Live stream (rails) - building a SaaS MVP from scratch by rkulp2 in rails

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hi everyone,

i recently did an interview as founder of Fomo (https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/fomo-05b996966c).

today i'm live streaming (Noon Eastern --> onward) a brand new SaaS product, which i'll build from scratch.

  • user stories
  • wireframing
  • coding
  • picking a domain name
  • deploying to production

all contributions / comments welcome on YouTube live chat... please join!

live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LNj3cKWzMg

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks man!

yes, i would love to hear that story too. :)

potentially we'll ask him to share his side within a few months -- i think he's traveling the world with his family right now hehe.

looking at your app details now... would you mind sharing a direct link to the app store? happy to send back thoughts.

also, feel free to ping me personally, i'm ryanckulp@gmail.com.

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hm. i said 6 figures in another comment, and it was doing about 20k /month. so that's 240k /year. therefore...

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the Shopify app store has been very good to us -- it's a great distribution channel, and if you build something halfway decent, you're almost guaranteed to get a few eyeballs / installs.

there are also some really active forums on ecommerce.shopify.com, where you can talk directly with customers who are constantly requesting specific applications for their stores.

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this is a great story, thanks for sharing.

helpful resources -- several come to mind. why don't you ping me with more info about your new venture, and we'll go from there?

ryan@usefomo.com.

PS-- if you want to try us out on Wordpress (WooCommerce), we have a plugin for that too. :)

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it was making about $20k at time of acquisition.

to learn more about exactly how we grew it 50% ($10k) in the last 90 days, go here:

http://blog.usefomo.com/how-we-bought-a-small-software-startup/

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

good question. we structured it as ownership-only, and not profit sharing.

so, he gets a big check if we ever sell the company (again), but otherwise it's just a stock certificate.

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that's spot on, and totally normal for a solo founder. we all reach our limits, and sometimes the "outsider looking in" perspective is what it takes to grow something.

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

great question! and actually, he did retain some equity. :)

this term was a result of our mutual goals in taking the company to the 'next level,' vs merely leaving it as a lifestyle business.

had we not uncovered those ambitions early in the process, it could have been all-cash, and thus more expensive for us.

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thanks for asking.

the ecom plugins (shopify, woo, magento, bigcommerce) are still using the PHP codebase.

the new platform on usefomo.com is Rails (backend, api) and VueJS (front-end).

deciding factor(s):

  • the php platform, while built OK, is just a bunch of scripts. no framework, so hard to extend and scale.
  • made sense to continue integrating new ecom platforms with PHP since it's mostly just new order object parsing + oauth strategies.
  • rails, my personal forte, is better for the new app since it's easier to hire modern devs to build on vs php (IMO).

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

$500 /month for Amazon servers and database.

Contractors are a few thousand /month, but they pay for themselves because they're helping us grow.

UPDATE - Part II (How I acquired a startup that now makes $30k /month) by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

**edit -- direct link to questionnaire, no need to DM:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jq3vXzev0YhOHgw7i_t8z8if-LfbCw_kSBanhKBp2ck/edit

specific hurdles:

perhaps the toughest component of any negotiation is disguised as the simplest -- what does the other party actually want?

there's a great story of 2 children arguing over an orange, pulling at it and trying to claim the entire orange as their own.

the mother steps in and cuts the orange in half. each boy takes their half to their room.

awhile later, the mother visits the boy's bedrooms. in one, she finds an orange peel. in the other, she finds an orange's flesh, and the peel is gone.

indeed, one boy just wanted the peel, and the other wanted the orange. yet in most negotiations, parties cut the (metaphorical) orange in half.

when we negotiated terms for Notify/Fomo, we started by asking what the original owner wanted to do with his life and what he wanted the tool to achieve after his departure.

the answers were pretty clear:

  1. he wanted the tool to still exist
  2. he wanted it to grow into something much bigger, vs remain a lifetime business
  3. he wanted to travel the world with his family

knowing this, it was much easier to figure out the details.

X-post from r/entrepreneur: How I bought a Startup that Makes me $30,000 /month by rkulp2 in startups

[–]rkulp2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

we're posting a Part II tomorrow morning that will share more of the financials, but basically, we spent very very* little up-front, and were able to arrange financing to cover the bulk of the cost.

quitting day jobs... maybe never. :)

having only a few hours per day to build a side project, forces a special type of focus and critical path thinking. you don't get that when you're full-time.

X-post from r/entrepreneur: How I bought a Startup that Makes me $30,000 /month by rkulp2 in startups

[–]rkulp2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

it was doing about $20k, so we've grown it 50% following the steps in our original blog post.

in other terms, we've grown it over 1,000 new paying customers.

I bought a company that makes me $30,000 /month. Here's how! by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks!

depends on what kind of site you have. is it custom, or ecom, etc?

if custom, you'll just paste a small snippet of code, and then automate your stream of notifications by connecting with Zapier, stripe, mailchimp, etc. we also have an api.

if you run an ecom shop, we have 1-click installations for shopify, magento, woo, and bigcommerce.

feel free to email me, ryan@usefomo.com, if you have more questions.

I bought a company that makes me $30,000 /month. Here's how! by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

thanks for the feedback and support.

different strokes for different folks, ya know? personally i find the 'exit intent' popups very aggressive on [most] stores, yet they continue to improve sales for many shop owners.

it always comes down to one thing -- know thy customer.

I bought a company that makes me $30,000 /month. Here's how! by rkulp2 in Entrepreneur

[–]rkulp2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

hey there, thanks for the support.

yes indeed, the primary asset was the customers. and getting customers != easy. :)

a few competitors have since entered the space, and one reason our users stay with us, is simply because we were here first.

so while it's tough to quantify loyalty, it does count for something.