It doesn't exactly scream "This will certainly sell a quarter million of software, allow you to quit your day job, and fund your software business."
You'd find similar things floating around if you were to look at the early history of most companies which are widely idolized in our space. Nobody ships perfection on day 1. Luckily, customers are happy to pay for imperfect things.
"sell a quarter million [dollars] of software [over 7 years], allow you to quit your day job, and fund your software business"
Glad for you that your product has given you that freedom, but I don't think there are many devs who would be comfortable quitting a day job for circa $35K gross ARR...
Edit to say: I see from the link elsewhere that you publish your numbers (kudos), and that gross mean ARR for the last 4 years is $51K, which is a passive income I wouldn't say no to! Doesn't change my position on quitting the day job however.
Old people, man. And the people who take care of old people. I know it's not typically HN target demographic, but old people need improvements in their lives, too.
Not old people. Teachers. The distinction is vitally important. BCC solves a professional problem that teachers will pay money for. It's not about entertainment.
I meant that quote to read as "dollars." My bad. It's at somewhere north of $250k lifetime -- you can probably find it here http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month . (I don't keep tabs on it very often anymore.)
For those wondering, the relevant line: "All time $277,447.49"
While glancing at the data though, it appears something must have shifted about 12 months ago and you're on track to make a lot less than you had up through 2012.
Initially, it doesn't matter how your product looks if people want it. It would be cool to see early screenshots of other popular services like LinkedIn and Dropbox. Proper credit goes to reddit user, cmdrNacho, as the link was found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1y1f3n/if_you_coul...
Oh whoa, I didn't realize Facebook let you see other students in your classes. I wrote a program to do that my freshmen year for your Facebook friends.
Note the prominence of the Invite button on each. On Twitter it's in bright red in the header, Facebook also in the header and for Tumblr it's right below the profile.
I regret not taking a screenshot of http://skimfeed.com at the start. Then I made some DB changes and now I can't remember the colors I used. So it's all weird and orange.
Tip for startups: save! And get that DB right first time.
If you do a Google image search for 'skimfeed' you'll find screenshots for when it was written up on various sites. (although images might not be as ideal as HTML the screenshots might not include what you are looking for).
Bingo Card Creator, circa early 2007: http://www.bingocardcreator.com/old-site/index.htm
It doesn't exactly scream "This will certainly sell a quarter million of software, allow you to quit your day job, and fund your software business."
You'd find similar things floating around if you were to look at the early history of most companies which are widely idolized in our space. Nobody ships perfection on day 1. Luckily, customers are happy to pay for imperfect things.