--- title: $500M company CEO: I almost deleted what made $500K description: A startup CEO shares the story of nearly deleting a side project to save $120K/year in costs, but instead spent a few hours building a quick paywall. The app... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/500m-company-ceo-i-almost-deleted-what-made-500k-qx3wbz9hl twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: $500M company CEO: I almost deleted what made $500K | daily.dev og:description: A startup CEO shares the story of nearly deleting a side project to save $120K/year in costs, but instead spent a few hours building a quick paywall. The app... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/500m-company-ceo-i-almost-deleted-what-made-500k-qx3wbz9hl og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/qX3WBz9HL.png og:image:alt: $500M company CEO: I almost deleted what made $500K og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # $500M company CEO: I almost deleted what made $500K **[EO](https://daily.dev/sources/entreprenueropp)** · 1 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A startup CEO shares the story of nearly deleting a side project to save $120K/year in costs, but instead spent a few hours building a quick paywall. The app went on to generate over $500K in revenue with zero employees, growing entirely on its own. The key lesson: small, in-the-moment decisions can sometimes matter more than big strategic ones. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The profitable startup](https://daily.dev/posts/the-profitable-startup-iy6nqrl4e) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company](https://daily.dev/posts/reflecting-on-my-failure-to-build-a-billion-dollar-company-mcmk4lqpq) · Tech Lead Digest · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [From App Idea to 10K MRR – YouTube Series](https://daily.dev/posts/from-app-idea-to-10k-mrr-youtube-series-hol34ujvx) · SwiftLee · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [One-Person Startup in 2026: How Solo Founders Scale](https://daily.dev/posts/one-person-startup-in-2026-how-solo-founders-scale-xfmmx7mbz) · Alex CloudStar · 19 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#startup](https://daily.dev/tags/startup), [#entrepreneurship](https://daily.dev/tags/entrepreneurship) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/500m-company-ceo-i-almost-deleted-what-made-500k-qx3wbz9hl) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"$500M company CEO: I almost deleted what made $500K","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/500m-company-ceo-i-almost-deleted-what-made-500k-qx3wbz9hl","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/500m-company-ceo-i-almost-deleted-what-made-500k-qx3wbz9hl"},"datePublished":"2026-07-11T14:07:23.371Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:49:57.132Z","description":"A startup CEO shares the story of nearly deleting a side project to save $120K/year in costs, but instead spent a few hours building a quick paywall. 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