We reached profitability

Unexpected situation with my VA, design updates and new listings

Ilya Novohatskyi

Jun 29, 2023

👋 Welcome

Welcome to the 46 new people joining this week.

Let me know what you think of your first issue. Replying helps Google realize it’s not a spam.

Prefer Twitter? Drop me a DM here.

Now let’s crack on with the newsletter ☕️

🎉 New commissions

This week I paid a commission to our partners who referred new paying members to Microns. I'm glad that more and more influencers and other people get involved in the process.

Friendly reminder: we have an affiliate program where we pay 50% commission lifetime for every premium member you refer to Microns.

🎨 Microns v2

As you know I started building a second version of Microns. But you need to find out behind the scene of how I started.

I'm not a professional designer, so I hired a great one to create a proper design system and branding for Microns.

As a result, I found an awesome guy in Ukraine, and we started working. We didn't have any meetings. Everything was remote and async (we used Loom, Figma, and Telegram).

I analyzed feedback from hundreds of our users (buyers and sellers) and read all testimonials from our competitors. Based on this data, we started building a new design.

It's not a final version but very close to it. It's called a design concept. Before this, we created sketches and prototypes (two stages of the professional design process).

The idea of the logo is to show that Microns connects entrepreneurs. Two circles intersect like two people who shake hands and close a successful deal. This way, I wanted to show that Microns creates meaningful relationships.

Btw, let me know what do you think about the logo?

📈 We reached profitability

It took me one year to reach profitability. Still, I hired VA for operations and other routine tasks since I wanted to delegate most things.

Most of the expenses were on VA and sponsorships. I didn't pay myself because I had cash flow from Quanti Coders (my UI development agency).

As you can see Microns generated almost $3,300 in June so I could afford hiring a developer.

UPD: When writing this newsletter, my VA decided to leave, so now I'm on my own to handle new listings and customer requests. On average, I spent from $1,000 to $1,500 on VA monthly (billed by hours).

I was disappointed for some time but then I figured out that It is a positive change because it will help me figure out the weak sides of the product, how to improve the listing process, and other operational tasks. I'll create new onboarding materials, walk it myself, and hire someone smart from Ukraine (previously, my VA was from the UK).

I'm glad I started building my own team; all members are from my native country. It helps with communication. Plus, based on my experience, Ukrainians are the best in execution.