Solo, self funded and profitable. I work on it while traveling around Asia.
Agree with patio11 there's probably way more than would speak up here. I seldom contribute to HN or the bootstrapping forums mentioned in another reply. I browse a little, but 99% of my time spent in front of the computer is spent working on product or replying to customer emails.
How I got started:
I've built SaaS apps before but they were the dreaded "solution looking for a problem" type.
Then I decided to do things strictly the Lean way. Got out of the building. Talked to customers about an idea I had. Pretty soon I discovered an adjacent problem that everyone had, that sounded fun to solve, and that I had specific domain knowledge in. I built and launched my MVP in one month, from a beach in Koh Samui. I've been traveling ever since then, spending each month in a different country.
Charged from day 1. Had paying customers from day 1.
I find changing my environment enables me to compartmentalize my work better - like I try to get major new features rolled out before I head to my next destination.
Not planning on doing this solo forever. Not ruling out hiring some help down the line and maybe a permanent office somewhere.
Can you please share how you marketed the app? What worked and what didn't?
Everyone: When sharing information about your app, I would request people to share marketing approaches as well. It would greatly help people who are just getting started.
If I understand correctly, this will post automatically to a Facebook page when users sign up. Any trouble with token expiration? I think it was changed from unlimited to a shorter time recently.
Goodgecko just never made any meaningful amount of money plus it was a competitive space (surveys) so it was shut down.
Peashoot did ok but in the end there were too many free competitors (twitter analytics).
I think if the same thing happened now, I'm a more experienced entrepreneur so I'd be able to deal with free competitors better - figure out what customers are still willing to pay for, aim for the enterprise market etc.
Solo, self funded and profitable. I work on it while traveling around Asia.
Agree with patio11 there's probably way more than would speak up here. I seldom contribute to HN or the bootstrapping forums mentioned in another reply. I browse a little, but 99% of my time spent in front of the computer is spent working on product or replying to customer emails.
How I got started:
I've built SaaS apps before but they were the dreaded "solution looking for a problem" type.
Then I decided to do things strictly the Lean way. Got out of the building. Talked to customers about an idea I had. Pretty soon I discovered an adjacent problem that everyone had, that sounded fun to solve, and that I had specific domain knowledge in. I built and launched my MVP in one month, from a beach in Koh Samui. I've been traveling ever since then, spending each month in a different country.
Charged from day 1. Had paying customers from day 1.
I find changing my environment enables me to compartmentalize my work better - like I try to get major new features rolled out before I head to my next destination.
Not planning on doing this solo forever. Not ruling out hiring some help down the line and maybe a permanent office somewhere.
But for now it's pretty fun the way it is!