Ask HN: How long did you stuck with your startup before it is profitable? - iworkforthem
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paraschopra
It depends on what you define as startup and what you define as profitable.
Visual Website Optimizer beta was launched in December 2009, I quit my full
time job in March 2010 (yay, it will be one full year soon!) and then launched
paid plans in May 2010. Within first week, sales of VWO >> my previous salary.
And that's how I define the startup as profitable.

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matt1
I'm currently working on two web apps:

Preceden [1], a tool for making timelines, was profitable almost immediately.
Heroku costs about $50/month and a premium account costs folks $29, so with 2+
upgrades/month it is profitable. Currently making ~$700/mo.

jMockups [2], an HTML5-based web-design tool, was publicly launched about 4
months ago and is still not profitable. Costs total $200/month and with one
paying customer, I've got a ways to go before profitability (but it's
progressing very well).

Recent blog post has more details:

[http://www.mattmazur.com/2011/03/february-in-review-life-
tra...](http://www.mattmazur.com/2011/03/february-in-review-life-tracking-
major-jmockups-updates-and-precedens-best-month-yet/)

[1] <http://www.preceden.com>

[2] <http://www.jmockups.com>

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patio11
BCC was profitable within about a month of conception and has been since then.

AR will, knock on wood, probably hit cash-flow positive in May (about six
months after launch) and pay back development costs in a month or two after
that. I was originally targeting 12 months for surpassing BCC & consulting
but, knock on wood, I have since learned something about my market which may
make that pessimistic.

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rudiger
Care to elaborate on what you've learned about Appointment Reminder's market
that would make you pessimistic about it?

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patio11
My apologies, I think that phrasing was difficult to parse: the 12 month
estimate was excessively pessimistic (i.e. it probably won't take that long,
because the market is better than I expected it to be).

I had been basing my projections off of running a medium-volume low-touch
business with average yearly account values in the $500 range. It turns out
there is an addressable market for which average yearly account values are in
the five figure range. More detail on that in a blog post Friday-ish.

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bane
I've worked at a few startups in the past and can give you this history:

1) First one was an ISP, boot-strapped. 4 years. Mildly profitable, sold to a
larger ISP.

2) The next one was a short stint with a e-retailer. They were almost
immediately profitable, but needed some serious cash to grow. So it sold
within a couple of years and the founders all still work there. It's wildly
profitable now, but alas none of the founders can capitalize on that success
outside of a steady job.

3) Next one was a NLP middle-ware company (yes, they exist) that had been
around for more than a decade, I came in near the end and worked there for 3
years. It sold right after I left (I didn't have equity). I believe it was
unprofitable.

4) After a few years bouncing around mega-corporations I came back to startup
land. We're 4 years in. _Just_ hit profitability this year and then the
Congressional funding disaster hit (we're almost entirely government
business). We're going to see if we can make it through, but we may end up
selling.

5) My wife and I just launched our new company www.kymalabs.com (her main job,
my part-time job). We'll see how long that goes! We'd actually like it to grow
enough to pay our bills and give us long-term employment, but who knows!

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jonknee
May want to add a DNS record so it works without the www:
<http://kymalabs.com/>

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bane
Thanks, we're on GAE, and they claim they'll only route to subdomains. Any
ideas?

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eekfuh
been using this for one of the sites i run on aws.

<http://www.wwwizer.com/>

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jonknee
Google should have a similar service specifically for GAE users. WWWizer seems
neat, but it's a risk to use because it can just go away without warning (or
worse--you could have your site redirected somewhere else).

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bane
Looks like they updated their docs with ideas for domain forwarding. They tend
to refer everything to GoDaddy for some reason so that's what we're using atm,
looks like it all works.

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WillyF
I lost money the first year. I was profitable in name only the second year. I
made a profit that would almost cover my rent the third year. Now I'm in my
4th year, and I'm actually making a living. January and February covered all
of my expected business expenses for the year. I never thought it would take
as long as it did, but when revenue really started to grow, it came as a
pretty big surprise.

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ian_h
4 years in as a bootstrapped one-person product before sufficient
profitability to reinvest and take a salary/dividend (my definition of
profitability).

Bootstrapping and being just one person made it feel so much longer than I had
hoped when starting out.

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oziumjinx
Bootstrapped the entire operation for three years before it started generating
any revenue. Took about 5 months from turning on the monetization aspect
before it broke even month to month...We're netting about $3k profit each
month now.

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petervandijck
"Profit" as in after everyone gets paid?

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oziumjinx
Yep, after everything is said and done...hosting, tools, developers, etc.

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petervandijck
Including you though?

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oziumjinx
Everything I take out I consider profit. My day time job pays the mortgage and
all the bills.

Each month I look at the revenue and determine an arbitrary amount to pull out
for myself.

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dralison
Last hit for me: launched solo in 1998, self-sustaining though I didn't make
any money personally (kept folding it back in, worked programming contracts to
live), got angel funding in 2000 and popped staff to 14, first profitable
month in March 2001. Became consistently profitable in October 2001 and never
again went into the red. Sold to a venture firm in 2006.

Current biz: launched in 2009. Still working on profitability. This is a long
tail business so I've learned I need to be patient.

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paraschopra
I am curious. Do venture firms buy whole businesses? I thought they invest in
firms, not buy them altogether.

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dralison
In my case it was an acquisition and roll up - they acquired my company and
one of my competitors, combined the two together and brought in a seasoned
executive w/ IPO experience to lead the NewCo. I was retained to be the CTO,
though it's tremendously difficult to go from being the boss to having a boss
and left a little over a year later.

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mistermann
The one I've invested in lost $500k last year - I'm personally ready to cut
the losing half of it loose if we can't learn to spend our money more wisely.

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sahilKumar
Hey.. Sorry about the loss. But, what advise would you give a person trying to
get a startup working, in terms of certain hazard zones to watch out for?

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mistermann
I would watch out for any partner that is not hardcore worried about expenses.
Not to the point of stupidity, but acting cavalier about them. I like people
who treat a startup as a marathon, not a sprint.

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petervandijck
3 years, then I realized it wasn't going anywhere I wanted to go, so I sold
it. Wasn't profitable.

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jagtesh
Don't mean to ask something personal, but curious to know how much you sold it
for. A relative figure in % to your yearly pay before would be fine too.

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petervandijck
I can't say according to the contract. About 30% of my yearly pay before that.
I gave a developer that worked with me a good cut of that, to thank him for
all his effort.

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spoiledtechie
Im 3 years in and still not ramen profitable. Sadly, I have been working hard
at it for 3 years and still no where near where I want it to be. But I am only
one person.

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jasonlotito
About a year and a half. 4-5 months into it, we pivoted quickly (back before
anyone called it pivoting). We had investors, and mostly living off "ramen
noodles." At 10 months in, we turned it on to make money. I still remember the
fun of getting our first paying customer, and then checking everything over
and over again to make sure everything went well. It wasn't until late spring
of next year that we started seeing real progress and upward momentum, and
could support and our operation without needing investment.

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herval
My first startup did sales force automation for palm devices - profitable
after 6 years (left it after 2), but still haven't seen any explosive growth
till today (9 years already). Became a lifestyle business for those that
stayed

Third startup (the one I'm building today was lamen profitable after 6 months.
Don't expect it to grow a lot more until we get some funding, since the next
steps require a lot more than lamen to succeed.. (ah, the great wall between
MVP and V2)

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Keyframe
3 years here too.. I guess there is a truth in what people say 'it takes 3
years to turn green'.

