The name of the company is Cronhub and I’m Tigran Hakobyan, the creator of Cronhub.
Key Stats
- Monthly Revenue: $67
- Date Started / Years in Business: March 20, 2018, 2 months
- Location / Homebase: New York, New York
- Number of Employees: 1
During the launch phase, did you maintain a full time job? (or even currently)
Yes, I’m a full-time software engineer at Buffer. I’ve been working for Buffer for more than 2 years now.
How did you acquire customers/subscribers/users?
I have only couple customers now and my primary marketing channel has been content marketing. I enjoy writing and sharing all my learnings on what it takes to build a profitable side-business from scratch. I’m also writing technical educational materials for developers knowing that Cronhub’s customers are developers. I’ve acquired my first customer the next day after the launch on Product Hunt. Currently, most people discover Cronhub.io from my articles, twitter and organic search.
What software/platforms/tools have you utilized since launch?
I host Cronhub on Digital Ocean and use Laravel Forge for managing my Laravel application. I use Mailgun for handling emails and Nexmo for sending SMS alerts. I also use Hyperping for uptime monitoring.
How did you fund your startup and how do you make money/revenue?
Cronhub is a bootstrapped and profitable business. I don’t plan to seek any investment because I want to stay independent and be my own boss. Cronhub is a SaaS business and has 3 pricing plans (free, startup and business) with monthly and yearly options.
To date, what have been your biggest challenges as a company? What have you done to overcome them?
I’ve been operating only for two months so I’m sure the biggest challenges are only ahead. So far, the biggest challenge was to come up with a right pricing model. Pricing is really hard and getting it accurate requires multiple iterations on your pricing table. I’ve tried to read as much as possible and talk to people who know more about pricing than I do. It really helped and I’m planning to write a new article on side-project pricing very soon to share whatever I learned.
If you had to do it all over again, would you? What would you do differently?
Yes, I would. Nothing I’d have done differently I think. The biggest motivation for me to start Cronhub was to solve my own problem and educate myself with the fundamentals of running a successful business. I look Cronhub as a medium to learn new skills. Those are the skills I’d not learn in my current full-time job otherwise.
Lastly, if anyone reading this wants to know more about your company… where do we send them?
You can go to https://cronhub.io to check out Cronhub and this is my Twitter @tiggreen if you want to get in touch with me.
