Today marks six years since we launched Geocodio.
We built it because it was something we needed to keep our other side projects going. Our measure of success was whether we could get enough customers to cover the $20/month server costs. We broke even the first month, and by month five it was already surpassing the revenue from our other projects. Three years later, we started going full time.
When we launched, there were plenty of people who dismissed it, or said it was worthless because of X reason it didn't exactly fit their personal use case.
But there were just as many, and indeed more, who were excited by it and supportive. We took feedback from the people who were constructive, and slowly iterated and grew based on a steady stream of feedback. That's how we've grown over the past six years.
I'm including our HN launch post so you can see that you don't need universal praise when you launch for something to work out and become your full-time work!