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Comment by bttf | Hacker News Reader

This is an interesting perspective on running a SaaS and pricing it for slower paced growth. On the Inkdrop pricing page, it reads:

>We would like to provide good, quick and warm user support. If we got a lot of users, we won't be able to support them all.

Frankly admitting that they want to pace user growth for better quality service is both brutally honest, and enticing.

I hope more bootstrapped SaaS companies achieve this equilibrium where pricing is premium, growth is paced, and quality is high.

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Maybe a little bit too paced?

According to the first graph, it's $30,000 in total sales over the last 2 years which forced him to continue freelancing as his main income. This post is basically announcing ramen profitability. (Of course it's still a great achievement to turn any profit on a side project, let alone supplant his main income)

While you're right that $30K isn't hugely profitable, his growth curve looks good, especially at the very end. He could probably either reduce his focus and cash $1300 in profit extra a month or continue and it appears that his product could keep trending up for a while. That's a really sweet position to be in IMHO

Haha thank you for that.

I have been in the market for a new term, for what to say to people what my goal is with my side projects. Up until now I have been saying, it's not making much, it's all supposed to be for some "beer money"...

Welp. I stopped drinking.

Now I can call it ramen money instead. Cool!

(I do dropshipping of computer hardware, specializing in computerchips). And currently building an OS-disk to the enthusiast-market for Apple G5 workstations (yes, it's a hyper niche, and will only cover my ramens) :)

It's not my terminology: http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html

Ah thanks. I will begin reading more PG. It's necessary I realize.

I wouldn't call it "necessary" at all. Some of it is useful shorthand and steals some credibility for you if you're dealing with people who are way too deep in startupland, but most of the advice I've ever read from Paul Graham is on the more basic end of things.

If you have some basic notion of running a business, you probably won't find much in the way of revelations there. (Some of this is the "Seinfeld is Unfunny" effect, because the better advice you'll find in his blog is now common knowledge, but more is that running a tech business is still running a business.) If you aren't familiar with running a business I can see it being a useful naming-of-parts exercise, though.

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