PromptHarbor started as an internal router so we could swap model vendors without rewriting product code. It became a business when friends asked to rent the same controls.
Months 1–6
Revenue was noise-level. Security questionnaires ate the calendar. The breakthrough was packaging “budgets + kill switches + exportable eval sets” as one story procurement teams could repeat.
What moved revenue
- Embeddable Terraform modules for VPC peering — shaved weeks off reviews.
- Weekly office hours explaining tokenizer drift — turned skeptics into references.
- Pricing tied to successful completions, not raw tokens — aligned us with customer CFOs.
Plateaus
We stalled near $38K MRR until we shipped SOC2-friendly logging defaults. Compliance paperwork is a feature.
What we refuse to do
No growth hacks, no outbound blitz. Slow compounding beats a burn chart we cannot service.
