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by Ayraa 2656 days ago
As other people have already commented, Gumroad raised venture capital (https://medium.com/s/story/reflecting-on-my-failure-to-build...) before. Sahil had to revert Gumroad to a solo lifestyle business after it didn't grow fast enough to raise another round.

My question is, without having been venture funded for a period of time, would Gumroad still be able to $350k/mo now?

During the time Gumroad had a team of engineers, designers, etc., they shipped a lot of features, made improvements and presumably had a decent advertising / marketing budget. Gumroad likely wouldn't have reached the point where it is today product and awareness wise if it had just been one 'indie hacker' grinding away.

1 comments

Sure, but if you are an 'indie hacker', you don't need to make anywhere near $350k/mo to have a very comfortable life.
That's gross revenue. Their business model probably ends up giving them 5-7% of that in average net.
Their "gross revenue" is $5m a month. Their part of that is 350 000$ a month (which is still their gross revenue, but I feel like that's what you meant).

> So I built Gumroad. Fast-forward over seven years and we're doing about $350,000 in revenue monthly, helping creators earn over $5,000,000 a month.

Their "gross revenue" is $5m a month.

The $5m they process is not gross revenue to Gum Road since they're not the beneficial or legal owners of the $5m in payments received. Their X% share of that $5m is their gross revenue.