Japan Dev
👤 Eric Turner (American dev who moved to Tokyo, worked at Mercari—lived the foreign-hire pain. Wife Manami handled Japanese law and language.)🌐 site𝕏LinkedIn
A husband-and-wife team built a pay-on-hire job board for foreign devs in Japan. Zero revenue year one, then $62K/mo.
Will it work? · our read
Paid on hires. The pay-on-hire model wins trust but leans on honesty—companies must report hires, patched by late fees. And the whole thing is capped to Japan's foreign-dev niche.
01How the money moves
Curate top Japan tech roles; reject most companies
→
SEO + a 10,000-dev newsletter pull in candidates
→
Company hires -> Japan Dev bills a success fee
02The numbers
$62K/mo
revenue, July 2022
founder
about 150
companies under contract
founder
250K
monthly page views
founder
All figures founder-disclosed on Indie Hackers and his own blog (2022). Revenue was $0 for the entire first year. Indie Hackers
$62K/mo, founder-disclosed (July 2022).
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Indie Hackers: My ultra-niche job board earned $62,197 last monthJapan Dev blog: How and why I built Japan DevBootstrappers.com: founder interview with Eric TurnerHacker News: How and why I built Japan Dev (discussion)
Revenue of $62,197 in one month (July 2022) is first-party: Eric posted it on Indie Hackers and detailed it on his own blog, so independently confirmed, tagged Stated. The exact per-hire success fee is not public—he only says it undercuts recruiters' 30-35%, so I state no number. "About 150 companies" and 250K monthly pageviews are his figures. A later podcast cites about $80K/mo, but I anchored on the precise, sourced $62K. The zero-revenue first year is documented, not invented; no drama fabricated. We never score you.