Tell HN: The 4-Hour (Profitable) Startup - How I Did It

by guynamedloren • 15 years ago

78 50 15 years ago

Yesterday, I shared what has been deemed the "4-hour startup" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2173155), which was really just a little project I threw together that happened to have a significant amount of immediate success. There were lots of HN members asking about certain aspects of the project, and I absolutely plan on giving back to the community by sharing everything I did to bring the project to life. This is the first post of several in which I'll explain my steps, methods, and thought processes. I answered a bunch of questions in the original thread, but I think these posts will make things much clearer. Hope they help somebody!

abyssknight• 15 years ago

Thank you for following up on this! I read the original thread and pondered all the crazy details. I want to apologize for all the flak you're catching about minute details, of which most are meaningless, and wish you luck in your current and future endeavors. Not sure why the trolls are out in force today, but you've managed to do something many startups fail to: produce revenue.

DFectuoso• 15 years ago

Is it really a startup? Really?

run4yourlives2• 15 years ago

It's supposed to be a bit of a play on words to get you to bite.

I don't think "Loren" thinks this is a "start-up" in the SV sense.

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

Hi, thanks for clearing that up. You're totally right.

One question though - why is my name in quotes? Are you implying that I'm not real? =]

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

"start-up - n. A business or an undertaking that has recently begun operation."

stretchwithme2• 15 years ago

Think lemonade stand.

BornInTheUSSR2• 15 years ago

How did you learn design?

jmtame• 15 years ago

from his blog on his shirt design web site:

http://beetnikaesthetics.com/blog/beetnik-tutorial-a-must-re...

click on the link to "25 must read t-shirt tutorials," you'll learn most techniques for shirt design there.

BornInTheUSSR2• 15 years ago

Thanks for that, I am more curious about how he learned design in general because of the kick-ass aesthetic sense in what he's shared of his work.

bmr• 15 years ago

Thanks for being open. I think the most interesting part will be about how many hits you got and what kind of conversion rate you were seeing.

Some of my personal curiosities: How many people abandoned the purchase when confronted with the PayPal form? Do you think you could have been profitable with paid customer acquisition methods (like geo-targeted display ads), or would that have eaten into your profit too much?

HardyLeung4• 15 years ago

Loren, thanks for sharing, first and foremost. I appreciate this thread (and the original) a lot.

I have a related idea and I want your opinion (and others fellow HNers')... Say, you sell the T-shirt for $16 each including shipping. The twist is that if there are over a fixed number of orders then everyone gets a discount, with the earlier buyers get a deeper discount. i.e. the more people buy, the more group discount, and the earlier you buy, the more discount. Do you think, based on this exercise and your experience, whether this will help make it more viral? Or would it be too complicated and hence destroy the conversation rate and virality?

zavulon• 15 years ago

That sounds dangerously close to a pyramid/MLM scheme ...

shadowpwner• 15 years ago

Except everyone knows what they're paying, with $x discount.

HardyLeung4• 15 years ago

I am curious whether it is effective or not, but pyramid/MLM is not something I'm worried about. Let's say the price schedule is well defined (and visible), and that people are paying money in exchange for goods, with various level of discount due to quantity and timeliness to encourage sales. In any case, from a good<->evil scale, I don't think what I suggested is even in the league of Zynga, Groupon, and Twitter promotion (tweet this for a chance...), let alone MLM scam. Whether it could be effective or not, that's my question.

To clarify this is what it would look like, using customer #10, #212 (if exists), and #1350 (if exists) as examples under different scenario

(1) #customers < 100

customer #10 pays $16

(2) 100 <= #customers < 1000

customer #10 pays $12, customer #212 pays $14

(3) 1000 < #customers

customer #10 pays $8, customer #212 pays $10, customer #1350 pays $12

The numbers are made up (the actual numbers may not make sense, so don't try to find flaw about total profit based on these numbers). So basically customers are rewarded for (1) being an early adopter, (2) propagating the viral effect, and (3) having good taste.

Now that I think about it some more, this is similar to Amie Street for indie music (didn't quite strike it big) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amie_Street

What do you think?

Raphael2• 15 years ago

Flat pricing is predictable and transferred immediately. Your scheme would involve refunds or delayed payment. Sounds risky for questionable benefit.

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

I think we could rule out refunds and go with the Groupon model of delayed payment. And what's the risk in that? Collect the payment information (credit card or paypal) and hit them with the charge when the shindig is up and you know the final costs. I'm not seeing the risks.

u48998• 15 years ago

You don't have RSS feed on your website?

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

I have no idea how they work and I've never had the desire to use an RSS feed myself. Maybe one day.

steveklabnik• 15 years ago

Since you're doing a custom Rails app, may I point you at this:

https://github.com/ryanb/railscasts/blob/master/app/controll...

https://github.com/ryanb/railscasts/blob/master/app/views/ep...

That's all you'd need to do. Oh, and if you submit your feed to http://feedburner.com/, you can hand out their URL instead, and you'll get stats and stuff.

amalcon2• 15 years ago

I don't know that this counts as a startup. This is not to take anything away from it -- it's a brilliant idea, and well-executed; it has everything that makes a good startup good. It just isn't one in sort of a purely technical sense, in that it's a single product with a limited lifespan.

All in all, well done, though.

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

You're right in that its not a startup. I'm just kind of having fun and playing up a few responses from the original thread. The million dollar question here is this: is it repeatable? If so, then we've got a startup.

amalcon2• 15 years ago

This is true. If you plan to keep doing this, then suddenly, it is a startup.

rrival• 15 years ago

Next step: Weather machine

seasoup• 15 years ago

It's a start up the same way the 4-hour work week is a work week and the 4-hour body is a workout book :) In other words, brilliant satire!

endlessvoid942• 15 years ago

Thanks for the write up. I totally understand where you're coming from with the "it just takes hard work and experience".

But that doesn't mean you should skimp on the details. The reason HN is so awesome is because the contributors say things like "I was able to put some money into reddit ads, I got a 5% conversion rate, and then called my friend that works at company X and it turns out they were having a sale and I'd worked with them before, so I ordered 500 tshirts priced at $6. With $5 shipping, I charged $15 and obtained a $4 margin on each shirt sold. So I made $2k." These are the kinds of blog posts that are truly awesome and valuable, and continue to be valuable over time.

Instead, you're turning this 4 hour startup into a series of articles and trying to pump out as many pageviews as you can to your blog. This first post had nothing your original HN post didn't.

Your idea was very good and you acted quickly. Congrats. I'm not trying to bust balls, it's just a pet peeve of mine. Details would be cool.

EDIT: an example is in order. your "short answer" of "I've done it before" is unhelpful for anyone aspiring to do anything remotely similar.

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

I think you misunderstood the blog post. I don't give a shit about pageviews on my blog. I know you guys care about the details (I get the same way when hearing about other projects) and that's exactly what I'm going to deliver. In all honesty, I would have written one long post packed full of details, but my brain is running on empty right now and I just don't have it in me. Admittedly, the first blog post was a bit weak. Like the post said, I haven't slept in days. How well are your critical thinking skills after being awake for almost 3 days straight? So instead of trying to write and analyse everything in one big burst I'm splitting it up. But I'll get it all out as soon as I can, before I forget anything.

And yes - stats and hard numbers are interesting, but I think there's more to a good analysis than that. I want to help fellow hackers get better. If I told you I had a 5% conversion rate, turned a $4 margin on each shirt and and sold 500 of them, would that help you in any way at all? I think not. That won't bring you any closer to being successful. But if I told you that I optimized the conversion rate by making a dead-simple bullshit-free site, a single shirt design, and no distracting ads, then maybe you could learn a thing or two that could help with future projects. These are the things that really matter.

endlessvoid942• 15 years ago

Looking forward to it.

stretchwithme2• 15 years ago

Amazing how many snowpocalypse items there are out there.

http://www.zazzle.com/snowpocalypse+gifts

copycat3• 15 years ago

I just launched a clone site myself. Although, mine is snowmageddon. :)

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

You should wait for my blog posts and take some notes. Your copy-cat site would look better and sales would probably increase significantly.

mkramlich3• 15 years ago

It's a t-shirt not a startup. Given how much free or cheap infrastructural stuff is out there, and with services like web-based custom t-shirt printing services and PayPal, it's pretty easy and fast to do what he did. And it's not like he hand-made the shirt, mainly the logo image and even that is just a few words of text. I applaud him for seeing a money making opportunity and executing on it, but at the same time it's bad form to call this a startup. At most it's a dirt simple website and t-shirt, with a little glue and polish.

klbarry• 15 years ago

Nothing wrong with using massive amounts of leverage for profit, it's definitely entrepreneurship.

mkramlich3• 15 years ago

Agreed it's a form of entrepreneurship, and nothing wrong with using leverage for profit. All good stuff! I just find that calling it a startup is like calling a fish a shark. I mean, you could call a fish a shark, but it really isn't one, despite some similarities (live in water, fins, swim around.) And if the word fish meant the same as the word shark, there's no point having those as two distinct words. A distinction without a difference is existentially pointless.

mkramlich3• 15 years ago

I just whipped up an image and uploaded to Zazzle. I'm going to submit an article called, "My 4-Minute Profitable Startup and How I Did It."

(I didn't actually. Just pretend I did. I'm 100% Lean and Agile MVP Customer-Driven Pivoting and yet flush with cash from a $100m Angel/VC convertible note series C friends-and-family IPO Dutch auction fantasy in my dreams.)

TamDenholm• 15 years ago

Loren, I'm interested in the other posts about this, but I'm gunna forget to check your blog again and I might miss it on HN. Get an RSS feed please. Thanks.

guynamedloren10• 15 years ago

I know, I know, I know. Lots of requests for this so I'm looking into it right now!

kmfrk• 15 years ago

I was wondering: especially considering your experience with selling T-shirt, have you done enough to make sure people know that they get their shirts in the right size? Or are you preparing to set aside a specific margin for return cases?

It may just be me always having trouble with US sizes, but I'd imagine it to be a common thing for apparel vendours.

synnik• 15 years ago

I've sold dozens of t-shirts, ties, etc on both CafePress and Zazzle. But until this article, I never realized that I could have spend an extra 3.5 hours on each of them and been a serial entrepreneur...

Which is not meant to simply be snarky and diminish his success. But this is not a startup, and not just because of its simplicity.

It is not a startup because it is not a sustainable business. It is a quick cash-in on a very temporary bit of pop culture. A startup it would be... if you create a long-term, reliable income stream from such ideas.

clark-kent• 15 years ago

How much profit did it make? Some numbers would be helpful.

Tell HN: The 4-Hour (Profitable) Startup - How I Did It

Related Stories