.io while deployments are rolled out by keel.sh, some alerting goes through Node-RED so I don't have to interfere.

Still doing full-time consulting but hopefully in the next year or two I will transition full-time to it (if it's ever needed). I do plan to hire someone for marketing or sales, maybe on contracting terms and not full-time.

<comment><USER21> Hey, this is really cool. Two things:

Your headline text is "Webhook Relay lets anyone to..." You should probably make that "Webhook Relay allows anyone to..."

Also, I read your name as Web-hooker Lay, which is less feedback, and more just something I thought was funny.

<comment><USER20> :D lol! Thanks, will try to adjust :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hey! I just did/am doing an AMA on dev.to (located here: [https://dev.to/joelgriffith/i-m-the-creator-of- browserless-i...](https://dev.to/joelgriffith/i-m-the-creator-of-browserless- io-let-s-talk-about-starting-your-own-company-2ej3)).

I run a one-person (me!), bootstrapped business called browserless ([https://browserless.io](https://browserless.io)). I started it after trying to wrangle headless Chrome for a wishlist app, and desperately needing something like it. Obviously it wasn't around, so I pivoted and built it from the ground up.

I'd be super happy to answer questions. You can also email me at joel at browserless dot io. Anything and everything is game!

EDIT: Forgot to post how it's doing, which you can see on IH here: [https://indiehackers.com/product/browserless](https://indiehackers.com/product/browserless)

<comment><USER23> We use the open source version but still pay the subscription monthly. We love your product!

<comment><USER22> Thanks for that! Hope it's going well!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I run Keygen ([https://keygen.sh](https://keygen.sh)), an API for software licensing and distribution. I'm currently making ~$3,500/mo. You can read more about my journey here: [https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/2fa6c5e1eb).

</comment><comment><USER25> I run one, a minimalist personal finance app. It's about 11 years old at this point.

I built it up as my full-time gig and ran it initially for about six years. At that point: A) I had hired someone part-time to do customer support; B) the feature set was stable enough that it didn't need constant attention; C) I was missing working with people. So I moved out to SF and started working with a startup as an engineer. Enjoyed that for two years, then moved on to another startup where I was for three years (first as an engineer, then had a chance to move into management [which I also enjoyed, but where I missed making things]).

This past October I left that startup to go back to working on my own thing. Revenue coming in to the app dropped significantly while I was doing other things, but since coming back to it I've rebuilt it (well … 90% of it) and am soon going to be shifting focus to improving business operations (in addition to building out some new features). My hope is that within a year or so it'll be back up to its earlier customer levels, but I haven't spent a lot of time forecasting that, and growth could be slow. It'll be a while before it'll support us living in SF, but that's somewhere on the horizon.

What worked for me might not work for you (it was a long time ago!), but in case it's helpful, I built a very basic MVP (literally a spreadsheet) to scratch my own itch and then shared it, for free, online. (At the time I wasn't thinking of it as a business, just as a way to help people.) It got a good amount of traction. I was able to build on the attention the free version got (and the feedback people shared) and to develop a web-based, subscription- based version that required less work and gave more value to customers than the free version.

I haven't ever taken funding, and am so, so glad I haven't.

<comment><USER26> Do you have a link to your product? A cursory search turned up nothing.

<comment><USER25> Sure thing! Thanks for asking.

We're closed to new signups now while we wrap up the last bit of feature parity from the old app (and make sure all is working smoothly for our current subscribers), but would love to have you check it out in a little bit: [https://pearbudget.com](https://pearbudget.com)

<comment><USER27> Oh, wow, I've been using your spreadsheet for over a decade now! It was my intro to personal budgeting and has served me well all this time.

Have you ever considered creating a native mobile app? That'd probably tip me over the edge to become a paying customer.

<comment><USER25> Oh gosh, that is so awesome to hear! I love that it's worked so well for you!

Native mobile app! Absolutely have thought about it in the past, and will absolutely be thinking about it a little later on this year as we tune our roadmap.

If you shoot me a note (email@example.com), I'll let you know when we get a native app out the door. No pressure, though! Take care!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Indie Hackers lists lots of examples you can read about. Just filter on employee count and revenue: [https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1?employeeCount...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1?employeeCount=0)

</comment><comment><USER29> I started Parachute [1] by accident when I won the TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2015 Hackathon with its first prototype. I dropped everything else I was doing and launched it right here on HN a few months after that [2]. Today it's a healthy business without having taken a single cent of VC funding. I'm the only one full time on it, and it's made possible by relying heavily on a network of amazing friends who are each responsible for specific subprojects within their areas of expertise. Everyone is geographically distributed and I spend 9 months a year in NYC and the remaining 3 months traveling

Cheers to all the amazing engineers here who run ethical, douche-free, sustainable businesses

[1] [https://parachute.live/app](https://parachute.live/app) (app), [https://parachute.live/platform](https://parachute.live/platform) (B2B)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9885950)

</comment><comment><USER30> I co-founded Pigeon SMS ([https://pigeonsms.com](https://pigeonsms.com)) with my dad just a couple of years ago and we reached profitability just a few months after founding.

We provide business texting services to businesses of all sizes. Some of our customers include a city, vet clinic, glass shop, screen printing firm, boutique retailers, and on and on. Really any business can benefit from adding texting to their communications.

My advice: Pick something that will keep you interested and motivated to come back to when life gets busy.

<comment><USER31> Congrats on the launch. Would you be able to recommend off-net sms providers that you have had good luck with?

<comment><USER30> It really depends on use case. They all have their pros and cons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-ruwt I founded Are You Watching This?! ([https://ruwt.tv](https://ruwt.tv)) in 2006 and have been profitable since 2013. It's a Sports Excitement Analytics firm, licensing real-time data about the excitement of games by analyzing pitch-by- pitch and shot-by-shot data, to sports properties and cable companies.

I'm happy with where I'm at, but there's a lot I would've done differently. Holler if you'd like to chat about it at all: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/markphillip/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markphillip/)

<comment><USER32> Way cool. I remember when this site had scores for games posted and it would show you what channel each game is on depending on your location/provider. Great work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm the solo founder of Loadster ([https://loadster.app](https://loadster.app)) which has been profitable for a while and is now making me pretty close to a comfortable living.

I really enjoy the freedom and variety that comes with running a SaaS, and while the grass is always greener on the other side, I think I'm pretty much ruined for a regular job at this point. So beware!

One piece of unsolicited advice: if I were to start all over again as a solo bootstrapper, I would probably do something less technical. As others here have pointed out, there is a LOT more to running a SaaS than just building software, and it's often hard to find the time or brain space to give all the facets of your business the attention they deserve.

<comment><USER34> Great work w Loadster. Didn't know it was a solo effort! I founded another load testing service - loadimpact.com, which is doing very well but certainly not a solo effort and has taken on investors along the way. I'm now trying to build something solo again, and would echo the advice to go for something less technical. Plus do B2B if financial success is important. I have three projects atm, trying to figure out which has the most potential - 2 of them are consumer apps (one unreleased, the other is a crossword game for kids - [https://puzzlepirate.net](https://puzzlepirate.net)) and one is a technical data storage SaaS for IoT sensor data storage ([https://pushdata.io](https://pushdata.io)). The latter product is a lot more demanding, from most aspects. A simple and maintenance-free product is worth gold when you're running it solo.

<comment><USER33> Hey thanks Ragnar it's good to hear from you! Those both look great. Pushdata seems like an excellent idea – having done some stuff with InfluxDB I can definitely see the appeal of fully managed timeseries data without the worry of scaling it yourself. I guess Amazon and other big competitors will want this space too, but they won't be able to touch the simplicity of something like this. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I first built Mimiran ([https://www.mimiran.com](https://www.mimiran.com)) because I just wanted to know if and when prospects were reading my proposals. Since then I've added features by customer request to the point that it's a crm, but really designed for consultants and other service-focused people, rather than traditional sales teams. It's fun (usually) to get to do everything from coding to customer support. The feedback loop is very tight, especially because I'm user #1.

If I could be so bold as to pass along advice, I would say:

\- keep the app itself as simple as possible. "This is so simple, even Steve Jobs would say it's too simple" simple. This makes creating, testing, describing, and supporting the app as easy as possible. And if people can use it and provide meaningful feedback on what else they need, you can always decide to add it later.

\- don't try to reinvent the wheel on marketing. See what has worked for similar products (indie hackers is awesome).

\- make sure you talk to prospects, customers, friends, and family. Don't just sit there writing code. Having lifestyle flexibility as a solo founder is awesome, but it's important to make time to be social. As much as I don't miss commutes, office politics, etc, we are social creatures, even us introverts, and if you're just coding or emailing or whatever and not actually talking to people, it's going to be hard.

\- try to pick a market where you enjoy talking to your customers. I really like this part of my job. I know some other people who for whatever reason tend to have unpleasant interactions with their customers and it's not nearly as fun.

So I'm told. :)

</comment><comment><USER36> I run Pinboard by myself and make about $250K/year in revenue, with 97K expenses.

<comment><USER37> Where does 97k expenses come from, if you don't mind me asking

<comment><USER36> The two biggest expenses year over year are colocation ($25K/year) and PayPal/ Stripe fees ($11K/year). I pulled the $97K figure from the year I bought Delicious, so it includes a lot of one-time hardware purchases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm close with ToDesktop ([https://www.todesktop.com/](https://www.todesktop.com/)), I've launched quite recently so expect to be there in the next month or two.

<comment><USER23> Was really impressed with the flow but I hate being so tied to this. For example, what happens if you go out of business? Now we have 10,000 users on an app we can't update, etc.

<comment><USER38> That's actually one of the great things about being bootstrapped and profitable. I can grow naturally and I don't need to scale rapidly and hit huge customer numbers to keep VCs happy.

I'm in this for the long run. Even if 90% of my customers left me tomorrow then I would keep this going as a side gig.

I'm also able to facilitate customers that want to move off the ToDesktop platform to their own (i.e. built in-house) desktop app. Just send me on your binaries and I'll push an auto-update to your customers that gets them onto your new desktop app and your new auto-update platform. I charge $200 once-off for this currently and this feature will never be priced to force people to stay on the platform. The only reason for the charge right now is that it's a manual process so I charge consultancy rates.

<comment><USER39> Do you have a bus factor plan in place?

I. E. If. You are hit by a bus, what happens?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I built out Pipefile ([https://pipefile.com](https://pipefile.com)) as a one man operation. Bundle your PGP key into file upload forms to receive end-to- end encrypted files. Embed the upload forms into any html page to receive files without setting up any backend infrastructure.

You can try sending me something at [https://pipefile.com/steve](https://pipefile.com/steve)

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm the solo founder of Holiday API - [https://holidayapi.com](https://holidayapi.com) \- a DaaS platform for holiday information.

The project was originally started in 2013 as an open source side project, while I running a network of niche social networks full-time (also quite profitable for a while), after serving as CTO of a daily deal company, that stemmed from my need for reliable holiday information without the overhead of actually maintaining said data on a regular basis.

A shift to a premium model was made in 2016 and the first month into being a premium service, it was profitable (sans my time ;) and has grown to ~$1500 MRR.

Ironically I started the project as a way to NOT have to maintain said data and now part of my day to day involves maintaining data accuracy... and sales outreach... and DevOps to improve... my own development efforts... and... and...

Recently received my YC rejection email for the upcoming batch (actually interviewed with another project with a partner a while back), but still hustlin'. Flying solo is great, but definitely can't get caught up in the echo chamber. Would highly recommend building a peer group of founders / other hackers & hustlers to meet / chat with regularly.

</comment><comment><USER42> My friend launched EnvKey ([https://www.envkey.com/](https://www.envkey.com/)) completely solo and grew it slowly over time. He eventually went through YC and took on investment but the first few years were bootstrapped. But he's still solo with a few freelancers.

</comment><comment><USER43> I run a few projects for ~$400 MRR. Here's my numbers from last year: [https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project- income-2...](https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project- income-2018.html)

Since there are questions about company formation in the comments, here's my notes on US taxes/legal from when I got started: [https://www.simonmweber.com/2016/07/11/launching-a-chrome- ex...](https://www.simonmweber.com/2016/07/11/launching-a-chrome-extension- part-1-taxes-and-legal.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> I run two SaaS products. Both are entirely my work and both are modestly profitable.

I split my time about 50/50 between the the SaaS side of my business and consulting. The consulting revenue stream is much larger than the SaaS one but it's growing.

[https://takehome.io](https://takehome.io)

And

[https://clubman.app](https://clubman.app)

<comment><USER45> Which is bringing in more profit? Clubman looks super niche. Unless you know ski clubs really well, looks hard to market.

<comment><USER44> Takehome brings in more revenue and takes less time to administer. Clubman has only just gone live with its first client, though. I think Clubman will outperform Takehome quite soon.

Takehome is in a pretty crowded market space. It has its own distinct niche but it can be quite difficult to communicate that difference to potential buyers.

Clubman, on the other hand, has few competitors. The clients are relatively homogeneous and their needs well articulated. They're a smaller total addressable market but with a higher percentage hit rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I continue to run the writing software Draft ([https://draftin.com](https://draftin.com)) all by myself. It can largely run on its own without a ton of interruption to me so I can work on other things.

<comment><USER47> Hi Nate. I've looked at Draft when I wanted to build something similar. Is it profitable to the point where you could do it full-time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm running [https://mybrandnewlogo.com](https://mybrandnewlogo.com) — an automatic, online logo generator.

I'm also running [https://monokai.pro](https://monokai.pro) — a professional color scheme for coders.

I've done both on the side of co-running a design agency. Last year I've spent quite some time on the logo design tool. It helps that I enjoy programming, learning and making stuff, but something's always got to give. I've sacrificed a lot of weekends, but luckily the foundation is there now.

Both projects are profitable and have quite different mechanics. I've done almost no marketing for the color scheme, whereas the logo machine needs a lot of marketing.

</comment><comment><USER49> [https://letterfromyou.com/](https://letterfromyou.com/) Letter from You is a service that allows business owners to connect with their clients through beautifully handwritten letters. It's my first side project and currently talking to some larger recurring companies.

<comment><USER50> That is a _really_ clever, original idea for a business, I mean it. Damn.

<comment><USER51> It's actually not at all original. Maybe he independently came up with the idea, but there are tons of these.

<comment><USER52> Let people be excited about things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm building a SaaS app (getting close to ramen profitable): Trunk @ [https://www.trunkinventory.com](https://www.trunkinventory.com) which helps online sellers sync their inventory in real-time across their different sales channels (i.e. Etsy, Faire, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc)

</comment><comment><USER54> I started [https://cronhub.io](https://cronhub.io) a year ago and it's profitable now. I have written blog posts about my learnings and challenges so far. [https://blog.cronhub.io/](https://blog.cronhub.io/)

</comment><comment><USER55> StatusGator is the status page monitoring service I built. It's been profitable since about 2016.

Though I very recently took on a partner to try and grow it because I believe it can be more than just "profitable" but perhaps actually a sole income source one day. It's great to have a "one person" company but I feel it's even better to have a partner to help inspire and motivate you, especially when it's a side project and not a full time job.

</comment><comment><USER56> Packetriot ([https://packetriot.com](https://packetriot.com)) - around 4 months old and I haven't begun seriously marketing, but it generates $60/month and makes a tiny profit.

With it you can create a secure public endpoints (HTTP/TCP) from any network. The client can host static sites, reverse-proxy to other hosts, terminate TLS. It manages Lets-Encrypt for you. The higher-end tiers provides access logs, metrics, firewall rules, and service-health checks.

With a public endpoint you can pretty much do anything. I initially built it to reduce my hosting costs to something minuscule (which it did). I found alternatives as I developed it, but I was so interested in the problem I continued and created some features that aren't available in others. I still have more ideas in the pipeline.

I've been putting together video tutorials to showcase what you can do with it and how to use it. I'm focusing on people that self-host since most developers/hackers understand the concept. A lot of my registrations and customers have discovered Packetriot through my YouTube channel.

<comment><USER57> Interested in hearing more about your very low running costs (I understand below $60/month).

<comment><USER56> I have 4 edge servers that are small VMs at the moment. For the number of users I have more than enough capacity. I also have a separate server that has more resources for the main site and APIs.

I use DO, altogether hosting costs are $40/mo for now.

<comment><USER57> I guess you are generating a lot of traffic, is DO allowing you unlimited traffic on your droplets?

<comment><USER56> DO has bandwidth included in the price of the droplet and if you exceed then you pay a fair price for the additional bandwidth. For the cheapest droplet ($5/mo) you are provided 1TB of bandwidth. What they also do is take the all the bandwidth across all droplets you purchase and make that your pool. So if you have 4 droplets, then 4 TB, if one of the droplets experience the most traffic like 3.5 TB, and the rest are zero, you are under your total bandwidth quota for the billing period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tom-jh I built [https://flowcrypt.com](https://flowcrypt.com) solo for the first two years. I would have preferred a partner, but nobody committed.

Today 3+ years later it's a three person team. Maybe in another year I can have reasonable work life balance again. Maybe.

</comment><comment><USER58> Yep! I made [https://fitloop.co](https://fitloop.co) as a solo maker and it's making about $450 MRR.

</comment><comment><USER59> Running a 1-man SaaS as a side-project has been one of the best things career wise. It helped me gain a different perspective on software (design, devops, sales, support etc.) in general. Being able to bring some of that experience into my day-time jobs was really rewarding.

The Saas i'm running is Gridoc ([https://gridoc.com](https://gridoc.com)) - <USER2> pays for the car and a few bills. I'm pretty sure it could be doing better but it has been on auto-pilot for a couple years now (started a family).

</comment><comment><USER60> Solo founder of [https://docevent.io](https://docevent.io) SFTP and FTP/S directly to your Azure Blobs, Google Cloud Storage and S3 buckets.

I bootstrapped it myself, but there are now others that help remotely (consultants, contractors) on some features, fixes testing and marketing.

<comment><USER61> This is great! I really wished this existed a few years ago at my previous company. We needed this exactly. A straightforward way to get ftp files into blob. Is it possible to cname/whitelabel the domain of the ftp address?

<comment><USER60> Thanks! You can CNAME, but for FTPS there will be certificate verification errors because the DNS is changed (there is nothing like http2 where we can serve other SSL certs for different destination hosts).

But for SFTP, and FTP (insecure, not that you'd want to) CNAME works fine.

We do do seperate SSL certs but it is only for bigger customers that we host dedicated instances on their behalf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm making [https://getmakerlog.com](https://getmakerlog.com), which is currently doing $200 MRR.

<comment><USER63> Just curious, did you go about setting up a formal corporation for the product? I'm thinking about setting up my own SaaS product and I'm not sure if I need to do anything on the legal/business side.

<comment><USER64> I wouldn't set up a corporation until you have either a reasonable amount of cash coming in or someone ready to give you a check. After that, I'd start with an LLC in your home state, unless you think there's a chance you'll take outside investment. If you do, conversion to a Delaware C-corp costs around $10K in legal fees.

<comment><USER65> I thought that an LLC in California required a yearly fee that was close to a $1000 the last time I looked. Is that no longer true or not true at all? Related - isn't it much cheaper in other states?

<comment><USER66> Yea, $850 franchise tax minimum. I personally think it's a bit excess even by Californian standards.

Also, you'd need to get an office in Delaware to not mandate a foreign registration in California which still involves the taxes. Getting an office in Delaware is pretty expensive but it's about $400 cheaper than California franchise tax. They assess their own but it still works out lower.

Edit: Nevermind, they still tax you on that. I don't condone tax evasion, but Wyoming doesn't track the owners of a corporation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I run two side projects on my own.

The first with is on auto pilot and does $800MRR. My second is called TeamCal ([https://www.teamcalapp.com](https://www.teamcalapp.com)) and I'm actively working on it. Usually 2-3 hours/week. Its doing $1700MRR and growing.

TeamCal provides a scheduling view for Google Calendar and is used by cleaning/call center/staffing companies.

If your interested about some of the work involved, I documented part of the journey on Indie Hackers: [https://www.indiehackers.com/product/teamcal](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/teamcal)

</comment><comment><USER68> Solo started [http://Fairpixels.co/pro](http://Fairpixels.co/pro) \- UX/UI for B2B SaaS companies. a "Service as a Service" powered by custom internal software to work more efficiently. Growing strong and working with small saas companies and Elon Musk cofounded ventures.

</comment><comment><USER69> I know the solo guy who are running Proxyman [https://proxyman.app](https://proxyman.app) as a side project for a year.

He's ambitious to be a better alternative version of Charles Proxy. The best of Proxyman is that it's native app, lightweight and super easy to use for iOS dev newbie

</comment><comment><USER70> I run a leave intent fortune wheel popup SaaS called Listagram ([https://www.listagram.com](https://www.listagram.com)) as a solo founder and doing about $6K MRR with about $1K costs (Heroku, AWS CloudFront).

Have about 100 paying customers.

Yeah everybody hates popups. But I saw a potential for a product and wanted to try doing the SaaS thing after a decade selling software and doing consultancy. It has been a lot of fun, it is thrilling and scary to have my JS loaded on some high traffic sites.

</comment><comment><USER71> Two-person but close enough - We're building Leave Me Alone ([https://leavemealone.xyz](https://leavemealone.xyz)), an app that helps you unsubscribe from spammy mailing lists. Currently at ~$500/month (full stats are public here [https://leavemealone.xyz/open](https://leavemealone.xyz/open))

<comment><USER72> I used your service 2 months ago, thank you sooooo much!

<comment><USER71> You're very welcome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I launched [https://travelmap.net](https://travelmap.net) as a side project 5 years ago but now I'm working full-time on it. I preferred that than freelancing ;)

<comment><USER74> this is amazing idea. Happy to share how much monthly users you got, and what tech you used?

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> BigPicture ([https://bigpicture.io](https://bigpicture.io)) is a solo founder operation. I was the only person for the first couple years before I grew it enough to start hiring.

I don't recommend anyone follow this path now having been through it myself. Being a solo founder is absolutely brutal.

</comment><comment><USER76> [https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/) is my toy project. It brings in £250 a month.

</comment><comment><USER77> Surprised Simple Analytics[1] hasn't been mentioned yet. I don't know how profitable it is but this seems like a great example re: the question.

[1] [https://simpleanalytics.io/](https://simpleanalytics.io/)

<comment><USER78> As the founder of Simple Analytics I know a bit about the profitably of the company. It is making profit but it's not enough yet to sustain my lifestyle completely.

I do some freelance work on the side. As one hour of freelance work is more or less equal to one customer for a year it's still way more satisfying to work on Simple Analytics.

I try to keep it within 40 hour work weeks but the reality is around 2-10 hours freelance and 30-50 on Simple Analytis. But it's sooo fun!

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I made [https://kernl.us](https://kernl.us) solo and it's making ~$1100 MRR and growing.

</comment><comment><USER80> I am working on SaaS DocsApp ([https://www.docsapp.io/](https://www.docsapp.io/)) solo and bootstrapped. DocsApp is a platform to manage your product documentation. DocsApp now is profitable and growing. Currently I am focusing on marketing to grow more. DocsApp was born as a result of frustration to building documentation for Product/SaaS.

I have been working on DocsApp for 3 years and only now start profitable. The hardest problem I faced was marketing and sales. Development is only 30% of the work.

</comment><comment><USER81> Preppr ([https://preppr.com](https://preppr.com)). I built this Instagram scheduling site and iOS app. Currently doing $10,000 MRR over the last month.

</comment><comment><USER82> I am running [https://abot.app](https://abot.app) currently at $1500 MRR and growing. Still at full-time job apart from that.

<comment><USER83> I understand the context, but that logo doesn't give me a lot of warm feelings. I would likely skip the product just on that regardless of how awesome it might be.

<comment><USER82> Can you elaborate on why ?

<comment><USER84> 1) It's associated with hacktivist groups bordering on actually criminal. 2) As a British person, it's associated with Guy Fawkes, who was a terrorist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> [https://algodaily.com](https://algodaily.com) is profitable :-)

And we're just getting started! Still very much a side project too.

</comment><comment><USER86> Lobiloo ([https://www.lobiloo.com](https://www.lobiloo.com)) is an invoicing tool exclusively for florists.

i acquired it from a florist about 1.5 years ago and have been going deep on the industry ever since.

my challenge is (obviously) not having domain expertise, but i compensate by listening to customers, getting feedback from the former owner (now a lifetime user), and doing what i do: hack.

</comment><comment><USER87> Full-Stack Job Board ([https://fullstackjob.com](https://fullstackjob.com)) is a one-men show on the way to profit, as costs are very low, just one paid submission is enough for now. But of course far from goal to get something more out of it then a lot of fun, learning's and coffee. Real money is then to come in from the underlying boardengine.io

</comment><comment><USER88> I've seen a lot of friends publish apps to different ecosystems (e.g. marketplace.atlassian.com, [https://apps.shopify.com](https://apps.shopify.com), etc.) and make a steady profit. Seems like this is a good way to tap into an existing user base (although you share a portion of the revenue).

</comment><comment><USER89> I'm a one-man team developing TAYL, a service that turns websites into podcasts using AI. I built everything in 3 months (while working full-time with other things) and it's been profitable since week 1 of public release [https://www.tayl.app](https://www.tayl.app)

<comment><USER90> It looks very promising. What text-to-speech engine are you using?

<comment><USER89> Thanks! GCP and AWS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have an edge in the market and it can work with larger portfolios than mine so I setup a system where my entries/exits are automatically posted for others to follow. Also, my algo generates the plan at night and that gets posted before the market opens so people can get in when I get in and make the same profits. In trading, most services aren't as transparent/don't get into all their recommendations, so this helps me take advantage of a niche. It's not nearly as profitable as I expected, but it will be soon once I create more awareness for it. It's not really a side project because I do trade full-time, but it kind of is a side project as I don't spend too much time marketing/advertising/adding features. Finding a niche is important, in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER91> There's my [https://teams.cardsync.xyz/](https://teams.cardsync.xyz/), which I did as toy and forgot about, then months later I realized there were many many users using it for free, then started charging a little and people indeed started to pay! Then many people told me to raise the prices, which I did reluctantly and now I have a nice product that is grossly overpriced, but people pay anyway (not many people, but sufficient to be profitable and perhaps make a very modest living).

I recommend first trying out plugins and extensions for established products instead of trying to launch the new Facebook.

Stuff like [https://www.ragic.com/](https://www.ragic.com/), for example, are niches no one seem to be exploring.

</comment><comment><USER92> I run a one-person 'SaaS' that delivers morning tech briefings each day for industry insight, without ads, that I wanted to see, called recharged: [https://char.gd/recharged](https://char.gd/recharged). I both write the newsletters + develop the platform behind the scenes that enables seamless community access involved, and our MRR is approximately $2,500/month for about 18 months.

I'll admit it's a struggle to properly grow at this point, but I'm trying to figure it out... but it's been a fun ride so far. Now I'm moving to build the tools I already made for myself that make it easy to build paid content + communities without the developer skills I had to learn to get here... hopefully going into beta soon.

<comment><USER93> I follow your work! If you need a hand on Recharged I'd love to help and keep it live and up.

<comment><USER92> <3 thank you! I'm working out a plan for our next iteration at the moment, but I'll totally let you know if I need help or feedback.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Your Audio Tour ([https://www.youraudiotour.com](https://www.youraudiotour.com)) is making about $120 in recurring monthly revenue. I built it using Micheal Hartl's online ruby on rails tutorial which I would HIGHLY recommend.

</comment><comment><USER95> [https://trolley.link](https://trolley.link) \- my payments project.

It lets you put a payment button on any website and pop up a cart; single products, donations, deposits, subscription / recurring payments.

Customers are using it to power charity donations, self published book sales, physical product sales & shipping, membership fees for clubs and so on.

You can integrate it to Mailchimp and use it to put together a paid subscription email newsletter... or use it to make your own Patreon at much much lower cost to you.

It uses Stripe as the gateway in the back end. (To use Stripe Checkout you still need a back end to handle token exchange. Trolley handles that for you.)

</comment><comment><USER96> Tangentially related. If someone wants to sell his side project, please list here. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19693520)

</comment><comment><USER97> I created Vora ([https://getvora.com/](https://getvora.com/)) as a solo developer. I sold it a couple months ago, at time of sale it was making $300-500 in monthly profit

</comment><comment><USER98> I've run a music education site for 10 years ([https://www.tonictutor.com](https://www.tonictutor.com)). It's been only a very modest success, but it's provided a small amount of revenue that's been relatively steady. I haven't really marketed it much, but I'm planning on putting some time and resources into that once I've finish converting all of the old Flash versions of the games (which is nearly finished!).

</comment><comment><USER99> I started [https://www.seektable.com](https://www.seektable.com) as a side project 2 years ago - originally this was demo of technology (totally free tool). Last 9 months I'm trying to convert it into profitable SaaS app; have first paid customers however MRR is still low.

Depending on your SaaS app niche and your marketing capabilities it might take some time to get stable and good-enough cash flow.

</comment><comment><USER100> My saas https.appdoctor.io is barely profitable but that is mainly because of how cheap the infrastructure cost is(something I think helps a lot in 1 man/woman projects). I would agree with what others have stated though that I don't recommend solo founding(looking for a co founder now). They don't tell you that making an functioning application that is useful is less then half the battle to having a successful saas.

</comment><comment><USER101> [https://usebx.com](https://usebx.com) was my personal side project for a couple of years. We managed to sell contracts to a few corporates, and now have fairly strong MRR (so much so, that we've made the core product free for small teams). I've recently hired a few contractors in London to help expand the Bx toolset and also finally add some documentation!

</comment><comment><USER23> I am the only full time cofounder of a healthcare SaaS. My cofounder is the domain expert who kept his job. No employees. ~20k MRR

<comment><USER83> What sector of healthcare? Mind being more specific? My email is in my profile if you're interested in a conversation.

I have a side project that's targeting physicians being able to better track their activities.

<comment><USER23> Mainly plastic surgeons who operate their own practices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> I made [https://icohunt.co](https://icohunt.co) and it's doing $400-$900 MRR

</comment><comment><USER103> Remarkbox ([https://www.remarkbox.com](https://www.remarkbox.com)) +$50/mo

<comment><USER104> Can't load :(

<comment><USER103> I typo'd the uri... sorry about that. Please try again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> I created excellent product for test automation [https://github.com/alaserm/VisualTAF/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/alaserm/VisualTAF/blob/master/README.md) maybe someone wants to join for marketing and sales, profit sharing.

<comment><USER105> write to my email: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Currently building receiveco.com. It helps local businesses to get customer feedback and based on it asks for reviews on Google, Yelp, etc. I am currently searching for a co-founder better if someone who's got experience in marketing. The app is 95% complete. Email me at the email on my profile if you're interested.

</comment><comment><USER106> I just stumbled across this: [https://forum.bubble.is/t/shoutout-to- bubble-45k-mrr-benchma...](https://forum.bubble.is/t/shoutout-to- bubble-45k-mrr-benchmark/41279) while looking at bubble.is (tool for code-free development of web applications).

</comment><comment><USER107> Made a no frills transcription services that uses AWS transcribe on the backend: ([http://scribe.thence.io](http://scribe.thence.io)). I run a podcast and use it to generate multi-speaker transcripts. It's fully automated and generates a nice little revenue

</comment><comment><USER108> I started [https://apility.io](https://apility.io) about 16 months ago and it's profitable since month six. It's not profitable enough to leave my job and fully dedicate my time to this, and who knows if it ever happens. I started the project just for fun, btw...

</comment><comment><USER109> [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonkester](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jasonkester) runs [https://www.s3stat.com/](https://www.s3stat.com/)

</comment><comment><USER110> I'm running [https://www.gosourcingwise.com](https://www.gosourcingwise.com) \- its not super profitable but growing. Companies using it find it very simple and useful so that motivating to keep building it better.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm doing screencasts as opposed to a SaaS, so I started another thread for indies doing content businesses over here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19704735)

</comment><comment><USER111> Send To My Cloud ([https://sendtomycloud.com](https://sendtomycloud.com)) is a one-person SaaS that I made 4 years ago. Its definitely in maintenance/passive mode but still profitable.

</comment><comment><USER112> CryptoTrader.Tax ([https://www.cryptotrader.tax](https://www.cryptotrader.tax)) We started this about 15 months ago during the crypto craze and have been able to grow to over 13,000 users!

</comment><comment><USER113> I've been working on PDFShift ([https://pdfshift.io](https://pdfshift.io)) for a almost a year now - alone. I'm nearing 100 customers and will soon be able to make salary :)

</comment><comment><USER114> We're a small team of 3 co-founders at @nazar_io currently doing $50k MRR.

</comment><comment><USER115> I run VoIP Spear (voipspear.com) by myself. We're doing about $5k/month.

VoIP Spear is a service for people who use VoIP. It monitors your Internet connection and alerts when you have a call quality issue.

<comment><USER116> How does this work? How can you even tell VoIP data from non-VoIP data? I would have guessed that everything is encrypted.

<comment><USER115> We're not monitoring phone calls. We're monitoring the network conditions. This means we can provide an estimate of call quality even when there's no calls on the network.

<comment><USER9> I'm struggling to understand why this would be useful, so I guess I'm not the target market - can you say something about who this is useful for, why they want to see this info, and what they can do with it?

<comment><USER115> It's frustrating for people who experience voice quality issues because the problems are usually intermittent. This means that, by the time they contact their service providers, the problem is not occurring and they just get a lame 'have you tried rebooting your modem/router' response.

VoIP Spear monitors 24x7x365 so customers can provide historical data to their service providers to show the issue occurred.

Also, service providers use VoIP Spear because they want help troubleshooting. They are also frustrated that the issue is no longer occurring by the time the customer calls for support.

<comment><USER9> So this is targeted at SMEs that don't have an in-house sysadmin/ops monitoring capability?

<comment><USER115> There are three targets for VoIP Spear.

1\. Personal: Home users use VoIP Spear to monitor their VoIP service to provide information to their service providers about the problems they are experiencing.

2\. SME: Businesses that have VoIP use VoIP Spear in the same way as the home users.

3\. Service providers: Service providers use VoIP Spear because it is an inexpensive and cheap way to get data about the issues their customers are experiencing. Most VoIP service providers are typically unable to get any data about the quality of phone calls their customers experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> I've been running [https://honeymoney.io](https://honeymoney.io) since 2011 (Russian version of it only initially). It's profitable.

</comment><comment><USER118> The Overcast podcasting app seems to be built by a single person: [https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq](https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq)

<comment><USER119> I imagine the history of that single person might not be so relatable to people reading this thread :) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Arment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Arment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER120> sshreach.me ([https://sshreach.me](https://sshreach.me)) - it's currently only ramen profitable but I'm getting new users every day.

</comment><comment><USER121> [https://carrd.co](https://carrd.co) by aj - a Zapas That enables people build simple websites/landing pages.

</comment><comment><USER122> I started park.io 5 years ago by myself and it has been profitable since then (and it has been just me the whole time)

</comment><comment><USER123> [http://indiafinearts.co.in](http://indiafinearts.co.in)

</comment><comment><USER124> My self developer of few of Saas applications. I worked on starting from ideation to go live. I am developer of those applications working as single person for client to make multiple Saas applications as side projects since few years.

P.S. Ideas are not mine I'm just doing development and can't disclose more details here.

</comment><comment><USER125> I am not at liberty to say who it is but I know a one person SaaS (well, now a 4 person SaaS) that does several million a year in revenue. They found a niche and wrote software for that niche. It is the tiniest of niches but is underserved.

<comment><USER96> Atleast giving an idea of the general market would be great. Otherwise, your answer has no meaning

<comment><USER126> The last two sentences that comment are meaningful to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> Education SAAS is anytime great product to make money - something like EduClan.com

</comment><comment><USER123> Prints salutations

</comment><comment><USER128> so what can we learn from this?

</comment><comment><USER129> Pocket: one man team for at least the first two years.

</comment><comment><USER129> Pocket. One-man team for at least the first two years.

</comment><comment><USER130> No one is going to tell you this idiot. They'll build it themselves and reap the profits.

This whole ycombinator post is stupid as hell.

</comment><comment><USER131> Interesting question because answering it is somewhat risky, assuming no secret sauce or years of work to launch.</comment>


Blogging for your business is worth it even if you get no traffic - <AUTHOR> http://thestartuptoolkit.com/blog/2011/12/blogging-for-your-business-is-worth-it-even-if-you-get-no-traffic/ <comment><USER2> Video blogging is still an untapped opportunity.

Most people either think it's too much work, or they cannot commit to doing video blog posts that take 15 - 20 minutes, and put you on any mobile/laptop screen where an existing or potential customer, joint venture partner, blogger or reporter might wish to find you 24/7/365.

The idea with blogging is to start a data-driven feedback loop that you can fine-tune 'on the fly' similar to the following process the author outlined in the article:

* Capture every idea * Don't wait for good ideas – shipping regularly creates quality * Don't obsess — publish posts on the 2nd draft * Watch realtime analytics and heavily polish only the posts which start to take off

Of course some types of startups enjoy viral growth through invites/recruiting, so perhaps blogging is less important for them.

For many startups creating compelling content, syndicating the heck out of it, and connecting with as many people as possible are core drivers of organic traffic growth.

<comment><USER3> I guess I'm old fashioned but I almost never look at video blogs...for informational value anyway. It might be a great way to communicate the personality/likability of the blogger, but it seems like a really inefficient way to communicate ideas compared to static graphics and well-formatted text.

Imagine if HN were a discussion board filled with youtube embeds for web-cam comments.

<comment><USER2> You're absolutely right that video blogging is not for everyone, and not for every startup. I also agree that HN would not work as a web cam comment site.

For the right startups and founders with a certain type of DNA video related content (with transcripts and time-coded key points) can be an excellent marketing tactic. Just look at Gary Vaynerchuk - his videos are far from polished, but they are entertaining, and get the job done.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been trying to start on videos[1] because I also feel it's got a lot of potential reach. Even though the view numbers are significantly lower on my videos than my blog, I get many more emails and comments about the videos. I guess people respond better to a face and a voice than to text.

It's definitely something I'll be putting significantly more time toward exploring in the new year.

[1] About 30 videos up so far at <http://youtube.com/robfitzpatrickable>

<comment><USER2> SOME people respond better to a face and voice on video. Others prefer any one of a kaleidoscope of possible engagement methods. That's why it's important to try lots of approaches and see which ones resonate with your market.

Use your creativity folks - your videos CAN and WILL rank on page one with the right SEO (assuming there aren't already 1,000 videos targeting the same keywords).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great post. You mentioned using real time analytics to polish your articles. What tools did you have in mind?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Ray, thanks. I've tried chartbeat, gosquared, and google's realtime. They're all fine, but now I mostly just get it via twitter.

It's not "analytics" per se, but the first 10 minutes worth of retweets is a better indicator of whether a post has legs or not than anything else.

With the proper realtime tools, I would basically just watch for irregular spikes after I pushed a post. The actual numbers never really mattered.

A quick SMS saying the post was doing better than 80% of my other posts would do the trick too.

<comment><USER5> How do people know about your blog posts initially? A tweet by you? Anything else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I tweet it and post a subset (maybe 1 in 5) to HN if I think it's good and relevant to most people.

I haven't really dug into RSS metrics, but you get those in realtime via feedburner, so that could be another valid source.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Blogging has its place in a lot of startups but is hard to justify for ours. We're selling a purely commercial product to technologically unsavvy clients who expect a professional public face.

It's a triple whammy. Very few of them follow blogs (you're lucky if they own a smartphone) and any posts come off either as tacky schilling or unprofessional commentary. That being said, we still blog for the purpose of content and keywords for SERPs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey JS, I think you've got two fallacies baked into your perspective.

First, that blogs have to be unprofessional. That's simply not true -- for more "serious" industries, you can treat the content like mini-whitepapers or slices of a conference presentation.

Second, that non-technical people can't appreciate and share good content. They can, although it goes through email rather than rss. If you provide the mini-report and analysis which helps someone win an intra-management dispute, you're going to have an evangelist forever.

The less your industry does it already, the more value I see in you breaking the mould. Which supplier are you going to pick up the phone and call? The one you've heard very highly of, or the one whose report you just spent the morning poring over?

<comment><USER6> Good points Rob, and I can see what you mean about breaking the mold in an industry where blogging isn't common.

My comment on the blog posts appearing unprofessional just meant that I can't take a casual, conversational approach to blogging which makes posts a lot easier and more fun to write. Everything has to be written from that anonymous company-as-a-person perspective so the resultant posts are dry and difficult to write.

I like your idea about providing thorough technical content though, I'm going to keep it in mind the next time I write one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Agreed. Blogging can be great for building awareness and credibility, which can create financial rewards down the road.</comment>


I miss Inbox, so I hacked Gmail with a little CSS magic (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://modus.medium.com/gmail-ux-sucks-so-i-fixed-it-for-my-own-sanity-b6f33898ebe3 <comment><USER2> I've never understood why people don't prefer desktop email clients. Thunderbird is really great.

I remember growing up, we used Outlook with our ISP-provided email addresses. The first time I ever saw webmail (it was probably Yahoo or Hotmail at the time) I was just confused. To me, web browsers are for browsing the web, and email clients are for accessing email. Eh, but what do I know. The article was interesting though.

<comment><USER3> Web apps are simply easier to use, go to a given URL, log in and you're there.

<comment><USER4> Which is why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER4> See what I mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Basic HTML Gmail hasn't changed in years and works perfectly fine for all of my needs for gmail: reading and sending emails. I find the current UI to be quite unusable, but at least there's still the basic html option.

<comment><USER6> Yep it's great. It loads way faster than IMAP would, I can see more than 40 emails on my screen at one time, and it has a very nice practical 2000s aesthetic with no unnecessary whitespace.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> People use the web interface for GMail ?

I just have it set up via IMAP on my laptop, tablet and phone. No need to ever use it via the web interface. What would be the advantage of using the web interface vs. just using a native mail client ?

<comment><USER8> The first circumstance that comes to mind is when you don't have app installation privileges.

<comment><USER9> Thunderbird portable can help you here. But my first step would be to escalate while not having those privileges. Let yourself be put in another network if there are security cocerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> GMail has ads? Never noticed so UBlock origin did its job well

I find the GMail UX to be a simple for basic tasks e.g. opening an email But anything more is rather annoying

<comment><USER11> My first thought was, here is someone technically skilled enough to modify the css of a page they do not own, yet they aren't blocking ads with an adblocker? I hope they did not waste the time on hiding the ads manually..

<comment><USER12> I know many SW engineers that will keep ads on as a matter of principle. They like to support the sites they use the most and believe that giving back in views/clicks is okay.

I'm with you but different folks different strokes!

<comment><USER13> That's what you have exceptions for. (whitelisting)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I never thought the intention was people actually look in the promotions or social tab, so it's odd here it's being viewed as a way to keep people in Gmail.

To me it felt like a way to quarantine the Facebooks and linkedins of the world which email you every time a contact sneezed, or the stores that opt you into promotional emails in a way that doesn't shame those companies enough into trying to bypass it or complaining about anti-competitive behaviour if they got rightfully classed as spammers.

</comment><comment><USER15> There is another way. GMail allows to use compact interface. There is option to turn it on: click on 'gears' icon in top right on the top of table/list with e-mails and switch onto compact view. You can also turn off those "Primary", "Promotions", etc. labels.

<comment><USER16> Those are options but definitely don't come anywhere near what the author has achieved! I'm actually very impressed with the new interface.

I can't believe it, but I'm actually at the point where I no longer enjoy using Gmail. I have an easier time using the Windows Mail application at this point... which is really telling I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The pain of maintaining this long term (look at those CSS identifiers with jibberish names, you know those aren't set in stone) is going to be worse than the pain of adapting to crappy Gmail.

You know what else sucks about Gmail, other than just the design?

* There's no option to consolidate multiple emails into a single thread (so you're at the whim of the sender to maintain the same thread)

* There's no "Send after X duration" or "Send at X time", so you can't write something at 3am and schedule it to be sent during work hours. [Edit: I stand corrected, there is a Scheduled Send option now]

* There's no way to add private notes to email threads. So if I'm told something over the phone which is relevant to the email conversation (but private), I have to dump it into some other notes app where I'll lose it. [Edit: No, confidential mode is not what I'm looking for]

I've said the same thing about FastMail before, these email guys SUCK at innovation.

The only thing good about Gmail is the spam detection and the superior deliverability of using a Gmail address.

<comment><USER18> "* There's no way to add private notes to email threads. So if I'm told something over the phone which is relevant to the email conversation (but private), I have to dump it into some other notes app where I'll lose it."

There are several extensions available which add this ability. Two are "Simple Gmail Notes" and "Gmail Notes". There are several others. Some free and some paid.

<comment><USER19> Alternatively, I will reply to myself at that point in the thread. Just have to make sure you don't include this when conversing later, which isn't a problem as I generally reply to the other person's inbound.

Sending myself emails as notes is the stickiest note taking app I've had in 20+ years of internetting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I solved the Gmail UX problem by switching to a completely different email provider, Migadu.

</comment><comment><USER21> I use [https://simpl.fyi/](https://simpl.fyi/), much more radical.

<comment><USER22> _" Simplify was made by me, Michael Leggett. I was Gmail's lead designer from 2008 to 2012 and co-founded Google Inbox."_

I suppose there's not going to be a better _" make Gmail look like Inbox"_ solution than this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some of these suggestions are just settings. For example, you can turn off the Hangouts integration and turn off the tabs.

I like some of the others, such as turning off ads and widening lines.

One odd thing... I don't think I've ever seen ads. Maybe my ad blocker is clearing those for me already.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Gmail is not designed for the user. It is designed to maximize your time > spent in Gmail.

When I read this, all those weird unrequested changes Google made to Gmail made so much more sense.

</comment><comment><USER24> To be honest, I think the way to go about implementing this would be to either use the basic HTML version of the web page (which seems to change rarely) or to build a native app and communicate with something like POP. This solution, as nice as it is, is really quite flakey.

In the same breath, I can really recommend switching to Thunderbird. I run all my emails, RSS feeds and instant messaging through it all whilst being able to keep local backups of this valuable data.

</comment><comment><USER25> I really don't understand why everyone has spent the last decade trying to get rid of colour in the GUI. Google themselves are one of the worst offenders (e.g. Docs and Sheets toolbar buttons), but Apple isn't far behind (e.g. finder sidebar icons).

Even for someone with mild colourblindness, removing all traces of colour from a set of icons / buttons / labels just makes it harder to find the right one quickly.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm Joey, the maker of DarwinMail.

—

DarwinMail aims to help you be your most productive when dealing with emails & todos.

Problem Inbox by Google was one of the best products they ever made. And then they shut it down.

Solution Introducing DarwinMail, which aims to replace and become better than Google Inbox ever was.

—

How & Why

\- How can DarwinMail become better than Inbox by Google?

\- Why would we use you over competitors?

1\. We will not sell your data, abuse our power or ignore your requests...

2\. Because we respect your privacy.

3\. We understand that the product can only become great if each & every suggestion is listened to.

4\. We have a public roadmap, public changelog, and open lines of communication.

5\. The primary focus of Darwin Mail is to help you be productive. Each and every change is made for that sole reason.

—

Features

\- Snoozing Running late? Or need to forget about an email for now? Snooze your emails and take care of them later.

\- Reminders Clear your mind with our reminders feature. Jot down your reminder so you don't forget about it.

\- Dark Mode A sleek and less distracting option for managing your email & todos while ensuring you're at your most productive.

\- Undo Send Do you ever wish you could take back what you just said in that email?

\- Custom Backgrounds Choose a custom Unsplash HD background to be displayed behind all your emails, ensuring you feel at home in your Inbox.

\- Templates Create multiple email templates (product launch, feedback, promotion, testing, recruiting etc) and use them in your emails to save you loads of time.

\- & much more according to your requests! Just let everyone know exactly what you would like!

—

Darwin Mail will evolve to become great over time, thanks to its users, and thanks to you.

[1] [https://www.darwinmail.app](https://www.darwinmail.app)

[2] [https://twitter.com/joeytawadrous](https://twitter.com/joeytawadrous)

<comment><USER12> There's a small irony in you advertising your platform in the wake of all the comments and OP complaining about ads in Gmail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> oh my god i do miss inbox! funny how time flies because i even almost forgot about it. what i miss most is the auto grouping (tagging? or whatever it was called) and the one column layout. i found it less distracting. never had the sidebar opened!

inbox was email that simply worked. never got in your way. not for the "pros", that's what gmail is for. it had its place. and yet...

<comment><USER28> Google dropping inbox was what finally got me abandon their products as much as I could. Switch to Firefox and use DDG as my primary search provider.

FYI, Darwin Mail[0] was made soon after Inbox shuttered as a paid alternative. I gave it a spin but didn't stick with it mainly out of apathy.

[0] [https://darwinmail.app/](https://darwinmail.app/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yes, Inbox was great! Now that I can quickly archive or delete emails (on Android at least) with swipes I at least get by with Gmail.

I agree with everyone else who recommends an email client like Thunderbird if you want to avoid the web client!

</comment><comment><USER30> I had no idea that there are ads in Gmail. This is infuriating.

I would be absolutely fuming, but I don't use the web client, so I didn't realize this was a thing. But holy shit! How is that okay?

<comment><USER31> It's a free service. Free as in free beer. There are real costs in hosting an email service, they need to pay for it somehow.

If you don't want ads, just pay for a G-suite account.

<comment><USER30> Well that would certainly explain why I haven't seen these ads - I pay for G-suite.

Nonetheless, I find this to be heinous. Practically the same as Google vouching for spam emails, pushing them directly into your inbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To fix this once and for all, just use Fastmail. It has a beautiful and fast interface. And you can use your own domain, so you're not stuck with Google 4 life...

</comment><comment><USER33> I miss Inbox too, it was a pleasure to use it.

My inbox was always empty, no spam e-mails no useless stuff.

Only actionable e-mails and scheduled tasks

The people behind it should start a new business based on it.

</comment><comment><USER34> For the tabs, Settings -> Inbox -> Inbox Type can disable them.

</comment><comment><USER35> Those CSS classes they're overriding look _awfully_ fragile.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there anyone else who has problems with medium.com? :/

<comment><USER37> Yes, it requires me to create an account to be able to read the article. And this, kids, is why you shouldn't use Medium if you want people to read your stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> yay -S neomutt

</comment><comment><USER39> Why the hell is email so hard for people? You just answer an email or ignore + archive it when it comes in, it takes 15-20 minutes a day. Everything is searchable from there in a simple search bar. I have been in management so don't use 'too many emails' excuse. I was honestly surprised when people started talking about 'inbox zero' a couple years ago. I legit could not believe professional software people can't manage their email.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay developers to fix open source bugs? - <AUTHOR>

I could see it working well for GitHub. You would submit a bug to some sort of "bug board" with a link to the repository and attach a reward (you choose the amount of money). Other developers could then choose to fix a bug and maybe the developer who finishes it first gets the prize? However this could lead to crappy code and there would be wasted developer time (developers who don't finish first).<p>There could be many other ways to award the prize but I'm just curious if you would ever use a service like this? <comment><USER2> It's a good idea. Would it be possible to even choose the developer to fix the bug out of the developers who are interested ?

<comment><USER3> I'm on a contract with a startup doing just this mostly. Mostly of what I do is opensource. And I'll tell you it's fun. There are certain times when it's very tempting to fork off or write another library.

Although I have to admit that it's certainly fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's bounty boards albeit for security bugs. I would love to pay for fixes if the maintainer determines it as a bug but can't fix it in at the moment.

There would be an issue of hiding progress work for fear of losing payment as you point out payment goes to those who finishes first.

There's also some more issues.</comment>


Tableau files for IPO - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/04/02/tableau-files-for-ipo-as-strong-run-for-business-software-continues/

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting stats from their S-1 ([http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1303652/00011931251...](http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1303652/000119312513138700/d469057ds1.htm)):

\- $127.7m 2012 revenue

\- 749 full time employees at end of 2012

\- 70% of revenue from product licenses; 30% from services

\- 11,000 customer accounts

\- No customer represented more than 5% of total revenue

<comment><USER3> thats a really really durable robust company profile. Congrats to them.

<comment><USER4> I'm not in the knowledge to evaluate company performance, but is net income of $1.6mm on $127mm revenue counts a robust company? In the last 3 years they had a similar % for net income/revenue, their employee count is linear with their revenue.

<comment><USER5> I am curious though, is 1.6mm out of 127 a bad thing or a good thing? My knowledge in this area is abysmal :) Honest question. 1.6m profit is a decent thing though after costs.

<comment><USER6> Usually company is compared with other vendors in the same industry. E.g. Qliktech (NASDAQ:QLIK) in 2012 had net income of ~3,839,000 on the revenue of ~388,537,000 which is a profit margin of 0.99% vs Tableau's 1.26%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an interesting view to a modern B2B sw licensing business, which is not SaaS. Their Sales & Marketing expenses are about 50% of their revenues, R&D is 25% and administration is 13%. Combined sales and admin costs are 63%. In the previous years, Sales has been a tad above 65% of their revenues and combined sales and admin costs have been above 80%. Quite a drop! What did they do?

I assume that BI tools are quite hard to sell, as they require non-trivial amount of integration to existing systems, but it is interesting to compare to this other B2B companies. For example SalesForce's combined sales and administrative costs are 78% of their revenue. Tableau's competitor QlikView has combined sales and admin costs at 75% of their revenue.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe i haven't seen the insides of enough large companies - but watching their demo video, this sort of product seems to glimpse past what LtU call the 'middle-ages' of programming. Like seeing map, fold and CPS for the first time. I spend _how_ much time writing graphs, charts, filters, sql, password reset interfaces by hand for my SaaS with my web stack?

The coolest part for me is someone here has what seems like a quite pure software gig, writing interfaces with no real need to care for the underlying business, only for the data adapters. Mostly if you're working with business software the result would be polluted by some specific business logic or domain knowledge.

(Excuse the gushing, that video blew me away slightly.)

<comment><USER9> I've used a few BI tools and it blows everything else out of the water - <USER2> is the first tool I've come across where I feel like end users could actually create the reports they want with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Title should be renamed to reflect that revenue is $127.7mm, thought this was going to be an article decrying the crazy valuations some tech companies get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops! Unfortunate typo. Hopefully a mod will fix

<comment><USER11> I just added the m subconsciously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12>
        "...the idea that companies needed simpler ways to visualize big data and databases."

Maybe I'm late to the party but is "big data" now just another way of saying "data"? More and more it seems like anyone who uses a database is mixing it up with "big data".

<comment><USER13> I think big data is a bad term, the key issue is whether you're using data to drive your decision making, not how much of it you have or what storage technology your using. If you're Amazon or Facebook then, sure, you've got to crunch through many TB to get to an answer, if you're an insurance broker turning over $100m from 2000 customers then there's no way making a business decision should need more than a few SQL queries on relational databases. But saying you're into big data is now almost a shorthand for saying, we analyse our data and use that to drive our decision making.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Do companies, at this stage, announce what the IPO issuing price (or market cap) will be? If so, what is theirs? If not, any guesses what it will be?

It is not in Splunk's league, but it is definitely a solid product, with a great growth prospect.

<comment><USER15> I'm currently looking into web based BI tools and have Tableau on my radar at the moment. Is splunk able to do traditional relational database reporting for business users or is the value more in IT operations? I'm googling, but finding a whole lot of handwaving.

<comment><USER16> Splunk is not able to. Check us out at chartio.com

<comment><USER17> This comes across as juvenile and shady. At least expand on it a bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I can't believe the stock symbol "DATA" wasn't taken already.

<comment><USER19> I wonder, now that a lot of stock symbols are taken, if we will see more vanity type symbols like this. Reminds me of the evolution of domain name usage.

<comment><USER20> Vanity?

<comment><USER17> DATA doesn't represent the company name, similar to the recent RIM change, a marketing/vanity piece.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Woo not a lot of Seattle IPOs!</comment>


How to modify java classes in memory without restart - <AUTHOR> http://javosize.com/gettingStarted/modifyClasses.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope you like this tool that allows to do nice troubleshooting and hacks with running JVMs</comment>


I will pay delicious $100 for hierarchical tagging - <AUTHOR> http://tw.rpi.edu/weblog/2009/06/19/i-will-pay-delicious-100-for-hierarchical-tagging/

<comment><USER2> Roflcopter</comment>