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MakeHub 2.0 — 65 solo founders making $370,000/mo
MakeHub let's you find profitable micro-startups built by solo founders without funding.
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Hey Product Hunters – thanks for checking out v2.0 of my website MakeHub that I launched here around 2 years ago.
🤔 The Problem
I love when people are working on their own micro-startups to express their creativity and pay their bills. And I think it’s super important to make some money so that you’d have more time to work on projects that are interesting to you and eventually quit that job if that's what you want.
Product Hunt is great for discovering all kinds of new products in tech.
Indie Hackers is a nice community for solo founders.
But I haven’t found a place on the web where I could just find some new profitable indie startups with their revenue.
🛠 My Solution
So MakeHub let’s you find profitable micro-startups built by solo founders without funding. You’ll find new startups on the front page every day, but you can also browse the entire startup database using almost 20 filters. You can also subscribe to my weekly newsletter that sends you last week’s products.
📹 The video
This time I also made a quick launch video where 🍄 Terence McKenna talkes in the background how it’s important to produce and send stuff up the wire instead of just consuming the ideas coming down through the toxic distribution system. It’s very simple, I just used iMovie to put together some free videos from Pexels.
Watch it here and let me know what you think 👉
https://youtu.be/oAIfJ-c0qYc
@raunometsa nicely done and refreshing video. definitely something else then your run-of-the-mill intro video 😎
@zwacky Thanks, Simon! And I really do think it's important to create more and consume less. Maybe SaaS products are not really about this, but newsletters and blogs are, and people are also making money their writings (like Substack).
So instead of reading mass media articles, you read what other people write.
@eddieaich love this idea! Do you have some more thoughts about this (how would this mentorship work)?
@raunometsa Just shooting from the hip - users sign up and add more info to their profile such as industry, product market, and whether or not they are open to mentoring others. Pre-revenue founders can find founders who are open for mentorship based on product/service, market similarities. Something like that?
Nice product and very cool video. What is MakeHub's revenue / month : ) joke, you don't have to answer that, but I am interested in the revenue model. As an angel investor the chance to invest in some of these companies is very appealing, could be something there...
@ronanawall Thank you! Haha, well it's $0/mo :) don't know yet how to monetize MakeHub, but 3.0 will have something that people can buy I think :)
But you're right – it is very appealing to invest in these companies. I haven't asked them, but I have a feeling they're not really interested in outside capital (I should ask them, maybe I'm wrong) – see my comment to @gerryhays1
Looks very cool! @raunometsa how are you defining "solo founder"? I took a look at Canny (the highest earning project on the list) - and they have 2 founders and 9 employees.
@hannahkonnn Yep, I hear your point, Hannah! See my comment to Keith here. I will continue to focus on solo projects only.
Love the idea! Would be great to also see the underlaying business model for each microstartup. Sometimes when it's not really obvious (sponsors, ads, ...) it's hard to find it out and so a dedicated section for that would be really helpful :)
This is great @raunometsa. Is it your experience that the founders are looking to move beyond the micro-startup stage with outside capital?
@gerryhays1 I've seen few who sold. Some continue to work on their projects, some stepped out completely.
But in general I think no – they're not looking to move beyond being a small startup with outside capital. For a lot of creators, it's about independance (you work on something you like and when you're inspired, spending rest of your time living life).
@gerryhays1 But the first couple of years are hard without capital. You need to continue your day job to pay your rent and eat food. And a the same time find the time and motivation to work on your own projects.
This is why it's super important to really like your own product, so you'd continue to work on it even if it doesn't make money yet and you don't really see how it will start making money in the next two years, maybe.
I think when you're building something that has a value, it will start making you money eventually. Could take some years though.
Congrats! MakeHub is neat, and helps me broadens my circle of maker friends and get inspired. Keep it up! 🤩
I am 18 years old and I am quite at the beginning. With this site, I can discover what other people are up to and get inspired. I even discovered "Marketing Examples" a few hours ago thanks to this site. Then I read the story of Harry's (founder of Marketing examples) Kanye West project. And I got a lot of inspiration. Thank you.
@kagantaskin Thanks for this comment, Kağan!! Really, that's the whole point of MakeHub! To spread to word that it's possible to build something alone and make money with it to pay your rent and food.
Great work and it's inspiring to see so many of these. Just a quick suggestion - some of these companies are not solo operators but have teams listed on their websites...maybe some way to verify submissions would be awesome...
@haitham_m I know Indie Hackers also lists startups, but I feel community side is more dominant there and I wanted to do just a simple list of bootstrapped startups.
Thanks for letting me know about this 500 error, I think it may have to do with MRR input (must be a number). Made a fix so it will be converted to integer now!
Wow this is great! How do you collect information on how much is the startup making per month?
@sudeep_chauhan Thank you, Sudeep! Revenue numbers come mostly from the founders themselves (but there are startups who share their revenue on their website too, although not many of them – some I have found like that).
I like the way the best family members and friends I like from love and support as good for the update and more.
@leobassam thanks! And I'm happy to see your Plutio.com makes a good revenue ($13k/mo). It's a very very competitive field you're in.
MakeHub is super cool to find other bootstrapped founders and connect with them.
PS. Do you plan to cleanse it over time? Some seem bigger than solo.
I was particularly intrigued by one or two there at the top end revenue-wise. I figured they were at most a three-person co-founder team, but according to one the founders, they are a seven-person team.
Appreciate the definition of "solo" is hard when the lines are blurred on what an employee is. And I still like the list, but it seems more bootstrapped focused than "solo" + bootstrapped.
@lynnastyie I see what you mean, Keith! I think my long-term focus should be probably on solo projects (a couple of co-founders are okay too), because that was the original idea and I want people to see it's possible to build something profitable alone. You make a website, a small SaaS or newsletter and you pay your bills with it.
For example Canny is listed now and while they did start out as two co-founders, they're now grown to 9 people (https://canny.io/about).
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