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I've not watched it yet (going to do that shortly whilst grabbing lunch), but I'm really looking forward to watching this particular interview as it strikes me
by joelg87 16y ago
I've not watched it yet (going to do that shortly whilst grabbing lunch), but I'm really looking forward to watching this particular interview as it strikes me as very much in line with some of the changes in my own thinking in the last few months.
I graduated in Summer 2009, and I immediately wanted to do my own startup. I'd recently built my own new website, which was pretty much all my social networks on a single page. A friend asked me when he could have his, and after that I knew I was onto something. It turned into OnePage (http://myonepage.com http://myonepage.com) and it is doing well, with thousands of users. The problem? revenue was an afterthought, so to fund it I had to keep doing contract work. I tried doing it part time, and then I tried doing a wave of full-time and then a wave of full-time work on OnePage. We tried applying to incubators, too. After a year and a half, I still know there's huge potential in that space (just look at about.me), but I know I need to sort out my income so I can focus.
So, when the November Startup Sprint popped up, the timing couldn't have been better. I built my second startup called Buffer (http://bufferapp.com http://bufferapp.com) with the sole purpose of getting to ramen profitability and using it to free my time. I built the app in about 7 weeks of evenings and launched with payment options from day 1. Fast forward one month until now, and I've had just over a hundred signups, 3 of which are paying. I have a long way to go, but I think this is the method more people should take.
Some people want the lifestyle business so they can spend less time working and enjoy life more, others want their finances "sorted" so they can hit for the home run. Either way, I think lifestyle business first is almost always a good idea.
- kaisdavis 16y agoBuffer looks great. I'll be paying user #4.
- joelg87 16y agoYou just made my day. Thank-you!
- swombat 16y agoNeat indeed. Great, slick design, and clearly useful. I'm about to write the same functionality into my swombat.com codebase, so I can really see the use for it. Tweeted about it: http://twitter.com/swombat/status/22747385750888449 http://twitter.com/swombat/status/22747385750888449
- joelg87 16y agoThanks! I agree it's actually not too difficult to write, although there are a few complications when making it a service for many (timezones was the main one). I built it to scratch my own itch and also to put into practice all my learning of lean startup ideas, development and user experience. It was a real challenge to hold back and launch with a minimal yet complete (in the sense of being useful) feature-set. Now I'm trying to scale it up, I would love to ease off the amount of time I need to spend on contract work given time. Really appreciate the support.