Thanks for the mention and for your continuous support! Jen here, founder of Lunch Money :) We've come a long way since the solo dev days– happy to announce we're a core team of 5 now (yes, still bootstrapped!) and have lots of exciting stuff in the pipeline for 2025!
Lunch Money founder here! Thanks for flagging :) My guess is that it was definitely inspired by Lunch Money as the founders here have reached out to me before about liking my branding.
I did not use any stock illustrations for our logo– the idea was thought up by me and subsequently digitally illustrated by me also. I've had my logo/branding both partly and fully copied time and time again, and while seeing this is a bit annoying, I'd chalk it up to "heavy inspiration" over out-right copying. That being said, Leave Me Alone is doing great stuff in a different space and I am rooting for their success.
Jen here- founder of Lunch Money. Definitely give us a try if you're looking for something more modern and user-friendly. Lunch Money is less rigid than YNAB so much easier to get started on and build habits with.
If you (or anyone else reading this) decide to try it out, let me know you're from HN and I'll hook you up with a free month on top of the 14 day trial :)
We don't adhere to any one budgeting philosophy. While we won't walk you through the envelope style budgeting the way YNAB does, you can certainly mimic it with the platform!
* OXF import so that duplicate transactions are not an issue.
* An iPhone app so my wife can see the state of the budget.
* Envelop budgeting by default.
Lunch Money meets none of these. I don't think I am the target market, but the UI has won me over. I'm totally going to do everything I can to make this work. I suspect the API will make that possible.
Amazing job on the interface, clean fast and appealing while showing loads of information all at once.
Hi HN! OP here. Been working on my product, Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app), full-time since I launched it roughly 10 months ago. Sharing my learnings and thoughts along the way as it can be pretty lonely and daunting as a solo founder out there. Let me know if you have any questions and thanks for reading!
Hi Jen, great post! As you continue to grow Lunch Money even further, have you thought about when will it make sense to bring outside help, and if so, will this be hiring our outsourcing to freelance?
Hey, thanks! Honestly my thinking right now is that I want to continue growing Lunch Money on my own up until a certain ARR- I feel there's no reason to think I can't at this point. Past that, I may start to think about hiring outside help though I have no idea what that would look like. It would also heavily depend on where I'm at in my personal life as well!
Hi :) OP and founder of Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) here. Sharing my experiences through writing makes the whole journey as a company of one less lonely. Thanks for your readership!
First of all, congratulations! That's really exciting!
This is a costly mistake to learn, but to offer a bit of hope, at my last start-up we accidentally racked up high costs on the location API. Our CEO hopped on the phone with them a few times and was able to get the bill down. Good luck!
I used to track it all in a spreadsheet by hand and eventually turned that spreadsheet into a web app which I (and a few hundred others!) are using today. It's called Lunch Money (https://lunchmoney.app) if you're interested.
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