I spent five years building a webapp and got my first $1 (2022)
18 comments
·February 1, 2025android521
OccamsMirror
> mistakenly convince ourselves that if I add one more feature,
Even non-technical founders make this error. Everyone wants to believe that "just one more feature" is the difference between make and break.
In my experience reducing features is better to begin with.
reactordev
>In my experience reducing features is better to begin with.
This is right approach. Lean. If you don’t have PMF, reduce your features until you find it. Pivot. Maybe pivot again. Eventually you’ll find a market to serve. Just don’t fall into the sunken cost fallacy. Time box your market exploration.
KingOfCoders
I remember the moment when in my last startup, the first invoice was paid - $5. A magic moment. I still remember the name of the customer. The last invoice before exit was $50.000. I remember that customer too.
arionhardison
Same here but I learned so much I think it was worth it, im literally 4y+ in. I made a platform for my own personal website:
then Ai education: https://pub.education
then Ai healthcare: https://codify.healthcare
I used to think my goal was to do this and that and change the world etc... I am starting to think that I just like building things and maybe thats OK.
ipnon
I wouldn't be who I am today without wasting years in the bike shed. Kudos!
nrilead9
One time I set out to write an accounting ledger application and towards the end realized I built an ORM framework.
Neither the application nor the ORM lived on. I now start from an existing ORM framework for any new project.
Good learning!
jsemrau
I built a deep search for financial research in 2023 and learned that 2025 would have been the year to launch it.
swoorup
Surprisingly the cost to develop is fairly accurate, using scc's COCOMO
Estimated Cost to Develop (organic) $1,023,233
Estimated Schedule Effort (organic) 13.87 months
Estimated People Required (organic) 6.55
writtenAnswer
I want to be as cool as this guy.
Frederation
Thats cool.
Uptrenda
Light text on light background for max pain. Still I will read it though. Frankly, I commend anyone who is willing to work long-term on massive projects by themselves like this. I find it inspiring since all my projects are like this tbh.
Seems like frameworks were a major problem for the project. I get it. Sometimes if you're too early you end up having to build not only your project but a small ecosystem of things to support it.
Here's the software they ended up making which looks frigging cool: https://signal.vercel.app/
makerdiety
Is that Signal Vercel MIDI thing something people can use to make music for free?
reactordev
Yes
nikolayasdf123
yeah, GitHub Sponsors is non-existent, impossible to get any revenues from it
david_allison
And yet it still hurts significantly less that Patreon
Spent last year working on a side project and assumed I would need this and that in order to launch. But after it was ready to launch, I found out there was no product market fit. I have known about the importance of quickly finding out pmf but still made the mistakes. knowing != doing. We just love building stuff and mistakenly convince ourselves that if I add one more feature, this thing would be ready for launch and take off. But in reality...