Geocodeo

Michelle and her husband were running a mobile app called 'What's Open Nearby' that helped users find which grocery stores, convenience stores, and coffee shops were currently open. The app relied on geocoding—converting addresses into latitude and longitude coordinates—to display locations on a map. Google provided 2,500 free geocoding lookups per day, but beyond that required prohibitively expensive enterprise contracts costing tens of thousands of dollars annually. When their database of 3,000 stores exceeded Google's free limit by 500 locations, they hit a wall.

Out of necessity, Michelle and her husband built a "super rudimentary geocoder" just to keep their app alive. When they mentioned this to developer friends, many said they had the same problem. One friend suggested they "slap a paywall in front of this" so other developers could help cover server costs. The idea clicked. They launched Geocodeo in January 2014 with two DigitalOcean droplets at $10 per month each—total infrastructure cost of $20/month.

They posted Geocodeo on Hacker News and Product Hunt. To their surprise, the product made it to the front page and stayed there all day, driving massive signups. Most traffic didn't convert, but it was enough. "We ended up making about $31 our first month. So about, you know, $11 when you take out the server costs." They hadn't even built payment automation yet—Stripe billing had to be added later. Despite the small numbers, Michelle was thrilled: "We were so surprised that anyone wanted to pay us that we actually had not written the code to tell people to tell Stripe to bill people."

The launch revealed something crucial to Michelle: the power of customer feedback. The Hacker News community engagement sparked her interest in understanding customers and their needs—a passion that would define her career. She realized that solving her own problem first (the geocoding bottleneck) gave them built-in conviction and existing proof of concept before selling to others.

Geocadeo grew to north of $1 million in annual revenue. Michelle went full-time in 2017; her husband followed in 2018. Rather than narrowing her focus, Michelle has expanded into adjacent ventures—co-hosting the Software Social podcast with Colleen Stettler and writing 'Deploying Empathy,' a guide to customer research for indie hackers. The company remains a profitable, sustainable business while Michelle pursues her passion for helping founders learn to talk to customers effectively.