From The Founder: October Update
BudgetBro launched Day Trips in October 2026, passed four figures in first month sales, registered its UK trade mark and built the Day Trips app, with the team now down to founder Josh and Samar.
October Overview of BudgetBro
We've been waiting the best part of eighteen months for a month like this one, and now it's here, Day Trips live and people actually paying for it, I should be bouncing off the walls. I'm not, and I've spent a fair bit of the month trying to work out why.
The Feelings I Was Supposed to Have
The build up to this was long and loud, and somewhere in all of it I picked up the idea that there's a correct way to feel when you finally get there.
This bit's deep for a startup blog but bear with me, because it reminds me of when my daughter was born. There was so much pressure to feel it all straight away, the love, the attachment, the big post telling everyone your life's changed, and honestly I didn't feel any of it on day one. Took a week or two.
That's where I am with this. We've got to the top of the first mountain and all I can see from up here is how big the second one is, and the third, and probably the fourth behind that. The view's good, it's just not the finish line I'd somehow talked myself into expecting.
We Lost Nathan
Straight with you as always, it's me and Samar now, we've lost Nathan. That's a blow in a few ways but it's been an eye opener too, because although he earned a wage from us for the job he did, looking back I reckon we were paying for my schooling as well. I learnt a huge amount off that man and I'll be forever grateful.
Finding It Again in Brazil
With the UK behind us and life settled back in Brazil, I've had the space to go properly inward and work out whether I still want this, and it turns out I do, more than I did a year ago.
I'm unbearably particular about my own work, and fixing something then making it faster then making it neater gives me a hit I'm not entirely convinced is legal. No substances involved before anyone asks, just me and a code editor at two in the morning.
I know the advice is to spend less time in the weeds and more time polishing yourself into a corporate looking founder, I've had that advice more than once, but it isn't me and I've stopped pretending otherwise. If that costs me a bit of credibility in certain rooms then so be it.
Anyway, the month's been good, we nailed it.
Want to see where your money actually goes? BudgetBro tracks it in any currency, free.
The Numbers
October in plain figures then. 5,830 visitors, 12,045 page views, a 26% bounce rate and an average visit of four minutes and sixty seconds, which I'm fairly sure is five minutes, but nobody's ever asked me to do advanced maths.
We also picked up just under 200 sign ups to the weekly email in those first four weeks, which I wasn't expecting at all. That might end up mattering more than the sales did, because those are people who've actively asked us to turn up in their inbox every Sunday, and that's a much harder thing to get than a one off.
We also went just past four figures in sales in our first month. Not miles past, and it came down to the last few hours of the month, but we got there and I'm allowed to be proud of that one.
The honest other half of that sentence is that this site costs a fair bit to run and none of that money has reached me or Samar yet.
The Trade Mark
BudgetBro's now a registered UK trade mark, owned by Nomu Studios Ltd. Small thing on paper, big thing for us. Watch out.
The Day Trips App
We put a poll on the site and 93.64% of you said you wanted an app, so I've been building it and it's nearly there, with the Apple and Google submissions next.
It's semi basic and I've made peace with that, because it's good enough for a first version and there's already a list of ideas as long as my arm for what goes in afterwards. The one thing the budgeting app taught me is to stop trying to perfect something before anyone's even touched it. I still try, mind. I'm better than I was, maybe.
The Travel App
While we're on apps, the original one's semi flying, a couple of hundred downloads in the last thirty days and three paying subscribers in the past forty eight hours. That's not changing anyone's bank balance but it's a slow burner getting itself ready for full throttle, and we stripped a load out of it this month and simplified it, which seems to have helped.
Milestones We've Hit
A few bits worth writing down.
- Day Trips finished its first full month live, with people paying for it
- Just past four figures in first month sales
- UK trade mark registered
- Day Trips app built and about to go to Apple and Google
- 93.64% of people polled said they wanted that app, so at least we built the right thing
- Three new paying subscribers on the original app inside two days
The Struggles
The team halved, that's the big one, and I'm still working out what I pick up myself and what simply doesn't get done any more.
The money hasn't started flowing either, the running costs are real and they go out every month whether we sell anything or not, and everything I've got is still sat in this thing.
And then there's the feelings business at the top of this post. Hitting a milestone you've waited a year and a half for and finding it a bit flat is a strange one to sit with, though I'm told it passes.
What's Next
I want to go home for Christmas, so I set myself a goal of 500 members in 38 days to make it happen, and right now I'm failing it by a fairly embarrassing margin. Work in progress, and I'm not a quitter, so we'll see where it lands.
There's more I'd like to say about the last month but I'll leave it at this. Some of what we've built is being copied and scraped by people who never asked, we're not ignoring neither.
Final Thoughts
One month live, one team member down, one trade mark up, four figures in and none of it in our pockets yet.
If you've followed us, paid for a membership, shared a post or just stuck around while this took far longer than it should have, thank you. And if you fancy seeing what a day out in Europe actually costs, it's all on budgetbro.app.
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