Q & A

Clinton from Australia asks “How long was it before you started generating revenue?”

For a software business, how long did it take to get:

  • Your first $1 in revenue?
  • Your first $100 in revenue?
  • Your first $10,000 in revenue?
  • Your first $100,000 in revenue?

Intent

Hopefully we can get a whole bunch of results that can be averaged out… That way founders have a bit of a rough guide on when they maybe should be looking to alter things. “Hey, it has taken me to eight times longer than normal to generate my first $100 of revenue, what am I doing wrong?”

My Answer

I run a custom software development business.

We did our first job for $2000, which bought the first computer.

It took 1 year to get to $100,000
it took 2 years to get to $250,000

14 years later there is $xM per year.

But we don’t sell product, we don’t have a website which waits for a sale, we don’t advertise, we didn’t do any marketing besides word of mouth for the first 3-4 years.

If your trying to get a feel for the two extremes have a listen to

  • Automate my small business. These guys spin up new small ideas quickly and are profitable within 2-6 months.
  • This week in startups. These people generally get funding for 2 years+ and the majority don’t try and make much money within that time, they are focused on getting a huge amount of continual traffic which can then be monitised.

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