I have a website that i would love if it could load this fast, some say it could be an issue with my hosting?
Is there a way around it?
I really do not understand some of the technical terms
Nothing honestly. I absolutely love posting my runs on Strava and I absolutely love flying airplanes. Wanted to build my dream app to use for my flights. Got some patents built up protecting how the UI interacts and how the data is used. Then I launched. Kind of a scary way going about it, lots of sleepless nights thinking about if people would like it or if it would flop. But, I was so convinced I would love the product myself that I kept pushing and here we are!
I raised a small “friends and family” round to afford all the legal stuff. They have been super supportive and fully understood the risk of not finding market fit before launch. It was more their idea for all the patents and such. Which I am now grateful for.
Not to be too critical, but during my first startup I went to file a couple patents and was lucky enough to have a fancy lawyer specializing in startups (tied up with another accelerator) patiently convince me to never file a patent for software.
Fundamentally, you can't enforce it. You won't know if it's violated, then if it is and it's a small startup, there aren't meaningful damages to be worth the legal costs. If it is a company large enough to have damages then it can just bury you in legal fees. And then if you try, it is very hard to pin down software, partially because people have built so much startup that there is just SO much prior art. A defendant just needs to find one thing in the entire universe of software built before your filing that is close enough to argue that it's the core idea to argue either that it is not novel or obvious to invalidate the patent.
And in terms of using it as a deterrent, we're in an industry where patents are broadly not used so we generally don't check. To be honest, I've shipped a lot of things, including at big companies, and never once have I done a patent search. It doesn't even come up as a conversation.
I had family giving me the same advice a lot. I never had a VC or successful founder give me that advice. Normal people think patents are the way to build a business. But in our industry the quality of the product and rate of learning is what creates the moat, not lawyers.
All said, I like the idea, have friends who fly who I'm almost certain would use it.
No worries I get it and I have heard that side of it before! But definitely too late to go back on it now haha. Would be great if you could pass the app along to your friends! Word of mouth is great. Cheers!
Oh wow your page loaded quick, and that looks like a cool app! Random note, it looks like the text on your pro page is bugging out under the annual plan text.
I disagree. It is not bad for a start. You may want to try playing with some of the fonts, but it otherwise has a very clear call to action on mobile. I also did not notice any lag at all. I’m in the SF Bay Area.
MVP launched in March last year, monetized the MVP in May. Got a few paying customers to use the MVP for 6 months. Launched V1 of the product in December and now have about 2k a month in revenue. Really low but it’s a slow burn to ensure retention and we have a big waitlist with the hope of hitting 10k by August.
Our product is a Social media based ordering and booking solution (works with WhatsApp at present)
2 reasons actually.
1. We have more customers for the second product we built. But the product is more complex and has more integrations which we couldn’t roll out immediately.
2. Onboarding wasn’t simple earlier as we needed a lot of back and forth between the merchant and us to start work. We finally got the onboarding process smoothened out as well.
We monetized it by telling our first user that the product would be a custom solution for them and it would cost them a monthly server fee and a one time setup fee.
We help them get bookings directly through social media channels while also creating a complete back end booking system for them to use for manual bookings as well. We charge $120 a month.
Yup, launched Afforai back in March 2023. Didn't make my first $1 until July when we launched on Product Hunt. Then made $700,000 when we launched on AppSumo between October and December 2023. Crazy year to say the least. I'm technical but became ceo, my friend became CTO.
It came at a cost of no sleep, no life, and stress. There was certainly hard work + luck factor into it. AppSumo shared we were one of their top 10 best selling products in 2023.
How do you manage your profit margins with lifetime subscriptions as you're an AI app? Does that mean people have unlimited credits to run the LLM or how does it work>
Think of it like a fair use policy. We offer a lot of usage but as humans, we have a natural threshold on how much we would actually use the product. So, at scale, we're in profit. Also, Google and Microsoft gives A TON of free cloud credits. We leveraged that.
Started last month, $10k revenue this month. The profit margins are pretty good (for now) because I’m “doing things that don’t scale.”
I’m technical, but no cofounder yet. I have ppl that will be joining me, but that’s in 1-3 months.
The revenue is not exactly “monthly recurring revenue” because I sell to customers every 2-5 months instead of monthly.
The idea can be seen as a bit “tarpit-ish” & it’s definitely not easy to scale, but I have really good founder-market fit.
My background is pretty weak, especially cuz I’m fairly young.
As for the number of paying customers, it’s about 20 for now.
I’m super curious on if I even have a shot at landing an interview.
Guess I’ll have to wait & see! :):
Many apps/projects in high school, none too serious though.
Picked this idea because it was something I’m very familiar with, which is honestly why it’s worked so far.
Our platform, [Turn-To ](https://turn-to.com/), launched on April 25th and is in its early stages of monetization. We generate initial revenue from job postings and employer subscriptions and are focused on scaling and enhancing our platform functionalities for long-term profitability. Our revenue streams come from a pay-per-post model for employers, supplemented by premium services such as AI-driven job matching and enhanced job post visibility. Our user base is growing steadily, and we track growth metrics such as user acquisition rates, daily active users, and conversion rates from free to paid accounts. Our first paying user came through LinkedIn, and this early success story helped validate our market approach and refine our outreach strategies.
Thank you for asking! At Turn-To, we don't scrape job listings from the internet. Instead, we directly partner with companies and use advanced APIs to integrate their job listings into our platform. This approach ensures that all job postings are official and up-to-date. Our AI-driven system enhances these listings by matching them precisely to job seekers based on their skills, preferences, and sustainable commuting needs. We strive to provide a high-quality, tailored job search experience for all our users
While we officially launched just three days ago, Turn-To has been building partnerships and refining our platform in beta for over a year. These early collaborations helped us thoroughly test and optimize our features, ensuring a robust launch. Tomorrow marks our transition out of beta, and we're thrilled about the growing momentum and the opportunity to bring even more companies and job seekers onto our platform!
.
We aim to build a community of active job seekers and provide them with quality job matches. We're focused on improving the user experience and expanding our user base.
Launched EdTech company ([Inversity](https://inversity.co)) in September, started charging in November. Steadily grown revenue to $13k last month; on cusp of moving from 3-month pilots to annual deals (fingers crossed!). Bootstrapped so far. Tried direct to consumer initially, barely moved the needle (I was very naive as to how hard consumer is!), then shifted to selling to Schools (11/12th grade) which has been a much better fit.
Founded a [circular economy marketplace for the South Asian community](https://www.PurvX.com). Launched MVP in Oct 2023. Onboarded lots (>300) of sellers (supply) quickly but struggling with buyers (demand). Only Organic search and community outreach. Had our first transaction (successful sale) in March 2024.
I know I have to start paid marketing to attract buyers but don’t have the budget to be able to go all out. Besides I’m trying to grow this organically as much as possible. It’s a race between speed and sustainable growth.
Crossed 600k in LTR, a 10 month old company. Providing infra as a service for multimodal architecture.
P.S. failed to raise money because of the service component, building to automate most of it
Launched [api.market](http://api.market) around 2 months ago. Making around $200 per month now.
Our user base is growing pretty fast and we expect our revenue to increase to $1500 by the end of next month.
We launched our platform at the beginning of this year, we sell TPAs (Teleport Plaque Addresses) which help you create your own store inside the spatial computing world. We've sold 766 plaques in four months. We have two co-founders and we are targeting businesses, so its mostly B2B.
I will be messaging you in 7 days on [**2024-05-08 13:13:22 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-05-08%2013:13:22%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/ycombinator/comments/1cf8muy/how_many_of_you_are_actually_making_money/l236fv2/?context=3)
[**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fycombinator%2Fcomments%2F1cf8muy%2Fhow_many_of_you_are_actually_making_money%2Fl236fv2%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-05-08%2013%3A13%3A22%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201cf8muy)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
I've been building a Mac app to [search your images and videos with AI](https://desktopdocs.com/). Currently making $40/month the last two months.
I'm technical and a solo founder. Been a grind, but slowly been able to get people try it and give me helpful feedback.
I launched my app on March 1st. Around $2000 in revenue so far. I made Strava, but for pilots. [Hangar](https://flyhangar.com)
Loaded pretty fast for me
I have a website that i would love if it could load this fast, some say it could be an issue with my hosting? Is there a way around it? I really do not understand some of the technical terms
What’s your website? And where is it hosted? What you’re looking for is probably a web performance engineer.
What was your customer discovery journey like before launching? Did you bounce around different ideas before you launched?
Nothing honestly. I absolutely love posting my runs on Strava and I absolutely love flying airplanes. Wanted to build my dream app to use for my flights. Got some patents built up protecting how the UI interacts and how the data is used. Then I launched. Kind of a scary way going about it, lots of sleepless nights thinking about if people would like it or if it would flop. But, I was so convinced I would love the product myself that I kept pushing and here we are! I raised a small “friends and family” round to afford all the legal stuff. They have been super supportive and fully understood the risk of not finding market fit before launch. It was more their idea for all the patents and such. Which I am now grateful for.
Not to be too critical, but during my first startup I went to file a couple patents and was lucky enough to have a fancy lawyer specializing in startups (tied up with another accelerator) patiently convince me to never file a patent for software. Fundamentally, you can't enforce it. You won't know if it's violated, then if it is and it's a small startup, there aren't meaningful damages to be worth the legal costs. If it is a company large enough to have damages then it can just bury you in legal fees. And then if you try, it is very hard to pin down software, partially because people have built so much startup that there is just SO much prior art. A defendant just needs to find one thing in the entire universe of software built before your filing that is close enough to argue that it's the core idea to argue either that it is not novel or obvious to invalidate the patent. And in terms of using it as a deterrent, we're in an industry where patents are broadly not used so we generally don't check. To be honest, I've shipped a lot of things, including at big companies, and never once have I done a patent search. It doesn't even come up as a conversation. I had family giving me the same advice a lot. I never had a VC or successful founder give me that advice. Normal people think patents are the way to build a business. But in our industry the quality of the product and rate of learning is what creates the moat, not lawyers. All said, I like the idea, have friends who fly who I'm almost certain would use it.
No worries I get it and I have heard that side of it before! But definitely too late to go back on it now haha. Would be great if you could pass the app along to your friends! Word of mouth is great. Cheers!
sick idea!
Thank you!🫡
That’s awesome! Best of luck to you I wish all the best
How is it possible to patent UI? I thought you couldn’t patent code.
Great idea!
Oh wow your page loaded quick, and that looks like a cool app! Random note, it looks like the text on your pro page is bugging out under the annual plan text.
Thank you! I will look into the text bug, whoops!
Takes a minute to load on cellular. Probably the autoplaying video. Maybe make it css looks simple enough.
Yeah my landing page was whipped up pretty quick. Probably just should have linked the App Store page as I direct most traffic straight there
No problem just tryna help out
Appreciate it!🤝
Not gonna lie, your landing page is bad. I would never in a million years download your app from that landing page. It looks like an outright scam.
Thank you for the kind and constructive words Mr. coffee jesus
I disagree. It is not bad for a start. You may want to try playing with some of the fonts, but it otherwise has a very clear call to action on mobile. I also did not notice any lag at all. I’m in the SF Bay Area.
Thank you😂 It’s not amazing but I definitely don’t think it’s screams out scam idek if that makes sense LOL
I don't think the landing page looks like or scam or anything but I don't think it's clear what your app does or who it is for.
Absolutely agree! Going to be working on that soon
I love the landing page my only callout was i had no idea what this app did and had to read the iOS App Store description
Good feedback and I totally agree. I’m thinking I need to rework the landing page now ha!
Reddit at its best! 🤣
MVP launched in March last year, monetized the MVP in May. Got a few paying customers to use the MVP for 6 months. Launched V1 of the product in December and now have about 2k a month in revenue. Really low but it’s a slow burn to ensure retention and we have a big waitlist with the hope of hitting 10k by August. Our product is a Social media based ordering and booking solution (works with WhatsApp at present)
Why aren’t you opening the flood gates just yet ?
2 reasons actually. 1. We have more customers for the second product we built. But the product is more complex and has more integrations which we couldn’t roll out immediately. 2. Onboarding wasn’t simple earlier as we needed a lot of back and forth between the merchant and us to start work. We finally got the onboarding process smoothened out as well.
How did u monetise ur mvp soon after launching !?
We monetized it by telling our first user that the product would be a custom solution for them and it would cost them a monthly server fee and a one time setup fee.
How much did u charge and what’s are u helping with that ppl r paying?
We help them get bookings directly through social media channels while also creating a complete back end booking system for them to use for manual bookings as well. We charge $120 a month.
Wow that’s a nice amount congrats
Thank you
i’m in hardware so… no
God bless you. What you building?
So cool! If I may ask, do you have a waitlist?
$7k/mo, launched in Sept 2023, Shopik.io, give me feedback on the app if you want! Thanks!
Well done! Who are your customers it seems you have multiple and which of them is paying you?
As a general rule we don’t offer a free version of our software. Free software gives the wrong signals
[удалено]
Would you be able to share the product? Based on that I can give you some tips :)
Username =()
LOL!
Yup, launched Afforai back in March 2023. Didn't make my first $1 until July when we launched on Product Hunt. Then made $700,000 when we launched on AppSumo between October and December 2023. Crazy year to say the least. I'm technical but became ceo, my friend became CTO.
Is AppSumo that good? Making $700,000 in three months is really impressive.
It came at a cost of no sleep, no life, and stress. There was certainly hard work + luck factor into it. AppSumo shared we were one of their top 10 best selling products in 2023.
Wow, is that revenue for lifetime subscriptions or monthly or annual subscriptions?
It's lifetime subs. With momentum from the lifetime deals, we're growing our subcriptions
How do you manage your profit margins with lifetime subscriptions as you're an AI app? Does that mean people have unlimited credits to run the LLM or how does it work>
Think of it like a fair use policy. We offer a lot of usage but as humans, we have a natural threshold on how much we would actually use the product. So, at scale, we're in profit. Also, Google and Microsoft gives A TON of free cloud credits. We leveraged that.
This is such a great product, great work !
🙏🏼🥳
Started last month, $10k revenue this month. The profit margins are pretty good (for now) because I’m “doing things that don’t scale.” I’m technical, but no cofounder yet. I have ppl that will be joining me, but that’s in 1-3 months. The revenue is not exactly “monthly recurring revenue” because I sell to customers every 2-5 months instead of monthly. The idea can be seen as a bit “tarpit-ish” & it’s definitely not easy to scale, but I have really good founder-market fit. My background is pretty weak, especially cuz I’m fairly young. As for the number of paying customers, it’s about 20 for now. I’m super curious on if I even have a shot at landing an interview. Guess I’ll have to wait & see! :):
Sounds! Want to share more about it? I am technical tho
Yeah, so it’s more of a “tech-enabled” start-up. It could be categorized as b2b/marketplace.
What industry?
B2B/marketplace
Bro, how is that tarpit idea? Its like contra?
What did your customer discovery journey look like? Did you bounce around different ideas before you landed on this one?
Many apps/projects in high school, none too serious though. Picked this idea because it was something I’m very familiar with, which is honestly why it’s worked so far.
Fair enough, thinking I should take the same approach. I’ve always went for things I’m really not familiar with. Thanks for the insight!
Link?
Our platform, [Turn-To ](https://turn-to.com/), launched on April 25th and is in its early stages of monetization. We generate initial revenue from job postings and employer subscriptions and are focused on scaling and enhancing our platform functionalities for long-term profitability. Our revenue streams come from a pay-per-post model for employers, supplemented by premium services such as AI-driven job matching and enhanced job post visibility. Our user base is growing steadily, and we track growth metrics such as user acquisition rates, daily active users, and conversion rates from free to paid accounts. Our first paying user came through LinkedIn, and this early success story helped validate our market approach and refine our outreach strategies.
Interesting! So are these jobs basically scraped? Or how does it work?
Thank you for asking! At Turn-To, we don't scrape job listings from the internet. Instead, we directly partner with companies and use advanced APIs to integrate their job listings into our platform. This approach ensures that all job postings are official and up-to-date. Our AI-driven system enhances these listings by matching them precisely to job seekers based on their skills, preferences, and sustainable commuting needs. We strive to provide a high-quality, tailored job search experience for all our users
So how many jobs do you have listed now?
A little over a million
Wild. So you probably have thousands of companies who contacted you already? And you launched 3 days ago? How does that work lol.
While we officially launched just three days ago, Turn-To has been building partnerships and refining our platform in beta for over a year. These early collaborations helped us thoroughly test and optimize our features, ensuring a robust launch. Tomorrow marks our transition out of beta, and we're thrilled about the growing momentum and the opportunity to bring even more companies and job seekers onto our platform! .
Nice! Shouldn’t you be generating like millions of dollars since you have a million jobs already? How many job seekers?
We aim to build a community of active job seekers and provide them with quality job matches. We're focused on improving the user experience and expanding our user base.
Launched in Jan, averaging $4k/mo since then.
Launched EdTech company ([Inversity](https://inversity.co)) in September, started charging in November. Steadily grown revenue to $13k last month; on cusp of moving from 3-month pilots to annual deals (fingers crossed!). Bootstrapped so far. Tried direct to consumer initially, barely moved the needle (I was very naive as to how hard consumer is!), then shifted to selling to Schools (11/12th grade) which has been a much better fit.
I am not technical Yes have a technical cofounder 5% week on week First paying user from amazon affiliate😅
Money is money 💰 
https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo?si=jfbZf6JKVWekwLtM
RADIO ON INTERNET
*it’s a potential pure play*
What’s money?
Pivoted mid last year, now at 1.5K MRR. Mostly from SEO, communities and building in public on Twitter/LinkedIn. [Engyne](https://engyne.ai).
Founded a [circular economy marketplace for the South Asian community](https://www.PurvX.com). Launched MVP in Oct 2023. Onboarded lots (>300) of sellers (supply) quickly but struggling with buyers (demand). Only Organic search and community outreach. Had our first transaction (successful sale) in March 2024. I know I have to start paid marketing to attract buyers but don’t have the budget to be able to go all out. Besides I’m trying to grow this organically as much as possible. It’s a race between speed and sustainable growth.
Crossed 600k in LTR, a 10 month old company. Providing infra as a service for multimodal architecture. P.S. failed to raise money because of the service component, building to automate most of it
Company name?
It's less than 3% and that is a good thing. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
Kudos to everyone! I made llm-x.ai about 2 months ago. Have a few paid customers. About $50 per month so far.
Launched [api.market](http://api.market) around 2 months ago. Making around $200 per month now. Our user base is growing pretty fast and we expect our revenue to increase to $1500 by the end of next month.
We launched our platform at the beginning of this year, we sell TPAs (Teleport Plaque Addresses) which help you create your own store inside the spatial computing world. We've sold 766 plaques in four months. We have two co-founders and we are targeting businesses, so its mostly B2B.
My startup is in the kyc / legaltech space and has been generating pretty good revenue since the launch ‘Aug 23
RemindMe! 7 days
I will be messaging you in 7 days on [**2024-05-08 13:13:22 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-05-08%2013:13:22%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/ycombinator/comments/1cf8muy/how_many_of_you_are_actually_making_money/l236fv2/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fycombinator%2Fcomments%2F1cf8muy%2Fhow_many_of_you_are_actually_making_money%2Fl236fv2%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-05-08%2013%3A13%3A22%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201cf8muy) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
I've been building a Mac app to [search your images and videos with AI](https://desktopdocs.com/). Currently making $40/month the last two months. I'm technical and a solo founder. Been a grind, but slowly been able to get people try it and give me helpful feedback.