scubakid

Anything in particular you're looking for? Currently there is support for some common Canadian account types, tax estimation, CPP, OAS, GIS, etc.

here's a writeup I shared that might be of interest[0]

it's mainly been product-led growth. I've always just been a guy that likes building cool things, and I spent most of the early years head-down coding. anything marketing-oriented was new to me, and not my natural skillset.

gradually PL started getting some attention in the FI / FIRE space, and recently I've begun building out a small team while staying bootstrapped.

https://projectionlab.com/blog/we-reached-1m-arr-with-zero-f...

> outdated software with known vulnerabilities

Maybe I missed it, but was it ever established that these general vulnerabilities are actually relevant to this specific system/implementation?

good point, I'd agree sensors are just a piece of the picture

To me, "what is it like to be a" is more or less the intersection of sensory modalities between two systems... but I'm not sure the extent of the overlap tells you much about whether a given system is "conscious" or not.

You know, I used to bullseye T16s in my womp rat back home, they're not much bigger than thermal exhaust ports.

cool project. I always found java a little verbose for my taste, but I bet this runs faster than our sim engine! (it's in typescript)

I think there's a certain type of engineer that actively prefers working in a small team where you can make an outsized impact and wear many hats. I'm one of them lol.

I wonder if you could bring on just one really good dev who matches that description vs scaling up to a larger team. In many cases, a very small team of A+ players can beat a large team of B players.

Although it sounds like you're saying marketing/distribution may have played a larger role in your trajectory? In hindsight, do you think focusing your team-building efforts on the marketing side would have been a better strategy?

Knowing what you know now, is there anything strategic you would have done differently after reaching that 1M ARR milestone?

Did you consider adding an optional survey (or just an input or two) somewhere in setup or the onboarding flow? I bet some % of people would willingly tell you how/why they are using the software.

Glad to hear it resonated. And also glad I didn't start this project with the expectation of quick success, hype, or exponential growth. If I had, there's no way I would have made it through the slower early years.

you might enjoy The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins.

We've done some pricing experimentation over the years, and it's possible we're actually still positioned too cheap right now for the value the platform provides.

Personal finance is a pretty broad space, and it's common for different people to come to this with varying desires and expectations.

In our experience, the people who see the value in a good long-term DIY financial plan view our current pricing as extremely affordable, especially compared to traditional financial planning services which often charge $3-5k for a PDF and a pat on the back.

Anyway, if automated tracking is the piece that's most important to you, it might be worth noting that we do plan to add more options for that. But that work -- and all the other controversial implications of it that I mentioned in another comment -- just needs to be prioritized against all the other highly requested things on the product roadmap, based on what the community really wants the most.

Yep, I wrote the post!

I'd say we reached PMF a couple years ago the way I define it (solid customer acquisition from organic sources & word-of-mouth, strong retention, sustainable growth).

I was just curious if others might look at it differently, since I know definitions can vary. And like you said, some people might look at this update and dismiss it as still really small-time.

I noticed most tools neglect international scenarios because the US market is big and it's easier to focus on that. So I decided to be different and try to build with as much international flexibility as possible. We have a bunch of international account types and tax preseta, including some for the UK.

Doing some research would definitely be part of the diligence process when considering a new project.

Congrats on 100k organizations, that's impressive.

How much of a pain point is support? At that scale, is it becoming a burden without more of a team in place?

I'd be curious to hear more about what the ups and downs on your journey have been like.

Thanks! He's a fun little copilot when he's not chewing my cables and mousepad.

Definitely agree on thinking in bets and probabilities.

Is your sense that we're officially at PMF now? Or maybe last year even?

Or do you think the question is fundamentally subjective and depends on who you ask and what numbers seem compelling to them, like you kind of alluded to before?

GPT is not bad at high-level guesstimates, but there's a LOT that goes on under the hood to make a detailed, accurate, responsive, and tax-aware long-term planning system with a good UX for nuanced scenario comparisons and what-ifs. At current capability levels, AI tools aren't a great replacement for that in my experience. But we'll see if that changes as they continue to evolve...

one of the nice things about being lean and bootstrapped is there's less pressure to chase the mass market.

so we need to worry less than a venture-backed company probably would about just how far outside of the FIRE community this has a lot of appeal.

that being said, there are certainly a lot of people who would benefit from having a long-term financial plan. here's to hoping your ynab comparison turns out to be apt!

lol so have we gone from "wicked PMF" to just being "onto something"?

the rear-view thing sounds kinda like "you'll know it when you see it"... which I'm sure is true for some people, but idk if I would know when to declare PMF without a more precise definition.