
6 months in and $1k MRR: my biggest mistakes so far - jnfr
https://lunchbag.ca/lunch-money-mistakes/
======
blakesterz
This was super interesting! The design really helped as well. I liked this
one:

"Lesson learned: People care about the narrative behind your product, so don't
be afraid to tell your story!"

As someone who finds new things on HN all the time, I always check the "about"
page, especially if it's something that isn't free. I'm surprised at how often
the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone", there's no names, it's all just
"Us" and "We".

~~~
DoreenMichele
_I 'm surprised at how often the "About Us" isn't actually "About Anyone",
there's no names, it's all just "Us" and "We"._

That's something I often get instructed to use when doing freelance writing.
It is considered "professional" and "corporate speak."

The other thing is that women and minorities sometimes intentionally hide or
downplay their personal details. One guy with a very "foreign" sounding name
legally changed his name to something normal WASPy sounding because it was a
barrier to doing business. I have seen at least one article on the front page
of HN where a woman founder was being sexually harassed and generally treated
terribly by clients when doing support chats. She changed her picture and her
name to make it appear you were dealing with a man and that largely stopped.

I'm a woman and I've had to deal a lot with awful behavior from people, much
of which is pretty clearly rooted in misogyny, basically. I'm still not sure
what the best path forward is for me.

One part of me is clear that hiding or downplaying my gender to try to be
successful just reinforces sexism. Another part of me has to wonder if that's
a hill I really want to die on or would I rather be able to, you know, eat
more regularly and what not.

~~~
hef19898
Damn, I might be guilty as charged! Not long ago, I officially launched
greenleaves.io, a logistics startup. The main issue I have with the about us
thing is, that for now it is just me. So I use a lot of we and such (the co
founder will join as soon as there is enough money to sustain a second person,
we both have family, so...).

Would you to have quick look at
[https://greenleaves.io/about/](https://greenleaves.io/about/)? Because the
last two weeks told me that I might be overthinking a couple of things...

~~~
DoreenMichele
Try reading this:
[https://johnnycupcakes.com/pages/about](https://johnnycupcakes.com/pages/about)

Then sit down and "tell your story" in writing as if you were telling it over
beers at a pub to a few new-ish friends who don't all equally well know your
backstory. Get someone to read through it before publishing it. Good feedback
is very helpful. Also, grammar check, spell check, etc.

You want to be somewhat entertaining, but more importantly you want to capture
as succinctly and compellingly as possible why you are uniquely/especially
qualified to offer a new and better solution to an old and tired problem
space, basically.

There's also a movie clip I like and I've written about why elsewhere, so let
me link you to that write up:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizenPlanners/comments/ecr2vv/get...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CitizenPlanners/comments/ecr2vv/getting_the_word_out/)

I actually suck at the doing business thing or I would no doubt have some
brilliant tie-in here to "And if you have trouble with that, you can hire
me..blah blah blah." This is why I still work for a writing service. And I
blog.

~~~
hef19898
Thanks for pointing me there! This whole about us thing took me longer to
write than the content for the rest of the page, I hate selling myself. Seems
I have my work cut out for me over the next couple of days!

~~~
DoreenMichele
Feel free to email me with your first draft or whatever.

I don't know how to do this networking thing or whatever, but I do know
something about writing and about doing stuff on a budget.

~~~
hef19898
Sounds good! Expect mail next week. And I ain't good at this whole networking
thing neither.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Awesome!

~~~
needcaffeine
This was an excellent exchange that I learned a lot from. Thank you both.

------
stevoski
Hey Lunch Money founder, if you are reading these comments, a big
congratulations on reaching $1K so quickly! I loved reading your story so far.

IMO getting to that first $1K is harder than getting from $1K to $10K. Most
first timers never make it to $1K at all.

~~~
ronyfadel
To be clear, 1k to 10k in recurring revenue (SaaS style). I sell one time
purchase apps, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to scale from what I make
(2k$/month) to even 3k$/month any time soon.

~~~
hopia
Can I ask why you picked this model instead of a subscription based model?

~~~
ronyfadel
If you check the apps I currently offer (link in my profile), I’d have a hard
time asking for recurring payments. I’m basically implementing missing OS
features.

I have other products in the pipeline where I will consider a subscription
model.

~~~
zerr
Generally speaking, don't most users prefer one-shot payments, even if it is a
relatively large amount, rather than monthly subscriptions? So it doesn't
require followup mental maintenance... You just pay once and forget.

~~~
ronyfadel
They probably do prefer that, and also probably want free updates forever.

But as a maker, recurring (read: predictable, continuous) revenue makes a
software business easier to sustain and gives incentive to grow.

~~~
zerr
I was thinking the same way, but once a client explained that at least for
them it is the same - they periodically roll out the major version update
which is paid, and users pay upfront a lump sum the amount they had to pay
anyway if it was a monthly subscription during that period.

------
twentyloops
I recently switched to Lunch Money from Mint (6+ years user). I was sold after
spending a weekend setting it up and getting used to it.

The app is a delight compared to Mint. The interface is simple, fast and
snappy. You never get an annoying "Refreshing your accounts" notice every time
you login. I've come across far fewer connection issues compared to Mint
(~everyday).

There is a host of nifty features I never knew I wanted: custom rules;
recurring expenses; split transaction; grey/green checkmark for
unreviewed/reviewed transactions.

Jen (the founder) is also very responsive to feedback. It feels great to have
your bug report addressed and fixed in a couple days. Keep up the excellent
work!

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the awesome review and for your continued support!

------
codysc
The bit about the lack of a mobile app, and the over-compensating for it was a
great illustration of guessing at the importance of features to users.
Something I'm dealing with a lot right now as I strip out incomplete features
to get to a better MMP. Thanks for posting.

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for reading and I'm glad that bit helped you out! I was in my own head
so much about the lack of mobile app and it was paralyzing at times. Good luck
with your own product!

------
jtbayly
"A $5 monthly membership adds up to $72 per year."

Nope. Might want to fix that.

[https://lunchmoney.app/features/recurring](https://lunchmoney.app/features/recurring)

~~~
viklove
I don't even understand how you could get a number not ending in 5 or 0 and
think it's remotely correct...

~~~
kaishiro
Presumably because they used to have $6 in the copy (or in their head) and fat
fingered it.

------
davidsawyer
I'd recommend listening to the Indie Hackers Podcast episode that Jen was a
guest on. Super enjoyable listen.

[https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/150-jen-yip-of-lunch-
mo...](https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/150-jen-yip-of-lunch-money)

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the plug :)

------
glofish
While I commend the creator on a good looking and well-designed user interface
- I will say that it boggles my mind when people give up their login
credentials to unknown entities on the internet.

There is this fundamental disconnect between wanting to save yourself some
money - but not realizing that you are setting yourself up for immense risks.
You can lose far-far more by signing up to a site like this than what it could
ever possibly benefit you.

The same applies to the founder as well - it is all fun to reach 1k MRR - but
are you prepared to shoulder the responsibility that comes with managing
people's login accounts and finance records? It is a massive risk.

Someone that forgets to set the development flag on their production service
should not be in charge of accessing bank accounts.

This is no different than giving out legal or medical advice on the internet.
Most people don't understand what they are getting into.

~~~
antigirl
Jesus, its comments like this that will stop future developers from
documenting their stories honestly or even having an About Me page. As already
pointed out, Plaid takes care of this not the dev. Sheesh

------
daenz
>That is until I realized that it was my own dumb fault because I accidentally
left my Plaid environment set to development

One of the last things you do before launch is pay money to yourself by
running a real payment with real money in production. An automated test for
config is nice, but nothing beats actually doing the critical thing yourself
before launching to the world.

~~~
darkerside
> which only supported 100 connected accounts. My free test accounts which I
> had been diligently rationing up until this point had been depleted and
> Plaid was rightfully denying any new connections.

You picked an odd time to stop reading!

~~~
daenz
I don't see how this changes anything? If they had attempted to do a
production import of their live bank account, it would have been denied, same
as what happened to their customers, and they would have caught it before the
mistake affected real users.

~~~
GeneralTspoon
My understanding was that it would have worked for her because she still would
have been under the 100 user limit. So the test env still worked for
production data, for the first 100 users.

~~~
jnfr
Yeah, exactly. And running a payment through wouldn't have revealed anything
since those two systems aren't connected.

~~~
daenz
Got it. For some reason, I was reading it as you had depleted the accounts
before going live, but that makes much more sense. I take back what I said
then about the live production test helping here. Thanks for sharing your
experiences!

~~~
jnfr
Au contraire, I was diligently rationing my free test accounts, haha!

Thanks for reading!

------
steve_adams_86
I use YNAB but I'm compelled to give this a try. I love the simplicity and I
enjoy the transparency behind the product's development (not that it makes a
difference while budgeting, but I'm a sucker for a personal touch). Really
cool, I'm stoked to see how the trial goes. Thanks for sharing Jen. Keep up
the great work.

~~~
colinloretz
I've tried YNAB and use Mint alongside Lunch Money and I'm super sold. I
started using it when she first launched on HN and have been in love with it
so far because it's super speedy and not as manual as YNAB. The way she
handles recurring expenses is what made it for me. I set a task in my todo app
to reconcile my transactions every day (usually only happens every week).

~~~
steve_adams_86
Ahhh this speaks to me! Recurring expenses and the sheer manual labor required
for YNAB makes it a chore. I don't expect software to be magic — the stuff I
make certainly isn't — but it always feels like too much effort.

------
krisroadruck
Currently use YNAB and it drives me bananas. The way it refuses to reconcile
budgeted money for a CC against the interest/fees for that card as monthly
payments often go out BEFORE interest is assessed for the month, requiring a
convoluted interest bucket and juggling. I'll give this a shot.

~~~
Jtsummers
The way I treat interest/fees is as just another expense. Then there's no
juggling. But I manually enter all the transactions, I don't know how this
works if you automatically get transactions, as it would depend on how the CC
or other companies add interest onto the statement (as a regular transaction
or separately). So once a day (typically, at least 3-4 times a week) I go into
each account and YNAB and make sure everything is present. If interest or fees
are present, I add those as transactions. YNAB properly accounts for it (if
you budget money into the interest/fees categories) for the next CC payment.

------
jazzex
I subscribe to this application, and I love it. I was not one of the first 100
to experience any of these difficulties, and the one bug I did experience was
fixed by Jen two days after I pointed it out. In the mean time, Mint still has
not deleted my account two months after I requested it...

~~~
jnfr
Awesome! Thank you for your support!

------
drastorguev
Did you struggle in convincing people to share their account details with an
unknown startup? What if you are fraudster and not a real company?

~~~
jnfr
It'll always be a struggle but it's not something I'm actively pushing for
anyone to do. If you're comfortable with it, great! If you're not, I think I'd
be the last person to change your mind.

The company is definitely real, but anyone with at least a few hundred bucks
can incorporate. Building trust is a non-trivial thing, and I try to do that
by putting my name and reputation behind the product and blogging
transparently about the journey.

------
lbj
What a trooper. Well written, very interesting journey and very forgivable
mistakes for a startup. Hope this takes off big time

~~~
jnfr
Thank you for the incredibly kind words!

------
xupybd
I like the look of this. I would think about switching but I've paid a year of
YNAB and I don't have the time to switch budgets right now.

But I will probably re-evaluate in 11 months when my YNAB expires.

Onboarding with the kind of products may take longer than the author realises.
People like my self will need reminders that this product exists. It took
years of YNAB ads for me to switch from HLedger and that really only happened
because I needed something my wife could use after I got married and we merged
finances.

~~~
jnfr
Thanks! In a year, the product will likely be more fleshed out, so it'll be a
good time.

IMO, onboarding with YNAB specifically would take longer than most other
budgeting apps, since on top of getting used to the interface, you also need
to get used to their very specific method of budgeting. With Lunch Money, I've
heard from users coming from YNAB that it's easier to get set up likely
because we've approached organizing transactions and budgeting in a more
pragmatic and flexible way.

Love to hear what you think when/if you ever decide to join Lunch Money!

------
roughfalls
This looks great and I'm inclined to give it a try. But do you have a privacy
policy? I try to avoid services that sit between me and my financial
institutions, as I worry they're building analytics off my spending patterns
and selling it to third parties.

~~~
projproj
I felt the same way, and it's part of why I made spendweek.com (a privacy-
first, easy-to-use competitor to Lunch Money, YNAB with a single focus on
saving money instead of keeping track of all your accounts). I am sort of
proud of my privacy policy, so it's a link right at the top of the home page.

Here's the basic manifesto of the SpendWeek framework in case anyone's
interested: [https://www.spendweek.com/blog/you-need-a-different-
budget/](https://www.spendweek.com/blog/you-need-a-different-budget/)

~~~
DLarsen
Nice domain and nice concept. I too am among those with a home-grown approach
to managing the budget. Mine is more of a spending journal than it is about
planning or reconciling the entire budget, with motivations similar to those
who would have a meal journal. I focus on the decision making process and
self-evaluate spending according to my budget and my overall values.

My approach won't appeal to a lot of folks, but there are dozens of us who
find it super useful: [https://www.spendlight.com/#how-it-
works](https://www.spendlight.com/#how-it-works)

We're on the same page regarding privacy. Except for taking money for the
subscription, I keep my hands off bank accounts. And for those wanting a
complete air gap, there's always the printable paper version:
[https://www.spendlight.com/download/paper-spending-
journal](https://www.spendlight.com/download/paper-spending-journal)

~~~
projproj
Yes! This is awesome. Looking at all the budget software that uses monthly
time frames, I was wondering why no one uses weekly. This quote is a great way
to say it, "Even though most bills are paid monthly, discretionary spending is
more naturally tracked on a weekly basis."

~~~
DLarsen
Ages ago, my tool tried to do _both_ weekly and monthly but then I had the
realization out that almost all of the monthly items were not ones I was
having trouble with in the budget. The fixed expenses were (obviously) fixed.
And consumption-based utilities would vary month to month, and that was easy
enough to track and reconcile every so often.

In other words, the budget would get "broken" more often in the week-to-week
habits than the monthly ones... hence, the resulting focus of my tool.

------
igammarays
Side note about budgeting apps: anyone just not have the time to use them? I
just use a spreadsheet to keep track of subscriptions and balances — can’t
bother to “categorize” transactions which seems like such an arbitrary
grouping exercise anyway.

~~~
juped
Plaid's API, and probably other similar APIs, already returns broad categories
when you query bank or card transactions.

------
dunky11
I would change the footer of your website. The yellow background / white text
combination is really hard on the eye. I would switch to a lighter shade of
yellow for the background and black text instead.

~~~
Someone1234
The contrast (1.81) is also so low it isn't considered accessible at even the
worst tier. And while the legal status of accessibility requirements is a
complex topic, in terms of user experience, good accessibility normally means
good experience (particularly color contrast, there are a lot of color blind
people, or older people with diminished eyesight).

~~~
jnfr
Thanks for the tip! Great reminder that I need to be more mindful of these
things.

~~~
hoten
a11y is hard. I like to let axe ( extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe-web-
accessibil...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/axe-web-
accessibility-tes/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd?hl=en-US) ) do all the hard
work for me.

------
frequentnapper
my wife and I live in Tokyo and I have been using a programmed google sheet
for over two years since we moved here to track our expenses and also use
currency APIs to fetch rates and convert currencies in my spreadsheet. I am
also originally from Canada. Looking at this encouraging post, I realize that
maybe there's a big market for this since it was able to reach $1k MRR in 6
months!

I think I will also start working on something like this on the side that
encapsulates my budgeting knowledge. Should be a fun project. Thanks for
posting and good luck.

~~~
kareemm
Fyi TillerHQ does this.

~~~
frequentnapper
thanks that looks interesting. I realize there's probably a lot of solutions
in this space. I probably won't implement a spreadsheet solution like
TillerHQ. I am thinking more in line with an app and thinking of features to
differentiate the app from run of the mill personal expenditure tracking apps.

------
homero
How close is this to Mint? I'd be interested in paying for a Mint alternative.
They've really gone downhill plus they sell my information.

But then again I don't trust Plaid and avoid them at all costs.

~~~
jnfr
Here's a quick page on Lunch Money vs Mint:
[https://lunchmoney.app/compare/mint-
alternative](https://lunchmoney.app/compare/mint-alternative)

Pasting from an earlier comment:

> Totally understandable that you'd like to avoid using services like Plaid.
> We have a lot of users who share the same sentiment, and also many
> international users who cannot use Plaid, so it's a priority to ensure the
> experience is without Plaid is still an enjoyable/practical one.

> We offer two other ways to bulk insert transactions: 1. we offer a CSV
> import tool, and 2. we are currently beta-testing our developer API so you
> could write your own integrations to import data

------
kayson
I'm always hesitant to use any of these services because (AFAIK) they need to
store your banking credentials in order to access your account. The one
exception I've found to this is Chase, which actually has an API. But even
with providers like Plaid, its not clear whether the API is being used - I
don't think it is, because the request does not go to Chase.

Is there a better way? Or a service that would let me enter credentials if I
want to update data? Rather than storing them and updating automatically...

~~~
HeavenFox
I am building a similar app as a hobby, and have done some research on this. I
am also very interested in avoiding Plaid, mostly because they are very
expensive, and require a signed contract with them for production use (which I
don't want to do under my own name, and forming a LLC is also expensive).

Without Plaid, you only have three options: connect to bank yourself with OFX,
let user upload OFX file, or let user upload CSV.

OFX stands for Open Financial Exchange, an open standard to programmatically
access and transmit financial data - which is basically Plaid, but provided by
the banks themselves, which as you can imagine is 1000x worse than Plaid.

Connecting to bank using OFX is really annoying. First, if you want to do it
without storing the user's credential, you need to run the app in the user's
computer, so forget about auto update in the background. Second, I don't know
a single bank that publishes their OFX connection parameters, so people rely
on crowdsourced data, which is iffy at best and totally unreliable at worst.
Finally, OFX is a disastrous format to parse. It uses SGML (!!!) and require
DTD to parse correctly (!!!!). Furthermore, banks' implementation are, as you
can imagine, widely inconsistent. For example, each transaction is supposed to
have a unique identifier. However, HSBC decided to reuse them, so you can't
completely rely on it to dedupe your input.

To be fair, OFX has improved, and the latest revision abandoned SGML in favor
of XML and introduced OAuth for authentication. But few bank support them, and
among those that do, the API is still not public, so you probably need to talk
to the bank's BD people to use them. For example, Chase says "Access to the
Developer Ecosystem is currently by invitation only and limited to developers
and businesses that have a relationship with Chase."

Most banks support downloading OFX file yourself, so you can just let user
upload them manually. This is obviously a huge hassle for the users, and you
have the same problem with parsing OFX format.

For the rare cases where OFX is not available, you can count on CSV. However,
since there's no standard, you can't automate the import, and must require
user input to annotate the columns, which further increase user friction.

In conclusion, in today's landscape, Plaid is a necessary evil if you want to
have a seamless user experience. Anything that preserves user privacy will
result in a 10x worse UX.

~~~
kayson
I reached a pretty similar conclusion investigating OFX to add support to
Firefly III. I think best case scenario would be to setup OFX connections to
the institutions that require the user to enter credentials and manually
refresh data. Unfortunately you wouldn't get the benefit of automatic
budgeting/spending alerts, but in my case, for just tracking spending, it
would work. Right now I have to export each account to csv monthly, and import
to Firefly. Fortunately the import settings are saved as JSON so as long as
the format doesnt change it works well enough.

I have read in some places that you can get OFX access as an individual if you
call the right customer service dept.

------
huangc10
Loved the UI and signed up for your 14 day trial. Looking forward to using
your web app and seeing if it can benefit my life or not.

------
everybodyknows
Suggestion: A heavier font, in darker grey or black. Hard to read as is, on my
7" tablet screen, with Firefox.

------
HorizonXP
Wow, great job! I love how you're documenting all of this, it's super
inspiring. Congratulations on this!

~~~
jnfr
Thank you!

------
ericmcer
The part about the lack of an app is a great insight, I think people do have a
lot of fatigue around apps right now, and a really well done responsive page
will work for most users.

Most of the features enabled by making an app are ones users are tired of:
push notifications, mic/camera access, etc.

~~~
jnfr
Good point! Also, web apps are definitely making a comeback!

------
Guidii
WRT the android/ios app question: Why do you want to implement a native app?
Seems like a significant investment if you're already meeting user needs with
your PWA offering.

~~~
jnfr
Exactly :-)

It's definitely punted for now as I continue to round out the product. When
the time comes and we're ready for an official mobile offering, we'll evaluate
the current solutions out there (the landscape is always changing!)

~~~
Guidii
As a browser developer, I really do want to know why folks choose native over
web. [Disclaimer: I'm not denying that there are sometimes valid reasons!]

If you do reach that point, I hope you share the factors contributing to your
decision.

------
CodiePetersen
Honestly seems like you are doing well and that many of these had quick
solutions. Great job.

------
sydney1
Thanks for sharing! I've been using Lunch Money for a couple months and really
like it.

~~~
jnfr
Thank you for the support!

------
MapleWalnut
It would be great if you could add an RSS feed to the blog.

~~~
jnfr
Noted! I know a friend of mine reads my blog via an RSS reader, so they still
might be able to automatically parse it?

------
projektfu
Are you on a path to get 5-10x users?

~~~
projektfu
What, that doesn’t matter? I’m just interested in how to go from hobby to
career.

------
c256
I clicked on the link thinking that this was about the card game “Lunch
Money”. Disappointed.

