In 2011, Pinterest designer Sahil Lavingia wanted to sell an icon he had made directly to his audience. But it was too difficult. Why setup a storefront? Just share a link–customers can click, pay, download. A weekend later, Gumroad was live.
A lot more has happened since then, but we won't bore you. If you're curious, you can read all about it on Medium.
We have a lot in common with our creators: we also earn a living doing what we love. But we are different from many other companies.
We're profitable.
We are focused on improving our product in a sustainable way. We even share our numbers, so that others can learn how to run a creator-focused business.
Gumroad in January:
— Sahil Lavingia (@shl) February 13, 2019
Volume processed: $5.2M (down 4%)
Revenue: $341K (flat)
Gross profit: $133K (down 1%)
Net profit: $59K (up 13%)
3 creators made over $100,000
72 made over $10,000
755 made over $1,000
2,578 made over $100
Let me know if you have any questions!
We donate a percentage of our profits to causes.
In 2018, we donated over $23,775 (eight percent of our profits) to different causes. We raised money for the hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the floods in Kerala. We helped fund the Presence-of-Blackness project in speculative fiction, and a Mexicanx publication.
We are hiring.
We're looking for engineers who want to work part-time on @gumroad!
— Sahil Lavingia (@shl) January 14, 2019
- Ruby + JS.
- 15-25ish hours a week.
- Project-based or hourly.
- Remote only.
- Everything you work on will eventually be OSS.
Send me an email (sahil@gumroad.com) or DM if you're interested!
It's been a while since April 2011. But rest assured, we're just getting started. Want to follow along?
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