<story><title>Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?</title><text>Pinboard&amp;#x27;s numbers* were just realeased, and that made me curious. How many of us currently run a single-person company? By company, I mean something that generates (or is intending to generate) revenues. Side projects count.&lt;p&gt;Three thing I&amp;#x27;m most curious about - growth in user base, revenues &amp;amp; profitability over the years.&lt;p&gt;If you can share numbers, that would be fantastic.&lt;p&gt;*https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12059965</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway58182</author><text>Just hit $1 million&amp;#x2F;year in sales :)&lt;p&gt;About 20 years ago wrote a scratch-my-itch B2B desktop software for Windows.  Side project for 10 years which is how long it took to reach about $120K to make the switch to full time.  Added features and increased price accordingly.&lt;p&gt;Hired a few more people.  Growth is slow but steady.  Yearly renewable support contracts are the secret.&lt;p&gt;Coding is easy, marketing is hard. Persistence, persistence, persistence.  In a very crowded niche.  Desktop software is definitely not dead - you can charge a whole lot more for it, and ongoing costs (other than people) is comparable to trendy web apps.&lt;p&gt;Using throwaway so customers don&amp;#x27;t find this comment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SoftwarePatent</author><text>&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Coding is easy, marketing is hard&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It took me over five years in this business to fully internalize this. Programmers (me included) often complain about clueless entrepreneurs in this business, but even more rare than a good programmer is a good entrepreneur, who can sell&amp;#x2F;market and turn code into money.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?</title><text>Pinboard&amp;#x27;s numbers* were just realeased, and that made me curious. How many of us currently run a single-person company? By company, I mean something that generates (or is intending to generate) revenues. Side projects count.&lt;p&gt;Three thing I&amp;#x27;m most curious about - growth in user base, revenues &amp;amp; profitability over the years.&lt;p&gt;If you can share numbers, that would be fantastic.&lt;p&gt;*https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=12059965</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway58182</author><text>Just hit $1 million&amp;#x2F;year in sales :)&lt;p&gt;About 20 years ago wrote a scratch-my-itch B2B desktop software for Windows.  Side project for 10 years which is how long it took to reach about $120K to make the switch to full time.  Added features and increased price accordingly.&lt;p&gt;Hired a few more people.  Growth is slow but steady.  Yearly renewable support contracts are the secret.&lt;p&gt;Coding is easy, marketing is hard. Persistence, persistence, persistence.  In a very crowded niche.  Desktop software is definitely not dead - you can charge a whole lot more for it, and ongoing costs (other than people) is comparable to trendy web apps.&lt;p&gt;Using throwaway so customers don&amp;#x27;t find this comment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tjholowaychuk</author><text>Nice congrats!&lt;p&gt;I often hear the same thing, it doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what your product is, it&amp;#x27;s how you market it. I still want to make a nice product of course haha but marketing is new to me.&lt;p&gt;Any generic software marketing tips? I promised myself I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be one of those annoying startups that emails you ever day or two</text></comment>