Day 569: mrr goals

status

22 weeks left in 2021

i wrote this post a few months ago thinking through what’d be required to get browserflow to $5k MRR by the end of the year — that was when there were 33 weeks left

1/3 of the time has gone by and i’m still at $0 MRR

do i think that i can hit $5k MRR in the next 22 weeks?

that’d be:

  • 556 customers on the basic plan ($9/month)
  • OR 173 customers on the hobby plan ($29/month)

going to discount the more expensive plans for now because they seem unlikely

556 customers (basic plan) / 22 weeks = 25 customers per week = 3.6 customers per day

every day, starting today, until the end of the year

mm… yeah that doesn’t seem likely

what does $1000 MRR look like?

112 customers / 22 weeks = 5 customers per week

that still seems pretty hard but doable

okay, aim for $1000 MRR by end of 2021?

is that too low? i feel like it’d be possible for someone to hit $5k MRR ez even if they were starting a business from scratch today if they had a clear idea of their target audience

currently at this point, i don’t have doubts about browserflow as a business

  • it is honestly impressive that i still have this level of confidence/arrogance/conviction/delusion even after 14 months of nothing but straight building without any real validation

but i do have doubts about how quickly i can find customers because i feel like my positioning is still all over the place

i have a lot of my hopes pinned on the hacker news launch going well

i strongly suspect that it will but oh boy will i be in for a rude awakening if it flops

also, PSA that even though i write about building a SaaS company all the time here and on twitter, it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. i feel the need to contextualize this all every once in a while because if this were some random hobby like… making art out of toothpicks or something then people would understand that this is something you do for fun and it’s not actually Very Important but because coding + work + company-building involves money and status and a lot of people do think that those things are Very Important, it’s unclear what people’s relationships are to it when they engage in it

browserflow is fun and i like working on it, but it pales in comparison in terms of how much importance i place on it next to things like meditation, spirituality, friendships, creative expression, love, family, etc.

just so we’re clear