ProjectionLab
👤 Kyle Nolan (Boston software engineer deep in the FIRE movement — built the tool he wanted, and his own tribe became the distribution.)🌐 site𝕏LinkedIn
Privacy-first life-and-money simulator: no account linking, no ads, no data sale. Built by and for the FIRE crowd.
Will it work? · our read
Trust compounds. A great lifestyle business — but the paid-privacy wedge only bites where users distrust free tools and love spreadsheets. Push mainstream and free auto-sync rivals win.
01How the money moves
Money nerd distrusts free, data-selling apps
→
Enters data by hand, models any life path free
→
Upgrades to $129/yr Premium — data never sold
02The numbers
$1M
ARR, no VC
PL blog
$83.3K
MRR, Jun 2025
PL blog
100K+
households
PL about
Non-recurring lifetime purchases add another 20-50% on top of MRR each month (founder). ProjectionLab blog
$1M ARR in about 4 years, zero funding, 100K+ households.
🔒
The facts are free. The judgment is for members.
You've seen how the money moves, the numbers, and every source — free, on all 365 cases, always. Members get the part you can't look up: why it won · where the moat really is · how it dies · how it beats its rivals — plus the 🚀 launchpad prompt that turns any case into a plan for your business.
Sources stay public, always · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
(demo: preview the full teardown)Sourcesupdated · daily
ProjectionLab blog — "We reached $1M ARR with zero funding" (first-party)ProjectionLab — About (founding story and values)Kyle Nolan on X — $70K MRR, $1M total revenue (Jan 2025)Starter Story — How Kyle built a $50K/mo financial planning toolChooseFI Ep 506 — Kyle Nolan interview
Revenue is first-party and unusually well documented — Kyle publishes revenue charts, a $1M ARR blog post, and X updates ($83.3K MRR, June 2025); bootstrapped with zero funding is confirmed. The CENTS grades, the "dies" scenario, and the Plaid framing are our read, not founder claims. Rival prices verified at time of writing (Boldin $144/yr, MaxiFi $149/yr, Empower free). We never score you.