Bootstrapped to $200k ARR 🔥
by Kyle NolanAfter 2 years of obsession and consistency, I've officially bootstrapped https://projectionlab.com to $16.7k MRR as a solo dev and side project.
→ 9 months to get to $1,000
→ 4 months to get to $2,000
→ 7 months to get to $5,000
→ 6 months to get to $10,000
→ 2 months to get to $16,7142
Even though I'm shocked and elated it could ever get this far, there is still an insecure voice in my head that reminds me it could all go to zero overnight 😬
When I was just starting out, that voice would say things like "no one would buy this", or "you don't have enough skill."
Then later, "this won't actually scale" and "you'll never get real traction."
At each stage, there were fun new things to fuel the paranoia! 😅
But zooming out, I wonder if it is beginning to look silly that PL is just a side project.
When is the right time to finally throw caution to the wind?
-
2
Your site and design look awesome. Can you give some insight on what technologies you used. How did you do the design? What technologies you used to build front and back end. The reason i'm asking is that I'm on the same boat trying to do a side project but I don't know where to start. Should I do the design myself, or something like webflow. etc... Really appreciate your insight here.
-
3
I'm using Vue.js, Vuetify, Chart.js, Firebase, Paddle, and GCP. That stack has been fairly efficient for me so far, though in retrospect it might have been faster to build the marketing site portion using something like framer/webflow rather than coding it all from scratch and trying to figure out how to make Vue SEO friendly.
-
1
I also use Vue in my stack and I feel your pain when it comes to making it SEO friendly. On the other hand, now that I've done it I'm very happy how it turned out.
-
1
Ah nice, what was your approach for improving SEO compatibility?
-
2
Well, first I tried Nuxt but it came with a lot of baggage that made porting my project over kinda difficult.
Then I basically got it working by reading through the Vue SSR documentation and implementing the server side stuff myself. Their documentation focuses on using a Node backend but I typically use .NET so once I got the gist of it down I came up with my own approach.
-
1
So you didn't have any qualms about stability/scalability with hosting yourself?
My approach so far for the marketing site is to use vite-plugin-ssr for static site generation and host the built pages via Firebase Hosting
-
-
-
-
-
-
2
Congratulations, Kyle! Looks like you've built a really useful and very comprehensive software. I love your humility about the whole thing.
Any plans to go beyond the US?
-
1
Thanks! And actually, PL already includes some international account types and tax config presets. If there are more you'd like to see added, feel free to make some suggestions on the public roadmap.
-
-
2
NICE... I am looking for financial projects for our audience... and I see you have an affiliate program, will join!
-
2
This is so nice to see! Your product is awesome (I'm a lifetime paid user), and it's inspiring to see your results.
Maybe steady, low churn for a few months could be the signal to go full time? Are you willing to share your churn rate?
-
1
hey thanks! glad to hear you've gotten that kind of value out of the tool :)
ProfitWell reports monthly churn ranging from 3-6%. not sure exactly how that stacks up to other SaaS products in this space, but if I'm not mistaken that would equate to losing 40+% of the existing user base annually... which feels intimidating...
-
-
1
Kyle - Love the look of your site. Do you have a designer that you work with?
-
1
Couldn’t be happier for you Kyle 🔥
-
1
Thanks! 😊
-
-
1
Congratulations! Fantastic news :)
Do you recall any obviously pivotal moments when you realized you had product market fit?
-
1
Honestly, I'm still not sure I know what that term means! I've heard so many conflicting definitions at this point, that I'm losing confidence it has precise meaning 😅
Which definition do you go by?
-
1
Ha. That's a good point. I think it's just one of those things you know you have when you have it.
You seem to have found a market in the FI community. The fact that people are paying you seems to indicate you're clearly solving a problem for them. So yeah, you've got a product, a market and they fit together. You have it.
The trajectory of your numbers looks great. I guess I was just curious if you did anything in particular that moved the needle.
-
-
-
1
You posted in February about reaching 6k MRR, and now in September you’re at 16.7k MRR. That’s a big jump! What do you think contributed to the large increase in the relatively short amount of time?
-
1
It's been a combination of word of mouth spread, posting updates to places like HN, Reddit, Twitter, and writing a few guest posts for bloggers/influencers in the personal finance + financial independence space.
-
