I launched Hourvy — $1/seat time tracker for small businesses. Zero customers. Sharing anyway.
I want to be upfront — this isn't a success story post. This is a "just launched, looking for first 50 customers, sharing the journey" post.
How it started:
I kept seeing the same thing talking to small business owners. Cafes, salons, cleaning crews, landscapers — all tracking employee hours in WhatsApp groups, paper sheets, or spreadsheets nobody maintains properly. Every payday turns into a dispute. Someone claims they worked more hours, owner is digging through old messages from three weeks ago trying to prove something. It damages trust with staff and wastes hours every single week.
Nobody was solving this simply and cheaply for businesses this small. Every tool I found was either built for office teams or priced for companies with HR departments.
What I built:
Hourvy is dead simple. Workers clock in and out from their phone. Owner sees live hours. Mark shifts paid when done. That's the core loop. No payroll processing — we don't touch money. No bloat, no feature tiers, no complicated setup.
Pricing:
$1 per active worker per month. Billed to the business only. Workers always use it free. Forever. A cafe with 8 staff pays $8/month total.
The honest challenge:
At $1/seat the CAC ceiling is brutal. Paid ads are basically off the table — I can't outspend Homebase or Deputy. So the whole strategy is direct outreach, content, word of mouth, and communities like this one.
Stack:
Laravel, Livewire, PostgreSQL, DigitalOcean, Paddle for billing.
Where I am today:
Live at hourvy.com. Zero paying customers. Doing Reddit, Facebook groups, and direct outreach to local businesses. Learning as I go.
What I'd love from this community:
Honest feedback on positioning or the landing page
Anyone who knows a small business owner with hourly staff — I'd genuinely appreciate a mention
Anyone who's been at this stage — what actually got you your first 10 customers?
Happy to answer anything about the build, the market, or the journey. Thanks for reading.
I think the interesting constraint here isn't getting customers—it's preserving the economics that make $1/seat possible.
If paid acquisition is structurally difficult, then every part of the product has to increase the likelihood that one customer naturally leads to the next. At this price point, the growth model becomes part of the product design, not just the marketing strategy.
You nailed it. At $1/seat, the growth model has to live inside the product itself.
My bet is the worker invite flow. Owner invites workers, workers move jobs or start their own business someday, they bring Hourvy with them. Product spreads through the workforce not just owner networks.
Not fully designed around this yet though — right now it's a feature, not an engine. What would you build in to accelerate that loop?
That's exactly the question I'd want to think through with you.
The reason I'm hesitant to answer it off the cuff is that the right loop depends on one assumption about how you expect Hourvy to spread, and I'd rather understand that before suggesting anything.
What's the best email to reach you on?