
Who is living off their startup fulltime? - webbruce
I'm curious who is currently living off their startup? Self-sustaining or through funding?  Also, if you are a link?
======
cabinguy
When I started out in 1999 my business partner and I took $1,200 and turned it
into $1M (revenue) in 12 months...100% online sales. We started out buying 3
beat up laptops, fixing them and selling them. Within 6 months we were buying
containers (semi-truck loads) of off-lease laptops and shipping up to 150 a
day. 60-70% profit margins. We grew for a couple of years and then we ran into
our first wall.

By 2003, our product commoditized and margins started shrinking fast. All of a
sudden the used laptop business turned into the used VCR business. New laptops
were cheap and our margins went from 60-70% to 5-10%. Our world was changing
and we needed to pivot fast. We had to lay off our entire staff, sell our
office building (yea, we bought our own office building) and start over...but
not from scratch.

During the good times, we would always throw new ideas around. If we agreed
that an idea was solid, we would build it out and let it sit on the back
burner. When the time came, we were able to jump into a new project that was
already setup and ready to go. We just needed to start executing.

Fast forward to today. Our website (services, subscriptions, advertising)
currently does about $400k annually (up from $250k last year) with a
substantial profit margin, zero debt and miles of growth in front of it. It
has been WAY harder this time around, but we are building something much more
substantial.

While my business partner and I whole-heartily believe we are about to enter a
hockey stick phase of growth, we do have a couple of ideas built out and
simmering on the back burner...just in case.

tl;dr I have been bootstrapping and making my living online since 1999.

~~~
barmstrong
Awesome! What is the site doing $400k annually?

~~~
cabinguy
Because I shared some sensitive data, it is probably a good idea to keep the
name of our site to myself (for now).

------
jasonkester
S3stat (<http://www.s3stat.com>) brings in enough to live on, and funded me
while I was traveling last year and bootstrapping the next thing. It also has
the advantage of pretty much running itself on autopilot, so I can sometimes
go entire months without opening the IDE or doing anything beyond responding
to the odd customer email.

I'd highly recommend building something like that (a low-maintenance income
generating business) as opposed to the sort of zero income "shorten urls then
tweet them from your location on your camera phone" thing that requires 14
billion users and a Google buyout before you see your first dime.

~~~
eurohacker
what technology you are using for it - Ruby , Python etc,

~~~
jasonkester
As somebody else deduced, the public site is ASP.NET.

The heavy lifting is done in C# as well, on a pile of EC2 machines that gets
spun up each night. Back before EC2 Windows instances came out, it was running
under Mono, with the help of a bunch of Ruby scripts to handle everything that
Mono let me down on (such as ALL the downloading, uploading, talking to
webservices, etc. that require pieces of .NET that is hard to implement and
non-sexy and thus didn't get implemented by the Mono team).

Now it's all C#, leveraging a half dozen Amazon Web Services and running on
EC2 Windows instances.

------
paraschopra
<http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/>

I have been living full time on this since I launched paid plans in May this
year. My annual revenue goal was surpassed in first two months. But to be
honest, I was very scared the week paid plans were launched. Thoughts of what
if I don't even make equivalent to my previous salary haunted me (I had left
my full time job 2 months before launching paid plans -- so my family and
friends thought I was doing _nothing_ for 2 full months). But, it has been
profitable (touch wood!) and I am very happy about it. Been approached by
investors a couple of times, but the revenue generated is good enough to
expand the team by itself so I don't see a reason to take any outside
investment.

But before getting to this point, I had toyed with numerous ideas and coded a
bulky conversion optimization platform for more than a year.
<http://www.wingify.com/product/tour.php> Showed it to patio11 and others who
all said: "you know what it has to be simple". So, redone the whole thing and
that's how Visual Website Optimizer came about to be.

I have been lucky to have learnt many great lessons: what to make, how to make
and how to get covered in TechCrunch even if you are bootstrapped :)

~~~
hariis
Can you please share your learnings on how to get covered in TechCrunch if you
are bootstrapped, I thought they only covered VC funded startups.

------
patio11
<http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month>

I quit my job in March, and could survive on my fairly modest revenues
indefinitely. (I have done some consulting on the side in the interim, which
is nice, because it means I don't have to make any hard choices like "Proceed
at maximum speed on the business _or_ go home for Christmas?")

The next product comes out at the end of November or thereabouts. I am
cautiously optimistic. I haven't accepted any investment yet.

~~~
strooltz
I was listening to your podcast yesterday at the office. Very insightful,
especially the idea of launching the business in 8 days...

------
bearwithclaws
Hacker Monthly (<http://hackermonthly.com>), self-sustaining so far and doing
everything to keep cost really low:

\- Only 1 fulltime employee (um...me) + 3 remote freelancers.

\- Works from home.

\- Based in Penang island (somewhere between Bangkok and Singapore with its
living cost much lower than both of them).

~~~
libpcap
Do you speak the local language? Malay?

~~~
bearwithclaws
Yes (along with Chinese and its dialects: cantonese & hokkien). The national
language is Malay (Bahasa Melayu), but most people speaks English here.

~~~
browsemybooks
Penang, beautiful island. I was there not too long ago. I would make the 12+
hr journey to return, just to taste the BBQ stingray again. Awesome!

------
g0atbutt
I am with my startup Codesketch (<http://www.codesketch.com>). We've been
designing and coding apps (mostly iPhone, but some web apps too) for various
companies. We are also working on some apps that we will sell directly to
consumers on the App Store.

\- 2 partners (one of them is me)

\- 3 board member who contribute several hours a week gratis

I took some funding at the beginning, but we are now completely self-
sustainable. We did this by being hungry. Our burn rate is incredibly low. Our
downtown office we rent we got for next to nothing (thank God for karma). The
only thing we splurged on is we bought the best tools for our employees.
Getting married in 230 days also helps you to keep your foot on the gas.

It's been a lot of fun.

~~~
hajrice
>> Our downtown office we rent we got for next to nothing (thank God for
karma)

I'm curious to how you got a free office. Would you mind sharing?

~~~
g0atbutt
Between high school and college I took a year off. I decided to spend 6 months
in South Africa to help people help themselves out of poverty.

I did this by writing a curriculum that covered basic computer office skills.
We got about 15 laptops donated from the states and began our mobile lab. Our
first 2 class rounds were people that we hand picked to be teachers in later
classes.

The next round of classes launched with the teachers that we just trained
running the show (we still attended all of these sessions just to help out).
The classes were self sustainable (teachers got paid a small amount from
students, and the students were then committed to the program).

Jason (the guy who hooked me up with the downtown office) was a part of my
team.

Moral of the story: Be nice and help people.

------
dangrossman
I created/run a couple web apps (<http://w3counter.com> <http://w3roi.com> and
a few more). Everything is profitable and I've lived off it for the past 6
years. All bootstrapped, no outside funding.

~~~
sr3d
Dan, I really admire your products and your business sense. Your post on "Step
by step to launching a new product" is spot on. Keep up the good work!

~~~
paraschopra
Can you please share the URL for that post?

~~~
ashleyw
[http://www.dangrossman.info/2009/07/02/step-by-step-of-
launc...](http://www.dangrossman.info/2009/07/02/step-by-step-of-launching-a-
new-service/)

------
vty0
This is probably the most motivating thread I've read on hn.

~~~
rosariom
I agree this thread rocks with real life stories...

------
javery
I live off of TekPub (<http://tekpub.com>) and Adzerk (<http://adzerk.com>,
<http://theloungenet.com>, <http://rubyrow.net>).

~~~
sgallant
The design of your sites is great. Do you outsource that?

~~~
javery
Yeah, I have a designer I use on contract. I would give you his info but I
have him booked solid for awhile. :)

~~~
nubela
Incredible, its really spartan and great design. Where would you recommend I
start looking designers like that? 99designs? Any tips?

------
heyjonboy
ParkWhiz (<http://www.parkwhiz.com>) is fully bootstrapped and paying full-
time salaries to both founders. It took us 3 years of being ramen-profitable
to get to that point, though.

~~~
wheaties
What a great concept!

------
nkohari
My wife and I were living on AgileZen (<http://agilezen.com>) before the
company was acquired earlier this year.

~~~
vijayr
There are so many project management apps. What made you choose this
particular niche? How did you get your first customers?

Congrats. Your app looks beautiful.

~~~
beatpanda
haha. asked and answered.

------
kylebragger
Forrst (<http://forrst.com/>) makes more than enough to cover all costs,
including some of my salary. The rest comes from a seed round I took in March.

~~~
Andrenid
I'm a big Forrst fan, thanks for the site! It has become my new place to go
for inspiration/motivation when I need it.

Now when do we find out what Acorns are for? ;)

~~~
ericlavigne
I just signed up to try it out. May I have an invite?

Name: Eric Lavigne

Email: lavigne.eric@gmail.com

Twitter: ericlavigne

Something I made: <https://github.com/ericlavigne/island-wari>

~~~
kylebragger
I sent you one earlier, Eric. Happy to hear feedback at kyle AT forrst.com

------
WillyF
One Day, One Job (<http://www.onedayonejob.com/>) is my startup, and it's just
reached the point where it's covering all of my business and personal costs.
The site, along with its sister site One Day, One Internship, help college
students learn about interesting career opportunities.

Nearly 45% of this year's revenue has come from direct advertising.

Another 40% of the revenue comes from contextual job advertising which directs
users to a private label job search engine.

About 10% comes from product sales (an online job search course), and the rest
comes from various affiliate programs.

I've also been able to get some significant referral credits with a few online
clothing retailers. That's enabled me to be well dressed, despite just
scraping by for most of the year.

------
Julianhearn
Left full time employment two years, was profitable within three months, now
employ three full time staff and profits into seven figures. The best move I
ever made.

~~~
lovskogen
Care to tell your story?

~~~
Julianhearn
I have been thinking about telling it for while, I have considered starting a
blog to help other start-ups especially people who are a little older and get
caught in the full employment trap with the needto pay the mortgage. Also
considereddoing a mixergy interview. But always go back to 'head down, work
your arse off', there is always work to be done. One day, one day soon. I need
to pay back to the community.

------
compumike
NerdKits (<http://www.nerdkits.com/>). Started with roommate co-founder in
senior year of college with $200 of parts, continued part-time while I still
in school / doing Masters degree, and now full-time since graduation (almost a
year and a half now). Profitable and a lot of fun.

~~~
Charybdis
Heh, I remember reading a shameless self-promotion post from you on Slashdot a
few months back. Looks like things have turned out well, and I'm considering
getting one myself. Nice work!

------
inovica
All my outgoings (including staff wages) are paid for by a number of small
sites that I have run. They are quite diverse, but I love creating different
things. Here's some of what we do:

www.sourceguardian.com - encryption software for PHP. Have been running this
for around 10 years. This alone would be a very good 'wage' for someone

www.europeantenders.com. This provides leads for european government contracts

www.ukscrap.com. This is a referral site that we created for people who's car
is 'end of life'.

www.rubyencoder.com. Similar to SourceGuardian. It's for encrypting Ruby
source code. We had a need for this ourselves so created it

I run a few more also. I love the freedom that this has given me and the
regular income allows me to play with what I'm interested in

Feel free to message me privately if you want any details or just some advice

~~~
chipocabra
Hi, sorry for the stupid question here but I'm a tech newby. But why would you
want to encrypt php? I thought only the hosting server can view the actual
code. Is it possible to view php scripts that are not executed through a
browser?

------
endlessvoid94
ThatHigh.com pays my rent in SF.

Currently working on Djangy.com, hopefully that will "supplement" thathigh :-)

~~~
shadowpwner
how did you advertise ThatHigh?

~~~
endlessvoid94
Chalked the SHIT out of college campuses, basically IRL spammed as much as I
could. Paid for some reddit advertising as well as StumbleUpon. That's pretty
much it.

I got lucky with a good name and a ton of early exposure from college humor.

------
cloudkj
I haven't really been living off of my apps, but since I've been unemployed
for the past 6 months with no other streams of income, I'll count them.

<http://www.facebook.com/amznwishlist> was pretty profitable up until about
mid-October when Amazon decided to disable some of its Product Advertising API
calls for getting Wish List data. If the app still worked and ran through the
holidays, it probably would've paid for rent (and then some).

<http://www.fatearthmedia.com/> \- My browser extension for shopping sites is
also profitable. If the Mozilla add-on policy was less strict about affiliates
earnings, then it'd probably be paying for rent as well.

------
toast76
<http://usabilityhub.com> (including <http://fivesecondtest.com>) was
originally a free app. We introduced subscriptions in August. It's now getting
close to being able to support two of us full-time. At the moment, we're both
still doing consultant work to fill the gaps. I would certainly think in the
next 6-12 months it'll be covering both of us. We're entirely self-funded from
3 years of contracting/consulting.

If I have a tip for anyone, the consulting/startup pairing works wonderfully
well....especially if you're in demand. I can turn paid work on and off as
needed depending on what we're working on.

~~~
HackrNwsDesignr
Toast,I am pretty decent at graphic/web design, but have trouble finding
consulting work in order to make this work. Mind if I ask where do you look?
Craigslist seems saturated, and elance seems too much of a hassle with
outsourcing companies and others with years reputation on the site.

~~~
toast76
I'm a programmer (and in Australia), so maybe that makes it a bit easier.

I think it's mostly a case of knowing people. Nearly all of my work is from
people who already knew me before they needed the work, or knew someone who I
had previously done work for.

Referrals and recommendations are worth more than anything else, and people
will pay more for someone they know will do a good job. My two current side
projects are for an old client of a company I used to work for and had worked
with previously (they referred me), and a friend of a friend of my father.
Previous work has all been via referrals from friends or clients. Once you do
a job for someone, give them a stack of business cards and ask them to refer
you to others. If you've looked after them, they'll be more than happy to do
it. Since starting my business 3.5 years ago, I've never once had to actually
look for work.

I'd strongly avoid looking for work on any website, you end up competing on
price, and that's no way to make a living.

~~~
HackrNwsDesignr
Toast, great advice, thanks for sharing. How do you estimate how much to
charge for a project? I'm more of a designer than a coder (though I can
technically do both), and I'm always seeing price estimates all over the board
on craigslist and other places. Any advice on this?

~~~
toast76
It's like anything. You get what you pay for.

If you're up against low price estimates, they're probably using templates, or
reusing stuff they've already done for someone else or maybe even outsourcing
it overseas. You can't compete with that when you're starting from scratch on
your own time. You just have to accept that some people are cheap and won't
pay your price. You should never do a job that loses you money just for the
sake of winning the job.

Estimation on any project is a matter of breaking it down to the smallest
components. Estimate each component with a high/low bracket (i.e. best case
and worst case). Find the average, add some slippage (15%-20%) to allow for
when you get it totally wrong, or to give you some room if the scope changes
(and you want to be nice and not charge more), and you have your number.

Don't ever budge on your hours estimate.

If your client thinks it's too much you can do a % discount on the overall
price, but you make sure they're aware that 200hrs is 200hrs. Too many clients
think you can somehow build the exact some thing, but in less hours by "trying
harder" or waving a magic wand. They'll ask why the guy on craigslist is
cheaper, I'd suggest they give the guy a go and find out, and if they're not
happy to give you a call back. It may help to ask them if they'd ask their
surgeon for a discount :P

But seriously, give up on craigslist. The only people looking there are ones
that are trying to save a buck. We've tried a few online "job markets" and
found we were estimating $2000 for jobs others were quoting for under $500. A
15 page website in a day?? No thanks!

~~~
HackrNwsDesignr
toast, again, great post and thanks for sharing.

------
cullenking
<http://ridewithgps.com/> is paying my "full-time" salary, which is barely
ramen level. But, it's doing that right now in the off-season, off donations
and a small licensing deal. Releasing premium features within the month, and
negotiating a larger licensing deal right now. Then, I'll be up to spaghetti
profitable :)

------
nischalshetty
My part time app <http://justunfollow.com> rakes in wayyy more than my day
job. I'll be doing the "obvious" in a few months time. The reason it's taking
me long is the people I currently work with. They are all talented and
something gives me a feeling I'll find a "co-founder" in one of my colleagues
;)

~~~
PonyGumbo
BTW, your app saved me a ton of effort. I spent a full afternoon wading
through the API before I found your site, and at that point it was a no-
brainer to pay the four or five bucks.

~~~
nischalshetty
I'm so glad to know that :)

------
braindead_in
I've been working on CallGraph.Biz (<http://callgraph.biz>) and living off it
for around two years now. The work's pretty hectic though and recently I hired
two contractors in Phillipines to take the load off me. Work from home, live
in Bangalore, India.

------
treitnauer
Living off iWantMyName (<http://iwantmyname.com>) – completely bootstrapped,
enough to support 3 co-founders (including me) and we'll most likely start
hiring next year. Fun times... :)

------
quinniep
Reachoo (<http://reachoo.com>) is a video classifieds website (a craigslist
and youtube's baby). It also aggregates ads and distribute ads. I'm a single
female founder that started and self-funded the site since early 2009 .
Reachoo went from being ramen-profitable to replacing my corporate income in
the past 6 months. My site is reaching 1M unique pageviews/month

~~~
niico
WOAH, awesome stats! I just bought <http://www.clasificados.tv> (Classifieds
in spanish). Let's get in touch. my mail and gtalk is nicogarcia at gmail ;)

------
apike
We are with Steam Clock Software (<http://www.steamclocksw.com/>). We're self-
funded from day one and were profitable within three months.

We're doing iOS apps and consulting. Finding enough consulting to pay both the
bills and the cost of developing our products has been straightforward. I've
been working on product #2 this morning and having a lot of fun.

~~~
jluxenberg
Checked out your iPhone DJ software; how do you handle interruptions due to
incoming calls or text messages? Whenever someone is using their iPhone to DJ
they always occasionally get messages or calls and the noise is played over
the loudspeakers. Does the SDK provide a way to turn those off?

~~~
StavrosK
Airplane mode?

~~~
chunkyslink
The iPhone has a mode which disables WIFI, GPS and the phone network.

The phone is still operational for all other tasks which is ideal for when you
are on an airplane.

~~~
StavrosK
No, I know, I meant they should use it.

------
jwu711
I am, but that's because our costs are incredibly low. I have a team of 3 with
a monthly burn total of $1,000. We have our seed funding from i/o ventures.
Company is called Skyara if you want to check it out.

~~~
jaxn
$1,000 a month includes a team of 3?!?

------
crystalarchives
I'm currently floating on a pretty ridiculous niche website:
<http://www.snowboardsforwomen.com>

I actually started it for my then girlfriend whom I wanted to go snowboarding
with me by buying a board to guilt trip her into coming along. We couldn't
find a place with a lot of women's snowboards so I pulled up some datafeeds
and scraped them just for the women's boards, some friends asked for the list,
I got lazy emailing everybody so I made a site, threw up the affiliate links
for funsies, and actually started making some money.

It's a seasonal earner which I don't recommend to anyone because my winter
makes or breaks my year. It helps a lot that I don't live in the Western world
anymore which reduces my cost of living, but Shanghai is getting more
expensive by the day so I'm working on other revenue streams.

------
justinchen
Menuism (<http://www.menuism.com/>) - bootstrapped in 2006 and profitable for
a few years now. 2 FT founders.

~~~
chopsueyar
Who enters the menu data for the restaurant?

~~~
justinchen
Users, owners or partners. We also aggregate online menus from around the web.

------
acabal
scribophile.com is paying my salary right now. Not as much as working as a
developer at a big company, but enough to live, and I'm much happier :)

Completely bootstrapped. The only cash I put down was $100 for some small
graphic design work, $500 for an initial Adwords campaign, and $20 for a
server.

~~~
joakin
From what i get, is it more or less the same as <http://page99test.com/> but
with the whole texts?

Did the adwords campaing success?

------
jjudge
Signal (<http://www.signalhq.com>) supports 13 including myself, co-founded in
2006. First few years as a founder we're incredibly tough (paid others but not
ourselves), but we're doing great now.

~~~
Blocks8
I love the design - did you do it in-house?

~~~
jjudge
Thanks - yep, design was done in-house by our design/UX director
(<http://www.signalhq.com/about-us/team/drew-myler>). We're now focused on
cleaning up our message so that you immediately know what the product does
when hit the home page. I think a few walk through videos will be helpful,
it's a great product.

------
wslh
I cofounded Nektra Advanced Computing (<http://www.nektra.com>) in 2003. It
was self-sustaining after some months (we started while we were working on
different organizations, and we quit our jobs after reducing the financial
risk). We grew to 12 full time employees and found a niche that progressed to
other lines of business. Our company was able to have some Fortune 500
customers and sell windows internals services to them. It was everything
accomplished without a previous business network, just selling solutions via
our web page.

------
davidw
I'd be interesting to look at these by category and/or business model.

* Sells advertising.

* Sells physical goods.

* Sells a software product.

* Sells a subscription to software.

... and so on and so forth.

------
spoiledtechie
Ramen Profitable off my several Websites. The big one that makes the most is
<http://utopiapimp.com> (freemium), but several other websites I created are
also helping out with the costs.

Others included: <http://demotivatedposters.com> <http://itfeelslike.com>
<http://drinkingfor.com>

------
bemmu
<http://www.coolestfriends.com> until about a week ago when the "New MySpace"
launched.

------
DJN
Bootstrapped from day 1, I'm pleased to say Trafficspaces
(<http://www.trafficspaces.com>) is now profitable enough to sustain
operations without requiring additional capital.

I've learned five lessons.

1\. Charge from day 1

2\. Focus on business customers (the Average Selling Price is much higher)

3\. Pump all your profits back into marketing.

4\. Never stop innovating.

5\. Put a phone number on your site (it does wonders for trust)

------
msacks
Making more than I did as a full-time system engineer.
<http://www.glasscodeinc.com> based off IT services alone. Soon to invest the
profits into some software for managing enterprise infrastructure and
hopefully grow from there.

~~~
sga
Your use of the word 'unfounded' in your front page copy is not correct.

------
btstrpthrowaway
I started out 6-8 months ago by reading through HN and being introduced to the
entire idea of bootstrapping. We had an idea that was partly technical, but
mostly good marketing (e.g. closer to the idea of the parrot book:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215>)

In fact, there are sites that sell wholesale kits for the technical part of
the company.

We didn't buy a kit though and took the high road of building all our software
in house using hired talent. Most of the work was done through freelancers at
under a $3000 budget. (We would not do this again, the code quality on first
run was incredibly low and hiring better is definitely worth it).

Getting the marketing working took another few thousands, but all said and
done, we got it running with under $10k investment.

What was especially hard for bootstrapping for me was that I'm not a very
technical guy. Most bootstrapping ideas here require you to be the engineer,
but I didn't have the privilege of that position. I had to pull off a Derek
Siver (<http://sivers.org/how2hire>) to get the idea to work.

Now that it is running though, it's doing great. We're pulling in over $100k
of profits on an annualized basis, enough to cover living costs and more for
sure.

As an aside, the roadblock we're running into now is that user demands are
outstripping my current system of hiring freelancers. I've posted another
thread asking for hiring help if anyone has experience:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1932131>

Anyway, it's been a really fun ride, and I want to tell everyone that it
really can be done. Your idea needs to be creative, and you need to be in a
space where bootstrapping is possible (e.g. NOT biotech). The biggest lesson
is to have good judgment. While investors are often a burden, they add a lot
of experience for real, and with bootstrapping, sometimes you're left
completely on your own.

------
phishphood
I make enough with MTH Software (<http://www.mthbuilt.com>) to not have a full
time job. My sales are seasonal in nature, so I either need to scale down
living expenses or to supplement with some consulting in the summer.

------
ajdecon
It's not _my_ startup (I'm an employee, not a founder), but I'll put in a
shout out for R Systems, a bootstrapped startup providing high-performance
computing resources. (<http://www.rsystemsinc.com/>)

------
kaib
TinkerCAD (<http://tinkercad.com>). Self funded and in soon-alpha mode, 3 FT
founders. Quit Google a few months ago after five great years at the place.

~~~
TamDenholm
If you're self funded and not even launched yet you're not actually living off
the business. I'm not having a go at you or anything, just saying thats what
the question was.

~~~
kaib
You are obviously right. As per mkramlich definition the startup is currently
living off us (given only founders have invested in the corp) and we will live
off non founder investors before being in the black.

I initially hesitated to reply but as the original post did not differentiate
between type of investor I assumed it would be acceptable. I stand corrected.

------
dpcan
Yes. Android app sales.

------
vijaymv_in
I own staffing/ consulting firm names <http://www.Sohosquaresolutions.com>. We
are profitable from 1st years and mostly focused on financial firms in
Tristate. We have solid revenues and many people working @ client sites. The
business is totally self sustainable. Only time I spend is to grow the
business in recruiting new people and identifying new clients.

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strooltz
While were not a "traditional" SaaS type of startup we've managed to turn
bandsonabudget.com into a full time gig for myself, my partner, a full time
employee, and a number of part timers. I supplement income w client
development work and consulting but have been gradually phasing that out of
the equation as we've grown... We have yet to take any funding and completely
bootstrapped the company ourselves...

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haarts
I am, sort of. But it was a huge step back money-wise.

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zingo
I think there are differences between an "aspiring startup" i.e. self-
employment, small business, cooperative etc. and a startup. To me you are
running a startup when you are ready to take funding that will mainly be used
for growth. People can of course call their businesses whatever they want, but
using a term like "seed stage startup" would be helpful for clarity.

~~~
Silhouette
Why does being a startup have anything to do with taking external funding at
any particular stage? I would say being a startup is more defined by whether
you are at an early development and market research stage or whether you have
an established, significantly profit-making product/service. How that early
development and market research happens to be funded seems irrelevant.

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Skroob
I am. I don't know if I'm technically a startup; right now it's just me doing
freelance iOS development, but it's paying the bills.

~~~
rewind
It's awesome when anyone can make a living doing what they choose. But for
practical purposes, I think most people think of "living off their start-up"
as making money from things other than an individual doing contracts/hourly
work; in other words, a product or service that can scale in some sense. If
you were making money by paying others to do the work, that would be a
different story!

~~~
Skroob
I actually agree, and i'm taking steps to make that happen and move from a
freelancer to a sustainable boutique iOS development shop. That's more
startup-y, right? :)

~~~
philfreo
Only if you're building your own products that you can sell in a scalable way
- not just becoming a larger consulting shop. That's not to say it isn't a
good idea -- just that building a business is a little different in most
people's mind than a "startup".

~~~
Skroob
Really, the goal is both. Consulting is a much more reliable way to generate
income in the iOS market, but the app store is steadier if you can get a good
performer out there. I'm trying to use consulting (and grow the business that
way in the short term) until I can get a serious product in the app store that
can support the business.

~~~
onedgepr
In our case we were able to convince some of our clients to let us keep
ownership of the iOS code developed for them as long as we didn't sell it to
their local competition. We basically gave them a license to do whatever they
wanted with the code while we kept all ownership/IP/ability to create a
product with it.

After 5 months developing a fairly complex iOS app for a local cable company
(think i.TV + Netflix like vod recommendations) it sure feels that we have
created some value as we can go out and create spinoffs or repackage the same
solution to other (non local) cable providers.

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michokest
Teambox maintains a small team of us fairly well (5 programmers, 2 people on
sales and marketing). We're now relying on some more freelancers and looking
at ways to handle the increasing workload.

It's been close to one year since the first people jumped in full-time besides
myself, and we've been funded to get the product and early revenues on track.

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HackrNwsDesignr
Do any of the operators of the sites mentioned here need design or logo work?
I'm revamping my portfolio page and wanted to offer it to hacker news
entrepreneurs. My about section has my old portfolio page, I've also done some
work for hacker news entrepreneurs already, so you can email me if you want to
see the absolute latest.

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whouweling
It's enormously motivating to read about all these startup stories, really
gives me energy to start coding :-)

Also I find it a lot of fun to check out the different startup websites
mentioned, because you know a bit of background info.

Thanks all for sharing!

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speleding
<http://www.supersaas.com> Doing exceedingly well, thank you, and growing like
mad still. (no funding needed, cash positive from day one)

------
stevesmith155
<http://autolicio.us> \--> Bootstrapped company making me a few $. Enough $
for ramen, unfortunately not enough to pay the mortgage.

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enjo
I am, but I'm taking my bare-minimum salary at this point (thank god for my
lovely wife). We're actually doing quite well money-wise, but I just keep
reinvesting everything we make.

~~~
kapitalx
I would appreciate more information! Thanks.

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hboon
Yes, full time with iPhone apps, including SimplyTweet (app store link:
<http://motionobj.com/simplytweet$>).

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dejb
I don't think a 14 year old web business counts as a startup... but it's
paying the bills. I only returned to it 4 years ago after an long um
'sabbatical'.

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nir
<http://prixfeed.com/> just makes some beer money - but it's ok for a single
short PHP script..

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callmeed
Living full time off 2 startups, but they are 6 and 2 years old so I'm not
sure if they still qualify as "startups".

~~~
dolphenstein
Not sure if "children" and "child support" qualify either! :-)

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MoreMoschops
What doesn't count as a startup? Bill Gates is still living off his.

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TaraK
We've just reached ramen break even, 2 years after seed funding.

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ditojim
ditoweb.com has been paying my bills for the last couple years. we are a
google apps partner/service provider with a growing staff of 16.

------
herval
bloobox.com.br - still a local/national business, still to be launched
worldwide

already making enough revenue to keep us up, though (3 people total)

------
zackattack
I am living off <http://www.AwesomenessReminders.com> and
<http://www.CustomerFind.com>. For AwesomenessReminders, you can use the
referral code HACKERNEWS to save money.

~~~
iamgoat
Awesomeness Reminders is hilarious. Wish I had known of the referral code, but
regardless, it was money well spent!

~~~
zackattack
Glad to hear it was a dose of awesome!

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mkramlich
_living off your startup:_ it has revenue, it's being used to cover all it's
own costs, including paying you some money which you are then using for food,
shelter, utilities, etc.

 _startup living off you:_ it's costs are being paid out of an account that
you personally funded. it is not in the black yet.

 _you/startup living off investors:_ it's costs (including possibly paying you
a "salary" of some kind) come out of an account which was funded by investors
-- other people's money, not from you and not from customers

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haploid
I am, along with my cofounder and a dozen employees.

It's been 5 years though, so I'm not sure one could easily qualify us as a
startup any longer.

