

Ask HN: How much did you invest in your bootstrapped startup? - drewrv

Just curious how much others have put into their own business.<p>Also, did you see a return on that money? In other words, get the investment back plus some?
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devtestapp
So far, I've spent about $40, all on hosting charges. As someone with design
and development skills I was able to do all the work myself. I can't imagine
how a non-developer could do anything similar without a huge budget.

Having said that, I haven't had much success. Although I've had a fair amount
of traffic and a significant number of comments to the effect that my site is
really well executed, I haven't had any sales so far two weeks after launch. I
guess it's early days but it's hard not to be disheartened and question if the
idea is viable. It's hard working alone and not having anyone to motivate and
bounce ideas off of.

My site is <http://www.devtest.net> if you're interested in having a look.

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japhyr
Do you mind sharing a little of your hosting details? How are you hosting it?
How much traffic/ how many users do you think you can manage at this hosting
level?

I am asking because I expect hosting costs to be my most expensive item while
in the MVP stage, and I don't have a lot of cash to throw at my project.

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devtestapp
I'm hosting it on linode, using 2 vps instances at the moment, one for the
site and another isolated instance to run the code. The code running VPS is
disposable so I can boot up new ones / restore from a snapshot if there are
any problems with it.

With this setup, I've tested 200 concurrent users with no major problems, and
would support easily tens of thousands of hits per day.

Having too many users is a problem I would love to have!

~~~
japhyr
Thanks for the specifics. It's been really hard for me to sort out whether to
go with a VPS, or something like heroku. Heroku is appealing but seems to get
expensive quickly. VPS has a bit higher learning curve for me, but might be
worthwhile. Am I correct in understanding your hosting cost to be about $40/
month until you gain a significant number of users?

Good luck, and I hope you end up with a scaling problem to solve.

~~~
devtestapp
I was really close to going with Heroku, I decided not to as I wanted full
customisation options and I've been hosting rails apps for a long time and
know what I'm doing.

If you're inexperienced in server administration, go with Heroku I'd say. It's
a great service and works really well and if you do get a load of traffic,
it's really easy to scale up. There's a guide here to using unicorn to get 4X
the performance out of it:

[http://blog.railsonfire.com/2012/05/06/Unicorn-on-
Heroku.htm...](http://blog.railsonfire.com/2012/05/06/Unicorn-on-Heroku.html)

You're correct in saying $40 per month for hosting until I gain more users. If
someone would sign up to my "pro" plan I'd be breaking even :)

However I don't think that even if it does take off it will be as profitable
as it sounds. It seems customer acquisition is going to be my biggest problem
and so I'll probably end up spending lots on adwords and other promotional
avenues.

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luxpir
It was good to meet via the chat box on your site. I've spent a little more
than you, but not a great deal. Thanks for the design tips - much needed!

That marketing plan I sent you covers only the basics, but perhaps with enough
consistent effort the basics might be enough to drive initial traffic.

As I said, if there's anything I can do, let me know.

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chadyj
I have invested $70k, and spent around $15k so far over the last few months.

I am a unique case because I am also applying for a E2 Investor visa, and $70k
was the number recommended by my immigration attorney to satisfy the visa
application. If I didn't have that requirement I would have spent less on
legal fees and hopefully would have launched the MVP for around $10k. I still
haven't launched, but am about to start a closed beta program.

~~~
fabiandesimone
Would love to get in touch with you regarding the visa application. Got an
email?

~~~
lachyg
I would also like your email. I'm incredibly surprised that your attorney
considers $70k enough, all the attorneys I have talked to have said upwards of
$120k~.

Very interested to hear how it goes!

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davyjones
So far, about 1100 USD. A MacBook Pro and the domain name. It is an open
source project and there is no biz angle as of now really.

