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My formal background is mechanical engineering. After undergrad, I spent a year back home teaching myself to code then developed and iterated the MVP. The product is a highly customized e-commerce product targeted to industrial customers that is manufactured on demand.
Year 1: $500 gross. I did some SEO/website improvements. It took about 4 months to compound. Year 2: $70k gross Year 3 (covid): $50k gross
I put profits back in the business via buying manufacturing equipment The site is scratch built with a decent amount of tech (AI)
-COGS markup is between 300%-600%. Granted this on like a $30 product price.
-Spend per customer is $340. But its bimodal. Most spend $30 or $500+
-CAC: $0, everything is organic, no advertising or outreach. No time to invest right now.
-Customers love the service (Based on unsolicited feedback)
-Customers are mostly B2B, many are huge household names.
Here's what's killing me.
- I have no employees and I feel like a slave to the machine I built.
- I'm missing some critical features that cause customers to email me with orders. Turning everything into slightly high touch sales.
- I'm not netting enough to pay myself, but all the CAPEX is paid off.
- I need to gross about $180k a year in sales just to pay myself equivalent market rate. (6000 units per year)
- It's a specific niche. I don't know how well that scales long term and in volume.
- There is still a lot of software dev left to do
I want to quit my dayjob to free up time and brain space, to build out critical features. I can sustain for 12 months of no sales before bankrupting myself and the company.
But if I do go bankrupt, I'll be approaching my late 20's with nothing to show for myself.
Am I insane for thinking about closing this thing? And try to get a well paying job as a programmer for several years, which provides guaranteed money and benefits with much lower stress?