Show HN: Bootstrapping a community-based startup for AR creators. Catchar 2.0
Published in 2020, this chronicle by @dan_zaitsev details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
Great work creating a vibrant community in just a short couple of years! This is certainly a space that's only going to grow and you have positioned yourself well.
As someone deeply interested/involved in the area, I have a few leading questions and a shameless plug:
- From the description of your pivot, it seems that you plan for this to become a job board/professional profile/LinkedIn/Behance of AR. Did I understand that correctly? What do you consider to be the main source of revenue in that case?
- Do you feel that the simplification of your stack from JS to PHP helped you be more agile for 2.0? This is a tangential question but the answer is likely an interesting one given the choices and current web dev trends.
- Can you share some of your most successful SEO/Traffic tricks with the HN community? What worked the best? We love to hear a great creative/innovative bootstrap story.
- Do you miss working in AR dev itself given your background in the space or do you feel the most value comes from empowering other creators in the AR community?
- Shameless plug: https://pinealeye.co/adkitxr/ ↗ We are working on 3D native ads for AR/MR/XR. Check us out, let me know what you think, and let me know if there is a potential/interest for a partnership. I see a big synergy between building a community of creators who want to get their creations known, and our technology.
Really nice described product! I love it. Maybe you would like to do the same on our website https://owwly.com ↗ and introduce to our audience :) worth to check in free time. Good luck with Catchar!
Hello HN
We are a team of independent makers from Ukraine. Today, three of us are launching Catchar 2.0 and we would like to showcase our updated version to HN. Please feel free to share your feedback or any suggestions.
What is Catchar 2.0?
Catchar 2.0 is the world's largest community and hub where creators and companies build, share and support the best Augmented & Mixed Reality projects that change the ways we interact with digital content and information.
What problem do we solve?
First of all, Catchar helps creators and companies to organize and showcase their Augmented and Mixed Reality portfolios online. As a result, their portfolios and profiles can be searchable across the web and on our website. Catchar also helps to connect brands with creators and companies. And definitely, you will be able to find and get lots of different AR/MR related projects and articles that can be sorted by date, rating and category.
About us
My name is Dan Zaitsev and I’m a hustler (CEO) and founder of Catchar. I jumped into the Augmented and Mixed Reality space approx 7 years ago when I was developing apps for Google Glasses, then I joined Looksery that was acquired by Snap Inc. After I worked on ROAR, a cloud-based platform that allows you to create your own AR experiences. At the end of 2018 I started working on Catchar. Also, in the team is Dmytro Zolotar who is our hacker and co-founder and Sergey Lagodzinsky is our lead hipster ;) / designer and co-founder.
Business model and investments
Currently, Catchar is a 100% bootstrapping startup that we have built and supported without investments / investors. In terms of business models, all creators and companies have to pay membership fees (once) to be listed on Catchar. In addition, we have paid options that help to promote AR/MR projects and experiences. And also we are experimenting with a PRO subscription.
How I started with version 1.0 and my challenges
I started Catchar 1.5 years ago as a side-project and was the solo-founder during the first year. One friend of mine helped me to build the basic MVP based on React_js. We have chosen Prisma_io as a solution for back-end and user management. Also, we connected and used Mailchimp as a notification and newsletter service. The first version was a simple, curated directory where users were able to share their projects. I’ve got some transactions and feedback but honestly, the first 4 to 8 months were very tough for me. First of all, it was difficult in terms of activity and traffic, secondly, I had a lack of features and resources. I even tried to learn React_js and Node_js to improve the core features but had no time to mix marketing, management, design and also do my full-time job. Anyway, I didn't stop working on marketing, SEO and AR content. Also, I was talking to users to get feedback and collect more XR projects. I felt that I had problems in PMF so I was looking and thinking about new ideas for Catchar.
Changes and profit
In 2019 I came up with an idea to transform Catchar into a community-based startup / project. In summer 2019 I met my new co-founders and we started working on the 2.0 version. Our main goal was to build something for AR/MR creators and to be more focused on people rather than on projects. And this worked well. Also, I jumped into Startupschool by YC in the summer of 2019. It helped me to change my mindset a little bit and think more about KPIs and PMF. The first positive feedback was received when we got a spike of pre-registrations for the 2.0 version and our first donations.
Tech stack that we use in version 2.0
Website is written on PHP and Javascript, using Laravel framework for back-end and Vue.js on the public. Server instance has Ubuntu 18 and MySQL 5.7 database. We use Redis for caching and Pusher for broadcasting events. For the instant notifications we have connected Mailgun service. Payments are going through Stripe. Hosted everything on GCP.
Support
Since Catchar is a community-based startup, anyone can share and contribute AR/MR content, similar to Wikipedia, Crunchbase, etc. However, Catchar needs some support in terms of approving content and users that fit community rules. In these terms, some of my friends help me to moderate the community properly. Also, we are working on a new role, named Community Leader. As a result, our CLs would be able to help us to support and moderate the community.
Our stats
We have fully launched version 2.0 in December 2019 and to this day we have around 2,550 registered creators, companies and basic users. Before December we were in the pre-launch phase for approximately an additional 2 months. During this time we collected our first 30% of users and got some payments. This gave us some nice motivation and a boost to our mentality. In terms of projects, we have 950 submitted AR/MR apps, lenses and experiences. Some projects were submitted and contributed to the first version of Catchar. We migrated them from 1.0 into the 2.0 version. In terms of revenue, up until today we have earned approx $976.
How much we spend per month:
Support - $140/mo (I have a friend of mine who works with us on a part-time basis. He helps us in terms of moderating the community properly) Hosting - $0/mo (Trial by Google Cloud Platform) Content - $50/mo (Proofreading of EN articles, posts, etc.) SEO - $100/mo (We are also working with 1 guy who helps us in terms of SEO)
How much I spent in one year
Currently, I’m investing in Catchar with my own funds. Please note I’m not an investor but it’s necessary in terms of supporting, marketing, etc. So, if someone thinks that they can build a startup or side-project with 0 investment, I would say it’s possible but will be difficult. During the last year and 3 months, I have invested around $1,529.
Our plans for 2.0
We have to finish and polish lots of new features. First of all, we have to work on the improvements of the subcommunity pages (i.e. SparkAR, Magic Leap, Lens Studio, ARKit, etc.). Our goal is to help creators to focus on the tech stack that they follow and specialize in. The next step is to release a collaborative module. And definitely add the ability to edit profiles, projects and release password recovery feature :P Also, we have to scale our revenue streams.
So guys, I hope you liked our story. My main question to you is what do you think about Catchar? Can we turn it into a $1B company or will Catchar remain in the side-project phase? :)