
Simple Analytics hits $4k MRR and shares its numbers - AdriaanvRossum
https://simpleanalytics.com/open
======
AdriaanvRossum
We always have been open about our metrics as we are building a company based
on trust. This time we went a step further and did break down our revenue and
costs. We did go through all our transaction to build the chart you see with
the last 4 months. We divided the costs up by banking (Stripe), hosting,
services and freelancers.

If there are any numbers missing, please let us know. We would love to add
more data points that interest you.

The open page has a Twitter thread combined with more details:
[https://twitter.com/AdriaanvRossum/status/122552812562013388...](https://twitter.com/AdriaanvRossum/status/1225528125620133889)

~~~
Avtomat_K
How do you earn so much money? I didn't think that starting a startup brought
you so much money. Of course, getting clients is not an easy task, but at the
same time, I see that they are the businesses that attract more customers.

~~~
dinkleberg
Since when is $4k MRR a lot of money? They are off to a great start, but that
is far from making it.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Agreed, and given available data from Baremetrics, that's actually quite a bit
above average:

[https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-
arr...](https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr-
milestones)

On average it takes a company a year(ish) to hit $4kMRR.

EDIT: I mistakenly thought they launched on Oct 2019, but a comment further
down puts launch at Dec 2018. Which means they're doing well but not
spectacularly...which means they maybe should raise prices.

~~~
rhacker
Or lower prices and expand the base??

~~~
michaelbuckbee
From my view, their pricing is still mostly in the "sticky" area between free
and the hassle of pulling out your wallet (or getting accounting) to pay for
the service.

They are charging on average $12/mo - to a business with hundreds of thousands
of visitors a month, that's sophisticated enough to consider tracking
implications, etc. that's indistinguishable from a monetary point of view from
$50/mo.

------
mikejarema
I noticed the TM used in the title: "Open Startup™". I wasn't sure if TM was
used in jest here or whether there was actually an organization behind it
holding the exclusive right to use the term.

Anyone know? Is there an "authoritative" source for open startups -- a list,
practices, etc etc?

The closest I could find was:

\- a TM, "100 OPEN STARTUPS", held by a Brazilian company
[[https://trademark.trademarkia.com/100-open-
startups-87085663...](https://trademark.trademarkia.com/100-open-
startups-87085663.html)] edit: they have active US and EU trademarks on the
term

\- Baremetrics' list of open startups, did they pioneer this approach?
[[https://baremetrics.com/open-startups](https://baremetrics.com/open-
startups)] edit: openstartups.com redirects here

\- A seemingly independent list [[https://open-startups.xyz/](https://open-
startups.xyz/)]

It'd be ironic for the term "open startup" to be locked up behind a TM and a
"governing body", so I'm inclined to think it's not. However, the use of the
TM here got me wondering.

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
We use it because we want it to be a common term for startups. We copied it
from @levelsio who tweeted about it [1].

According to wikipedia the use of the trademark symbol indicates an assertion
that a word, image, or other sign is a trademark; it does not indicate
registration. It's not super relevant for our page though.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/968219339588493312](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/968219339588493312)

~~~
mminer237
If you want it to be a common term for businesses of different sources, isn't
that the exact opposite of the purpose of a trademark?

~~~
corobo
It's Tradesnark™

[https://tvtropes.org/Main/Tradesnark](https://tvtropes.org/Main/Tradesnark)

~~~
mikeydiamonds
I've never heard the term Tradesnark, thanks for sharing.

------
smt88
I'm confused. Why would it be interesting for a startup to be earning $4k MRR?
Are all the points because of the transparency?

< $48k/yr with someone working even 20 hrs/wk is a worse proposition than
getting a mid-level 9-5 job in the US.

I definitely don't believe a business needs to have the growth/revenue VCs
demand, but it should at least pay one person a decent salary...

~~~
_frkl
Early days, no? Honestly, to me running my own thing, incl. the possibility of
failure and everything else that comes along with it sounds like a way better
proposition than getting a mid level 9 to 5 job. So, congrats to OP.

Fair enough if it doesn't sound appealing to you, I can totally see how that
might not seem interesting for all types of personalities, but there are all
sorts, right?

Either way, I don't think focussing on that figure and dismissing something
like this out of hand, assuming others have the same priorities makes a whole
lot of sense. I think the world would be quite a bit more boring if people
wouldn't try out things, ignoring the temptations that come alonng with job
security and all that jazz.

~~~
smt88
As I commented elsewhere, I'm not saying that I know enough about OP to
suggest that the business has failed and it should shut down. Far from it. If
he's happy, he should keep going.

My question is rather about why HN would find this interesting. It was a
sincere question. Simple analytics has been beaten to death as a product, and
when it's done "well", this community tends to have ethical misgivings about
it.

So is it the experiment in transparency? Is it that I'm totally missing
something novel or useful about the product?

~~~
hombre_fatal
We are a community of craftspeople and like to see others make an attempt,
especially the trope/plight of the solo developer trying to start a SaaS.
Simple as.

Doesn't mean we're all craving to add a tracking pixel to our websites just
because we upvoted it, I'd say the tracking aspect is not as interesting, it's
more the solo-SaaS-porn. And the hubris + sport of "damn, I could build this"
in the back of our heads. It's HN crack.

------
anderspitman
I did a blog post[0] recently comparing a few options for getting off Google
Analytics. I've been very happy with GoatCounter[1] (open source and has a
free tier), but Simple Analytics likely would have been my second choice.

[0] [https://anderspitman.net/20/#get-off-google-
analytics](https://anderspitman.net/20/#get-off-google-analytics)

[1] [https://www.goatcounter.com/](https://www.goatcounter.com/)

------
nreece
Fyi, your CDN hostname (cdn.simpleanalytics.io), as in your JS code, is
blocked by uBlock Origin.

------
NKCSS
loading the website from referral data in a frame might not be too smart... I
could poison those referral headers with some exploit loolkit and boom, you
expose your users to a lot of BS...

Example:
[https://simpleanalytics.com/simpleanalytics.com/referrers/fa...](https://simpleanalytics.com/simpleanalytics.com/referrers/fastcompany.com)

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
We did build a screenshot app for this:
[https://github.com/simpleanalytics/screenshot-
grabber](https://github.com/simpleanalytics/screenshot-grabber)

~~~
NKCSS
My bad, I did not catch that (should have probably checked before posting
that.

At least that's a lot less dangerous; now people at least have to click on it.

Sorry for jumping to that first conclusion.

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
No worries!

------
mason55
Would be interesting to see something that breaks out COGS vs. R&D as it might
be better representative of the trajectory of the business.

For example, revenue is up but profits are down, apparently due to freelancers
costs. Are those freelancers just doing some one-off work (e.g. the marketing
site)? Or are they essential to running the business? As traffic scales are
freelancer costs going to scale?

Another useful metric would be recurring gross margin (recurring revenue minus
the ongoing costs to support that revenue). Otherwise if you spend $4k on a
marketing site it looks like your business is suddenly doing terribly. If you
don't want to throw out R&D costs completely then at least amortize the R&D
costs.

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
Good questions, thanks for those.

When working alone on the project I feel like the momentum gets lost
sometimes. Sometimes I'm busy building a feature that takes a lot of time and
don't have time for other features or bugs. Or when working on marketing there
is no time to build new stuff. There might be a future when I'm not coding at
all and only responsible for the other aspects of the business. That's why I'm
already hiring a freelancer.

Normally the freelancer would work 1 day a week which is about half the time
he worked in January. Not sure if I would consider it as essential though,
because I can always take over and do it all myself. But I'm not planning to
do it all myself.

Freelancer costs will not scale as much as traffic would scale. As the work of
the freelancer is related to new features. Most of our systems can handle a
lot of traffic and if we can't anymore we need to add more hardware (which
will be recurring) or write some software (which is not recurring).

As for recurring gross margin. Would a list/graph of recurring costs be
sufficient? Combined with the monthly recurring revenue of course.

~~~
encoderer
It’s not too late to find a cofounder. I would consider it if I were you. You
can vest their equity (and even consider vesting a portion of your own to show
continued commitment).

One reason: vacations are nice.

~~~
MrQuincle
Ha, this is my brother. He's a digital nomad large part of the year. Plenty of
"vacations"...

He's a hard worker though. Props to you, brother! :-)

------
firefoxd
Congratulations! One thing I would like to especially note is the cost of
hosting. It is currently at $382. That's fantastic.

There many Show HN here that have domains that don't even resolve anymore.
They spend a large chunk of their money on hosting and can't sustain it long
enough. They have no choice but to stop paying for it.

You don't have to start with an expensive AWS instance and eat all your
budget. Go with cheap yet excellent options like linode or digitalocean.
Eventually when you meet those bottlenecks, move to more scalable solutions.

~~~
devmunchies
I pay about $60/mo on digitalocean for a side project that brings in about
$65k/mo now. Digitalocean is severely underrated for startups.

project: [https://www.indiehackers.com/product/crave-
cookie](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/crave-cookie)

~~~
nodesocket
At what point does a $65k/mo side project stoping being a side project? That’s
a boat load of cash every month.

~~~
radicalbyte
That depends on what the margins are like. He's delivering cookies via the
post so the COGS will be significant.

------
boynamedsue
Congrats to getting to this point!

How did you get an initial set of customers? How did you get the word out
besides on HN?

~~~
rexreed
Yes! Would love to know this - highly beneficial information sharing.

------
glofish
I think sharing numbers at this granularity is fun for readers, and I, like
others enjoy digging into details, but to frankly, it may not be so good for
the companies in question.

It provides too much data and insight to competitors. I wonder what the
rationale is. Perhaps attracting visitors makes up for the risks.

Just my opinion.

~~~
scribu
> It provides too much data and insight to competitors.

I think being confident enough to publicize your cost structure might actually
deter competitors. They'll look at it, realize they can't compete on cost and
decide to pursue a different avenue.

The challenge is maintaining that cost-effectiveness as you grow.

------
omarhaneef
For those who want to see the effect of landing on HN's front page:

This link has the actual number of visitors as of noon today (California time?
Eastern time). It went from 1.6k to 3.3k visitors.

I can't tell if this was right around the time it landed on HN.

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
If you want to see the details:
[https://simpleanalytics.com/simpleanalytics.com/referrers/ne...](https://simpleanalytics.com/simpleanalytics.com/referrers/news.ycombinator.com?start=2020-02-12&end=2020-02-12)
(Amsterdam time zone)

~~~
andy_ppp
This is excellent - it would be good if the charts were in the browser
timezone (should be easy) and they seem to draw points into the future, I'm
sure this could be disabled?

------
riantogo
Is your market the set of businesses who don’t want google analytics on their
pages? Won’t that be narrow? I imagine most small businesses don’t care and
big ones won’t trust you over google? Genuinely curious.

~~~
encoderer
Given they’ve reached $50k run rate in under a year I would suggest the answer
is: it’s big enough.

VCs obsess over TAM but it’s not the most important thing if you’re not
playing that game.

~~~
nojvek
What’s TAM?

~~~
manigandham
Total addressable market - how many total possible customers can you sell to.

------
aldoushuxley001
Is there any possibility of seeing the search terms that people used on search
engines to find your site? I know this is made very difficult these days, but
it is really an awesome feature.

Either way, great work. I'm currently debating between Simple Analytics and
using GoAccess. In your opinion, what's the difference between the two?

------
v1l
Would be great to see distribution by price tier. Does it skew more towards
lower tier or mid?

------
tnolet
Always great to see a fellow Dutch entrepreneur break the $4k barrier!
Congrats!

------
spectramax
What's the point of an open startup? Open source is _actually_ beneficial to
the user because they can look at the code, modify it and install the software
themselves. It empowers the user.

Open Startups seem like a hipster thing to do in silicon valley with literally
no benefit to the user, I don't care how much a company makes. I care about
the product and their services. It feels more about marketing themselves as
Open Startups _than_ actually providing value of any kind. But yea, let me put
some graphs (smoothed lines ofcourse) and put up a big banner that screams
"OPEN STARTUP".

I am curious what counterpoints are? What do you guys like Open Startups? For
centuries, companies have been closed (in terms of finances) and it has been
working fine.

~~~
thatguyagain
1: I don't think it's a thing done in Silicon Valley at all. It didn't even
originate from Silicon Valley. OP is based in Europe.

2: Free information is always of value, so how is this making it less valuable
to the user? If it works as marketing for the host, so what? Doesn't make it
less valuable. I know more now about company X than I would if it wasn't open.
It's that simple.

3: Many countries around the world have a very open system where you can go to
a government or private website (the information is usually provided by the
government) and look up financial information about every company in that
country. For example, here is Volvo in Sweden:
[https://www.allabolag.se/5560125790/aktiebolaget-
volvo](https://www.allabolag.se/5560125790/aktiebolaget-volvo)

------
woutr_be
I really love reading things like this, on the other hand I also feel very
demotivated seeing how difficult it is to earn money through a side project.

------
kohanz
Thanks for sharing! Really curious about the freelancer side. What kind of
work are they doing? Where do you find them? Are you happy with their output?

~~~
AdriaanvRossum
When working alone on the project I feel like the momentum gets lost
sometimes. Sometimes I'm busy building a feature that takes a lot of time and
don't have time for other features or bugs. Or when working on marketing there
is no time to build new stuff. There might be a future when I'm not coding at
all and only responsible for the other aspects of the business. That's why I'm
already hiring a freelancer.

The hiring process did go like this:

\- We posted a tweet along the lines of "We are looking for a Node.js
programmer to fight for privacy. 8 hours per week for $1000 per month" [1]

\- We got ~150 responses via Twitter DM

\- We write them all back with a form they needed to fill in

\- ~80 of those did fill in the form

\- From those we selected 5 applicants to do a paid assignment

\- From those we selected 2 for a video call

\- Then Dave [2] was selected

To us it's very important to treat your applicants in a very nice way. Take
time to respond their questions, let them know why they were not selected and
pay for their assignments. We got a lot of great feedback for applicants who
didn't got selected because of this.

Although we are still in the starting phase (he started in January) I'm very
happy with the output our developer Dave produces.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/SimpleAnalytic/status/119134189603728998...](https://twitter.com/SimpleAnalytic/status/1191341896037289984)

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

------
dom96
Loving the openness you are showing by sharing these numbers. Is there a list
anywhere of similar Open Startups (TM)? :)

~~~
lpellis
There is also
[https://www.indiehackers.com/products](https://www.indiehackers.com/products)

------
sickrumbear
I'm curious how MRR is $3.4K in december but actual 'revenue' is $2.2K?

~~~
clairity
based on the details shown on hover, looks like MRR is gross revenue, and
"revenue" might be net revenue (gross revenue minus direct costs).

------
RikNieu
What are the freelancers doing? Thats quite a big expense.

------
ronreiter
Great job!!! You are an inspiration.

------
siphium
Congradulations!!!!!

You are a force of light in the world!!!

Your success is a success not just for indie maker community but for the
privacy of everyone online!

Thank you!

~~~
riskymagemerge
Love the idea. Keep growing!

