Abot makes Slack feedback anonymous both ways — and turns profitable

Abot began with a meeting. Paweł Urbanek, a web developer building side projects after work, sat through yet another company meeting that everyone recognized as a waste of time — but no one wanted to be the first to say it. That gap between what people thought and what anyone would voice became the product: a Slack bot that lets a team member send feedback anonymously, and lets the recipient reply without ever learning who wrote it.

The build was deliberately small. Abot was a Ruby on Rails Slack app whose features were anonymity and not much else: anonymous messages to a channel or a person, anonymous replies, and anonymous polls. The entire service ran on one $10/month Hetzner VPS, the logo was a licensed icon, and Urbanek used Paddle as the payment provider precisely so the merchant-of-record handled EU invoicing and tax. Costs stayed near zero, so any revenue at all was close to pure profit.

Distribution started with the official Slack app directory, and monetization with a trial: after a team's trial expired, the user and the team admin each got a friendly Slack message asking them to buy, with a follow-up two days later. By March 2018, more than 400 Slack teams representing over 50,000 users had registered, and the month's income was a few hundred dollars. The post drew 263 points and 34 comments on Hacker News, where readers debated whether anonymous feedback signals a broken culture and whether a one-time price fit a hosted service.

Urbanek was candid about the arc behind it: his earlier Slack bot, Tracky, grossed $324 over three years and lost money. Abot was the point where three years of regular after-hours work finally crossed into actual profit — evidence that a sharp idea, a tiny cost base and patience could make 'side project' and 'profitable' compatible for a solo developer.