When I started KanbanMail almost exactly five years ago, I had no clue what a wild, fun and exciting ride it would be.
I've learned so many things — how to build software (when I started, I didn't even know how to make an HTTP request), graphic design, user experience, marketing, launching, building a product based on user feedback and more.
Unfortunately, due to low usage, and no longer having enough time in my life to dedicate to KanbanMail, I've had to make the tough and slightly sentimental decision to shut it down.
Thank you so much for your support, advice and encouragement over the years.
Ethan
Founder of KanbanMail
I'm studying part-time at university, and working part-time in the tech industry.
I'm also maintaining 1Feed. I don't have much time to build new features for it, but I'd say as a product it's already 'feature-complete'. There's obviously more I could add, but there's nothing really major missing in its current state.
I've also been working on some projects to give back to my local community, such as COVID-19 NSW (this really blew up during the height of the pandemic, getting millions of visitors) and SydneyBikeMap.
At the moment, I have no intention of becoming a full-time maker. I don't think I've made any products that have been financially successful enough to allow that, and after having these products as my sole source of income during high school, I'm quite enjoying the stability and security that a 9-5 job gives me for the time being. It's nice clocking off at 5pm and not having to worry about where the money will come from.
Absolutely not! While financially you wouldn't consider it as a successful product — it never even got over $200 MRR — I definitely don't regret building it, and I don't consider it as a failure on a personal level.
Rather, I think about how much valuable knowledge and skill I learned during my time working on KanbanMail. I learned more than probably most degrees would teach me, and rather than losing tens of thousands of dollars paying for this education, I received just under $5,000 (via revenue) in the process.
Also, the experience I gained through KanbanMail allowed me to get a well-paying job right out of high school — so KanbanMail enabled me to make hundreds of thousands of dollars that I wouldn't have by the time I'd start my career 3-4 years later.
So if you've got an idea in your head and you're not sure if it'll take off, I highly encourage you to try anyway if you have the time — either way, it'll end up a success!
In classic maker fashion, KanbanMail was a mess of spaghetti across different repositories, no-code platforms, accounts and service providers. I think the effort involved on my part in some sort of handover process would be quite significant, so I would only be willing to sell if it was for a high price, and if I could make time for it (which may not be immediately).
At the same time, I'm not sure whether KanbanMail would actually command such a high price, as the code is very old, messy, unmaintained and badly documented — it would almost be easier to start from scratch.
I would be open to discussion around selling the name/brand so someone could do that, but I never applied for a trademark or anything, so all I'd really be selling is access to the domain name, Twitter account and visual/branding assets like logos. There's also privacy/security considerations when it comes to selling the domain name, so it'd have to be to someone I can trust.
You can contact me by emailing [email protected].
Check out my personal website or my Mastodon. I'm not on Twitter anymore now that we have a vibrant social network that's fully open and not locked down by one company.
You can email KanbanMail-related queries to [email protected].