

Well, we're profitable, time to scale... - wmeredith
http://blog.200nipples.com/2008/08/a-new-design-every-two-weeks-starting-monday/

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tc7
Congrats, guys. Is this paying-yourselves-market-salaries profitable, or ramen
profitable? :)

~~~
wmeredith
Ramen, if even that. (Hence, the scaling) We've all three got day jobs, which
we'll be keeping for a while. (We've also got mortgages and such...)

~~~
wheels
Honestly, startups here referring to themselves as profitable that aren't
paying salaries rubs me the wrong way. Salaries are the major cost in a
startup. Up until that point you're just finding ways to not lose money on
your hobby.

~~~
babul
In bricks-and-mortar businesses that have real overheads (rents, wages, taxes,
utility bills) and need real customers paying real money in order to sustain
them, you could never say you were profitable unless your balance sheet is
consistently in the black (otherwise your bank/accountant/CFO will disagree
and you would be out of business).

As I work on my startup, I would never call it profitable until the total
income it produces exceeds the outings and includes payment for the time I
spent working on it at market rates (i.e. remuneration if I had been
contracting/working for others, or a realistic payday at the end of it).

I appreciate for many, doing a startup is a passion and they work insane hours
(as do I) and anything that gets publicity is good (hence, saying I earnt X in
Y or was profitable after Z days/months to seek attention), but want to see
people be more realistic about what being profitable actually is.

If your startup is a hobby and something you’d do anyway that generates some
spare cash, then fair enough. However if you are looking at it as a serious
business model, and something you want to do full time, then you should
account for the time spent on it.

Can you sustain your family on the income you generate? Can you grow the
business using the cash flow it creates? If not, then you are not profitable.
Sorry.

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maxklein
I love what you guys did here! Simple idea, but brilliantly executed.

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wmeredith
Context: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232958> |
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241296>

Thanks, Hacker News! You were extremely helpful in our beta.

~~~
khangtoh
save to say 200N has

irb(main):014:0> (1..52).to_a.sum+(1..36).to_a.sum+(1..53).to_a.sum => 3475

revenue so far (that's the least minimum), in reality, it should be higher
since $100 and lower tees are getting bought out.

congrats!

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axod
"two-week design cycle"

Fortnightly then ;)

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netcan
Is the next step up the scale 1 week cycles?

I like this idea. Any ideas on how to scale past 100 shirts a week?

~~~
rms
101 shirts, 102 shirts, 103 shirts...

~~~
netcan
ah

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Chocobean
late-comer here. I felt quite hesitant visiting a domain named 200nipples, but
congrats, guys.

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ComputerGuru
Your server's really slow from here - some pages timeout when loading. Is
everything OK?

~~~
wmeredith
Yeah, we've had more problems, than I'd like. (I'd say we get great load times
80% of the time. the rest of the time it can be a little slow.) We're
currently with Dreamhost, eying Media Temple.

~~~
rms
Media Temple Grid Server had uncomfortably high latency for me. Really
terrible latency, in fact.

Go VPS and never look back: Slicehost.com (best service/documentation/been on
the same virtualization architecture longer than linode) or linode.com (also
very highly recommended and slightly cheaper than slicehost)

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tstegart
Congratulations guys. Keep up the good work.

