Poll: is your startup profitable?

[mkrecny]

Also - http://microha.us

[davidw]

Other interesting options:

* Yes - and we're making more than we would working elsewhere.

* Yes - and it's at least "ramen profitable" and more or less self-sustaining.

* Yes, but not enough to live on just yet.

[preinheimer]

I like this, we're covering all direct costs, but we're not paying ourselves nearly what we're worth yet.

[MattBearman]

Definitely, mine would be "Yes, but not enough to live on just yet."

[qompiler]

* Yes - but actually no, we are still in denial.

[regal]

Here's a vote for door #2: ramen profitable, bordering on door #1: more than would make elsewhere.

[jpdoctor]

I would add: Yes, and our biggest problem is how to invest the profits.

[_yb]

Not exactly a startup: our project [1] is making some revenue, but is far from profitable (edit: which is kind of on purpose, but that's a story for another time)

[1] http://freelancersticker.com

[MattBearman]

Interesting, I was thinking of doing something like this to my macbook recently.

[lquist]

Anybody willing to share profit ranges?

We're in the $1-5M range. About 9 months old. Bootstrapped.

[olalonde]

Wow, that's pretty amazing. B2B or B2C? SaaS? Where do your revenues come from (monthly subscription, advertising, etc.)?

[bernatfp]

Would love reading a blog post about your story so far.

[taf2]

yeah that is really good after only 9 months - what business?

[suhastech]

Not sure if it'd count (not really a startup) but could live on it in India.

http://thehorcrux.com/

That makes me think, coders in India have an edge when it comes to quitting their outsourced job. Being ramen profitable (or idly profitable?) is actually quite easy compared to the first world counterparts.

Call it reverse geo-arbitrage?

[RivieraKid]

Those who are profitable are more likely to vote.

[Ixiaus]

Profit is funny for the startup scene. When first starting out building my company, my co-founder and I were often focused heavily on "profit" when talking to VC's and pitching.

At a demo day we had a meeting with a partner from a big fund and pitched him. He turned us down and told us why but was kind enough to have a follow-on meeting with us to talk further about our pitching strategy and general business strategy.

One of the key points I got out of speaking with him was this: VC's (institutional, not necessarily angels) generally want to see high-growth and not high-profit. If you've got revenue coming in and you're "profitable" on it, then you need to be growing more (spending it). To the point that most VC's believe you should grow so fast that you never reach profitability until you exit OR decide to "level out" the business.

[benjamincburns]

Isn't this a huge burden on the economy as a whole? The vast majority of businesses which follow this strategy will go out of business without ever creating more value than they consumed. A significant percentage of those will over leverage and file bankruptcy, pushing their losses off onto those who helped finance them while driving up interest rates.

How does it pan out long-term for a VC to advocate for this strategy and this strategy alone?

Edit: My gut instinct is that this is an example of a VC valuing short-term gain at the expense of literally everything else. They don't want your business to succeed, they want their business to succeed. They don't want the economy to boom, they want to outpace the economy any way they can. Maybe I just lack experience in this realm (I have nearly zero experience dealing with VCs), and/or this is overly cynical, but this just pisses me off.

[TheTaytay]

Yep! (I feel proud and lucky to say that)

Bootstrapped on $60 in Adwords by my business partner when he was selling a finance spreadsheet in college. :)

http://www.youneedabudget.com

[matthiaswh]

Happy YNAB user here. I was impressed by the number and quality of the support and classes you offer. The philosophy behind YNAB aligns really well with my own. Also happy to see that one time purchase software can be profitable in the Age of SaaS.

[NKCSS]

Off-Topic: but the site looks awesome and so does the video :)

[olalonde]

It's hard to believe that poll isn't heavily biased towares "yes". Looking at the results it's almost as if over 1/3 of startups are profitable which is pretty far from the stats I have seen before.

[kiyanforoughi]

The problem with this poll is that all the folks who are unprofitable will keep quiet and all those that are will share it proudly :-)

Useless poll

[mkrecny]

Actually the data is anonymous, while the comments aren't.

[bennyg]

Just look at the results. That seems not to be the case.

[tluyben2]

No, but have revenue. If not for the crisis we would be making profit now, so it will soon happen :)

[pbo]

I was lead tech (and first hire) at a hardware startup which launched two unsuccessful products then ran out of money (despite some seed funding). After that I left.

Revenue and margins yes, but far from break-even.

[yesimahuman]

Yes. Quadrupled revenue over the last few months and are now 6 full-time people. Primarily bootstrapped apart from TechStars.

http://drifty.com/

[danmaz74]

3 should be more like "no, and we don't have any revenue".

[SZenith]

Forgive me, for I am ignorant. Why do some many of you not even get revenue?

Is the aim to build a userbase before monetizing the site (or flipping it)?

[benjamincburns]

In my case my "startup" is a side project which doesn't cost me much to run. I started when my day job was rather soul-sucking. The day job has since improved, but I still work on the side gig from time to time.

I'd say my strategy now, if I have one, is to build in some natural virality so that I don't have to exert too much effort to attract new users. Presently if I market I'll get a good number of users for a week or so, then traffic drops back to nil. Once I get a regular user base I'll look at monetizing.

[massarog]

Yes we are profitable and we've always bootstrapped everything we do: http://viralsweep.com

[agurha]

No, but we got revenue. http://urlbox.io - We are screenshot as a service.

[peacemaker]

Interesting. This seems like the very definition of "a feature, not a product" yet you have revenue. Are you forecasting growth that will support you full time?

I ask because I seem to have 100's of ideas like this but feel like they fall into the 'feature' category, rather than a full business.

Anyway, good luck with it, the site and features look great!

[MicahWedemeyer]

You'll have to do a retrospective and let us know how this promotional campaign for microha.us goes.

[magicmarkker]

Yes, doing at least a million in profit a year for the past 2 years.

[return0]

Other option: Yes, one of them :)