from Hacker News

I made $1M in 67 days during Covid

by thamer on 10/4/24, 9:38 PM with 31 comments

• by pinkmuffinere on 10/4/24, 11:07 PM

  A couple elements that I think misleadingly present this as an “easy” success:

  1. He already has the email list (though the author called this out). The email list was likely very affluent — look at the other products offered in the same site.

  2. He already had a polished presentation, with well tuned branding. Making the decisions about packaging, product page, ads, etc is much easier if you already know the target

  3. He (likely) already had experience running ads on Instagram/Facebook/Google. This alone can represent a full career

  4. He already had 3pl (third party logistics) set up to fulfill orders. Or he fulfilled them himself, manually.

  5. There are likely other things that I’m missing

  Obviously this is still quite fast progress, but the post undersells the amount of work that went into this. It’s easy to take for granted the pre-existing infrastructure he had built. “It takes years to be an overnight success”

  Edit: My main goal is to say — don’t feel “bad” that he achieved so much so easily. It wasn’t really as fast or easy as it seems

• by woodruffw on 10/4/24, 10:06 PM

  The website for this product says that it’s made with 360 brass[1], which is typically about 3% lead. Holding a piece of 360 brass won’t hurt you, but I probably wouldn’t leave it in my pocket rubbing against my belongings for months on end (or using it to open beer bottles, as shown).

  [1]: https://buypeel.com/products/brass-keychain-touch-tool

• by CalRobert on 10/4/24, 10:00 PM

  “ While most people were watching Netflix in their PJs, I was working more than I ever had before”

  Honestly this is really offputting.

• by sprior on 10/4/24, 10:08 PM

  Aside from 3,500 face shields I also 3D printed a big bunch of basically those same "covid keys" and gave them away because that's how I roll.

• by Mistletoe on 10/4/24, 9:59 PM

  It’s so unbelievable that somewhere.com went for $52M. It’s not that I don’t believe it, I just can’t fathom paying that for that.

  https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/1cufqvd/has...

  “We find you amazing employees that cost 80% less than US equivalents” I guess there is a big market for that.

• by disambiguation on 10/5/24, 1:04 AM

  How to make $1M Step 1 - be rich Step 2 - capitalize on mass death and hysteria by rebranding a shiny bottle opener as health and safety tool

• by freitasm on 10/5/24, 12:21 AM

  > We emailed Peel’s customer list announcing the product and shared it on our socials.

  > Peel was an existing brand with customers and an email list. We had a basis to launch to.

  A new product for an existing brand with a ready-to-go mailing list. Good story from a design and production perspective but nothing exceptional for marketing.

• by echoangle on 10/4/24, 10:42 PM

  Am I cheap if I am confused who would pay $40 for this?

• by jackbroski82 on 10/5/24, 5:58 AM

  While it's impressive to see someone achieve such rapid success, it raises questions about how much prior planning and context played into it. For instance, did the author already have an established network and email list, or was this truly a 'from scratch' success? It's important to acknowledge that behind every quick success story is a potentially lengthy history of preparation and market understanding. What do you think—are we seeing a genuine entrepreneurial triumph, or just the culmination of years of groundwork?

• by gertlex on 10/4/24, 10:12 PM

  I bought a few of a similar product probably a few months later than the timeline covered here. Got mine from Etsy, and kind of assumed they were made in a home setup (obviously this is far from universally true with Etsy products). Living in an apartment complex, I got a lot more use out of them than family living in SFHs.

  I'm certainly curious what sales looked like over a longer timeframe.

• by OutOfHere on 10/4/24, 11:02 PM

  You capitalized on people's ignorance and misinformation. Covid doesn't spread by touch. It spreads by respiratory inhalation.