5
14 Comments

First $$$ after two years

Two days ago, we paid ourselves our first dividends.

It's not much, but these euros mean more to me than any salary.

(I just won't try to do the math and calculate the hourly rate 😅)

Starting a project from zero and turning it into a (ramen) profitable business, without external funding is something I'm very proud of.

I'm grateful for everyone that trusted us even though we had (and still have) an imperfect product with many caveats.

Now, it's up to us in 2023 to improve our product, serve our users better and expand to new customers 💪

posted to Icon for group Building in Public
Building in Public
on February 2, 2023
  1. 4

    I feel you!
    Keep it up, everything will come :)

    1. 1

      Thank you :) Good luck as well!

  2. 2

    I am going to monetize in the coming months!! (My project has been live on the App Store for years). Were you scared to charge your customers? Or was it built into the first verison?

    I ask because I'm a little nervous to charge lol

    1. 1

      We didn't charge for the first beta and looked for companies to test the product before we believed we were ready to charge. Another reason not to charge at first was the burden of developing recurring payments.

      • We then signed our first "enterprise" customers out of this beta. With custom Stripe plans or manual charges.
      • Then we implemented payment in our app and left a grace period to free users
      • Then we just blocked their accounts. Some of them churned, some of them paid, and some of them asked us to extend their trial and either churned or paid.

      So, no real strategy tbh, but in hindsight, I think we should have charged earlier. It took us 5-6 months before we started to ask for money, which is way too long IMO.

      Quick side note: this is the first time we pay ourselves as founders, but we have been charging for the last 18 months at least. Just keeping the money for the company :)

      1. 1

        Regarding your strategy, I am the same way lol, not really trying to overthink it

      2. 1

        Long weekend my apologies for the late reply! I see so you guys scored a nice enterprise company!! I think I am going to grandfather my current users in and give them the option to pay in order to get the "pro" or "premium" status even though nothing will change

  3. 2

    Congrats and keep going!

    1. 1

      Thanks :) GL/HF as well!

  4. 1

    It's not much, but these euros mean more to me than any salary.

    Amen my brother, amen.

  5. 1

    Nice! Congrats man

  6. 1

    Congrats on the consistency!

  7. 2

    This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

    1. 2

      Thanks @getflookup!

      The post is more about the small milestone: paying ourselves for the first time than about the project in itself. You can still have a look if you'd like: superdocu.com :)

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