(Author’s note: I’ve been meaning to post this blog entry for some time, but due to the sheer craziness of my life [detailed below], I haven’t blogged in a while and have probably fallen out of the habit of writing longer pieces in English [as opposed to C, Python, or Java], so please be patient with my verbal clumsiness.)
It’s hard for me to believe, but I’ve been flying solo with Audacious Software for over a year now. In short, business is going well and the last year has been a tremendous learning experience. Given that the last blog entry is quite stale and is no longer representative of my state of affairs, I figured that an update was in order.
First of all, let me talk about the business in rough financial terms. When I first began this process, I set two financial milestones for me to meet that would help me assess if the entrepreneurial route was a responsible and worthwhile choice.
The first milestone I set was to basically replace the lost income from my graduate school stipend. In short, if I could clear $1800 per month, I could tell myself (and my wife) that I was just as well off (financially) consulting as I was in graduate school. This milestone was hit well before my one-year deadline, and I was able to even wipe out the debt that I’d been accruing while in school. So, from a financial perspective, starting a business was a better decision than continuing my graduate studies.
The second financial milestone that I set was to be making as much money as I was in my previous job or what I could reasonably expect from a typical posting for a first year professor. (Again, I’m using the academic path as a comparison.) While I have certainly billed more than my previous job’s salary in the past year, I haven’t been paying myself as much I was receiving for a regular paycheck. The difference can be accounted for in the typical costs of running a small company: office rent, self-employment taxes, development hardware investments and so on. So, while I am still working on that second goal, I have plenty of time and the growth rate of this business makes me very optimistic that I’ll reach that milestone on time as well.
In terms of raw work, I don’t think that I’ve ever been busier. I have a healthy stable of clients and a couple of internal projects underway that should become revenue producers as well in the next year. I haven’t done much marketing – work has seemed to find me. This is a very good thing as one of my major concerns starting out was finding that initial batch of clients that would provide enough work for me to build a respectable portfolio that I could use to pitch the later clients. In the past year, I’ve either found enough work and completed enough projects to establish my bona fides as a mobile software developer and ubiquitous computing designer. For the curious, I’ve either delivered or I am on track to deliver finished products on the following platforms: Symbian/Qt, iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac OS X, HTML5, Flash.
While making my monthly billing goals are still important, I’ve been focusing lately on putting together a solid portfolio that will allow me expand my client network a good deal further beyond my current social network. While the bulk of the work I’ve done so far has been for or from referrals through immediate acquaintances, the next stage of the evolution of Audacious Software will be to find the larger commercial clients that will provide the financial resources for me to begin recruiting talent and expanding the consulting business beyond just myself. As it currently stands, it’s simply not possible for me to take on more projects solo. I currently have 3 major ongoing projects with external clients and 2 high-priority internal projects. While I’ve never been more productive than I am now, it has become painfully obvious where my limits are. Personally, I’m quite happy with what I can accomplish as a solo programmer, but professionally, I recognize that some of my initial goals are a bit larger than I expected, and to achieve them won’t just require the effort that I can muster alone, but the skills and energy of others as well.
In terms of my personal life, my business has firmly knocked that into a second-place priority. While I’m very happy with my current work, the sheer amount of energy that I must devote to it has severely hobbled some of my previous hobbies. My Lovecraft research has been at a virtual standstill for the past year, and I haven’t blogged in any meaningful way for months. I’m firmly off the World of Warcraft treadmill and it’s doubtful that I’ll get back on. I am still mentoring Willie, but the frequency of our outings has probably halved. I still manage to watch a few television shows every week, but only once I’ve reached full mental exhaustion and need an escape.
The largest casualty of the new business has been the loss of recreational programming that I used to do for fun. Before the business, I could steal an evening here or there and bang out some code for a small project without regard to its value in my software portfolio or underlying business model. Now, each interesting idea has to compete with existing billable work on the table as well as potential revenue-generating internal projects. Consequently, the small fun ideas lose out more often than not. That’s not to say that programming has become a tedious unenjoyable slog – I still very much enjoy the work that I’m doing for “official” company purposes. However, it’s much more difficult to be “whimsical” with the projects that I decide to take on.
For example, one project that has been greatly neglected for this reason is my book cataloging software. Some months ago, I discontinued development on Books due to my lack of time and available attention. I didn’t lose interest in that area of software, but until I can either come up with a compelling monetization model or buy enough leeway using income from other work, this project will remain on hiatus. Which is unfortunate, as I have a killer vision and architecture in mind for a cross-device cataloging system that would be amazing. (Imagine a fluid 3D touch interface for browsing thousands of comics on an iPad in the on a train in the subway and you’ve scratched the surface of what I have in mind.)
Overall, after a year, it’s amazed me the amount of time and energy that I’ve poured into this new business. It’s resulted in fairly substantial life changes, and the process of doing this has certainly stretched me as a professional and a person. It’s quite interesting to look back and remember the relative value that I put on things prior to this process. Over the last year, I’ve learned that time is the most valuable commodity that I have and my valuation of that pre-business was an order of magnitude lower than it should have been. In terms of short-term stress, I certainly have much more of it (e.g. “Will I hit all of my goals this week?”). However, in terms of long-term stress, I’m much more relaxed and confident that I’ll be able to hit the major life milestones that I used to worry about, but was unable to do much about. Personally, trading long-term uncertainty for short-term stress and exhaustion is an exchange that I’m happy to make.
One Response to “One year in…”
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I’m glad to hear things have been going very well business-wise! It’s been pretty exciting watching you transition from grad student to entrepreneur though I do miss our discussions about “whimsical” projects you’re working on. I just hope you manage to squeeze in a little more time for your personal life (hi Holly!).
Btw, the other interns in my group are all working on iPhone apps and I feel so left out!