Show HN: I spent 4 years bootstrapping a financial planning tool to 30k MAUs
Hey everyone! I'm back with an update on this post [0].
Last year, I quit my corporate job and went full-time on ProjectionLab, the long-term financial planning app I've been building for the past 4 years, which some of you may recognize. The decision to go all-in felt like a huge leap. But it was the right call, and it's been a good year.
And without the HN community, it would not have happened. As I mentioned last time [0], the feedback on my original Show HN is THE reason I'm still here working on this. I'm really grateful for that. And I hope the way I’ve grown PL -- staying bootstrapped and focused on users -- resonates with the early supporters who helped to shape it.
For now I'm still the only engineer, burning the candle at both ends, but luckily I'm not feeling burnt out myself!
It's been a fun and memorable year:
- 6,139 commits, 221,484 insertions, 116,255 deletions
- Shared my story on the ChooseFI podcast [1] (one of the original sources of inspiration for this project)
- Started building a team (2 team members for customer success, 1 leading growth & marketing)
- Doubled our customer base
- Took no external funding, keeping our interests as aligned with users as possible
Okay, but what did I actually do since last time? [2]
Here's a quick cross-section:
- Compare mode upgrades to explore what-if scenarios overlaid on the same chart with visual deltas/diffs
- Launched ProjectionLab for Employers [3]: offer PL as a benefit, or get your employer to pick up the tab
- Major tech stack migrations: Vue 2 -> Vue 3, Vue CLI -> Vite, Vuetify 2 -> Vuetify 3, Vuex -> Pinia, Jest -> Vitest, Firebase Namespaced API -> Modular API, Vike + SSG for marketing site
- Advanced visualization features (1-click-plot any metric, interactive event icons in charts, etc)
- Improved tax estimation & tax analytics
- Simultaneous editing on multiple devices
- MFA support
- Rebuilt the help center, added more educational content and YouTube tutorial videos
- Made it possible to book a 1-on-1 session for educational/training purposes
- Converted ~65% of the codebase from JavaScript to TypeScript
- And more! [2]
I never saw myself as an entrepreneur/founder type. But apparently I've now spent 4 years turning a side project into a real business.
I couldn't have done it without the initial support from this community, and I'd love to hear what you think of the updates and where you'd like to see things go from here.
--Kyle
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36849502 ↗
[1] https://choosefi.com/podcast-episode/projectionlab-kyle-nolan-ep506 ↗
Published in 2024, this chronicle by @scubakid 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.
This looks great - congrats on launching it and getting it to where it is today. I launched a personal financial forecast tool a few years ago with a primary focus being to help people understand the draw down plan. This is not an ad for my product as it's now abandoned (hosting moved to my personal domain).
But I wanted to share it with you and see if it's a feature you think makes sense in ProjectionLab. Most tools show charts but I wanted more fidelity and accompanied the chart with a table.
Here's what it looks like: https://fiers.jmathai.com/forecast/6020f254b4e8c ↗
Here is the logic: https://fiers.jmathai.com/article/how-it-works ↗
Happy to chat more if you're interested - find my contact info in my profile.
Hi Kyle,
I'm a big fan of projectionlabs and have recommended it to a few people. It's the best tool I've found in this niche. You've done a great job on the UI to keep it simple while being extremely powerful and I love moving milestones around and seeing how things react.
The Tax side is where things get interesting/complicated. In my case, I'll be retiring in a different country to where I'm working and so the tax for drawdowns doesn't really work
Since I graduated college last year and started working full time as a software engineer this year, I’ve been trying to navigate the financial world and set myself up for financial success. I feel like I’ve been able to get into a good place with just reading and napkin math, but this looks like the perfect tool to get away from semi-qualitative to quantitative decisions. Will be checking out!!!!
Seems like a really cool product. Curious who your primary customers are for the lifetime license?
At first I was thinking it would be financial advisors that are technical enough to self host. But then I noticed most of the advisor features aren't included in the lifetime license.
$800 to self host for a personal use case seems kind of steep. What am I missing?
I saw this a couple years ago. It was great looking then. I finally got around to trying to model some "real" considerations today, and it's just an awesome experience to use/explore so far. Congrats on the success, and great work! (and next, checking out the podcast, and probably subscribing to the service)