
How Sidekiq makes $80,000 a month - networked
https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=interview-promotion&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Indie+Hackers+Newsletter&utm_campaign=ec2594295f-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_11_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_43062afaa5-ec2594295f-118903173
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dasil003
I'm really fascinated by this career path. As I approach 40 I'm really feeling
the pain of the whole developer vs manager dichotomy. The fact is, I've always
been comfortable on both sides as a generalist and a team lead, but as my
career progresses I'm increasingly feeling the pressure to specialize either
by going full-time or specializing in some area that can command a hire salary
than the reams of bootcamp dev grads + 5 years experience are claiming. One
path would be to found a company and raise money, but I don't really want to
spend my brainpower on pitching investors, and the thought of having employees
dependent on me feels stressful. I figure I have enough general experience
with tech and business that I ought to be able to bootstrap a comfortable solo
lifestyle business, but what?

~~~
callmeed
I'm just on the other side of 40 and have similar developer vs manager pains
as you. Had my own bootstrapped company for several years, sold it, and lately
have been working as an engineering manager at a startup.

Its nice not having the normal worries of a founder but I already have the
itch to do something again. Problem is, I never have luck when I go out
looking for an idea. The idea usually finds you. You just need to make more
opportunities for serendipity.

Also, don't think you have to found a company AND raise money.

------
GuiA
Almost $1M as a solo founder - impressive. I wish many years of success and
continued revenue for Sidekiq, and hope the founder never succumbs to the dark
"we're gonna scale from $1M to $1B" side.

~~~
jarcoal
Having met Mike several times, I can assure you that won't happen.

~~~
eganist
Interesting. What specific things did you observe which led you to that
conclusion?

~~~
bdcravens
Mike is a very laid back guy - I would have thought he was making more like
$8000 a month, not $80,000, based on his general demeanor.

~~~
toasterlovin
I can second this. Mike is incredibly down to earth. In talking with him
(briefly) about Sidekiq as a business, he seemed intent on making sure it
remained compatible with his current lifestyle.

------
anondon
Nice interview!

The guy behind indiehackers.com, csallen, is doing an incredible job with the
site. Interesting interviews tailor made for hackers, the forum is an
interesting place and it's been fascinating to follow his journey which he
shares in vivid detail.

------
diziet
We love and use Sidekiq at our org. We even released a gem for it that enables
concurrency throttling : [https://github.com/sensortower/sidekiq-
throttled](https://github.com/sensortower/sidekiq-throttled)

There is a bit of a feeling that the community version is somewhat 'nerfed',
but it's really Mike's freedom to release the pro/enterprise version.

Though stuff like this:
[https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/blob/master/lib/sidekiq/l...](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/blob/master/lib/sidekiq/launcher.rb#L69-L76)
scares me~ :)

~~~
mwpmaybe
This always makes me laugh when I randomly come across it:
[https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/blob/659dea9601b3a283d9c8...](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/blob/659dea9601b3a283d9c85eee1ca3cf11e967c660/lib/sidekiq.rb#L51-L53)

------
mike1o1
The Ruby on Rails podcast recently had Mike Perham on as a guest [0], where
they talked a bit more about Sidekiq for those who are interested.

0: [http://5by5.tv/rubyonrails/222](http://5by5.tv/rubyonrails/222)

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protomikron
How does Sidekiq compare to Celery (apart from being a different language)?

IMHO Sidekiq succeeded, because it works smoother, than other (Ruby-based)
task scheduling systems, but can we say the same for Celery? It seems pretty
stable and is used in production by many organizations and companies, so the
question is, could one do the same for the Python ecosystem, or is Celery just
in such a good shape, that it's hard to compete with (considering the same
open-core model)?

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eclyps19
I really love sidekick and use it in several projects. It's one of those gems
that just feel really well put together and complete. And once you add it, it
opens up all of these possibilities that you might not have considered
previously.

Huge props to the developer, and I'm glad that he's been able to make a living
off of this.

------
tbrooks
Kudos to Mike. I'm glad to see Sidekiq Pro/Enterprise are this successful.

My favorite things about Sidekiq (and how Mike runs it) are:

1) The documentation and wiki pages of Sidekiq. [0]

2) The weekly happy hour chats. [1]

The docs and getting started guides are some of best I've seen in OSS --
everything is well-documented and thought through. There's a lot of good
things to emulate here.

In addition to his years of conferences talks, blogging, and helpfulness
through over mediums... Mike has a weekly happy hour on Fridays to answer
questions. I've done it a couple times and he's been extremely helpful.

[0]
[https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki)

[1] [http://sidekiq.org/support](http://sidekiq.org/support)

------
wsmith
> When you learn something, blog about it. People admire and trust those who
> educate others.

So true.

------
lacampbell
Great article. I feel like "exciting" applications that made it big get far
too much of our attention. There's real value you can create by doing
something "boring" like a background job framework.

Most business solve boring business needs. Find something you find interesting
and exciting, that most people regard as a boring chore - and solve the
problem in a tidy, approachable way. Is this a more reliable way to actually
make a living on your own?

~~~
tumbling_stone
True that. I had been thinking on similar lines myself. If you observe the
restaurant industry, an exciting menu isn't the only thing responsible for its
success, sure it night help, but most restaurants will have similar items in
their menu. The key is boring things like sustaining the business for
sufficient time until it crosses a threshold of patronage and consistency in
the taste of the food. So yeah, exciting things are overrated.

------
nathan_f77
Oh damn, that's a lot more than I expected. What a success. That's almost a
million dollars per year!

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siliconc0w
I'm a fan of sidkiq but holding out using a different more atomic redis
command for 'pro' is pretty lame - it's closer to 'intentional gimping' than
'open-core'.

~~~
dasil003
Obviously choices have to be made, I don't understand how you can begrudge the
guy his living. It's certainly better than random hot developer tool startup
that takes VC funding, grows like crazy, then either implodes, gets purchased,
or changes their policies so you get screwed by depending on them. With
Sidekiq I feel pretty good about relying on it compared to a lot of stuff out
there.

~~~
siliconc0w
I don't begrudge anyone. You can choose a commercial license and get paid. But
people don't choose commercial licenses because they want adoption and free
support of their tools. I have nothing against 'open-core' with 'expansion-
packs' that actually target niches and require development effort - switching
redis commands doesn't meet that requirement for me and thus is fails into the
category of 'intentional gimping' which I think takes advantage of your
community who isn't getting any of that 80k/mo.

That said, Sidekiq is, by no means, egregious here but it's a problem which
deserves to be called out.

------
newsat13
What's the opensource alternative to sidekiq? I am impressed he gets this much
money out of developer tools...

~~~
jwcooper
Sidekiq is open source (LGPL). There is a free version that is pretty
powerful:
[https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq)

------
LifeQuestioner
Can someone please explain the open-source yet earning? Is it that part of the
project is open source and the rest is paid and closed source? How to protect
products if they're open source?

~~~
rickyc091
Correct, sidekiq is open source by default. The pro portion of the code base
is closed source. Sidekiq is one almost a must have for any Rails app. I'd
imagine some people just want to support him and pay the licensing fee. It
reminds me of how people were willing to pay for Pivotal Tracker when it was
free.

[https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Commercial-
collabora...](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/wiki/Commercial-
collaboration)

~~~
throwaway_2875
I try to start similar dual-licensing model for my project. But I don't get
this. The link page and "In order to unambiguously own and sell Sidekiq
commercial products, I must have the copyright associated with the entire
codebase. Any code you create which is merged must be owned by me. That's not
me trying to be a jerk, that's just the way it works." \- it has no legal
value. I think all contributions are also LGPL unless contributor gives a
consent to give up the change as commercial or public domain etc. In my
opinion if Sidekiq Pro is forked from Sidekiq then Pro code should be released
under LGPL or he should share part of $80k/monthly with all contributors. What
about previous contributors' rights when the project switched to LGPL or dual?
Can somebody explain this scheme?

~~~
mperham
Changes contributed to Sidekiq are LGPL. Changes contributed to __Sidekiq Pro
__must also assign rights for those changes to me so I can sell them. I do
have customers who have access to the Sidekiq Pro source code and send me pull
requests when they find bugs or enhancements.

------
throwaway_3452
By the way, I punched in sidekiq.com without a second thought and the domain
is on sale.

~~~
dobodob
Only 3K!

------
ensiferum
Is this one of those "indiehacker" projects where someone created a XYk $
business over night? It's almost like those spam-adverts that you see
occasionally on websites if you don't have a proper blocker " $$$ work from
home, see how she earned 5000$ / month".

This guy is really beating his own drum every week.

Anyway there are interesting projects there and good luck to all the people
working on those things. I just wish the advertising was less "click baity"
and more truthful.

~~~
patio11
You might be interested in reading this story. Mike has run an enormously
value-creating OSS project for several years. It is one of the most
interesting technically-oriented business in the Ruby community, and one whose
model should be studied with attention by many HN readers.

Can I encourage people to have less reflexive skepticism about running a
business on the Internet? Plenty of people do it. Some of those businesses
make more money than you presently think is likely or possible. This is mostly
a function not of spamminess or evil but rather that skeptics have an
artificially constrained view of what is possible because skeptics have
probably not run a similar business and skeptics may have holes in their
understanding of how Internet businesses operate at modest scales.

Previous HN thread for additional context, including (predictably) folks who
said that the successful OSS project featured in it was a) not an OSS project
and b) would never be successful:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6480854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6480854)

~~~
ensiferum
I wasn't referring to sidekiq but to indiehackers.

~~~
csallen
I've never claimed that anyone built a business "overnight" on Indie Hackers,
or anything of the sort.

