Ghost Earned $750,000 in Annual Revenue
10 people, $750,000 in annual revenue.
They had strong execution: they said they were going to replace WordPress, so they immediately got to work, published blog posts to validate whether there was demand, and got hundreds of thousands of visits. Colleagues wrote the initial product code in one night.
They then spent three months refining the second version, by which time 30,000 people had signed up for email updates. (About half of the promises made in the promotional video used to acquire those early users were never actually built.)
Their initial revenue goal was only $30,000—but they hit it in just 11 hours. They also raised $350,000 in startup capital through crowdfunding.
Many people who were already interested helped promote the product after launch, quickly reaching 100,000 users. The business hit breakeven within 11 months.
Lesson learned:
The original price of $5 per month was too low, attracting many low-value users. That segment was large and came with a lot of support headaches. To screen for better customers, they raised the usage barrier and tripled the price.
As long as you can actually deliver, you can almost fraudulently secure your audience upfront. People who succeed are the ones who end up delivering on the bold claims they made.
From the founder's perspective