One Dude in his Underpants Earning $200K/Year

Maciej Ceglowski is the founder of Pinboard, a social bookmarking platform that allows users to save and share links 🔗

Pinboard is a paid service that charges users $22/year.

Maciej used to share his revenue numbers every year, but his last report was in 2020.

His revenue numbers over the years 👇

• 2010 = $117K
• 2011 = $178K
• 2012 = $181K
• 2013 = $175K
• 2014 = $193K
• 2015 = $160K
• 2016 = $234K
• 2017 = $259K
• 2018 = $253K
• 2019 = $222K
• 2020 = $212K

So it looks like revenue was declining when Maciej stopped reporting, but those numbers above average to about $200K/year for 11 years 😎

Quite impressive given that Maciej once described the business as…

one dude in his underpants somewhere who has five windows open to terminal servers

Also, I thought social bookmarking had died a long time ago, but apparently not 🤷‍♂️

Delicious was the VC-backed social bookmarking giant back in the day, raising $2 million in funding and being something of a poster child for Web 2.0.

Amazingly, Maciej bought Delicious in 2017 for only $35,000 🤯

Seems a big part of Maciej’s success is the Pinboard fandom….

There’s been fan-fic written about Pinboard, which I thought was awesome. I think that’s the litmus test. I don’t know if it goes that far, but fans have been really nice to me and they’ve responded in a very friendly way to my overtures so I would say I get along with them. I try to understand their specific needs and uses maybe more than some other sites do.

Apparently, back when they were competitors, Pinboard was able to capitalize on a silly mistake by Delicious.

Delicious redesigned their site, fans didn’t like it, and Pinboard positioned itself as a fan-first alternative that would listen to users 👂

A good example of this is a famous Google Doc where Pinboard users could share their thoughts. It’s a compilation of tutorials, discussions, feature requests, etc.

The conversations are still there, with Maciej’s comments in orange.

Maciej also regularly met up with users….

I’ve been having meetups in different cities, trying to get tech people involved in areas where we can help locally with volunteering… In the course of those meetings I’ve actually met a lot of Pinboard users and a lot of fandom people who use Pinboard.

I reckon Maciej’s personal and human approach is what set him apart from Delicious and ultimately led to Pinboard’s dominance.

This story also begs the question…

What other big VC-backed internet companies that “failed” might actually do well as a one-person or small-team business? 🤔

You might get some ideas from these lists…

• 260 of the biggest, costliest startup failures of all time
• Want to Talk About Failed Startups? 27 Companies That Went Under and Why

(Btw, I heard about Pinboard via BoringCashCow, a site worth checking out for breakdowns of “boring businesses”)

Get 10 more business ideas in your inbox each week