

Profitable After 3 Weeks - breck
http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/?p=95

======
jbyers
It's a great accomplishment to book thousands of dollars of revenue within a
few weeks of launch. But as the article states, this is profitability without
covering salary -- a big disclaimer.

~~~
swombat
And doesn't count the product development sunk costs, either.

By his maths, my first business was profitable in the first week, including my
salary.

What makes product businesses unprofitable upfront is not the ongoing costs,
it's the development costs.

~~~
jraines
Off-topic but honest question: Why does everyone say "maths" instead of "math"
these days? Is it a European thing, an academic thing, or just a meme among
hackers?

I never once heard it or saw it written like that before Hacker News /
proggit.

I cringed when someone on proggit recently said "Do the maths!" I don't think
that's a saying anywhere.

~~~
tlrobinson
I also cringe when people use the term "codes" instead of "code".

I don't think of code as being divisible into discrete units, it's like a
fluid. Like "water", you rarely say "waters". There are "programs" and
"libraries" and "frameworks" that are made up of "code" or multiple "files
containing code"... but they are not "codes"!

If you want to use the word "codes", you'll need to give me an adequate
definition of the word "code" as a singular noun (which I will most likely
disagree with).

In my mind "code" means programming language code, and "codes" means
cryptography related codes.

</rant>

~~~
mst
I despise it. It's an effective way to eliminate idiots though, "plz send teh
codes" being the canonical example.

I find 'plz' and 'thx' and 'tks' and '10x' and so on the most annoying though;
how the fuck is it polite if you can't even be bothered to spell the complete
word? If you want to show gratitude, 'thanks' or 'thank you' are much better,
and english already provides 'ta' as a short form.

Sigh. People treating IRC like AOL make my sad.

~~~
tlrobinson
Unfortunately it's actually not a very good idiot filter because a lot of non-
native English speakers seem to use "codes" instead of "code".

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Maro
The mockup app rocks.

Is it just me or is your site a lot like 37signals?

I personally had some trouble finding my way around. To me, it's not clear
what confluence is, what the flatworld thing is and how the mockup app ties
in. No big deal though.

Overall, congrats!

~~~
balsamiq
Hey there, thanks for the nice words. The design of the site is all mine (and
sadly it shows), but when I designed it I was at the height of my 37signal
fanboy phase, so I'm not surprised you can see an influence there.

Re: trouble with navigating the site: I keep hearing about it, but I haven't
been able to find the time (or inspiration) to drastically improve it. I'll
keep at it.

------
huherto
Great for having revenue after only three weeks. It is fantastic.

I would not call it profitable yet. You are considering your salary $0, but
that is not really true. Your time has value.

The idea seems great, It seems useful for my current work. I will look into
it.

------
balsamiq
WOW I never thought I'd be on HN twice in 10 days. Should I be proud...or
afraid? ;)

Thanks for the kind words everyone, I'll answer questions in-line.

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steveplace
This is a great case study for anyone who wants to go independent for a while.

------
dominik
Out of pure artistic curiosity: What did linked article use to make those
charts? They look nice.

~~~
balsamiq
I used Excel 2008 for Mac.

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rksprst
FYI, you can defer the $800 california minimum tax for two years if you
request to be taxed as a corporation when you file your taxes.

~~~
henning
FYI you might not want to take tax advice from random people on the Internet
although you might ask someone who is actually qualified about something like
that.

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wallflower
> My family and I relocated from San Francisco to Bologna, Italy on May 1st

Congratulazioni! Thank you for sharing. Your blog is inspiring. So many people
talk about living abroad and working for themselves - you are doing it..

What is it like? (working part-time but full-time on your mISV in a land where
they value relaxation and enjoyment of life more)

Balsamiq makes complete sense now!

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar>

~~~
balsamiq
I must admit life in Italy is really nice, especially when you have a large
extended family around like I do. I'll share more on my blog about it but I am
a little ashamed at how good the food is here and at how beautiful the
country-side can be... :)

As for "Balsamiq", you got it: scroll to the bottom of
<http://www.balsamiq.com/company> for the full story.

~~~
davidw
Complimenti! Vivere in Italia e` senz'altro bello, but if I may ask, how are
you planning on dealing with the weak dollar, and more importantly, getting
money from your company in the US to Italy? I mean the legalities of it,
obviously, not the actual method. My friend in Padova is an accountant, and he
was telling me that having a company in the US is pretty much "worthless". My
guess is that many European countries would have similar issues.

~~~
balsamiq
Hey Davidw, good questions. For both, my answer for now is "ride it out and
continue to live off of my Italian savings". When there'll be enough money in
the US account to make it worth it, or when the money here runs out (whichever
comes first), I'll cross the painful bridge of becoming a one-person multi-
national. :( I am NOT looking forward to it and I expect to get a sour deal on
taxes.

It's also not a given that we'll stay in Italy long-term, we are giving it a
try for a year or two.

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vaksel
Just be careful, those numbers are most likely skewed by that initial rush
from that initial promotion you did(i.e. HN thread etc). What I mean is, I
wouldn't quit my day job thinking the revenue stays the same, wait till you
have at least 2-3 months of 5K/month

~~~
balsamiq
Yup, the current revenue levels blow all my conservative predictions out of
the water...I keep waiting for the slowdown to start...hopefully I'll have to
keep waiting a while longer... :)

------
utnick
Did he really need to incorporate just to sell a shareware program over the
internet? What are the benefits of that?

~~~
balsamiq
Hey there. The main reason I incorporated is to give my potential customers (I
am going after large enterprises) a warm and squishy feeling of being able to
trust me. :)

That, and liability, and taxes, and I have big plans for Balsamiq, so I
thought I might as well incorporate right away.

~~~
tstegart
On a side note, its ironic that customers like doing business with a
corporation more than just a guy. They think if you're a corporation, well
then they know where to find you when things go down the tubes. Of course,
when they finally do find you, they'll be limited in how much they can get
from you because of your incorporated status.

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tortilla
That's great! Thanks for sharing the financial details. It's great to see
someone progressing and doing well.

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whacked_new
Hey, great job! I loved those mockups for heavyweight players.

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tstegart
Congratulations.

