Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?

Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by wakatime on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:19PM (#21336143)

Seven years ago I solo-started an automatic time tracker for programmers called WakaTime [1] and launched here on HN [2]. Partly from listening to developers too much, I waited way too long (almost a year) before adding a paid plan, but now it generates more MRR than an SF developer salary not including stock options. Technically I make more from RSUs and stock from past startups as a regular employee, but if I wasn't lucky with those then it would be my highest income stream.

1: https://wakatime.com/about

2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046227

For anyone thinking it's egregiously difficult to start a solo-project: You're right, but if you stick with it your persistence will pay off. For solo-products, I think grit is the deciding factor between success and failure.

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by Madmallard on Friday October 25, 2019 @07:03AM (#21353760)

Grit is definitely the deciding factor for success. It's practically the main trait selected for by evolution in humans.

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by bobbonew on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @01:55PM (#21337088)

Do you have a leaderboard of the most popular IDEs? I was really curious to see which IDE is the most popular and how often it is used.

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by wakatime on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @02:04PM (#21337176)

This page shows IDEs by most time logged:

https://wakatime.com/a-look-back-at-2018

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by ratsimihah on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:28PM (#21336239)

How does top 1 code for 13 hours per day? o_o

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by MrDresden on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:55PM (#21336522)

I've used Wakatime now for a few years (I highly recommend it), and have been going through one of the toughest projects of my life in the last 8 months. At one point I reached ~16 hours per day (for only a couple of days). This kind of output is not sustainable for more than a few days without incurring serious problems from it. I have now gone back down to a more normal 6-9 hours per day.

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by wakatime on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @02:02PM (#21337152)

Tip: Turn up your timeout preference.

https://wakatime.com/blog/37-when-is-time-tracking-too-accur...

The default 15 mins is very accurate, and only represents time typing not time working.

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by MrDresden on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @03:07PM (#21337775)

Thanks for the tip, didn't know I could modify this.

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by wakatime on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:33PM (#21336289)

Not sustainably... I've done that myself: it's hella fun but towards the end of the week the code stopped making sense and had to sleep for a whole day. WakaTime is very accurate so my daily average is only 4 hours of actual typing per day:

https://wakatime.com/a-look-back-at-2018

https://wakatime.com/@alan

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by codesternews on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @12:36PM (#21336320)

Thank you for sharing.

How much time it took you to build first version and whole product? Any advice for starters?

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Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by wakatime on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @02:14PM (#21337266)

There were several stages of MVP. First usable version took a month and half to build and public launch with 2 IDEs supported was 2 and half months after starting to build.

May 3 2013 - Started development Flask website & Vim plugin (https://wakatime.com/blog/1-why-i-built-wakatime)

June 25 2013 - Finished Vim plugin and Website (https://github.com/wakatime/vim-wakatime/commit/4346a055e301...)

July 1 2013 - Started Sublime plugin (https://github.com/wakatime/sublime-wakatime/commit/b7fe36f8...)

July 15 2013 - Finished Sublime plugin and public launch (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6046227)

Unfortunately I don't have WakaTime data until after finishing the Vim plugin, but everything after that I can see how long the actual coding took by dogfooding.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses? by joshmn on Wednesday October 23, 2019 @01:09PM (#21336637)

Thanks for this. I love using Wakatime and have nothing but good things to say about it.

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