Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business

Thanks. For a while there, it wasn't clear to me which side of the line I was walking.

Something that stuck with me from Poor Charlie’s Almanack is that low expectations are a cornerstone of a happy life. I built this for myself first, so when people actually signed up and paid, it was incredibly motivating. I was thrilled to spend my free time treating those early customers like royalty and building more of what they wanted.

If I had instead come into this with the expectation of quick success, I doubt I would have made it through those early years.

And cheers from one bootstrapper to another. It's not easy, but I can't imagine a more rewarding way to build.

I'm grateful to hear it's made such a difference for you, and that early support back in 2021 means more than you know. In the down months and challenging times, it's the encouragement from early adopters like you that kept me going.

Caring is kind of a superpower. And not just in terms of signal, but also the quality of work. I don't think this would have gone anywhere if I hadn't cared deeply about solving the problem in an elegant way.

Earlier in my career, I worked on some things as a corporate engineer that were hard to care about, and there's just no comparison.

I think there may be a few wrinkles in the nl tax code that are tricky to capture with the current framework, but it has been a goal from the beginning to be as inclusive as possible for international scenario modeling. I'm continually making refinements there, and always open to ideas and suggestions if you have some.

Live is overkill, all they'd need is an every 30-60 minute update on equity prices, which is not an overly expensive thing to acquire. With a 65% profit margin in their business, this is a dead-obvious feature they should be automating away to save their users a sizable headache.

Account linking for automated balance updates is our most upvoted and most controversial feature request.

I agree it would be really nice if it worked well, but my understanding from other founders is that aggregator reliability still leaves a lot to be desired in 2025, and is always a huge expense and support burden. As a small, bootstrapped team building a long-term planning tool where current balances are only a small piece of the picture, we need to be really careful about what we choose to take on. Currently there are still dozens of other high-priority feature requests that will also deliver real value but without those downsides.

I do go back-and-forth on this though. And I think eventually there will come a time for it.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the tool, and thanks so much for your support!

p.s. also might be worth noting that there is a plugin system, and community members have built integrations that can pull in balance updates automatically from some of the popular budgeting tools.

aww thanks, glad to hear it resonates.

it seems like every founder has their own version of that rollercoaster.

which moments from yours do you feel you learned the most from?

Thanks! Supporting Basic users comes at a real cost, but we want planning to stay accessible for everyone. To us, one-off planning feels like a better alternative than stripping down the product or selling user data.

Profit margin started out around 90% in the early years, but is looking more like 65% this year now that we're making a concerted effort to reinvest into growth, building a team, etc.

If ARR grows enough, there should be plenty of room in there to pay the founders.

For extreme examples of ARR growth at 0% profit paying off, look at Uber, Amazon, and ServiceNow. I know these are very much outliers. All three had rapid revenue growth but profits at (or far below) zero. But for all three, the founders are sitting pretty today.

https://valustox.com/NOW

https://valustox.com/UBER

https://valustox.com/AMZN

I don't think I'd call earning $250k "easy". Yes a significant % of us on HN are there, but we're still in the minority.

I share your frustration with the endless focus on revenue, rather than profit (looking at you, indiehackers.com). I suspect in many cases it is because they are embarassed to disclose their profit.

But congrats to the OP. It is impressive growth for a bootstrapped business.

Thanks! Seeing indie hackers building in public transparently about the ups and downs like pieter levels, danny postma, jon yongfook, etc, really inspired me early on. So I decided to try to emulate that. (Well, partly: idk how some of those guys post 100x a day)

I think it can vary from person to person depending on your goals. For me, an important signal was that complete strangers were willing to pay. That first Show HN post made all the difference. Without that, this could have ended up in my side project graveyard with 100 other projects.

Maybe validation isn't one big moment, but maybe validation could be many small moments. So, those first 5 users: small validation. First 1K MRR: small validation. Etc. I think the point of the article is to be persistent and if you're getting small validations along the way, then those are indicators to keep going. At least, that's my take.

I only have a product that makes $6k per month, but from my point of view, the validation is how many paying users sign up per day. Even one per day can add up. Hope this helps.