
What Could You Build with $10k? - yarapavan
https://hackernoon.com/what-could-you-build-with-just-10-000-67e91f65dd4b
======
nathan_f77
If you include your personal living expenses, then $10,000 isn't going to go
very far. You'll also need to do some consulting work while you build your
product.

If you're just talking about company expenses, then $10,000 will go a long
way. You need $500 to set up a company with Stripe Atlas [1], $100 to purchase
the initial shares, $100/yr for a registered agent, and $100/yr to file taxes.
You can do your own bookkeeping or use Bench for $135/mo. Stripe Atlas also
gives you $5k of free AWS credits, so you don't have to pay for hosting for a
few years. Then you can spend the ~$9k on whatever you want (other SaaS
services, design, landing pages, etc.)

Apart from the Stripe Atlas fee and share purchase, I didn't put any money
into my company. I was still doing contract work and wasn't taking any money
out of the company, so it was "profitable" as soon as I had a single paying
customer.

I think ~$1,000 is probably the bare minimum if you want to start a company
and bootstrap a SaaS product. But it's always better if you can have a healthy
bank balance for unexpected things.

[1] [https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas)

~~~
ttul
My “$10,000” was one of those 0% interest Visa card cheques, combined with
renting out two rooms in my house to students to net my rent out to zero. And
then eating cheap vegetarian food.

I don’t advise this as the optimal path. I think it is far wiser to spend your
time researching a strategy that you can sell to rich investors, and using
their actual money rather than your ramen noodles.

~~~
client4
I'd have to agree. For mental health it's much easier, though I do think you
learn a lot about your grit in accomplishing a goal when you commit to Ramen
for X time.

------
Kagerjay
$10,000 goes along way

1) Subcontracting work on upwork,logo design, etc. You can get quality
contractors for under $100 / hour easily in many domains

2) Buying LTL freight and MoQ orders for physical goods overseas

3) Buying tooling for most small processes

4) Getting consultant experts in your domain _not related to business, but
rather hard to get information_

5) Recruitment services (indeed)

6) Paying for monthly SaaS programs to help you lay out processes

7) Registering domain names

8) Rapid prototyping with local fabrication shops

9) Getting a shared coworking space for $100 to $500 a month to establish a
meeting place for localized service-based contracts / networking

10) Paying for courses online to learn all the tools you need

11) Paying for housing/food/etc in the very few months of operation

12) Hiring your first subcontractor lets you lay out processes on
slack/notion/trello/insert_project_management_tool etc. So you can start
laying out SOP (standard operating procedures) that scale well over time, and
find loopholes through rapid A/B testing

You can build anything you want once you reach a reasonable baseline. Also you
can be super cheap about everything you do too, you can buy scraping tools for
instance for $300 a month or more, or you can just run your own scrapers with
a $5 vpn/month service.

~~~
conductr
Build it and they will come right?

------
nn3
The simple ingredient list of the protein bar is amusing.

The bar is blueberry flavored, but there are no blue berries on the list, and
no sight of artificial flavors in the list either. And none of the other
component taste of blue berries at all.

Obviously there must be at least blue berry flavors be in there, but they are
not listed.

They end the list with "no B.S." but then they are obviously insulting the
intelligence of the reader in such an obvious way.

Does that really work with customers?

~~~
biztos
I guess I'm a customer, since I bought a few of these (not blueberry) and
liked them. Not available where I live unfortunately.

IIRC the full ingredient list is there on the package, as well as available
online.

I found them pretty tasty and without any scary side effects (bloat being a
common one with protein bars) -- but I was probably predisposed to like them,
since the thing I really _dislike_ about most protein bar brands is that
everything tastes like candy bars. I don't want candy after I work out, I want
protein that doesn't taste disgusting and ideally is not an extruded animal
part. (No idea why Cliff Bars coat everything in "chocolate" but I guess they
know their market for the Builder Bars.)

The dates are the "glue" so to speak, and there's a pretty long tradition of
that in natural foods. There are a couple of different fairly obvious reasons
why the founder would have tried dates, and you can hear about them in his How
I Built This interview[0].

I'm not convinced that 12g egg protein is as good as 20g whey protein, which
is pretty much standard. But I'd happily suspend disbelief in order to get rid
of the damned chocolate-caramel-stevia plague.

[0]: [https://www.npr.org/2018/08/10/637619434/live-episode-
rxbar-...](https://www.npr.org/2018/08/10/637619434/live-episode-rxbar-peter-
rahal)

~~~
nn3
Yes no opinion on the bar itself. I guess it's ok as far as protein bars go.

I personally just mix some powdered whey protein in a yoghurt. Beats any of
those bars easily and is trivially easy to do.

------
jaggederest
To contrast, if donated to the right organizations, you could save
approximately 3 children under 5 from dying of malaria.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Yes but if everyone did that there’d be no money or technology to save those
children.

~~~
drewmol
But if everyone did that, would there still be children to save?

~~~
sbarker
Oh yeah, once I can get someone to pay for my kids I’m going to fuck like a
rabbit. No joke who wants the bill?

------
graaben
Money buys founder an accelerated timeline. With consumer products like these
it's much easier to get to your first 10 or 100 customers when you have the
funds to spend on ads vs trying to get them organically.

~~~
pmart123
I think there is a difference between spending solely for the sake of sales
and smart marketing. Most new consumer products aren't completely novel, so if
you can figure out to gain sales with a low marketing cost, it gives you a
huge leg on the competition.

When I was hustling into the fray of starting a direct to consumer business,
our head of branding and marketing previously ran the launch strategy at
AdoreMe, a lingerie company. When they launched, they decided to feature a
corset only line since it was the only lingerie related keyword on google that
Victoria Secret wasn't bidding on it. They combined that was early influencer
marketing to dominate a niche with cheap cost per click.

~~~
nojvek
That’s a great trick. I’m saving it in my toolbox. Thanks

------
meredydd
As several people here have observed, "we built this for $10,000" actually
means "We did something for which the main input was time and effort, and
incurred $10k of incidental costs". The physical-goods stories are cute, but
any software company is clearly in this category.

I therefore think it's more interesting to break it down by how you _get_ that
time. I see a few categories:

1\. Have rich parents. Yes, yes, this is true of some people (but probably
fewer than you think), and isn't very interesting except for starting
political arguments.

2\. Have a supportive partner on whose earnings you can live. This is much
more achievable for many people, and under-emphasised (it's common for, eg,
postgraduate education!)

3\. Have an existing consulting work that gives you steady work 1-2 days per
week. People say "startups die by consulting", and they're right, but what
kills you is _finding new work_ (it becomes the "top idea in your brain",
which is lethal). If you have an established client who's happy to spend a
year paying for 1-2 days a week, you're perfectly positioned. (This is how we
started [https://anvil.works](https://anvil.works), and I can't speak highly
enough of it)

4\. "Productised consulting" \- consult full time until you come up with a
product that all your clients will buy immediately, then switch to selling
that product. This sounds great in theory, but I've seen a few people try and
fail to make that leap (possibly because it's really hard to stop "find new
consulting work" from being top idea on your mind, especially if you have
employees/partners to feed).

5\. Have a business with good cash-flow characteristics that can be launched
fast enough to become self-sustaining within its first month. This is what
this article seems to focus on, but apart from "productised consulting" (where
you start out selling something that's not your product), I'm very skeptical
that it really works for product businesses. If you try this, I'd recommend
having a fallback to one of options 1-4!

~~~
dceddia
Those options all make the assumption that you have to carve that time out of
regular working hours. I'd just like to add an option #6 - work on your
project on nights and weekends, launch it on nights and weekends, and make the
leap to working on it full time once it becomes profitable.

Meanwhile, increase your savings rate so that you might be able to make the
leap sooner. That way if it gets to the point where you're profitable, but not
yet making enough to cover your expenses, you can potentially jump ship
earlier than you would've been able to otherwise.

It's pretty much the plan I followed and so far it's working well (left my job
~5 months ago). On the topic of increasing your savings rate, some of the
ideas/mindset from [https://mrmoneymustache.com](https://mrmoneymustache.com)
were helpful.

~~~
meddlepal
Working nights and weekends is a luxury for the young and childless. It's just
not realistic for most people with families.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Very much this. I'll add that some jobs leave little free time and/or little
mental energy during the week once you get basic self-care out of the way.

~~~
dceddia
I almost added a bit about the > 40 hr/week problem. I can only speak for
myself but out of the 3 software jobs I've had none of them regularly required
more than 40 hours/week. That's a privilege for sure, but those jobs do exist.
Probably not at most startups, and probably not at most sexy well-known
companies... but it's a tradeoff (like everything, it seems) -- the shiny line
on your resume from AmaGooFaceSoft, Inc. or the tiny chance at a big payout
vs. making a decent salary and being able to forget about work outside the
hours of 9 to 5.

It probably varies by area of the world/country as well. I imagine the long
hours are more the norm in the middle of a startup hub city vs. out in the
suburbs.

------
phreack
In some countries you can live for almost a year on 10k, so that means having
all that time to build whatever you want on your own time. That's way more
than enough to make a product on free tools, and get enough customers to get
the ball rolling!

~~~
octosphere
> so that means having all that time to build whatever you want on your own
> time.

Which is why it's so important to spend that money wisely. If you're in your
parent's garage, you might want to experiment with AWS (but for a strictly
limited amount of spend and time) - just to get a feel for what it's like to
scale. It's a common mistake to build a bare bones solution, and never have to
worry about scaling.

------
keiferski
Alternatively, $10,000 will cover about a year’s worth of cheap living
expenses in somewhere like Eastern Europe, the Balkans, etc.

A year is pretty decent runway if you have the skills already.

~~~
ttty
Almost every city in Europe. Even London if you want you can live cheap.
Monthly bills: 350 for a very crappy room all included bills in a bad zone,
150 for Supermarket food, 150 travelcard. Total 650 gbp per month, I think is
around 10k USD.

~~~
keiferski
True but I think a room that cheap in London will negatively affect your
quality of life, as it’ll likely be in a bad area. Better to go to Belgrade,
Lviv, Wroclaw, Cluj, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Leipzig etc.

~~~
mstaoru
So you just come and tell an immigration officer - hi, I have $10k, do you
mind if I live in your country for a year without paying taxes while building
my US-targeting business?

~~~
keiferski
No, you bounce around 4-5 counties.

------
lifeisstillgood
At these levels the seed funding that really counts is _time_. $10k really
represents X months/weeks of founders time, compensating them for not having a
job.

------
zoomablemind
I think the article's title question has to be restated as 'How much value can
you build up from $10K?'

Obviously the title amount is in 'retrospect'. Also it does not imply any
specific time-period. A lot of ground work is put into a business idea prior
to even forming a company. This is often an undisclosed cost of success.

In retrospecitve with astronomical exits like RxBar's this just sounds like an
angel's dream.

------
ttul
I think the concept works for certain startup ideas - ones that don’t require
a lot of up front engineering or capital expenditure on equipment. If that is
your startup, then yes go do this.

------
aviv
Launch a boutique VoIP provider. Yes there are many out there, but the market
is crazy big (and growing) and there is plenty of room for you. Big margins,
low overhead if you know how to do it right. A 20-person office customer is
$18K in revenue over 3 year customer life (and avg. life is higher if you
provide good service). Go after niche verticals and dominate those.

~~~
SnowingXIV
Huh, this makes a lot of sense and the timing of this comment is interesting.
I work with a small commercial office building and they want to setup VoIP
instead of using their PDX machine for phones because it’s quite expensive.
Looked a lot of places but the big pain is having physical phones. Most tech
companies just want you to have an app on your phone but a lot people still
prefer an actual phone on their desk. This is why Dialpad wouldn’t work (also
expensive) but is more complex than phone.com which will send you phones
preconfigured.

Still trying to figure out the best route since so many of these places have
poor UIs or don’t support physical phones and fax very well. I can’t imagine
I’m the only one running into these problems so their is an opportunity here.

~~~
aviv
When you say "most tech companies" are you referring to employers in the tech
space, or specifically VoIP providers? Dialpad.com is pretty much still alone
in the mobile-first, anti-Deskphone, WebRTC-preferred approach. The rest are
still primarily geared towards desk phones, even RingCentral that has a very
slick mobile experience.

Dialpad is definitely playing the long game here and will be the clear winners
10 years from now. I predict Amazon will acquire them in the next year or two.

More and more businesses are switching from on-premise telephony to cloud
based hosted PBX. The addressable market is very large, latest estimates put
it at 55+ million seats. That's before you consider the contact center
market... just focus on getting to 500, then 2000, and so on. It's not
difficult. 2000 seats bring you $50K MRC, and again if you know how to this
right, especially coupled with intuitive self service UI to the end users,
overhead is very very low. And the actual Telco costs are too tiny to even
worry about. About 75 cents per user.

I thought about starting a "how to start a VOIP business" webinar or
somethint.. its amazing how many are trying to create SaaS products in obscure
fringe markets where the VOIP market is pure gold.

~~~
SnowingXIV
Referring the VoIP providers that are pushing out the anti-deskphone
philosophy.

I would love more of a blend of phone.com/ringcentral + using the designers of
Dialpad. Their interface seems a lot nicer. With the more traditional ones
it's nice that you can call them and they'll ship you ready to ring phones
that connect to the cloud based PBX. This is huge and needed but Dialpad does
not do this. Just look at their docs, you have to specify an IP and quite a
bit more configurations unlike the shipped ready phones, but I have a feeling
this is because of their licensing terms.

Being able to move around or take your deskphone with you home, to a coffee
shop, anywhere that has an internet connection is quite useful. Again, talking
about a physical deskphone that connects via wifi or ethernet. I'm aware using
a cellphone with an app easily does this but often that's harder to sell to
some more traditional folks.

Agree that this market is gold and this would be a really fun project to piece
together, though the type that I want to exist might not be doable for $10k.

------
crankylinuxuser
I call bullshit.

Sure, $thing cost $5k-$10k to start. That says nothing about how you live, how
you pay for rent/food/health/internet, or how to pay for dependants. Even if
you live in Shithole, USA, these costs are still up there. And likely in that
location, internet service is extremely lackluster or just plain non-existent.

Most startups get away with low spending is because of rich family. When you
hear a $elite_school dropout spinning around and making $empire, its not
because they did it by themselves... Their family capital to take care of
those other costs is what made that happen. But the Horatio Alger story keeps
people believing and wanting - they never look at the facts. No, you won't
find the "gold wrapper", statistically speaking.

But keep pushing the idea that prosperity can be for everyone, and its just
around the corner. For most of us, its not and never will be.

Edit: Ah. -1's but no actual discussion/refutation. Looks like I hit on a sore
point. I'd love some hard data here.

~~~
maxxxxx
"Most startups get away with low spending is because of rich family"

I think you are too negative but there is definitely something true about a
lot of founders coming from well off families. A long time ago I did some
business ventures with people from wealthy families and I quickly noticed what
advantage it is to have family that can give you a place to live, a car and
some other necessities. These guys lived a frugal life but they didn't have to
be afraid of going homeless as I was since I had nobody to give me money.

~~~
crankylinuxuser
> I think you are too negative but there is definitely something true about a
> lot of founders coming from well off families.

Its not negativity; its anger.

We have this idea.. That you can only with $5k make your own multi-million
dollar empire. But you're just too lazy to do it.

And that's far from the truth. Obviously, rich family kid who dropped out of
$elite_school isn't going to be homeless. So, they get an "angel investor"
(read: family). And those other services you need, like legal, sales, and
dozens of other things are smoothed over by quiet words said at social
functions, 'My son needs some internet business help to present to VCs'... And
they have the connections to get it done.

Summing it up, it is access to money, a strong social net to fall back on,
time, access to resources, and access to connections.

The VCs and rest can pretend that anybody can, but I know nobody who could do
this for a year, possibly fail, and recover. We all would be sunk and feeling
these ramifications for years.

~~~
sidlls
People like to discount all these things as being outliers, but they're the
norm.

Even many "rags to riches" stories are frequently more about luck and building
a network of support from which the business can be launched than they are
about scrappy business sense.

Take WhatsApp's founder: a true self-made, rags-to-riches story. Underlying
his self-made success is that he'd built a solid network and financial padding
working in high-paying tech jobs at places like Yahoo. He worked hard to reach
a point that most founders are simply born into and _then_ launched a
successful business.

