Now That I Found You

BuyBus’s First Sale!

created: 2023.09.26. 08:08 · modified: 2023.10.05. 10:21 ·  · license

This post was automatically translated and has not yet been reviewed by me. Please read with discretion.

BuyBus finally made its first sale. It’s been 51 days since I started the project and 31 days since launch.

• stats for nerds

  

  That’s after about 5,200 lines of JS (3,500 frontend + 1,700 backend) and 42 git commits. As of today, two days later, the code has already passed 6,000 lines.

It’s not just BuyBus’s first sale. It’s also my first income from a startup in the year since I finished my lab internship last September, cast off all the shackles and constraints of the world, and devoted myself to starting a business (or did I just put the shackles on?). My goal this year was to earn 1 million won purely from “my own business,” and this is a big step toward it.

The notification came completely out of the blue the evening before last, as I was crossing Yanghwa Bridge on my way to run along the Han River. Rather than jumping for joy, I felt a sense of relief, as though something weighing on me had finally lifted. My vague idea that people might buy something like this had been confirmed in real life.

I couldn’t just celebrate, though. I’d treated keeping the project lean as its highest virtue, so I’d made everything up to the point of purchase (and confirmation) airtight, while leaving plenty of holes in what came after. I had to fix an error on the purchase history page, create a purchase confirmation email template, and make the backend send it automatically upon confirmation. I ended up going to bed at 5 a.m. that night. Good thing I’d eaten a hearty 400 g of pork neck after getting back from my run. I crave meat so much after exercise. Normally it’s more like, “Oh, that sounds good,” but right after lifting or running, it’s, “If I don’t eat some, I’m going to die.”

I’ve been so busy working that I’m writing this at a pace of about one paragraph a day. Two paragraphs ago, I said it was the evening before last, right? Now it’s been five days. Anyway, I successfully bought and uploaded the ticket, sent the email, and wrote a boarding guide. I added a feature for viewing terminals on Google Maps and put up a related Instagram post. I’ve nearly finished contacting the university exchange student channels I could find, so now I need to look into advertising through language institutes and social media like Instagram. To prepare for that, I also need to create and post plenty of content in advance. I need to figure out how to reduce the fees charged by the payment gateway, too, and write a guide for cases where passengers have to collect a ticket on-site without a QR code.

There’s a lot to do. I’ll be spending this year’s Chuseok with BuyBus.

I’ll never forget your name, D****.

Like the song I was listening to then: Now that I found you, I have the reason to carry on.

P.S. So far, I’ve sold tickets for 20 people across seven purchases. Granted, several purchases were by the same people. Could this actually work?