< $48k/yr with someone working even 20 hrs/wk is a worse proposition than getting a mid-level 9-5 job in the US.
I definitely don't believe a business needs to have the growth/revenue VCs demand, but it should at least pay one person a decent salary...
Fair enough if it doesn't sound appealing to you, I can totally see how that might not seem interesting for all types of personalities, but there are all sorts, right?
Either way, I don't think focussing on that figure and dismissing something like this out of hand, assuming others have the same priorities makes a whole lot of sense. I think the world would be quite a bit more boring if people wouldn't try out things, ignoring the temptations that come alonng with job security and all that jazz.
My question is rather about why HN would find this interesting. It was a sincere question. Simple analytics has been beaten to death as a product, and when it's done "well", this community tends to have ethical misgivings about it.
So is it the experiment in transparency? Is it that I'm totally missing something novel or useful about the product?
Doesn't mean we're all craving to add a tracking pixel to our websites just because we upvoted it, I'd say the tracking aspect is not as interesting, it's more the solo-SaaS-porn. And the hubris + sport of "damn, I could build this" in the back of our heads. It's HN crack.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844083
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868
Whereas if you're salaried at $48k/yr, the chance of getting a $48k/yr raise, and then another, and another, and 10x'ing or 100x'ing your compensation is effectively zero.
This is speaking from experience, I run a SaaS company currently making $60k/mo, and not too long ago we were making $4k/mo.
I myself am much more interested in the data behind the people in the process of going from 0 to successful, even if they fail; not the hindsight blog posts about people who are already successful.
I understand that sentiment and have no argument against it, but there are tons of stories posted to HN with similar attributes (single founder SaaS, $3-5k MRR, blog post likely submitted as a marketing tactic) and none of those blow up the way this has.
To try and answer that question, I think its because this one is fairly easy to read, understand, they're very open with their data, they show their work on how they calculated MRR (which is probably useful for some people), and while yeah this is probably a marketing tactic, they are also not really being pushy about it.
As a startup you are building a product that other people buy. You are exchanging a product for money. Building a product has a big first time cost but selling to 100 customers vs million customers has a much smaller marginal cost (at-least for software)
In 5 years he could be making 100X median salary or 10X while putting 10% of normal work and let it sit on cruise control. Obviously there is a risk to startups.
But I applaud them sharing the Journey. Owning means of production is a very satisfying feeling.
Because the prospect of financial growth is missing in a mid-level 9-5 job.
Whereas the 4k/month could be 24k/month next year.
Additionally, many grow to be relatively large businesses with time due to being built from the ground up to be extremely self-sustaining unlike more traditional startups that grow fast then die fast.
It's noteworthy that relative to expenses, this business is profitable.
It's also noteworthy in that many businesses never achieve profitability.
How much do you think Google analytics is worth today?