The story of Revenue Rabbit …
How did I get here?
The majority of my developer life has been spent in school or corporate. My survival skills in those environments are very different from those required of an indie maker. So, I decided I needed to read some business books to figure out what I was missing. One of the first business books I chose was:
Profit First: Transform Your Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine
After reading Profit First, I decided to analyze the revenue from my small business, Slate Blue Web LLC. But, I couldn’t rationalize opening multiple bank accounts to follow the Profit First process. I wanted a hassle-free way to figure out where my money was coming from and going to.
So, I decided to build a simple web application to do that. It took me over six months to write that simple web application, Revenue Rabbit.
Logo History
With no budget, I just had fun coming up with logos on my own. The first three logos I created using symbols in Apple’s Pages word proccessor. The most recent logo was created from images downloaded from pixabay images under their license.
Naming My Product
After calling my product, ‘Earn’ and ‘Buckets for Business’, for many months, I finally came up with a name I really liked, Revenue Rabbit. Commonly, Indie Hackers strive to increase their Monthly Recurring Revenue, MRR, and Annual Recurring Revenue, ARR. So, I thought using ‘Revenue’ would be an attractive name. Hopefully, it fits anyone working on money management. If I am honest, I picked ‘Rabbit’ since it is an alliteration. But, my family does have a history with rabbits. My children grew up with Milo the rabbit. Milo, our house rabbit, couldn’t hop up or down the stairs so he lived solely in our bedrooms. Milo was a member of our family for 8 years and will always have a special place in our hearts.
Product Validation
After immersing myself in the Indie Maker community, it became clear that I did product validation all wrong. ‘Scratching your own itch’ is not always an efficient way to come up with a product idea. Many makers are building large social media audiences, hanging out with potential customers, launching MVPs with no-code tools, and validating their product ideas before spending much time on them. But, I like to build things and had already started, so I just stayed the course.
Product Marketing/Distribution
With solely a tech background, marketing and distribution is a big weakness of mine. While I did love creating software, I didn’t want to make software only for myself. I dream of writing useful software that has a positive impact on others. Since I have no idea who might use RevenueRabbit.app, I decided to cast a wide net trying to attract fellow business owners, personal finance enthusiasts, and teachers of money management. Finding a niche audience could be helpful, and I hope that niche audience becomes clear in time.
Product Quality
My biggest passion has always been to create high quality software. Oddly, I find testing as fun as writing original code. Likely this comes from a fear of debugging hard problems under stress. I would much rather put in the work upfront than to be stuck fixing bugs in an emergency situation.
Phased Launch
Originally I had hoped to create many small projects to increase the likelihood that one of them would have success. My first product has taken much longer than expected. I know it is important to just launch and adjust based on feedback. But, I always wanted to work on one more feature. Somehow, I managed to convince myself that I should do a phased launch. My first launch will be the landing page only. Next, I will launch a free version. Finally, I will launch the premium paid version. Hopefully, putting my software in front of others will give me the feedback to improve each iteration.
Here it is!
If you go to RevenueRabbit.app and see a Revenue Tracking application, then my launch has been successful. Consider sending me some feedback on Revenue Rabbit. My Twitter DMs are open. Here’s hoping RevenueRabbit.app can make a positive impact in your revenue tracking leading to a fun, healthy relationship with money and revenue.