I happened on this post on Reddit, and thought it re-post-worthy:

I just crossed $20,000 revenue within 10 months of launch, here’s what I learned.
by
u/GuidanceSelect7706 in
sideprojects

I just crossed $20,000 revenue within 10 months of launch, here’s what I learned.

Honestly, I think I could’ve saved myself months of going down the wrong paths if i understood this before i started.

  1. Validate your idea before you start building. I got lucky that the problem was one i had myself.
  2. don’t chase investors. focus on getting users instead and the rest sorts itself out. bootstrapped is completely fine.
  3. talk to your users constantly. it’s the fastest way to know what’s working and where basically all my good ideas came from.
  4. inspiration is the design key when you’re new. don’t build your landing page from scratch, copy sections from tools you love and make them your own.
  5. post online daily. reddit, x, linkedin, tiktok, whatever suits your audience. For me, it’s mostly reddit since that’s where my users are.
  6. Solve your own problem and let that decide if you’re b2b or b2c. i built leadradar because i was the one wasting an hour a day digging through reddit.
  7. i’m bootstrapped and highly recommend it. Keep the 9-5 until you’ve got 1-2 years of runway (living cheap), then go all in.
  8. you earn the right to paid ads by getting organic to work first. i’m still 100% organic. you’ll burn thousands just learning how ads work.
  9. define your most important metrics and track them. they should be the pillars that guide every decision.
  10. offer some sort of free trial at the start. controversial maybe, but the feedback and testimonials i got from it were worth way more than the “lost” revenue.
  11. the first few minutes of your app are a promise: this will help you hit your goal. put a lot of effort into the beginning to convert more people.
  12. have an mvp mindset with everything. ship the minimal version asap, then use feedback to improve it.
  13. just because someone else has done it doesn’t mean you can’t compete. you have no idea how well they’re actually executing.
  14. discipline over motivation. no one’s holding a solo founder accountable, so build systems that force consistency.
  15. if you’re not passionate about what you’re building, the early months with no results will break you.
  16. good testimonials increase the perceived value of your product. collect them relentlessly.
  17. marketing is constant experimentation to learn what works. speed it up by drawing on what works for similar products.
  18. getting your first paying customers is the hardest part by far. do things that don’t scale to get them.
  19. building a good product comes down to obsessing over what your users actually want.
  20. track where people drop off. i pipe everything into posthog and let it (plus claude) show me exactly where i’m losing users.

the hardest part is the start, but knowing these things really helps get through it. keep pushing, keep working hard, and stay disciplined and consistent.