Comment by jenius | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jenius | Hacker News Reader

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Just this weekend, I started coding up a tiny "saas product" that I thought about last week. Nobody knows about it, and that certainly has no launch page or audience. I got most of it done over the weekend, and really enjoyed putting it together in my favorite stack (sinatra, roots, marionette) and doing some design work, which I don't often get a chance to do.

I'll probably launch it late this week or next week. I have no audience, and don't expect massive profits either. I made it mostly because I want it. Since I plan on using it extensively, I honestly don't care if I have huge profits or a gigantic audience. I spent $5 on the domain name, am hosting it along with 10 other sites on a $5/month digital ocean box. I put in some great work this weekend, and am now going to end up with something that will fit nicely into my workflow.

It will ship with a decent free plan, and a $5/month pro plan with some expanded capabilities. If one person signs up for the pro plan, that covers the cost of hosting for this site and 9 other sites (bonus!) If 2 people sign up for the pro plan, it's profitable. If zero people sign up, I paid a very small cost for something that's going to be really useful to me.

Sometimes I wonder why so many developers gravitate towards huge ideas that they think other people might want rather than starting small, with things that you want. With this little thing I'm making, there's no risk. I've already won.

What you've made is just a hobby then, not a business. (Not that there's anything wrong with programming being a hobby - it's more about managing expectations)

I don't agree with that either. It starts as a hobby, sure. But if it's doing well, I could definitely keep working and expanding it out. Start small and ship fast.

Don't be so dismissive. This could very easily transition into a business.

The only real difference is that the author won't feel too much pain if it doesn't make a lot of money.

Agreed. The custom domain makes it pretty trivial to do initial scaling. This leaves only marketing as the big hurdle to go from small scale to something larger.

Yes, only marketing.

I’m not sure - I’ve coded several "micro-businesses". They make small amounts of money, and cost small amounts of money to run, and take almost no time.

One for example makes about $500 revenue with $200 expenses and 2 hours a year. It’s profitable, I’m not doing it because I like spending time on it - or I’d spend more time on it.

These aren’t traditional businesses, but they sure aren’t hobbies. They are services I think need to exist, and that I can create, without "wasting my time".

I think the distinction Bluedevil is trying to make is you're going into this SaaS app with no intention of it being hugely profitable or successful. You're scratching an itch and if other people decide to pay you to help scratch their itch as well, then that's just a sweet bonus.

In contrast, a business would be going in with the intention of the service/app being successful (profitable or popular). Maybe hobby isn't the best way to describe it, but I agree your way of looking at things is closer to a hobby then a business.

In my book If you don't enjoy doing it not a hobby. If you care about ROI, and profit it is a business.

For me weather something is a business or a hobby has more to do with outlook than anything else. A few lucky people have insanely profitable, and scalable hobbies with 1000s of employees, and plenty of kids are struggling to keep their lawn mowing biz afloat so they can afford a new video game.

Over the years I've been told that company I founded 8 years ago, and has been my and several other peoples's day job ever since, is a hobby for many reasons, including not enough W2 employees, revenue and so on. Which, even though these things were said to prop up the speakers egos, made me think on the topic - and this is what I've come up with.

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edit: totally rewritten

I have very similar experience creating a few microwebsites making $200-300 a month with no intervention what gives extreme ROI (2-3 days of initial work). These are mainly spin-offs - projects we have coded in spare time - from our Ruby on Rails and Java software house http://codedose.com

<shameless plug> If you want to build your MVP or extend your existing development team with reliable programmers thinking about scalable design, SEO and A/B testing from the very beginning we are the guys the call. </shameless plug>

It's a business in a similar vein to someone selling things at a local craft fair. What would have to change about his idea for you to consider it a business?

Not sure - if it's a hobby, then it's a hobby with fair potential to become a passive income or a lifestyle business (or more).

Just because the parent has reduced the risk of setting up a business doesn't mean he isn't setting up a business. There's no compelling reason to believe that the parent commenter has any smaller chance of success than any other business - but he surely has a smaller chance of making a significant loss.

There's no compelling reason to believe that the parent commenter has any smaller chance of success than any other business

Really? He stated in his comments that he doesn't plan to do anything for this site. No marketing, no publicity, nothing. His goal is to not lose money. Not to make money, just simply to not lose any. Do you think that has the same chance as success as someone who's only goal is to make money?

It goes back to my original comment on his post - if your #1 goal isn't making money, then you should consider it a hobby. That's not a bad thing at all, again, it's to keep things realistic with yourself.

> Do you think that has the same chance as success as someone who's only goal is to make money?

Yes, or at least maybe. The viability of businesses is extremely low in almost all circumstances. Doing something creative and putting it out there with a will to get some income from it perhaps has no lower chance than a more aggressive business strategy.

By reducing the cost of running the business to near-zero, you extend your runway to near-infinite. I'd say it's as good a bet as a VC-funded startup which needs regular cash injections to survive infancy.

> if your #1 goal isn't making money

I understand why you are saying that, and given the state of the world, you may well be correct in your belief.

However, I find it an extreme and quite a negative view.

As a consumer, I (with my limited economic power) would rather support people and small businesses with a #1 goal of improving the world in at least a small way - perhaps those which you would probably call hobbies - rather than support things that have a primary or exclusive goal of making money.

I believe that having money as a primary focus will, slowly but surely, damage your business branding over time.

The only tech business I can think of that meets your description is Pinboard - how do you assess the apps/sites/businesses against your criteria?

Thinking about it some more, most things I "fund" are a bit like this:

* Mailpile

* HabitRPG

* Ubuntu Phone (RIP)

Pinboard is a nice example, I have an account there.

Ethical criteria are not high on my list, but I try to apply them to the best of my knowledge when two competing services both meet my needs. E.g. LibreOffice vs Microsoft Office, and Starbucks vs local coffee house (if you count that as tech related), I tend to have an ethical preference for small and/or local businesses: I think it benefits me to support diversity and the local community.

Some nice tech companies that I'm aware of:

* Hog Bay Software

* 7 Generation Games

One of the reasons i taught myself to program years ago, was because i wanted the power to make my life easy for myself. I am currently building a semantic supply chain for my ideas, i have being using a few notetaking apps but they do not satisfy my needs because they lack in their ability for me to query, visualize and interlink my ideas.

So i was reading a paper on supply chain management and thought maybe i can implement this process for taking my ideas from inception to prototype. This is not a startup and i will use the cheapest hosting i can find, but i am thinking of allowing people to use it in the web and app form. If it gets traction, i will adjust app accordingy, if not i have a cool process to get my ideas out and visualize their process.

The bottom line is: "Don't build technology unless you feel the pain of not having it." http://nathanmarz.com/blog/suffering-oriented-programming.ht...

Because so many developers want to build a business. You've aimed your sights at making $5/month.

You can move your sights after they are aimed. Let's start at $5/month then see how it goes : )

Because we don't want to be stuck in a cubicle until we're 70 years old. That's why.

So..... what did you make?

(The fact that you didn't say shows that you REALLY aren't concerned about marketing! But I'm still curious.)

haha fair question. I'll post in on HN as soon as it's done (maybe it will make it to the front page, who knows!), and I'll reply to this comment and let you know - promise : )

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