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Comment by ChicagoBoy11 | Hacker News Reader

That's actually substantially higher than I would have imagined. Bootstrapping a business by yourself (and especially doing it like most of those people where it is not something you aren't usually committing full time to) to that mark is incredibly impressive.

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I wrote about this extensively here: https://siliconvict.com/articles/5-lessons-starting-a-500m-a...

It took me nearly a decade to get to where I am today ($700k / year), and half of that time I had a full-time job.

The most important thing to keep in mind is not to stop.

Not stopping for 5 years straight on top of your day job, while you’re are the sole on call pager duty engineer (through holidays and work crunches, etc), is kindly very very difficult and kudos to you but probably borderline unachievable for mere mortals.

Congratulations, I used castingcall.club in around 2014

Now that's surprising! Usually the HN and CCC crowd don't mix.

I actually used it to hire voice actors for a few games/apps I made. Very much enjoyed the community. One guy would submit auditions for parts and intentionally read for the characters in a strange way.

Love your quote "<>, I guess I need to read what this <>head has to say"

My feeling. every. time.

I've spent time reading through your site and inspired by your story and thoughts. One thought came to mind was - what's your go-to tech stack? And how do you typically acquire customers (distribution channels) in the early days of a project?

Rails / React / Tailwind / Postgres - I try new things out as they come out, but this is my current stack.

Early days of a project - I have an active audience, so I simply email them when I want to try a new project. Before that though, I spent about 5 years gathering an audience by being really active in various subreddits.

I'm intrigued by your past and the felony conviction. Do you write about it on your blog? Trying to find more details Mr. Buford

I've been meaning to but as you can imagine it's a sensitive topic.

Many people in society simply cannot accept that a convicted felon deserves second chances once their time is served.

It's been 20 years and I was finally pardoned a few years ago so I'd like this part of my history to be more in the foreground.

Makes sense. You do mention it on a few occasions and I am guessing the domain name reflects that as well so this yields some curiosity. Sounds like it hasn't had much impact on your life more recently. Was it an issue during any fund-raising activities during the due diligence process?

No. It was asked but it was not an issue. It felt harder to rent an apartment than to get VC funding when you have a record.

It was an issue when I immigrated to Europe the first time though.

I had the exact same reaction, I expected the "made any money at all" category to be closer to 5% than this.

Edit: They filtered out any businesses without stripe verified revenue, which makes these numbers a lot more believable.

Had exactly the same reaction, every one of these projects is probably life changing for the founder(s). It's hard work but those stats are still way better and much more satisfying than a lottery ticket.

There is certainly selection bias going on here. Sure, a lot of indie hackers register with the site to get exposure. However a lot of people won't disclose financials until the exposure is an obvious positive for them -- ie "look at how many people already trust and use what I provide."

Same reaction here - 5% sounds pretty good, especially considering indie hackers usually boot strap on their own free time while working. I'd be happy working on a 8-hour-a-week project if it was making 2-4K/Month.

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