I grew up near the middle eastern deserts of Qatar for the first 10 years of my life. My parents moved from India in hopes of better opportunities. Tech was growing quickly in the 80s. Tech jobs in the oil industry were the Silicon Valley jobs of the time. Salaries were tax free. My dad learned how to code by photocopying a friend's borrowed textbook. From punch cards to big mainframes, he taught himself how to program. He got a job that supported: his parents, financed his three brothers’ schooling and weddings, and provided for his young family of three. I was fortunate to witness the impact that one tech job would have as a ripple through a family’s livelihood.
For all the financial benefits of the Middle East, there were many drawbacks of raising a family there. Back then, if you expressed any radical political ideas or practiced your own faith, you could be jailed or deported. There were also limited options of universities and career paths. When I was 10, my parents decided to move the family to Canada for a better life.
It was all new and exciting for me. I enjoyed my art classes and discovered a love for graphic design. Specifically logos! They were like designing book covers for companies. Mini art projects that have deeper meanings and a language you can set up with it. Especially ones that could make money as well!
I started spending hours and hours experimenting with logo designs and submitting them to contests on 99designs. I got to learn how to do graphic design and learn how to work with feedback from clients. They would request changes and I got to see how I could improve and iterate on them faster. My obsession was so strong that I even started a website called Logofi.com to showcase cool logo designs that people would send in. The site was a hit. Thousands of people visited every day to see what logos were being featured. Each logo linked to the designer’s portfolio gets them leads for more client work. Inspired by Digg, upvote buttons were added to see what the visitors enjoyed. Soon advertisers wanted to pay for banners on the site and I generated my first ad sale on the internet. I was hooked. I turned a hobby into a side hustle and then into a cash flowing asset before graduating high school. I was convinced I could turn hobbies into businesses using the internet forever without having to ever work “a job”.
In 2010, I started my undergrad in graphic design. It was an exciting time for graphic design and technology. Many emerging startups started valuing design highly like Uber and Airbnb. I caught the startup bug and got internships in San Francisco, followed up with my first full-time job after school as a product designer in New York. I was slowly becoming aware of the way startups worked. I started reading more Paul Graham essays and dreamed about creating something significant like Airbnb. Two of the Airbnb founders were trained as designers so it gave me hope that it could be a path forward as a design tech entrepreneur. I worked at two companies in New York over the span of 2 years. It was exciting to imagine building something from scratch and potentially having a life changing financial gain. While both companies gave me priceless experience in product and business building, both companies netted me a zero in financial upside. This was a defeating feeling and gave me a realization of how risky early stage company building is. I was tired of the work and craved what I did in high school: turn hobbies into profitable businesses.
I moved from New York back to my hometown of Toronto, Canada. Having work experience in New York helped me out a lot when getting freelance work in Toronto. People are just so impressed with any American company doing design work. I tried to use that to my advantage as much as possible. I found some great entrepreneurs to work with in the beginning. I tried to think of every consulting project as future funding of my hobby businesses. I started getting pretty consistent work doing pitch decks for startups. Pretty soon I built a reputation around pitch deck work and it was the only type of work I attracted. My dreams of building my own products had to be put on ice for a while. I kept coming up with ideas that I could try and everything felt too expensive if it didn’t work right away. My ‘time runway’ didn’t feel too long. I didn't want to go down the route of raising money from investors for any idea just yet. Didn't feel comfortable. I still had a bad taste of the dynamics of raising money. How could I take someone’s money if I don’t even know if I can seriously work on it for 5+ years. So I kept doing pitch decks.
Until I came across what felt like a golden opportunity: solving my own problem when I was talking to clients. Whenever I would show clients a pitch deck or a landing page design I didn't have a way to get their thoughts other than getting on phone calls or using long email threads. Something felt broken. There were so many other tools built for general feedback but there was nothing built for websites. I got excited. “Wow, I found something that is a blind spot”.
I had enough experience with the problem and knew how I could fix it. All I needed was a few developers and maybe an operations person to help me scale the things I’m not good at like finance, bookkeeping and accounting. Probably even management. I knew I could knock the design part of things out of the park. So the first thing I did was calculate how much it would take to just build a basic version of what I had in mind. I looked at the numbers and then divided it by how many consulting hours I needed to put in to save up. I was looking at a bill for around $100,000. Money I did not have. Even if I found the right freelancers, I didn’t feel comfortable with the risk of not having partners without skin in the game. I wouldn't blame them either. As a consultant, after I bill for projects, I kind of move on with my life. I'm not taking the risk of the company not working. All I control is my effort and the task at hand.
Slowly I went back to the comforts of consulting. I tabled the idea. But after a few weeks of constantly thinking of what could be, I decided to push it as far as I could, design-wise. I opened up Keynote and designed a few screens and animated them to look like a demo video. As if it was the finished product. Threw it up on a landing page with a domain. I think the biggest motivation that kept pulling me back into this idea was the fact that the product was solving a problem I intimately knew and that software could scale much more efficiently than an agency would. I didn’t want to manage teams of designers or have a large payroll. Software could make money while I slept without a large employee base. The gold mine was the economic engine of monthly recurring revenue.
I promoted the product by listing it on Betalist.com and over the next couple of weeks, over a hundred people found this landing page and signed up to get future updates. I was excited that the idea was out of my head and standing alone as a brand and a website. This small step felt monumental for me.
In the meantime, I tried to find some of the companies that were building similar products. I was thinking I could convince them that I could be a great co-founder. Luckily, I found a team in Toronto working on a feedback tool. The only difference was that they were making the product specifically for developers.
I decided to email them anyway.
I grew up near the middle eastern deserts of Qatar for the first 10 years of my life. My parents moved from India in hopes of better opportunities. Tech was growing quickly in the 80s. Tech jobs in the oil industry were the Silicon Valley jobs of the time. Salaries were tax free. My dad learned how to code by photocopying a friend's borrowed textbook. From punch cards to big mainframes, he taught himself how to program. He got a job that supported: his parents, financed his three brothers’ schooling and weddings, and provided for his young family of three. I was fortunate to witness the impact that one tech job would have as a ripple through a family’s livelihood.
For all the financial benefits of the Middle East, there were many drawbacks of raising a family there. Back then, if you expressed any radical political ideas or practiced your own faith, you could be jailed or deported. There were also limited options of universities and career paths. When I was 10, my parents decided to move the family to Canada for a better life.
It was all new and exciting for me. I enjoyed my art classes and discovered a love for graphic design. Specifically logos! They were like designing book covers for companies. Mini art projects that have deeper meanings and a language you can set up with it. Especially ones that could make money as well!
I started spending hours and hours experimenting with logo designs and submitting them to contests on 99designs. I got to learn how to do graphic design and learn how to work with feedback from clients. They would request changes and I got to see how I could improve and iterate on them faster. My obsession was so strong that I even started a website called Logofi.com to showcase cool logo designs that people would send in. The site was a hit. Thousands of people visited every day to see what logos were being featured. Each logo linked to the designer’s portfolio gets them leads for more client work. Inspired by Digg, upvote buttons were added to see what the visitors enjoyed. Soon advertisers wanted to pay for banners on the site and I generated my first ad sale on the internet. I was hooked. I turned a hobby into a side hustle and then into a cash flowing asset before graduating high school. I was convinced I could turn hobbies into businesses using the internet forever without having to ever work “a job”.
In 2010, I started my undergrad in graphic design. It was an exciting time for graphic design and technology. Many emerging startups started valuing design highly like Uber and Airbnb. I caught the startup bug and got internships in San Francisco, followed up with my first full-time job after school as a product designer in New York. I was slowly becoming aware of the way startups worked. I started reading more Paul Graham essays and dreamed about creating something significant like Airbnb. Two of the Airbnb founders were trained as designers so it gave me hope that it could be a path forward as a design tech entrepreneur. I worked at two companies in New York over the span of 2 years. It was exciting to imagine building something from scratch and potentially having a life changing financial gain. While both companies gave me priceless experience in product and business building, both companies netted me a zero in financial upside. This was a defeating feeling and gave me a realization of how risky early stage company building is. I was tired of the work and craved what I did in high school: turn hobbies into profitable businesses.
I moved from New York back to my hometown of Toronto, Canada. Having work experience in New York helped me out a lot when getting freelance work in Toronto. People are just so impressed with any American company doing design work. I tried to use that to my advantage as much as possible. I found some great entrepreneurs to work with in the beginning. I tried to think of every consulting project as future funding of my hobby businesses. I started getting pretty consistent work doing pitch decks for startups. Pretty soon I built a reputation around pitch deck work and it was the only type of work I attracted. My dreams of building my own products had to be put on ice for a while. I kept coming up with ideas that I could try and everything felt too expensive if it didn’t work right away. My ‘time runway’ didn’t feel too long. I didn't want to go down the route of raising money from investors for any idea just yet. Didn't feel comfortable. I still had a bad taste of the dynamics of raising money. How could I take someone’s money if I don’t even know if I can seriously work on it for 5+ years. So I kept doing pitch decks.
Until I came across what felt like a golden opportunity: solving my own problem when I was talking to clients. Whenever I would show clients a pitch deck or a landing page design I didn't have a way to get their thoughts other than getting on phone calls or using long email threads. Something felt broken. There were so many other tools built for general feedback but there was nothing built for websites. I got excited. “Wow, I found something that is a blind spot”.
I had enough experience with the problem and knew how I could fix it. All I needed was a few developers and maybe an operations person to help me scale the things I’m not good at like finance, bookkeeping and accounting. Probably even management. I knew I could knock the design part of things out of the park. So the first thing I did was calculate how much it would take to just build a basic version of what I had in mind. I looked at the numbers and then divided it by how many consulting hours I needed to put in to save up. I was looking at a bill for around $100,000. Money I did not have. Even if I found the right freelancers, I didn’t feel comfortable with the risk of not having partners without skin in the game. I wouldn't blame them either. As a consultant, after I bill for projects, I kind of move on with my life. I'm not taking the risk of the company not working. All I control is my effort and the task at hand.
Slowly I went back to the comforts of consulting. I tabled the idea. But after a few weeks of constantly thinking of what could be, I decided to push it as far as I could, design-wise. I opened up Keynote and designed a few screens and animated them to look like a demo video. As if it was the finished product. Threw it up on a landing page with a domain. I think the biggest motivation that kept pulling me back into this idea was the fact that the product was solving a problem I intimately knew and that software could scale much more efficiently than an agency would. I didn’t want to manage teams of designers or have a large payroll. Software could make money while I slept without a large employee base. The gold mine was the economic engine of monthly recurring revenue.
I promoted the product by listing it on Betalist.com and over the next couple of weeks, over a hundred people found this landing page and signed up to get future updates. I was excited that the idea was out of my head and standing alone as a brand and a website. This small step felt monumental for me.
In the meantime, I tried to find some of the companies that were building similar products. I was thinking I could convince them that I could be a great co-founder. Luckily, I found a team in Toronto working on a feedback tool. The only difference was that they were making the product specifically for developers.
I decided to email them anyway.
I grew up near the middle eastern deserts of Qatar for the first 10 years of my life. My parents moved from India in hopes of better opportunities. Tech was growing quickly in the 80s. Tech jobs in the oil industry were the Silicon Valley jobs of the time. Salaries were tax free. My dad learned how to code by photocopying a friend's borrowed textbook. From punch cards to big mainframes, he taught himself how to program. He got a job that supported: his parents, financed his three brothers’ schooling and weddings, and provided for his young family of three. I was fortunate to witness the impact that one tech job would have as a ripple through a family’s livelihood.
For all the financial benefits of the Middle East, there were many drawbacks of raising a family there. Back then, if you expressed any radical political ideas or practiced your own faith, you could be jailed or deported. There were also limited options of universities and career paths. When I was 10, my parents decided to move the family to Canada for a better life.
It was all new and exciting for me. I enjoyed my art classes and discovered a love for graphic design. Specifically logos! They were like designing book covers for companies. Mini art projects that have deeper meanings and a language you can set up with it. Especially ones that could make money as well!
I started spending hours and hours experimenting with logo designs and submitting them to contests on 99designs. I got to learn how to do graphic design and learn how to work with feedback from clients. They would request changes and I got to see how I could improve and iterate on them faster. My obsession was so strong that I even started a website called Logofi.com to showcase cool logo designs that people would send in. The site was a hit. Thousands of people visited every day to see what logos were being featured. Each logo linked to the designer’s portfolio gets them leads for more client work. Inspired by Digg, upvote buttons were added to see what the visitors enjoyed. Soon advertisers wanted to pay for banners on the site and I generated my first ad sale on the internet. I was hooked. I turned a hobby into a side hustle and then into a cash flowing asset before graduating high school. I was convinced I could turn hobbies into businesses using the internet forever without having to ever work “a job”.
In 2010, I started my undergrad in graphic design. It was an exciting time for graphic design and technology. Many emerging startups started valuing design highly like Uber and Airbnb. I caught the startup bug and got internships in San Francisco, followed up with my first full-time job after school as a product designer in New York. I was slowly becoming aware of the way startups worked. I started reading more Paul Graham essays and dreamed about creating something significant like Airbnb. Two of the Airbnb founders were trained as designers so it gave me hope that it could be a path forward as a design tech entrepreneur. I worked at two companies in New York over the span of 2 years. It was exciting to imagine building something from scratch and potentially having a life changing financial gain. While both companies gave me priceless experience in product and business building, both companies netted me a zero in financial upside. This was a defeating feeling and gave me a realization of how risky early stage company building is. I was tired of the work and craved what I did in high school: turn hobbies into profitable businesses.
I moved from New York back to my hometown of Toronto, Canada. Having work experience in New York helped me out a lot when getting freelance work in Toronto. People are just so impressed with any American company doing design work. I tried to use that to my advantage as much as possible. I found some great entrepreneurs to work with in the beginning. I tried to think of every consulting project as future funding of my hobby businesses. I started getting pretty consistent work doing pitch decks for startups. Pretty soon I built a reputation around pitch deck work and it was the only type of work I attracted. My dreams of building my own products had to be put on ice for a while. I kept coming up with ideas that I could try and everything felt too expensive if it didn’t work right away. My ‘time runway’ didn’t feel too long. I didn't want to go down the route of raising money from investors for any idea just yet. Didn't feel comfortable. I still had a bad taste of the dynamics of raising money. How could I take someone’s money if I don’t even know if I can seriously work on it for 5+ years. So I kept doing pitch decks.
Until I came across what felt like a golden opportunity: solving my own problem when I was talking to clients. Whenever I would show clients a pitch deck or a landing page design I didn't have a way to get their thoughts other than getting on phone calls or using long email threads. Something felt broken. There were so many other tools built for general feedback but there was nothing built for websites. I got excited. “Wow, I found something that is a blind spot”.
I had enough experience with the problem and knew how I could fix it. All I needed was a few developers and maybe an operations person to help me scale the things I’m not good at like finance, bookkeeping and accounting. Probably even management. I knew I could knock the design part of things out of the park. So the first thing I did was calculate how much it would take to just build a basic version of what I had in mind. I looked at the numbers and then divided it by how many consulting hours I needed to put in to save up. I was looking at a bill for around $100,000. Money I did not have. Even if I found the right freelancers, I didn’t feel comfortable with the risk of not having partners without skin in the game. I wouldn't blame them either. As a consultant, after I bill for projects, I kind of move on with my life. I'm not taking the risk of the company not working. All I control is my effort and the task at hand.
Slowly I went back to the comforts of consulting. I tabled the idea. But after a few weeks of constantly thinking of what could be, I decided to push it as far as I could, design-wise. I opened up Keynote and designed a few screens and animated them to look like a demo video. As if it was the finished product. Threw it up on a landing page with a domain. I think the biggest motivation that kept pulling me back into this idea was the fact that the product was solving a problem I intimately knew and that software could scale much more efficiently than an agency would. I didn’t want to manage teams of designers or have a large payroll. Software could make money while I slept without a large employee base. The gold mine was the economic engine of monthly recurring revenue.
I promoted the product by listing it on Betalist.com and over the next couple of weeks, over a hundred people found this landing page and signed up to get future updates. I was excited that the idea was out of my head and standing alone as a brand and a website. This small step felt monumental for me.
In the meantime, I tried to find some of the companies that were building similar products. I was thinking I could convince them that I could be a great co-founder. Luckily, I found a team in Toronto working on a feedback tool. The only difference was that they were making the product specifically for developers.
I decided to email them anyway.
I remember thinking that even if they say no, I would walk away building a new friendship and maybe add some value to their business. I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold back any ideas. What would a consultant do to prepare for this meeting? One of the founders responded! He was an engineer and he took a fascination with how I thought about the same problem but from a design perspective. I knew that I only had his attention for an hour or two. I tried to summarize my findings into three product improvements: make every step more visual, simpler and faster. I had tactical ideas for each of those buckets of improvements. It turned into a good volley of ideas back and forth. The energy that we had in the conversation felt right.
Both of the founders had the humility to question their own product decisions and were open enough to hear new ideas. I was sold. With just a verbal agreement, we started to work together with the understanding that if it doesn't work out we just leave the project with no hard feelings. It was evident after the first meeting that this partnership could really work. Even after so many years, I keep thinking about how powerful one cold email can be. It brought two amazing business partners into my life.
I tried to pitch a performance based package. I wanted to own 20% of the company and if the product starts growing within a couple months I want to own 25%. At that time the business as a whole was making $25 a month. I knew that design agencies would pay a lot more for this. The folks are spending so much time trying to get the pixel perfection projects. They were the audience. They were the ones that cared enough to spend possibly $100 a month or more trying to get all their team and clients aligned to shipping a website that looked good.
It was March 2017. I was still consulting full-time. This felt like my first business acquisition. Instead of money, I was buying in with my time and skills.
$25 in monthly revenue. There was a lot of work to be done.
I remember thinking that even if they say no, I would walk away building a new friendship and maybe add some value to their business. I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold back any ideas. What would a consultant do to prepare for this meeting? One of the founders responded! He was an engineer and he took a fascination with how I thought about the same problem but from a design perspective. I knew that I only had his attention for an hour or two. I tried to summarize my findings into three product improvements: make every step more visual, simpler and faster. I had tactical ideas for each of those buckets of improvements. It turned into a good volley of ideas back and forth. The energy that we had in the conversation felt right.
Both of the founders had the humility to question their own product decisions and were open enough to hear new ideas. I was sold. With just a verbal agreement, we started to work together with the understanding that if it doesn't work out we just leave the project with no hard feelings. It was evident after the first meeting that this partnership could really work. Even after so many years, I keep thinking about how powerful one cold email can be. It brought two amazing business partners into my life.
I tried to pitch a performance based package. I wanted to own 20% of the company and if the product starts growing within a couple months I want to own 25%. At that time the business as a whole was making $25 a month. I knew that design agencies would pay a lot more for this. The folks are spending so much time trying to get the pixel perfection projects. They were the audience. They were the ones that cared enough to spend possibly $100 a month or more trying to get all their team and clients aligned to shipping a website that looked good.
It was March 2017. I was still consulting full-time. This felt like my first business acquisition. Instead of money, I was buying in with my time and skills.
$25 in monthly revenue. There was a lot of work to be done.
I remember thinking that even if they say no, I would walk away building a new friendship and maybe add some value to their business. I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold back any ideas. What would a consultant do to prepare for this meeting? One of the founders responded! He was an engineer and he took a fascination with how I thought about the same problem but from a design perspective. I knew that I only had his attention for an hour or two. I tried to summarize my findings into three product improvements: make every step more visual, simpler and faster. I had tactical ideas for each of those buckets of improvements. It turned into a good volley of ideas back and forth. The energy that we had in the conversation felt right.
Both of the founders had the humility to question their own product decisions and were open enough to hear new ideas. I was sold. With just a verbal agreement, we started to work together with the understanding that if it doesn't work out we just leave the project with no hard feelings. It was evident after the first meeting that this partnership could really work. Even after so many years, I keep thinking about how powerful one cold email can be. It brought two amazing business partners into my life.
I tried to pitch a performance based package. I wanted to own 20% of the company and if the product starts growing within a couple months I want to own 25%. At that time the business as a whole was making $25 a month. I knew that design agencies would pay a lot more for this. The folks are spending so much time trying to get the pixel perfection projects. They were the audience. They were the ones that cared enough to spend possibly $100 a month or more trying to get all their team and clients aligned to shipping a website that looked good.
It was March 2017. I was still consulting full-time. This felt like my first business acquisition. Instead of money, I was buying in with my time and skills.
$25 in monthly revenue. There was a lot of work to be done.
I remember thinking that even if they say no, I would walk away building a new friendship and maybe add some value to their business. I promised myself that I wouldn’t hold back any ideas. What would a consultant do to prepare for this meeting? One of the founders responded! He was an engineer and he took a fascination with how I thought about the same problem but from a design perspective. I knew that I only had his attention for an hour or two. I tried to summarize my findings into three product improvements: make every step more visual, simpler and faster. I had tactical ideas for each of those buckets of improvements. It turned into a good volley of ideas back and forth. The energy that we had in the conversation felt right.
Both of the founders had the humility to question their own product decisions and were open enough to hear new ideas. I was sold. With just a verbal agreement, we started to work together with the understanding that if it doesn't work out we just leave the project with no hard feelings. It was evident after the first meeting that this partnership could really work. Even after so many years, I keep thinking about how powerful one cold email can be. It brought two amazing business partners into my life.
I tried to pitch a performance based package. I wanted to own 20% of the company and if the product starts growing within a couple months I want to own 25%. At that time the business as a whole was making $25 a month. I knew that design agencies would pay a lot more for this. The folks are spending so much time trying to get the pixel perfection projects. They were the audience. They were the ones that cared enough to spend possibly $100 a month or more trying to get all their team and clients aligned to shipping a website that looked good.
It was March 2017. I was still consulting full-time. This felt like my first business acquisition. Instead of money, I was buying in with my time and skills.
$25 in monthly revenue. There was a lot of work to be done.
This has been my five year journey. It’s the only path I’ve experienced. I’ve read my fair share of self help and business books. I always wished that they would acknowledge the bias before they started, so here you go. These are the lessons I have learned building an independent software company. This is the book I wish I had read when I was 24. When I started this journey. It would have been awesome to get a boost of confidence knowing that a designer that didn’t know how to code could find a way to still realize a vision and do it independently.
When I started this company, I knew I wanted to write a book journaling some of the highs and lows. A way to capture the journey. The early version was a set of loose notes that I’ve kept over the years detailing the feelings and lessons of each event over the course of 5 years. I knew the experience was going to be intense and wanted to really cherish all the moments. I realized so much of these lessons are not reproducible. Of the little that I controlled, the most impactful decisions were: managing my mentality, effort and finding the parts of the process I enjoyed.
After freelancing for many years, I wanted to create a business that could give me and my future family financial freedom. A way to make money predictably over a long period of time by offering something useful to customers I already understood.
In 2017, I started a software company called Pastel. I found that my industry was going more remote and lacked the tools to collaborate on building websites.
Pastel now generates 7 figures in subscription revenue every year with 2 employees and 0 investors.
This kind of path seemed rare. An independent company having creative freedom to make decisions on their own terms. This is just the beginning. We are only starting to scratch the surface of the different types of independent profitable software companies that will be born over the next few decades. This industry is still so young and I’m excited to see all the different voices that will enter this space and create magic on their own.
This has been my five year journey. It’s the only path I’ve experienced. I’ve read my fair share of self help and business books. I always wished that they would acknowledge the bias before they started, so here you go. These are the lessons I have learned building an independent software company. This is the book I wish I had read when I was 24. When I started this journey. It would have been awesome to get a boost of confidence knowing that a designer that didn’t know how to code could find a way to still realize a vision and do it independently.
When I started this company, I knew I wanted to write a book journaling some of the highs and lows. A way to capture the journey. The early version was a set of loose notes that I’ve kept over the years detailing the feelings and lessons of each event over the course of 5 years. I knew the experience was going to be intense and wanted to really cherish all the moments. I realized so much of these lessons are not reproducible. Of the little that I controlled, the most impactful decisions were: managing my mentality, effort and finding the parts of the process I enjoyed.
After freelancing for many years, I wanted to create a business that could give me and my future family financial freedom. A way to make money predictably over a long period of time by offering something useful to customers I already understood.
In 2017, I started a software company called Pastel. I found that my industry was going more remote and lacked the tools to collaborate on building websites.
Pastel now generates 7 figures in subscription revenue every year with 2 employees and 0 investors.
This kind of path seemed rare. An independent company having creative freedom to make decisions on their own terms. This is just the beginning. We are only starting to scratch the surface of the different types of independent profitable software companies that will be born over the next few decades. This industry is still so young and I’m excited to see all the different voices that will enter this space and create magic on their own.
This has been my five year journey. It’s the only path I’ve experienced. I’ve read my fair share of self help and business books. I always wished that they would acknowledge the bias before they started, so here you go. These are the lessons I have learned building an independent software company. This is the book I wish I had read when I was 24. When I started this journey. It would have been awesome to get a boost of confidence knowing that a designer that didn’t know how to code could find a way to still realize a vision and do it independently.
When I started this company, I knew I wanted to write a book journaling some of the highs and lows. A way to capture the journey. The early version was a set of loose notes that I’ve kept over the years detailing the feelings and lessons of each event over the course of 5 years. I knew the experience was going to be intense and wanted to really cherish all the moments. I realized so much of these lessons are not reproducible. Of the little that I controlled, the most impactful decisions were: managing my mentality, effort and finding the parts of the process I enjoyed.
After freelancing for many years, I wanted to create a business that could give me and my future family financial freedom. A way to make money predictably over a long period of time by offering something useful to customers I already understood.
In 2017, I started a software company called Pastel. I found that my industry was going more remote and lacked the tools to collaborate on building websites.
Pastel now generates 7 figures in subscription revenue every year with 2 employees and 0 investors.
This kind of path seemed rare. An independent company having creative freedom to make decisions on their own terms. This is just the beginning. We are only starting to scratch the surface of the different types of independent profitable software companies that will be born over the next few decades. This industry is still so young and I’m excited to see all the different voices that will enter this space and create magic on their own.
This has been my five year journey. It’s the only path I’ve experienced. I’ve read my fair share of self help and business books. I always wished that they would acknowledge the bias before they started, so here you go. These are the lessons I have learned building an independent software company. This is the book I wish I had read when I was 24. When I started this journey. It would have been awesome to get a boost of confidence knowing that a designer that didn’t know how to code could find a way to still realize a vision and do it independently.
When I started this company, I knew I wanted to write a book journaling some of the highs and lows. A way to capture the journey. The early version was a set of loose notes that I’ve kept over the years detailing the feelings and lessons of each event over the course of 5 years. I knew the experience was going to be intense and wanted to really cherish all the moments. I realized so much of these lessons are not reproducible. Of the little that I controlled, the most impactful decisions were: managing my mentality, effort and finding the parts of the process I enjoyed.
After freelancing for many years, I wanted to create a business that could give me and my future family financial freedom. A way to make money predictably over a long period of time by offering something useful to customers I already understood.
In 2017, I started a software company called Pastel. I found that my industry was going more remote and lacked the tools to collaborate on building websites.
Pastel now generates 7 figures in subscription revenue every year with 2 employees and 0 investors.
This kind of path seemed rare. An independent company having creative freedom to make decisions on their own terms. This is just the beginning. We are only starting to scratch the surface of the different types of independent profitable software companies that will be born over the next few decades. This industry is still so young and I’m excited to see all the different voices that will enter this space and create magic on their own.
My Bias
My Bias
My Bias
I was shit scared of starting a business but I didn’t feel like I had many other choices.
I hated working for others. Whenever I did, I always felt like I wanted to do more than the role I was hired for. I was also frustrated with not being rewarded in the right way for a high level of effort.
I was told that I didn’t have a good chance of being an entrepreneur. I wasn’t ruthless enough or extroverted enough. Or that I needed white skin to be a founder at a successful company. This was more probably a by-product of the environment I was in during the 90s. Things have really progressed since then, but I still questioned if this was true growing up.
Back in 2016, I was 24 and working at a startup in New York. I was getting ready to turn down the highest salary I’d ever been offered.
It felt insane to turn any significant amount of money down as a recent graduate (class of 2014) but I frequently felt unhappy working at companies. The direction of projects were set by others and the reward never matched up to a successful effort (it never can!). I wanted to start my own business. A future for myself when I get to work on ideas I want to see in the world and have the money to fund them myself. No dependencies.
I started reading through my business ideas and I had this gnawing thought: will this idea work and will I make the same salary as the one I had just turned down? It was an annoying question. I knew I had to start working on something organically and not view it through the eyes of a salary expectation.
Rather than setting out to prove a new business idea, I started with the offer I had turned down. I knew I could get paid for my time. So I started there. Freelancing just made sense to pay the bills. It wasn't where I wanted to be but I knew I wanted to start there to help me pay for my time. That helped me build some confidence and slowly save up time to work on things that I wanted to see built. I specifically chose this path because I wanted creative freedom.
Takeaway: Develop a specialized skill that you somewhat enjoy. This has many benefits. Why specialized? So you can turn your time into cash at a premium rate. Something more than a minimum wage. Specialized skills also can help generate referrals. If you know how to cut hair, grass, install glass, make logos/websites, clean up CRMs. Whatever the skill is. If you somewhat enjoy it, you can always rely on it to fund your experiments, help you bounce back from risks that don’t work out. It can fund your dreams and your pivots.
I was shit scared of starting a business but I didn’t feel like I had many other choices.
I hated working for others. Whenever I did, I always felt like I wanted to do more than the role I was hired for. I was also frustrated with not being rewarded in the right way for a high level of effort.
I was told that I didn’t have a good chance of being an entrepreneur. I wasn’t ruthless enough or extroverted enough. Or that I needed white skin to be a founder at a successful company. This was more probably a by-product of the environment I was in during the 90s. Things have really progressed since then, but I still questioned if this was true growing up.
Back in 2016, I was 24 and working at a startup in New York. I was getting ready to turn down the highest salary I’d ever been offered.
It felt insane to turn any significant amount of money down as a recent graduate (class of 2014) but I frequently felt unhappy working at companies. The direction of projects were set by others and the reward never matched up to a successful effort (it never can!). I wanted to start my own business. A future for myself when I get to work on ideas I want to see in the world and have the money to fund them myself. No dependencies.
I started reading through my business ideas and I had this gnawing thought: will this idea work and will I make the same salary as the one I had just turned down? It was an annoying question. I knew I had to start working on something organically and not view it through the eyes of a salary expectation.
Rather than setting out to prove a new business idea, I started with the offer I had turned down. I knew I could get paid for my time. So I started there. Freelancing just made sense to pay the bills. It wasn't where I wanted to be but I knew I wanted to start there to help me pay for my time. That helped me build some confidence and slowly save up time to work on things that I wanted to see built. I specifically chose this path because I wanted creative freedom.
Takeaway: Develop a specialized skill that you somewhat enjoy. This has many benefits. Why specialized? So you can turn your time into cash at a premium rate. Something more than a minimum wage. Specialized skills also can help generate referrals. If you know how to cut hair, grass, install glass, make logos/websites, clean up CRMs. Whatever the skill is. If you somewhat enjoy it, you can always rely on it to fund your experiments, help you bounce back from risks that don’t work out. It can fund your dreams and your pivots.
I was shit scared of starting a business but I didn’t feel like I had many other choices.
I hated working for others. Whenever I did, I always felt like I wanted to do more than the role I was hired for. I was also frustrated with not being rewarded in the right way for a high level of effort.
I was told that I didn’t have a good chance of being an entrepreneur. I wasn’t ruthless enough or extroverted enough. Or that I needed white skin to be a founder at a successful company. This was more probably a by-product of the environment I was in during the 90s. Things have really progressed since then, but I still questioned if this was true growing up.
Back in 2016, I was 24 and working at a startup in New York. I was getting ready to turn down the highest salary I’d ever been offered.
It felt insane to turn any significant amount of money down as a recent graduate (class of 2014) but I frequently felt unhappy working at companies. The direction of projects were set by others and the reward never matched up to a successful effort (it never can!). I wanted to start my own business. A future for myself when I get to work on ideas I want to see in the world and have the money to fund them myself. No dependencies.
I started reading through my business ideas and I had this gnawing thought: will this idea work and will I make the same salary as the one I had just turned down? It was an annoying question. I knew I had to start working on something organically and not view it through the eyes of a salary expectation.
Rather than setting out to prove a new business idea, I started with the offer I had turned down. I knew I could get paid for my time. So I started there. Freelancing just made sense to pay the bills. It wasn't where I wanted to be but I knew I wanted to start there to help me pay for my time. That helped me build some confidence and slowly save up time to work on things that I wanted to see built. I specifically chose this path because I wanted creative freedom.
Takeaway: Develop a specialized skill that you somewhat enjoy. This has many benefits. Why specialized? So you can turn your time into cash at a premium rate. Something more than a minimum wage. Specialized skills also can help generate referrals. If you know how to cut hair, grass, install glass, make logos/websites, clean up CRMs. Whatever the skill is. If you somewhat enjoy it, you can always rely on it to fund your experiments, help you bounce back from risks that don’t work out. It can fund your dreams and your pivots.
I was shit scared of starting a business but I didn’t feel like I had many other choices.
I hated working for others. Whenever I did, I always felt like I wanted to do more than the role I was hired for. I was also frustrated with not being rewarded in the right way for a high level of effort.
I was told that I didn’t have a good chance of being an entrepreneur. I wasn’t ruthless enough or extroverted enough. Or that I needed white skin to be a founder at a successful company. This was more probably a by-product of the environment I was in during the 90s. Things have really progressed since then, but I still questioned if this was true growing up.
Back in 2016, I was 24 and working at a startup in New York. I was getting ready to turn down the highest salary I’d ever been offered.
It felt insane to turn any significant amount of money down as a recent graduate (class of 2014) but I frequently felt unhappy working at companies. The direction of projects were set by others and the reward never matched up to a successful effort (it never can!). I wanted to start my own business. A future for myself when I get to work on ideas I want to see in the world and have the money to fund them myself. No dependencies.
I started reading through my business ideas and I had this gnawing thought: will this idea work and will I make the same salary as the one I had just turned down? It was an annoying question. I knew I had to start working on something organically and not view it through the eyes of a salary expectation.
Rather than setting out to prove a new business idea, I started with the offer I had turned down. I knew I could get paid for my time. So I started there. Freelancing just made sense to pay the bills. It wasn't where I wanted to be but I knew I wanted to start there to help me pay for my time. That helped me build some confidence and slowly save up time to work on things that I wanted to see built. I specifically chose this path because I wanted creative freedom.
Takeaway: Develop a specialized skill that you somewhat enjoy. This has many benefits. Why specialized? So you can turn your time into cash at a premium rate. Something more than a minimum wage. Specialized skills also can help generate referrals. If you know how to cut hair, grass, install glass, make logos/websites, clean up CRMs. Whatever the skill is. If you somewhat enjoy it, you can always rely on it to fund your experiments, help you bounce back from risks that don’t work out. It can fund your dreams and your pivots.
Own a skill that
pays the bills
Own a skill that
pays the bills
Own a skill that
pays the bills
Our growth took some time. Longer than I expected.
My friends and family were sympathetic when inquiring if I was still working on the product. I usually mentioned that I was also consulting. That was my ego coping mechanism. It softened the blow. I wanted to build something significant and in my mind I was willing to build others' dreams to afford to build my own.
If I were to start over in the same route of bootstrapping, I would listen to Indian entrepreneur, Sridar Vembu, sooner:
Start the clock at -5 years.
It’s an artificial mindset to train you to buckle in for major fomo and the constant comparisons you may make. If you think of your starting year as year -5, you have created room for yourself to get used to a five year journey to get to the starting point of your company building.
Whatever you have built in five years will now get you to year 0 where you can imagine starting the company..
I found myself with too many time-operated goals, which reduced my endurance for long stretches of time. “$10k in monthly revenue by this date”. I have found more balance by aiming for consistency instead. It’s more enjoyable and more bearable when things get challenging. The goals now operate as important milestones to celebrate.
Takeaway: Start the clock at -5 years and buckle in for a longer ride. Address any emotion when you process this thought. Too long? Revisit your role and your day to day. Too risky? Revisit your reward and what makes you feel more comfortable to take the risk.
Our growth took some time. Longer than I expected.
My friends and family were sympathetic when inquiring if I was still working on the product. I usually mentioned that I was also consulting. That was my ego coping mechanism. It softened the blow. I wanted to build something significant and in my mind I was willing to build others' dreams to afford to build my own.
If I were to start over in the same route of bootstrapping, I would listen to Indian entrepreneur, Sridar Vembu, sooner:
Start the clock at -5 years.
It’s an artificial mindset to train you to buckle in for major fomo and the constant comparisons you may make. If you think of your starting year as year -5, you have created room for yourself to get used to a five year journey to get to the starting point of your company building.
Whatever you have built in five years will now get you to year 0 where you can imagine starting the company..
I found myself with too many time-operated goals, which reduced my endurance for long stretches of time. “$10k in monthly revenue by this date”. I have found more balance by aiming for consistency instead. It’s more enjoyable and more bearable when things get challenging. The goals now operate as important milestones to celebrate.
Takeaway: Start the clock at -5 years and buckle in for a longer ride. Address any emotion when you process this thought. Too long? Revisit your role and your day to day. Too risky? Revisit your reward and what makes you feel more comfortable to take the risk.
Our growth took some time. Longer than I expected.
My friends and family were sympathetic when inquiring if I was still working on the product. I usually mentioned that I was also consulting. That was my ego coping mechanism. It softened the blow. I wanted to build something significant and in my mind I was willing to build others' dreams to afford to build my own.
If I were to start over in the same route of bootstrapping, I would listen to Indian entrepreneur, Sridar Vembu, sooner:
Start the clock at -5 years.
It’s an artificial mindset to train you to buckle in for major fomo and the constant comparisons you may make. If you think of your starting year as year -5, you have created room for yourself to get used to a five year journey to get to the starting point of your company building.
Whatever you have built in five years will now get you to year 0 where you can imagine starting the company..
I found myself with too many time-operated goals, which reduced my endurance for long stretches of time. “$10k in monthly revenue by this date”. I have found more balance by aiming for consistency instead. It’s more enjoyable and more bearable when things get challenging. The goals now operate as important milestones to celebrate.
Takeaway: Start the clock at -5 years and buckle in for a longer ride. Address any emotion when you process this thought. Too long? Revisit your role and your day to day. Too risky? Revisit your reward and what makes you feel more comfortable to take the risk.
Our growth took some time. Longer than I expected.
My friends and family were sympathetic when inquiring if I was still working on the product. I usually mentioned that I was also consulting. That was my ego coping mechanism. It softened the blow. I wanted to build something significant and in my mind I was willing to build others' dreams to afford to build my own.
If I were to start over in the same route of bootstrapping, I would listen to Indian entrepreneur, Sridar Vembu, sooner:
Start the clock at -5 years.
It’s an artificial mindset to train you to buckle in for major fomo and the constant comparisons you may make. If you think of your starting year as year -5, you have created room for yourself to get used to a five year journey to get to the starting point of your company building.
Whatever you have built in five years will now get you to year 0 where you can imagine starting the company..
I found myself with too many time-operated goals, which reduced my endurance for long stretches of time. “$10k in monthly revenue by this date”. I have found more balance by aiming for consistency instead. It’s more enjoyable and more bearable when things get challenging. The goals now operate as important milestones to celebrate.
Takeaway: Start the clock at -5 years and buckle in for a longer ride. Address any emotion when you process this thought. Too long? Revisit your role and your day to day. Too risky? Revisit your reward and what makes you feel more comfortable to take the risk.
Start at -5 years
Start at -5 years
I was motivated to get the business profitable. I wanted to prove my own ability and prove the naysayers wrong. Once the business was profitable and I was making good money, the motivation didn’t pack the same punch. It was an embarrassing thing to admit but I needed a more sustainable source of motivation.
Every creative endeavor goes through ups and downs which we can call the struggle. The struggle needs a purpose to make the act worthwhile. For me, it was something simple like seeing myself improve. It’s less hype and adrenaline. More slow and steady. 1% better gets me pumped now. Seeing things grow like a plant is exciting to me. Slow to start and some spurts when you least expect it.
The other source of motivation is the label of independence. The never-ending debate in the tech world is the decision to raise capital for your venture or to bootstrap it. If you have the liberty of asking that question, always bootstrap. The industries and problems that cannot function in a self-funded capacity already have their answer. Staying independent without investors was a big motivator for justifying the struggle. The slow growth and all of the things that come with it. When you raise money, there are always strings attached. Maybe it’s a timeline you commit to. Or a mission you align yourself to.
It was slow to dawn on me but what I was seeking was a patch of dirt I can call my own. Something to grow over time. Something that buys my freedom of time and starts somewhere. Having spent my teens reading TechCrunch and the like, it created a perception in me that anything I created needed to have a tremendous impact on the world at large. Talk about a tall order.
I’m lucky I ever shipped anything with that mentality. It helped to think through my motivation during the tough times of building Pastel. Days when we had to find consulting work to pay the bills before going full time on the company. It was independence. Freedom to build at any pace and to invest into promising things.
There is another personal factor here that shaped my decision to aim for independence. I remember my dad telling me the story of how he wasn’t allowed to go to his mother’s funeral because of work commitments. What a hideous work culture. Putting profit above humanity. Oddly, I think about this constantly. A friendly reminder that if you don’t care about your own independence, no one else will. In my opinion, independence doesn’t mean operating a business. It is having the option to say no. That might mean having the savings to find a different job. If you have the inclination to start a business, then you have the added benefit of shaping the internal world of values for your people. You can do it differently with your leadership.
Some of my biggest joys of running a bootstrapped company has been the flexibility it has given me. To take an afternoon off or a short sabbatical. To invest in promising ideas without long drawn discussions. Once you’ve achieved all your financial goals, the love of the game prevails. Build the runway to figure that out so that once your conception of success has been reached, your activity is not predicated on your idea of success anymore. You are doing it to keep seeing where you can take it and have fun with it.
Takeaway: Label the reason for your pursuit. Knowing why the journey is important to you lets you build meaning. Meaning breeds great culture. It lets people see your passion and your conviction. All great ingredients to attract great people and have them stick with you through the highs and lows.
I was motivated to get the business profitable. I wanted to prove my own ability and prove the naysayers wrong. Once the business was profitable and I was making good money, the motivation didn’t pack the same punch. It was an embarrassing thing to admit but I needed a more sustainable source of motivation.
Every creative endeavor goes through ups and downs which we can call the struggle. The struggle needs a purpose to make the act worthwhile. For me, it was something simple like seeing myself improve. It’s less hype and adrenaline. More slow and steady. 1% better gets me pumped now. Seeing things grow like a plant is exciting to me. Slow to start and some spurts when you least expect it.
The other source of motivation is the label of independence. The never-ending debate in the tech world is the decision to raise capital for your venture or to bootstrap it. If you have the liberty of asking that question, always bootstrap. The industries and problems that cannot function in a self-funded capacity already have their answer. Staying independent without investors was a big motivator for justifying the struggle. The slow growth and all of the things that come with it. When you raise money, there are always strings attached. Maybe it’s a timeline you commit to. Or a mission you align yourself to.
It was slow to dawn on me but what I was seeking was a patch of dirt I can call my own. Something to grow over time. Something that buys my freedom of time and starts somewhere. Having spent my teens reading TechCrunch and the like, it created a perception in me that anything I created needed to have a tremendous impact on the world at large. Talk about a tall order.
I’m lucky I ever shipped anything with that mentality. It helped to think through my motivation during the tough times of building Pastel. Days when we had to find consulting work to pay the bills before going full time on the company. It was independence. Freedom to build at any pace and to invest into promising things.
There is another personal factor here that shaped my decision to aim for independence. I remember my dad telling me the story of how he wasn’t allowed to go to his mother’s funeral because of work commitments. What a hideous work culture. Putting profit above humanity. Oddly, I think about this constantly. A friendly reminder that if you don’t care about your own independence, no one else will. In my opinion, independence doesn’t mean operating a business. It is having the option to say no. That might mean having the savings to find a different job. If you have the inclination to start a business, then you have the added benefit of shaping the internal world of values for your people. You can do it differently with your leadership.
Some of my biggest joys of running a bootstrapped company has been the flexibility it has given me. To take an afternoon off or a short sabbatical. To invest in promising ideas without long drawn discussions. Once you’ve achieved all your financial goals, the love of the game prevails. Build the runway to figure that out so that once your conception of success has been reached, your activity is not predicated on your idea of success anymore. You are doing it to keep seeing where you can take it and have fun with it.
Takeaway: Label the reason for your pursuit. Knowing why the journey is important to you lets you build meaning. Meaning breeds great culture. It lets people see your passion and your conviction. All great ingredients to attract great people and have them stick with you through the highs and lows.
I was motivated to get the business profitable. I wanted to prove my own ability and prove the naysayers wrong. Once the business was profitable and I was making good money, the motivation didn’t pack the same punch. It was an embarrassing thing to admit but I needed a more sustainable source of motivation.
Every creative endeavor goes through ups and downs which we can call the struggle. The struggle needs a purpose to make the act worthwhile. For me, it was something simple like seeing myself improve. It’s less hype and adrenaline. More slow and steady. 1% better gets me pumped now. Seeing things grow like a plant is exciting to me. Slow to start and some spurts when you least expect it.
The other source of motivation is the label of independence. The never-ending debate in the tech world is the decision to raise capital for your venture or to bootstrap it. If you have the liberty of asking that question, always bootstrap. The industries and problems that cannot function in a self-funded capacity already have their answer. Staying independent without investors was a big motivator for justifying the struggle. The slow growth and all of the things that come with it. When you raise money, there are always strings attached. Maybe it’s a timeline you commit to. Or a mission you align yourself to.
It was slow to dawn on me but what I was seeking was a patch of dirt I can call my own. Something to grow over time. Something that buys my freedom of time and starts somewhere. Having spent my teens reading TechCrunch and the like, it created a perception in me that anything I created needed to have a tremendous impact on the world at large. Talk about a tall order.
I’m lucky I ever shipped anything with that mentality. It helped to think through my motivation during the tough times of building Pastel. Days when we had to find consulting work to pay the bills before going full time on the company. It was independence. Freedom to build at any pace and to invest into promising things.
There is another personal factor here that shaped my decision to aim for independence. I remember my dad telling me the story of how he wasn’t allowed to go to his mother’s funeral because of work commitments. What a hideous work culture. Putting profit above humanity. Oddly, I think about this constantly. A friendly reminder that if you don’t care about your own independence, no one else will. In my opinion, independence doesn’t mean operating a business. It is having the option to say no. That might mean having the savings to find a different job. If you have the inclination to start a business, then you have the added benefit of shaping the internal world of values for your people. You can do it differently with your leadership.
Some of my biggest joys of running a bootstrapped company has been the flexibility it has given me. To take an afternoon off or a short sabbatical. To invest in promising ideas without long drawn discussions. Once you’ve achieved all your financial goals, the love of the game prevails. Build the runway to figure that out so that once your conception of success has been reached, your activity is not predicated on your idea of success anymore. You are doing it to keep seeing where you can take it and have fun with it.
Takeaway: Label the reason for your pursuit. Knowing why the journey is important to you lets you build meaning. Meaning breeds great culture. It lets people see your passion and your conviction. All great ingredients to attract great people and have them stick with you through the highs and lows.
I was motivated to get the business profitable. I wanted to prove my own ability and prove the naysayers wrong. Once the business was profitable and I was making good money, the motivation didn’t pack the same punch. It was an embarrassing thing to admit but I needed a more sustainable source of motivation.
Every creative endeavor goes through ups and downs which we can call the struggle. The struggle needs a purpose to make the act worthwhile. For me, it was something simple like seeing myself improve. It’s less hype and adrenaline. More slow and steady. 1% better gets me pumped now. Seeing things grow like a plant is exciting to me. Slow to start and some spurts when you least expect it.
The other source of motivation is the label of independence. The never-ending debate in the tech world is the decision to raise capital for your venture or to bootstrap it. If you have the liberty of asking that question, always bootstrap. The industries and problems that cannot function in a self-funded capacity already have their answer. Staying independent without investors was a big motivator for justifying the struggle. The slow growth and all of the things that come with it. When you raise money, there are always strings attached. Maybe it’s a timeline you commit to. Or a mission you align yourself to.
It was slow to dawn on me but what I was seeking was a patch of dirt I can call my own. Something to grow over time. Something that buys my freedom of time and starts somewhere. Having spent my teens reading TechCrunch and the like, it created a perception in me that anything I created needed to have a tremendous impact on the world at large. Talk about a tall order.
I’m lucky I ever shipped anything with that mentality. It helped to think through my motivation during the tough times of building Pastel. Days when we had to find consulting work to pay the bills before going full time on the company. It was independence. Freedom to build at any pace and to invest into promising things.
There is another personal factor here that shaped my decision to aim for independence. I remember my dad telling me the story of how he wasn’t allowed to go to his mother’s funeral because of work commitments. What a hideous work culture. Putting profit above humanity. Oddly, I think about this constantly. A friendly reminder that if you don’t care about your own independence, no one else will. In my opinion, independence doesn’t mean operating a business. It is having the option to say no. That might mean having the savings to find a different job. If you have the inclination to start a business, then you have the added benefit of shaping the internal world of values for your people. You can do it differently with your leadership.
Some of my biggest joys of running a bootstrapped company has been the flexibility it has given me. To take an afternoon off or a short sabbatical. To invest in promising ideas without long drawn discussions. Once you’ve achieved all your financial goals, the love of the game prevails. Build the runway to figure that out so that once your conception of success has been reached, your activity is not predicated on your idea of success anymore. You are doing it to keep seeing where you can take it and have fun with it.
Takeaway: Label the reason for your pursuit. Knowing why the journey is important to you lets you build meaning. Meaning breeds great culture. It lets people see your passion and your conviction. All great ingredients to attract great people and have them stick with you through the highs and lows.
Label the purpose
behind the struggle
Label the purpose
behind the struggle
Label the purpose
behind the struggle
I have read a lot of wise quotes about prioritizing the journey over the destination. Well, let’s start there. I have found no destination. There is no pause button or a state of arrival where things remain the same. Some moments that I have tried to manifest in my life unfold in seconds. They become past memories so quickly. The song keeps playing. If the journey is the only constant, I have started to understand success as a reflective enjoyable journey.
This started a personal tradition every sunday. I would put a percentage to how happy I felt. It would help me quickly put a number that summed up the events of that week. During any given week, I might have gone through personal issues, new revenue records being broken, customers might have left, the product experienced downtime or I felt like we weren’t growing quickly enough. It was always a group of emotions. Sometimes, it would be a lack of exercise or proper nutrition that week. The problem was that it was so easy to label the general unhappiness and to keep spiraling down.
The actual percentage didn’t matter. It just made this a bit more real and actionable. If I felt like I was 50% happy two weeks in a row, that’s a problem. I should bring this up with my founders. Not for a solution, but to share it with somebody and see if there is something they can help with.
One of the toughest times of the business was the period between when we started and when we reached profitability and could pay ourselves a basic salary. I supported myself with freelance work and those were some of the most mentally exhausting moments. My happiness was still relatively high because I was using a skill I was in love with. Without that variable, I would have definitely had enough valid reasons to quit.
I keep these scores in a spreadsheet and display them as a graph over the years. It is a reminder to myself that with perseverance and patience, I can find and solve the things that add to my unhappiness and slowly discover the song and journey I enjoy. The things that give me joy are not fixed. It is to be discovered and cherished.
I have read a lot of wise quotes about prioritizing the journey over the destination. Well, let’s start there. I have found no destination. There is no pause button or a state of arrival where things remain the same. Some moments that I have tried to manifest in my life unfold in seconds. They become past memories so quickly. The song keeps playing. If the journey is the only constant, I have started to understand success as a reflective enjoyable journey.
This started a personal tradition every sunday. I would put a percentage to how happy I felt. It would help me quickly put a number that summed up the events of that week. During any given week, I might have gone through personal issues, new revenue records being broken, customers might have left, the product experienced downtime or I felt like we weren’t growing quickly enough. It was always a group of emotions. Sometimes, it would be a lack of exercise or proper nutrition that week. The problem was that it was so easy to label the general unhappiness and to keep spiraling down.
The actual percentage didn’t matter. It just made this a bit more real and actionable. If I felt like I was 50% happy two weeks in a row, that’s a problem. I should bring this up with my founders. Not for a solution, but to share it with somebody and see if there is something they can help with.
One of the toughest times of the business was the period between when we started and when we reached profitability and could pay ourselves a basic salary. I supported myself with freelance work and those were some of the most mentally exhausting moments. My happiness was still relatively high because I was using a skill I was in love with. Without that variable, I would have definitely had enough valid reasons to quit.
I keep these scores in a spreadsheet and display them as a graph over the years. It is a reminder to myself that with perseverance and patience, I can find and solve the things that add to my unhappiness and slowly discover the song and journey I enjoy. The things that give me joy are not fixed. It is to be discovered and cherished.
I have read a lot of wise quotes about prioritizing the journey over the destination. Well, let’s start there. I have found no destination. There is no pause button or a state of arrival where things remain the same. Some moments that I have tried to manifest in my life unfold in seconds. They become past memories so quickly. The song keeps playing. If the journey is the only constant, I have started to understand success as a reflective enjoyable journey.
This started a personal tradition every sunday. I would put a percentage to how happy I felt. It would help me quickly put a number that summed up the events of that week. During any given week, I might have gone through personal issues, new revenue records being broken, customers might have left, the product experienced downtime or I felt like we weren’t growing quickly enough. It was always a group of emotions. Sometimes, it would be a lack of exercise or proper nutrition that week. The problem was that it was so easy to label the general unhappiness and to keep spiraling down.
The actual percentage didn’t matter. It just made this a bit more real and actionable. If I felt like I was 50% happy two weeks in a row, that’s a problem. I should bring this up with my founders. Not for a solution, but to share it with somebody and see if there is something they can help with.
One of the toughest times of the business was the period between when we started and when we reached profitability and could pay ourselves a basic salary. I supported myself with freelance work and those were some of the most mentally exhausting moments. My happiness was still relatively high because I was using a skill I was in love with. Without that variable, I would have definitely had enough valid reasons to quit.
I keep these scores in a spreadsheet and display them as a graph over the years. It is a reminder to myself that with perseverance and patience, I can find and solve the things that add to my unhappiness and slowly discover the song and journey I enjoy. The things that give me joy are not fixed. It is to be discovered and cherished.
I have read a lot of wise quotes about prioritizing the journey over the destination. Well, let’s start there. I have found no destination. There is no pause button or a state of arrival where things remain the same. Some moments that I have tried to manifest in my life unfold in seconds. They become past memories so quickly. The song keeps playing. If the journey is the only constant, I have started to understand success as a reflective enjoyable journey.
This started a personal tradition every sunday. I would put a percentage to how happy I felt. It would help me quickly put a number that summed up the events of that week. During any given week, I might have gone through personal issues, new revenue records being broken, customers might have left, the product experienced downtime or I felt like we weren’t growing quickly enough. It was always a group of emotions. Sometimes, it would be a lack of exercise or proper nutrition that week. The problem was that it was so easy to label the general unhappiness and to keep spiraling down.
The actual percentage didn’t matter. It just made this a bit more real and actionable. If I felt like I was 50% happy two weeks in a row, that’s a problem. I should bring this up with my founders. Not for a solution, but to share it with somebody and see if there is something they can help with.
One of the toughest times of the business was the period between when we started and when we reached profitability and could pay ourselves a basic salary. I supported myself with freelance work and those were some of the most mentally exhausting moments. My happiness was still relatively high because I was using a skill I was in love with. Without that variable, I would have definitely had enough valid reasons to quit.
I keep these scores in a spreadsheet and display them as a graph over the years. It is a reminder to myself that with perseverance and patience, I can find and solve the things that add to my unhappiness and slowly discover the song and journey I enjoy. The things that give me joy are not fixed. It is to be discovered and cherished.
Score your general
happiness every week
Score your general
happiness every week
Score your general
happiness every week
Time is truly revealing when it comes to assessing your happiness. It helped me see that there were truly seasons for my thoughts and phases of emotion. It lets me understand my own body and mind better. For instance, maybe I need that social time with people midweek or I feel off balance if I don’t plan to catch up with my parents that week. Time puts some of these emotions in perspective. External motivation from Instagram posts and YouTube videos only go so far. Seeing your own progress reminding you to be patient is a powerful tool.
Takeaway: Whatever we occupy our time with in relation to work, it is all merely a means to an end to make us happy and fulfilled in our service to others. Tracking your happiness as a score can help you find the upcoming roadblocks and ask harder questions on what the misalignment is with what your mind expects and what your reality currently provides for you.
Time is truly revealing when it comes to assessing your happiness. It helped me see that there were truly seasons for my thoughts and phases of emotion. It lets me understand my own body and mind better. For instance, maybe I need that social time with people midweek or I feel off balance if I don’t plan to catch up with my parents that week. Time puts some of these emotions in perspective. External motivation from Instagram posts and YouTube videos only go so far. Seeing your own progress reminding you to be patient is a powerful tool.
Takeaway: Whatever we occupy our time with in relation to work, it is all merely a means to an end to make us happy and fulfilled in our service to others. Tracking your happiness as a score can help you find the upcoming roadblocks and ask harder questions on what the misalignment is with what your mind expects and what your reality currently provides for you.
Time is truly revealing when it comes to assessing your happiness. It helped me see that there were truly seasons for my thoughts and phases of emotion. It lets me understand my own body and mind better. For instance, maybe I need that social time with people midweek or I feel off balance if I don’t plan to catch up with my parents that week. Time puts some of these emotions in perspective. External motivation from Instagram posts and YouTube videos only go so far. Seeing your own progress reminding you to be patient is a powerful tool.
Takeaway: Whatever we occupy our time with in relation to work, it is all merely a means to an end to make us happy and fulfilled in our service to others. Tracking your happiness as a score can help you find the upcoming roadblocks and ask harder questions on what the misalignment is with what your mind expects and what your reality currently provides for you.
Time is truly revealing when it comes to assessing your happiness. It helped me see that there were truly seasons for my thoughts and phases of emotion. It lets me understand my own body and mind better. For instance, maybe I need that social time with people midweek or I feel off balance if I don’t plan to catch up with my parents that week. Time puts some of these emotions in perspective. External motivation from Instagram posts and YouTube videos only go so far. Seeing your own progress reminding you to be patient is a powerful tool.
Takeaway: Whatever we occupy our time with in relation to work, it is all merely a means to an end to make us happy and fulfilled in our service to others. Tracking your happiness as a score can help you find the upcoming roadblocks and ask harder questions on what the misalignment is with what your mind expects and what your reality currently provides for you.
Am I a designer? Operator? Manager? Marketer?
An early startup requires so many tasks and roles. There were many points where I questioned if I should be really the person to lead these experiments. As a designer, I feel very comfortable leading a team through design challenges and group workshops. As an inexperienced marketer, I couldn’t say the same about the marketing experiments I was putting together. Or the content I was creating on the blog.
I got the recommendation to read a book called the E-Myth. It turned my working life upside down. It dawned on me that I was looking at all business operations through my fixed lens as a designer. My inexperience looked like limitations because I had fully adopted the identity as a designer.
The book pointed out the difference between working IN your business with a specialized skill and working ON your business: hiring another person, writing instructions for them to follow easily or raising money to fund the business. All these activities work on either refining the business or actively growing it.
Then it hit me. Have I created a job for myself or is this a business that requires me? I realized I didn’t want to be THE designer. I want to have a successful business and happy customers. If that means, I need to do design now, customer support after, that is the way. What if I eventually do nothing and free up my time? Ok, great. Whatever that answer is, I knew I could do it earlier. I just had to find the right system to allow me to do that.
I was passionate about seeing our product strategy through. I loved having deep discussions about what customers wanted and how we can find ways to solve their problems. I wouldn’t want to delegate that away. That is a joy of mine. As much as it is fun to think about a huge exit for your company, there is a unique opportunity in building an independent and profitable company that allows you to choose the personal roles you enjoy. There is a higher likelihood that you bring more positive energy there and inspire the people who work with you.
Takeaway: Pretend you just bought your company for cash today. How would you think about making it more efficient? Instead of doing the job you are most comfortable with, what do the customers ask for? What does the business need? The more you are able to think rationally like an owner, you can put in the right system and put the right people in charge so you can ask the larger question of what role gives you joy and how you can occupy your time with things you enjoy the most.
Am I a designer? Operator? Manager? Marketer?
An early startup requires so many tasks and roles. There were many points where I questioned if I should be really the person to lead these experiments. As a designer, I feel very comfortable leading a team through design challenges and group workshops. As an inexperienced marketer, I couldn’t say the same about the marketing experiments I was putting together. Or the content I was creating on the blog.
I got the recommendation to read a book called the E-Myth. It turned my working life upside down. It dawned on me that I was looking at all business operations through my fixed lens as a designer. My inexperience looked like limitations because I had fully adopted the identity as a designer.
The book pointed out the difference between working IN your business with a specialized skill and working ON your business: hiring another person, writing instructions for them to follow easily or raising money to fund the business. All these activities work on either refining the business or actively growing it.
Then it hit me. Have I created a job for myself or is this a business that requires me? I realized I didn’t want to be THE designer. I want to have a successful business and happy customers. If that means, I need to do design now, customer support after, that is the way. What if I eventually do nothing and free up my time? Ok, great. Whatever that answer is, I knew I could do it earlier. I just had to find the right system to allow me to do that.
I was passionate about seeing our product strategy through. I loved having deep discussions about what customers wanted and how we can find ways to solve their problems. I wouldn’t want to delegate that away. That is a joy of mine. As much as it is fun to think about a huge exit for your company, there is a unique opportunity in building an independent and profitable company that allows you to choose the personal roles you enjoy. There is a higher likelihood that you bring more positive energy there and inspire the people who work with you.
Takeaway: Pretend you just bought your company for cash today. How would you think about making it more efficient? Instead of doing the job you are most comfortable with, what do the customers ask for? What does the business need? The more you are able to think rationally like an owner, you can put in the right system and put the right people in charge so you can ask the larger question of what role gives you joy and how you can occupy your time with things you enjoy the most.
Am I a designer? Operator? Manager? Marketer?
An early startup requires so many tasks and roles. There were many points where I questioned if I should be really the person to lead these experiments. As a designer, I feel very comfortable leading a team through design challenges and group workshops. As an inexperienced marketer, I couldn’t say the same about the marketing experiments I was putting together. Or the content I was creating on the blog.
I got the recommendation to read a book called the E-Myth. It turned my working life upside down. It dawned on me that I was looking at all business operations through my fixed lens as a designer. My inexperience looked like limitations because I had fully adopted the identity as a designer.
The book pointed out the difference between working IN your business with a specialized skill and working ON your business: hiring another person, writing instructions for them to follow easily or raising money to fund the business. All these activities work on either refining the business or actively growing it.
Then it hit me. Have I created a job for myself or is this a business that requires me? I realized I didn’t want to be THE designer. I want to have a successful business and happy customers. If that means, I need to do design now, customer support after, that is the way. What if I eventually do nothing and free up my time? Ok, great. Whatever that answer is, I knew I could do it earlier. I just had to find the right system to allow me to do that.
I was passionate about seeing our product strategy through. I loved having deep discussions about what customers wanted and how we can find ways to solve their problems. I wouldn’t want to delegate that away. That is a joy of mine. As much as it is fun to think about a huge exit for your company, there is a unique opportunity in building an independent and profitable company that allows you to choose the personal roles you enjoy. There is a higher likelihood that you bring more positive energy there and inspire the people who work with you.
Takeaway: Pretend you just bought your company for cash today. How would you think about making it more efficient? Instead of doing the job you are most comfortable with, what do the customers ask for? What does the business need? The more you are able to think rationally like an owner, you can put in the right system and put the right people in charge so you can ask the larger question of what role gives you joy and how you can occupy your time with things you enjoy the most.
Am I a designer? Operator? Manager? Marketer?
An early startup requires so many tasks and roles. There were many points where I questioned if I should be really the person to lead these experiments. As a designer, I feel very comfortable leading a team through design challenges and group workshops. As an inexperienced marketer, I couldn’t say the same about the marketing experiments I was putting together. Or the content I was creating on the blog.
I got the recommendation to read a book called the E-Myth. It turned my working life upside down. It dawned on me that I was looking at all business operations through my fixed lens as a designer. My inexperience looked like limitations because I had fully adopted the identity as a designer.
The book pointed out the difference between working IN your business with a specialized skill and working ON your business: hiring another person, writing instructions for them to follow easily or raising money to fund the business. All these activities work on either refining the business or actively growing it.
Then it hit me. Have I created a job for myself or is this a business that requires me? I realized I didn’t want to be THE designer. I want to have a successful business and happy customers. If that means, I need to do design now, customer support after, that is the way. What if I eventually do nothing and free up my time? Ok, great. Whatever that answer is, I knew I could do it earlier. I just had to find the right system to allow me to do that.
I was passionate about seeing our product strategy through. I loved having deep discussions about what customers wanted and how we can find ways to solve their problems. I wouldn’t want to delegate that away. That is a joy of mine. As much as it is fun to think about a huge exit for your company, there is a unique opportunity in building an independent and profitable company that allows you to choose the personal roles you enjoy. There is a higher likelihood that you bring more positive energy there and inspire the people who work with you.
Takeaway: Pretend you just bought your company for cash today. How would you think about making it more efficient? Instead of doing the job you are most comfortable with, what do the customers ask for? What does the business need? The more you are able to think rationally like an owner, you can put in the right system and put the right people in charge so you can ask the larger question of what role gives you joy and how you can occupy your time with things you enjoy the most.
Think like an
owner of a system
Think like an
owner of a system
Think like an
owner of a system
It was March 2017. We officially started working on the new company.
We got into a good stride in the first few months. We rebranded the existing product. Came up with a new logo. We were serving designers and freelancers now. We worked through the summer of 2017. We debated back and forth on what we should have in the first version of this relaunch. The big reveal was being saved up for ProductHunt.com, a showcase for new digital projects. We were really betting on this being a big driver of growth. My founders had some experience with launching once on ProductHunt before so we were excited about this new reveal. Our Slack was full of design concepts, logo designs and the domains we would need to purchase. It was that honeymoon phase of an idea. As month five of working on the project came along, I was starting to look at how much of my time was producing and what part of my time wasn't. I didn't know how much longer I could go with it, maybe 6 more months before I probably needed to find a metric of success and make a call whether to keep continuing on this or not. Everything was kind of hinging on this big launch. I didn't know what to expect. I was just hoping that everyone would just clap and open up their wallets and their business would be formed. Since I had personal experience of the problem we were solving, I was very confident of us making money.
Everything we were doing felt very productive but we really wasted a lot of time with busy work. Looking back at that time, I really wish we had prioritized our time better and focused on what was useful to ship. Startup wisdom says that you should ship often. Talk to customers as much as humanly possible. But it never really states when is a good time to do that. You can build a culture where you can consciously talk to customers. Let the research pile up. But when you put something out there it's more of an instinct and intuition. More art than science.
There have been so many times that we launched in the history of the company that the actual launch doesn't really matter. I know that's hard to understand if you haven't done it before. The launches are quite anti-climatic. It just marks the beginning of all the feedback that's going to come in. The feeling of a great launch is only felt after a few weeks of having the product in people's hands. As they say marketing, gets you the sale once and a good product gets you the sale twice. We were buzzing with energy at that point.
Takeaway: It’s hard to catch busy work. We are comfortable with our strongest skills. Work backwards from the biggest existential threats of the business and do things only to create revenue and reduce the threat of business extinction. When someone can get use and value from the project, launch. Value can be time saved, money made or fun to be had.
It was March 2017. We officially started working on the new company.
We got into a good stride in the first few months. We rebranded the existing product. Came up with a new logo. We were serving designers and freelancers now. We worked through the summer of 2017. We debated back and forth on what we should have in the first version of this relaunch. The big reveal was being saved up for ProductHunt.com, a showcase for new digital projects. We were really betting on this being a big driver of growth. My founders had some experience with launching once on ProductHunt before so we were excited about this new reveal. Our Slack was full of design concepts, logo designs and the domains we would need to purchase. It was that honeymoon phase of an idea. As month five of working on the project came along, I was starting to look at how much of my time was producing and what part of my time wasn't. I didn't know how much longer I could go with it, maybe 6 more months before I probably needed to find a metric of success and make a call whether to keep continuing on this or not. Everything was kind of hinging on this big launch. I didn't know what to expect. I was just hoping that everyone would just clap and open up their wallets and their business would be formed. Since I had personal experience of the problem we were solving, I was very confident of us making money.
Everything we were doing felt very productive but we really wasted a lot of time with busy work. Looking back at that time, I really wish we had prioritized our time better and focused on what was useful to ship. Startup wisdom says that you should ship often. Talk to customers as much as humanly possible. But it never really states when is a good time to do that. You can build a culture where you can consciously talk to customers. Let the research pile up. But when you put something out there it's more of an instinct and intuition. More art than science.
There have been so many times that we launched in the history of the company that the actual launch doesn't really matter. I know that's hard to understand if you haven't done it before. The launches are quite anti-climatic. It just marks the beginning of all the feedback that's going to come in. The feeling of a great launch is only felt after a few weeks of having the product in people's hands. As they say marketing, gets you the sale once and a good product gets you the sale twice. We were buzzing with energy at that point.
Takeaway: It’s hard to catch busy work. We are comfortable with our strongest skills. Work backwards from the biggest existential threats of the business and do things only to create revenue and reduce the threat of business extinction. When someone can get use and value from the project, launch. Value can be time saved, money made or fun to be had.
It was March 2017. We officially started working on the new company.
We got into a good stride in the first few months. We rebranded the existing product. Came up with a new logo. We were serving designers and freelancers now. We worked through the summer of 2017. We debated back and forth on what we should have in the first version of this relaunch. The big reveal was being saved up for ProductHunt.com, a showcase for new digital projects. We were really betting on this being a big driver of growth. My founders had some experience with launching once on ProductHunt before so we were excited about this new reveal. Our Slack was full of design concepts, logo designs and the domains we would need to purchase. It was that honeymoon phase of an idea. As month five of working on the project came along, I was starting to look at how much of my time was producing and what part of my time wasn't. I didn't know how much longer I could go with it, maybe 6 more months before I probably needed to find a metric of success and make a call whether to keep continuing on this or not. Everything was kind of hinging on this big launch. I didn't know what to expect. I was just hoping that everyone would just clap and open up their wallets and their business would be formed. Since I had personal experience of the problem we were solving, I was very confident of us making money.
Everything we were doing felt very productive but we really wasted a lot of time with busy work. Looking back at that time, I really wish we had prioritized our time better and focused on what was useful to ship. Startup wisdom says that you should ship often. Talk to customers as much as humanly possible. But it never really states when is a good time to do that. You can build a culture where you can consciously talk to customers. Let the research pile up. But when you put something out there it's more of an instinct and intuition. More art than science.
There have been so many times that we launched in the history of the company that the actual launch doesn't really matter. I know that's hard to understand if you haven't done it before. The launches are quite anti-climatic. It just marks the beginning of all the feedback that's going to come in. The feeling of a great launch is only felt after a few weeks of having the product in people's hands. As they say marketing, gets you the sale once and a good product gets you the sale twice. We were buzzing with energy at that point.
Takeaway: It’s hard to catch busy work. We are comfortable with our strongest skills. Work backwards from the biggest existential threats of the business and do things only to create revenue and reduce the threat of business extinction. When someone can get use and value from the project, launch. Value can be time saved, money made or fun to be had.
It was March 2017. We officially started working on the new company.
We got into a good stride in the first few months. We rebranded the existing product. Came up with a new logo. We were serving designers and freelancers now. We worked through the summer of 2017. We debated back and forth on what we should have in the first version of this relaunch. The big reveal was being saved up for ProductHunt.com, a showcase for new digital projects. We were really betting on this being a big driver of growth. My founders had some experience with launching once on ProductHunt before so we were excited about this new reveal. Our Slack was full of design concepts, logo designs and the domains we would need to purchase. It was that honeymoon phase of an idea. As month five of working on the project came along, I was starting to look at how much of my time was producing and what part of my time wasn't. I didn't know how much longer I could go with it, maybe 6 more months before I probably needed to find a metric of success and make a call whether to keep continuing on this or not. Everything was kind of hinging on this big launch. I didn't know what to expect. I was just hoping that everyone would just clap and open up their wallets and their business would be formed. Since I had personal experience of the problem we were solving, I was very confident of us making money.
Everything we were doing felt very productive but we really wasted a lot of time with busy work. Looking back at that time, I really wish we had prioritized our time better and focused on what was useful to ship. Startup wisdom says that you should ship often. Talk to customers as much as humanly possible. But it never really states when is a good time to do that. You can build a culture where you can consciously talk to customers. Let the research pile up. But when you put something out there it's more of an instinct and intuition. More art than science.
There have been so many times that we launched in the history of the company that the actual launch doesn't really matter. I know that's hard to understand if you haven't done it before. The launches are quite anti-climatic. It just marks the beginning of all the feedback that's going to come in. The feeling of a great launch is only felt after a few weeks of having the product in people's hands. As they say marketing, gets you the sale once and a good product gets you the sale twice. We were buzzing with energy at that point.
Takeaway: It’s hard to catch busy work. We are comfortable with our strongest skills. Work backwards from the biggest existential threats of the business and do things only to create revenue and reduce the threat of business extinction. When someone can get use and value from the project, launch. Value can be time saved, money made or fun to be had.
Launch when useful
Launch when useful
Humans compare. That’s how we know if we are safe or not. Is this person trustworthy compared to this other person? Is this brand better than that one? What is my potential salary if I took that other job instead? I’ve replayed too many scenarios in my head about jobs I should have stayed longer at to have made life changing money. The scenario playing is endless. Especially when it comes to seeing other people living what seems to be success filled lives.
I read this online recently. “Would you trade your entire life for the person you are jealous of?”
My answer gave me perspective. I started noticing that my most jealous moments came when I was most fearful of what I might lose. How far I could be set back.
Fear can keep you safe but sometimes it can also hold you back. Self preservation eventually can turn into self imprisonment.
Reluctantly, I identified myself as a risk averse person and thought this could be a reason why I might not be fit to build a business. I didn’t want to be risk averse! I wanted to be courageous with business and invention.
Little did I know that feeling could actually be my strength.
Takeaway: A challenge is fun because we haven’t gone through that experience before. If we knew exactly how it would turn out, it would be like spoiling a good movie or hacking a game to get infinite points. It becomes boring. We can’t compare our experiences with others because their experience is unique and we never have the full picture no matter what they display on social media. Remind yourself of how little you know of others and how much you know of where you used to be and where you are now.
Humans compare. That’s how we know if we are safe or not. Is this person trustworthy compared to this other person? Is this brand better than that one? What is my potential salary if I took that other job instead? I’ve replayed too many scenarios in my head about jobs I should have stayed longer at to have made life changing money. The scenario playing is endless. Especially when it comes to seeing other people living what seems to be success filled lives.
I read this online recently. “Would you trade your entire life for the person you are jealous of?”
My answer gave me perspective. I started noticing that my most jealous moments came when I was most fearful of what I might lose. How far I could be set back.
Fear can keep you safe but sometimes it can also hold you back. Self preservation eventually can turn into self imprisonment.
Reluctantly, I identified myself as a risk averse person and thought this could be a reason why I might not be fit to build a business. I didn’t want to be risk averse! I wanted to be courageous with business and invention.
Little did I know that feeling could actually be my strength.
Takeaway: A challenge is fun because we haven’t gone through that experience before. If we knew exactly how it would turn out, it would be like spoiling a good movie or hacking a game to get infinite points. It becomes boring. We can’t compare our experiences with others because their experience is unique and we never have the full picture no matter what they display on social media. Remind yourself of how little you know of others and how much you know of where you used to be and where you are now.
Humans compare. That’s how we know if we are safe or not. Is this person trustworthy compared to this other person? Is this brand better than that one? What is my potential salary if I took that other job instead? I’ve replayed too many scenarios in my head about jobs I should have stayed longer at to have made life changing money. The scenario playing is endless. Especially when it comes to seeing other people living what seems to be success filled lives.
I read this online recently. “Would you trade your entire life for the person you are jealous of?”
My answer gave me perspective. I started noticing that my most jealous moments came when I was most fearful of what I might lose. How far I could be set back.
Fear can keep you safe but sometimes it can also hold you back. Self preservation eventually can turn into self imprisonment.
Reluctantly, I identified myself as a risk averse person and thought this could be a reason why I might not be fit to build a business. I didn’t want to be risk averse! I wanted to be courageous with business and invention.
Little did I know that feeling could actually be my strength.
Takeaway: A challenge is fun because we haven’t gone through that experience before. If we knew exactly how it would turn out, it would be like spoiling a good movie or hacking a game to get infinite points. It becomes boring. We can’t compare our experiences with others because their experience is unique and we never have the full picture no matter what they display on social media. Remind yourself of how little you know of others and how much you know of where you used to be and where you are now.
Humans compare. That’s how we know if we are safe or not. Is this person trustworthy compared to this other person? Is this brand better than that one? What is my potential salary if I took that other job instead? I’ve replayed too many scenarios in my head about jobs I should have stayed longer at to have made life changing money. The scenario playing is endless. Especially when it comes to seeing other people living what seems to be success filled lives.
I read this online recently. “Would you trade your entire life for the person you are jealous of?”
My answer gave me perspective. I started noticing that my most jealous moments came when I was most fearful of what I might lose. How far I could be set back.
Fear can keep you safe but sometimes it can also hold you back. Self preservation eventually can turn into self imprisonment.
Reluctantly, I identified myself as a risk averse person and thought this could be a reason why I might not be fit to build a business. I didn’t want to be risk averse! I wanted to be courageous with business and invention.
Little did I know that feeling could actually be my strength.
Takeaway: A challenge is fun because we haven’t gone through that experience before. If we knew exactly how it would turn out, it would be like spoiling a good movie or hacking a game to get infinite points. It becomes boring. We can’t compare our experiences with others because their experience is unique and we never have the full picture no matter what they display on social media. Remind yourself of how little you know of others and how much you know of where you used to be and where you are now.
Catch and educate
the thief of joy
Making new ideas work can be an intense experience. You are bound to get into arguments with founders. After our first few disagreements, I learned more about how my founders processed their emotions. I wish we sat down earlier and asked each other a few questions on how we prefer to sort out these discussions.
Some may want time before sorting things out. Others want to confront the issue and deal with it right away. I knew that for me, I wanted to discuss things right away and also check in after a bit of time. Learning how to argue is important especially when you are dealing with different personalities.
Funny enough, I found a lot of couple counseling tactics quite helpful when discussing sensitive founder relationships: sharing a state of mind early and often, reframing the way I understand information as “The story I tell myself is…”. For founder relationships, the typical conversations that sparks tension is around fairness and meeting expectations. There was a point in the business where we started transitioning our behavior from trying to build a behemoth of a company to one that grows steadily. One that others call a lifestyle business. During that period of time, I decided I wanted to invest more time cultivating my hobbies. These were tough conversations because not everyone was on the same page with what we expected as a commitment from others. It required us to define what commitment looked like from everyone’s perspective and the reference we were using as a successful company. It created uncomfortable conversations but ones that were very important to the future of the business and more importantly, our personal happiness and fulfillment.
The usual thinking was that businesses require a ruthless unemotional way of working. I think that leads to a toxic culture. Emotions and egos will fly high. No matter how much you ‘check it at the door’. Instead, if everyone knows how you deal with your stress and emotions, you can be authentic with how you deal with people and set the tone for a rational conversation to collaborate on solutions.
Takeaway: Learn how you process negative emotions and communicate that to your team. We all process love, comfort, stress and setbacks differently. When stressful moments have the power of irritating us, the only thing we can do is identify the space in between the problem and reaction. When working with a team, if they can identify that reaction and help you in the process with how you like to resolve issues, it feels satisfyingly seamless.
Making new ideas work can be an intense experience. You are bound to get into arguments with founders. After our first few disagreements, I learned more about how my founders processed their emotions. I wish we sat down earlier and asked each other a few questions on how we prefer to sort out these discussions.
Some may want time before sorting things out. Others want to confront the issue and deal with it right away. I knew that for me, I wanted to discuss things right away and also check in after a bit of time. Learning how to argue is important especially when you are dealing with different personalities.
Funny enough, I found a lot of couple counseling tactics quite helpful when discussing sensitive founder relationships: sharing a state of mind early and often, reframing the way I understand information as “The story I tell myself is…”. For founder relationships, the typical conversations that sparks tension is around fairness and meeting expectations. There was a point in the business where we started transitioning our behavior from trying to build a behemoth of a company to one that grows steadily. One that others call a lifestyle business. During that period of time, I decided I wanted to invest more time cultivating my hobbies. These were tough conversations because not everyone was on the same page with what we expected as a commitment from others. It required us to define what commitment looked like from everyone’s perspective and the reference we were using as a successful company. It created uncomfortable conversations but ones that were very important to the future of the business and more importantly, our personal happiness and fulfillment.
The usual thinking was that businesses require a ruthless unemotional way of working. I think that leads to a toxic culture. Emotions and egos will fly high. No matter how much you ‘check it at the door’. Instead, if everyone knows how you deal with your stress and emotions, you can be authentic with how you deal with people and set the tone for a rational conversation to collaborate on solutions.
Takeaway: Learn how you process negative emotions and communicate that to your team. We all process love, comfort, stress and setbacks differently. When stressful moments have the power of irritating us, the only thing we can do is identify the space in between the problem and reaction. When working with a team, if they can identify that reaction and help you in the process with how you like to resolve issues, it feels satisfyingly seamless.
Making new ideas work can be an intense experience. You are bound to get into arguments with founders. After our first few disagreements, I learned more about how my founders processed their emotions. I wish we sat down earlier and asked each other a few questions on how we prefer to sort out these discussions.
Some may want time before sorting things out. Others want to confront the issue and deal with it right away. I knew that for me, I wanted to discuss things right away and also check in after a bit of time. Learning how to argue is important especially when you are dealing with different personalities.
Funny enough, I found a lot of couple counseling tactics quite helpful when discussing sensitive founder relationships: sharing a state of mind early and often, reframing the way I understand information as “The story I tell myself is…”. For founder relationships, the typical conversations that sparks tension is around fairness and meeting expectations. There was a point in the business where we started transitioning our behavior from trying to build a behemoth of a company to one that grows steadily. One that others call a lifestyle business. During that period of time, I decided I wanted to invest more time cultivating my hobbies. These were tough conversations because not everyone was on the same page with what we expected as a commitment from others. It required us to define what commitment looked like from everyone’s perspective and the reference we were using as a successful company. It created uncomfortable conversations but ones that were very important to the future of the business and more importantly, our personal happiness and fulfillment.
The usual thinking was that businesses require a ruthless unemotional way of working. I think that leads to a toxic culture. Emotions and egos will fly high. No matter how much you ‘check it at the door’. Instead, if everyone knows how you deal with your stress and emotions, you can be authentic with how you deal with people and set the tone for a rational conversation to collaborate on solutions.
Takeaway: Learn how you process negative emotions and communicate that to your team. We all process love, comfort, stress and setbacks differently. When stressful moments have the power of irritating us, the only thing we can do is identify the space in between the problem and reaction. When working with a team, if they can identify that reaction and help you in the process with how you like to resolve issues, it feels satisfyingly seamless.
Making new ideas work can be an intense experience. You are bound to get into arguments with founders. After our first few disagreements, I learned more about how my founders processed their emotions. I wish we sat down earlier and asked each other a few questions on how we prefer to sort out these discussions.
Some may want time before sorting things out. Others want to confront the issue and deal with it right away. I knew that for me, I wanted to discuss things right away and also check in after a bit of time. Learning how to argue is important especially when you are dealing with different personalities.
Funny enough, I found a lot of couple counseling tactics quite helpful when discussing sensitive founder relationships: sharing a state of mind early and often, reframing the way I understand information as “The story I tell myself is…”. For founder relationships, the typical conversations that sparks tension is around fairness and meeting expectations. There was a point in the business where we started transitioning our behavior from trying to build a behemoth of a company to one that grows steadily. One that others call a lifestyle business. During that period of time, I decided I wanted to invest more time cultivating my hobbies. These were tough conversations because not everyone was on the same page with what we expected as a commitment from others. It required us to define what commitment looked like from everyone’s perspective and the reference we were using as a successful company. It created uncomfortable conversations but ones that were very important to the future of the business and more importantly, our personal happiness and fulfillment.
The usual thinking was that businesses require a ruthless unemotional way of working. I think that leads to a toxic culture. Emotions and egos will fly high. No matter how much you ‘check it at the door’. Instead, if everyone knows how you deal with your stress and emotions, you can be authentic with how you deal with people and set the tone for a rational conversation to collaborate on solutions.
Takeaway: Learn how you process negative emotions and communicate that to your team. We all process love, comfort, stress and setbacks differently. When stressful moments have the power of irritating us, the only thing we can do is identify the space in between the problem and reaction. When working with a team, if they can identify that reaction and help you in the process with how you like to resolve issues, it feels satisfyingly seamless.
Learn how your
partners like to argue
Having someone offer to buy your company is exciting. So many new possibilities it could bring. It could be life changing money. Maybe a whole new adventure awaits. It lets you reassess how you want to spend your life and how you devote resources to the things that are important to you.
It is also very distracting. The first offer we ever received was 12 months into starting the company. We were flattered. They wanted to meet in person so all three of us flew down to their US headquarters. It was hard not to discuss future plans of how we would spend our winnings. Giddy like children.
After a tour of their offices and a dinner with the executive team, we were floored. We were all praises and returned to Toronto with grins on our faces. We were on a high.
A few weeks later, we got the offer. Our expectations came crashing down as we tried to process how low the offer was. It was a rollercoaster of emotions and the ride definitely came to an end. Looking back at the offer, it was more than fair for where the business was at. It was nowhere close to where we saw the business going.
I was unable to put words together as to how to justify this. All I knew was I was tired. Tired of the emotional up and down of that month. Worse, I can pinpoint on our revenue chart when the first acquisition talks took place. As a matter of fact, I can show you all points at which buying was discussed because it resulted in a slight dip in our progress. The time consuming process of relationship building and initial talks took time away from focusing on the product. Serving the customers. None of our offers ever got into the diligence phase. Imagine what that would have looked like!
Mentally, I wanted to find an alternative to this one big money event that all founders read and dream about. How about smaller ones? Dividends and salary bumps with slow and steady growth. As they say. Companies are bought. Not sold. So what if we controlled the money events ourselves.
This relieved some pressure from creating so many expectations on how money can improve my quality of life. Ironically this got me to focus on small incremental things in the business. Got me feeling more optimistic about making a great company and product. Which looks more attractive to a buyer…
Assuming you will never sell is the best place to be. It gives you the best leverage for negotiation. You will never short change the company for pure financial arbitrage and you will build something you can be proud of.
So if I switch the narrative from striving for one big money event to small recurring ones, what else am I setting myself up for?
This one question led me down a road of questioning all the things they glorify in business land. The big exit. Retirement.
Yikes. What if all this sacrifice leads to a scenario I didn’t prepare for or didn’t take the time to understand. I heard about a subreddit called r/FatFire. Fire. Financial independent retire early. In a very fat luxurious way. A community of people that aspire to create enough wealth to never have to work for money again. The interest gained on the investment takes care of their annual expenses. I was obsessed with this subreddit. There were many stories of people who found themselves in fortunate positions of retiring early.
They were bored.
Post upon post was about how they weren’t prepared for all this free time. I was skeptical. I knew I had so many different interests and it must be easy to fill up my time. I got more curious about this feeling. I started finding that many founders who sell their company even go through this feeling. They felt important and impactful in the identity they created from being a business owner. After selling, they find themselves without an equally meaningful purpose.
Double yikes. What was I in for? After all this luck and hard work, will I be miserable with too much free time? There was only one way to find out. Try smaller sabbaticals. We started experimenting with taking a month off in December and extending our holiday time. The first week sucked. A combined feeling of guilt and boredom. The second week, I slowly started building new habits that don’t include work. Then slowly, I started missing some of the work. Ah! Time to write down what I was missing. I didn’t miss the meetings, but I missed the brainstorming. I missed the early prototyping of ideas. Not the project management. I slowly started to figure out what I enjoyed more than other tasks.
If I could tell my 24 year old self one thing: enjoy at least 50% of the work. It’s the most applicable thing I could find the words to say. Everything else is a smattering of timing, luck and perseverance. As a business owner, you deal with risk, stress, management issues and customer complaints. All that is worth it if doing the other 50% gives you an ultimate high.
Takeaway: Redesign retirement for yourself. Paint the dream. What would you do after that two week vacation? What challenges inspire you? What do you find yourself wanting to grow in? There might be a way to bring that into your life earlier in a smaller way.
Cashflow. Freedom. Passive income. All of these buzzy words describe the same theme. Flexibility. My new ‘retirement’ was finding cool things to make, cool people to work with and being financially flexible enough to pivot to interesting topics.
Having someone offer to buy your company is exciting. So many new possibilities it could bring. It could be life changing money. Maybe a whole new adventure awaits. It lets you reassess how you want to spend your life and how you devote resources to the things that are important to you.
It is also very distracting. The first offer we ever received was 12 months into starting the company. We were flattered. They wanted to meet in person so all three of us flew down to their US headquarters. It was hard not to discuss future plans of how we would spend our winnings. Giddy like children.
After a tour of their offices and a dinner with the executive team, we were floored. We were all praises and returned to Toronto with grins on our faces. We were on a high.
A few weeks later, we got the offer. Our expectations came crashing down as we tried to process how low the offer was. It was a rollercoaster of emotions and the ride definitely came to an end. Looking back at the offer, it was more than fair for where the business was at. It was nowhere close to where we saw the business going.
I was unable to put words together as to how to justify this. All I knew was I was tired. Tired of the emotional up and down of that month. Worse, I can pinpoint on our revenue chart when the first acquisition talks took place. As a matter of fact, I can show you all points at which buying was discussed because it resulted in a slight dip in our progress. The time consuming process of relationship building and initial talks took time away from focusing on the product. Serving the customers. None of our offers ever got into the diligence phase. Imagine what that would have looked like!
Mentally, I wanted to find an alternative to this one big money event that all founders read and dream about. How about smaller ones? Dividends and salary bumps with slow and steady growth. As they say. Companies are bought. Not sold. So what if we controlled the money events ourselves.
This relieved some pressure from creating so many expectations on how money can improve my quality of life. Ironically this got me to focus on small incremental things in the business. Got me feeling more optimistic about making a great company and product. Which looks more attractive to a buyer…
Assuming you will never sell is the best place to be. It gives you the best leverage for negotiation. You will never short change the company for pure financial arbitrage and you will build something you can be proud of.
So if I switch the narrative from striving for one big money event to small recurring ones, what else am I setting myself up for?
This one question led me down a road of questioning all the things they glorify in business land. The big exit. Retirement.
Yikes. What if all this sacrifice leads to a scenario I didn’t prepare for or didn’t take the time to understand. I heard about a subreddit called r/FatFire. Fire. Financial independent retire early. In a very fat luxurious way. A community of people that aspire to create enough wealth to never have to work for money again. The interest gained on the investment takes care of their annual expenses. I was obsessed with this subreddit. There were many stories of people who found themselves in fortunate positions of retiring early.
They were bored.
Post upon post was about how they weren’t prepared for all this free time. I was skeptical. I knew I had so many different interests and it must be easy to fill up my time. I got more curious about this feeling. I started finding that many founders who sell their company even go through this feeling. They felt important and impactful in the identity they created from being a business owner. After selling, they find themselves without an equally meaningful purpose.
Double yikes. What was I in for? After all this luck and hard work, will I be miserable with too much free time? There was only one way to find out. Try smaller sabbaticals. We started experimenting with taking a month off in December and extending our holiday time. The first week sucked. A combined feeling of guilt and boredom. The second week, I slowly started building new habits that don’t include work. Then slowly, I started missing some of the work. Ah! Time to write down what I was missing. I didn’t miss the meetings, but I missed the brainstorming. I missed the early prototyping of ideas. Not the project management. I slowly started to figure out what I enjoyed more than other tasks.
If I could tell my 24 year old self one thing: enjoy at least 50% of the work. It’s the most applicable thing I could find the words to say. Everything else is a smattering of timing, luck and perseverance. As a business owner, you deal with risk, stress, management issues and customer complaints. All that is worth it if doing the other 50% gives you an ultimate high.
Takeaway: Redesign retirement for yourself. Paint the dream. What would you do after that two week vacation? What challenges inspire you? What do you find yourself wanting to grow in? There might be a way to bring that into your life earlier in a smaller way.
Cashflow. Freedom. Passive income. All of these buzzy words describe the same theme. Flexibility. My new ‘retirement’ was finding cool things to make, cool people to work with and being financially flexible enough to pivot to interesting topics.
Having someone offer to buy your company is exciting. So many new possibilities it could bring. It could be life changing money. Maybe a whole new adventure awaits. It lets you reassess how you want to spend your life and how you devote resources to the things that are important to you.
It is also very distracting. The first offer we ever received was 12 months into starting the company. We were flattered. They wanted to meet in person so all three of us flew down to their US headquarters. It was hard not to discuss future plans of how we would spend our winnings. Giddy like children.
After a tour of their offices and a dinner with the executive team, we were floored. We were all praises and returned to Toronto with grins on our faces. We were on a high.
A few weeks later, we got the offer. Our expectations came crashing down as we tried to process how low the offer was. It was a rollercoaster of emotions and the ride definitely came to an end. Looking back at the offer, it was more than fair for where the business was at. It was nowhere close to where we saw the business going.
I was unable to put words together as to how to justify this. All I knew was I was tired. Tired of the emotional up and down of that month. Worse, I can pinpoint on our revenue chart when the first acquisition talks took place. As a matter of fact, I can show you all points at which buying was discussed because it resulted in a slight dip in our progress. The time consuming process of relationship building and initial talks took time away from focusing on the product. Serving the customers. None of our offers ever got into the diligence phase. Imagine what that would have looked like!
Mentally, I wanted to find an alternative to this one big money event that all founders read and dream about. How about smaller ones? Dividends and salary bumps with slow and steady growth. As they say. Companies are bought. Not sold. So what if we controlled the money events ourselves.
This relieved some pressure from creating so many expectations on how money can improve my quality of life. Ironically this got me to focus on small incremental things in the business. Got me feeling more optimistic about making a great company and product. Which looks more attractive to a buyer…
Assuming you will never sell is the best place to be. It gives you the best leverage for negotiation. You will never short change the company for pure financial arbitrage and you will build something you can be proud of.
So if I switch the narrative from striving for one big money event to small recurring ones, what else am I setting myself up for?
This one question led me down a road of questioning all the things they glorify in business land. The big exit. Retirement.
Yikes. What if all this sacrifice leads to a scenario I didn’t prepare for or didn’t take the time to understand. I heard about a subreddit called r/FatFire. Fire. Financial independent retire early. In a very fat luxurious way. A community of people that aspire to create enough wealth to never have to work for money again. The interest gained on the investment takes care of their annual expenses. I was obsessed with this subreddit. There were many stories of people who found themselves in fortunate positions of retiring early.
They were bored.
Post upon post was about how they weren’t prepared for all this free time. I was skeptical. I knew I had so many different interests and it must be easy to fill up my time. I got more curious about this feeling. I started finding that many founders who sell their company even go through this feeling. They felt important and impactful in the identity they created from being a business owner. After selling, they find themselves without an equally meaningful purpose.
Double yikes. What was I in for? After all this luck and hard work, will I be miserable with too much free time? There was only one way to find out. Try smaller sabbaticals. We started experimenting with taking a month off in December and extending our holiday time. The first week sucked. A combined feeling of guilt and boredom. The second week, I slowly started building new habits that don’t include work. Then slowly, I started missing some of the work. Ah! Time to write down what I was missing. I didn’t miss the meetings, but I missed the brainstorming. I missed the early prototyping of ideas. Not the project management. I slowly started to figure out what I enjoyed more than other tasks.
If I could tell my 24 year old self one thing: enjoy at least 50% of the work. It’s the most applicable thing I could find the words to say. Everything else is a smattering of timing, luck and perseverance. As a business owner, you deal with risk, stress, management issues and customer complaints. All that is worth it if doing the other 50% gives you an ultimate high.
Takeaway: Redesign retirement for yourself. Paint the dream. What would you do after that two week vacation? What challenges inspire you? What do you find yourself wanting to grow in? There might be a way to bring that into your life earlier in a smaller way.
Cashflow. Freedom. Passive income. All of these buzzy words describe the same theme. Flexibility. My new ‘retirement’ was finding cool things to make, cool people to work with and being financially flexible enough to pivot to interesting topics.
Having someone offer to buy your company is exciting. So many new possibilities it could bring. It could be life changing money. Maybe a whole new adventure awaits. It lets you reassess how you want to spend your life and how you devote resources to the things that are important to you.
It is also very distracting. The first offer we ever received was 12 months into starting the company. We were flattered. They wanted to meet in person so all three of us flew down to their US headquarters. It was hard not to discuss future plans of how we would spend our winnings. Giddy like children.
After a tour of their offices and a dinner with the executive team, we were floored. We were all praises and returned to Toronto with grins on our faces. We were on a high.
A few weeks later, we got the offer. Our expectations came crashing down as we tried to process how low the offer was. It was a rollercoaster of emotions and the ride definitely came to an end. Looking back at the offer, it was more than fair for where the business was at. It was nowhere close to where we saw the business going.
I was unable to put words together as to how to justify this. All I knew was I was tired. Tired of the emotional up and down of that month. Worse, I can pinpoint on our revenue chart when the first acquisition talks took place. As a matter of fact, I can show you all points at which buying was discussed because it resulted in a slight dip in our progress. The time consuming process of relationship building and initial talks took time away from focusing on the product. Serving the customers. None of our offers ever got into the diligence phase. Imagine what that would have looked like!
Mentally, I wanted to find an alternative to this one big money event that all founders read and dream about. How about smaller ones? Dividends and salary bumps with slow and steady growth. As they say. Companies are bought. Not sold. So what if we controlled the money events ourselves.
This relieved some pressure from creating so many expectations on how money can improve my quality of life. Ironically this got me to focus on small incremental things in the business. Got me feeling more optimistic about making a great company and product. Which looks more attractive to a buyer…
Assuming you will never sell is the best place to be. It gives you the best leverage for negotiation. You will never short change the company for pure financial arbitrage and you will build something you can be proud of.
So if I switch the narrative from striving for one big money event to small recurring ones, what else am I setting myself up for?
This one question led me down a road of questioning all the things they glorify in business land. The big exit. Retirement.
Yikes. What if all this sacrifice leads to a scenario I didn’t prepare for or didn’t take the time to understand. I heard about a subreddit called r/FatFire. Fire. Financial independent retire early. In a very fat luxurious way. A community of people that aspire to create enough wealth to never have to work for money again. The interest gained on the investment takes care of their annual expenses. I was obsessed with this subreddit. There were many stories of people who found themselves in fortunate positions of retiring early.
They were bored.
Post upon post was about how they weren’t prepared for all this free time. I was skeptical. I knew I had so many different interests and it must be easy to fill up my time. I got more curious about this feeling. I started finding that many founders who sell their company even go through this feeling. They felt important and impactful in the identity they created from being a business owner. After selling, they find themselves without an equally meaningful purpose.
Double yikes. What was I in for? After all this luck and hard work, will I be miserable with too much free time? There was only one way to find out. Try smaller sabbaticals. We started experimenting with taking a month off in December and extending our holiday time. The first week sucked. A combined feeling of guilt and boredom. The second week, I slowly started building new habits that don’t include work. Then slowly, I started missing some of the work. Ah! Time to write down what I was missing. I didn’t miss the meetings, but I missed the brainstorming. I missed the early prototyping of ideas. Not the project management. I slowly started to figure out what I enjoyed more than other tasks.
If I could tell my 24 year old self one thing: enjoy at least 50% of the work. It’s the most applicable thing I could find the words to say. Everything else is a smattering of timing, luck and perseverance. As a business owner, you deal with risk, stress, management issues and customer complaints. All that is worth it if doing the other 50% gives you an ultimate high.
Takeaway: Redesign retirement for yourself. Paint the dream. What would you do after that two week vacation? What challenges inspire you? What do you find yourself wanting to grow in? There might be a way to bring that into your life earlier in a smaller way.
Cashflow. Freedom. Passive income. All of these buzzy words describe the same theme. Flexibility. My new ‘retirement’ was finding cool things to make, cool people to work with and being financially flexible enough to pivot to interesting topics.
Retirement is boring,
plan accordingly
Retirement is boring,
plan accordingly
I often dreamed of things happening one after another. I would start a company. Eventually be very well off. Then, help lots of people. What a happy ending.
Now if things didn’t go according to plan, I planned again. Same format. First, do this. Then, this. Then, that. I was always putting the thing I wanted to do most all the way at the end. Why? Fear of failure. I was sure that I needed the first two things in order to achieve the last one. Might be worth asking for yourself: what are you putting off?
Recently, I tried asking a question to my family: if you could do one thing before you die and money was no object, what would it be? Whatever the answer was, I then asked them what 0.01% of that dream looks like? Maybe laughable to your imagination and your big dreams. But satisfying and perhaps a very educational experience.
Maybe you love the feeling of it. Maybe you hate it. It’s enough to give you a taste of what’s more to come.
This was an unlock for me because I felt like I was slowly working towards and experiencing that big ambition.
As for philanthropy, my founders and I decided to dedicate monthly recurring revenue to causes we believed in. 1% for each founder to a charity of our choosing. In the beginning, the numbers felt small. But it was a start. It was the planting of seeds. Over the years, now the sum donated per year exceeded the revenue we made from the product in the early years. Things compound quickly. Baby steps soon become a jog and then a run.
Takeaway: Pick a dream. Feel the 0.01% version of that dream. Start small. Feel the difference. Appreciate the growth over time. It gives you perspective of what you have, where you have been and maybe gives you hope of where you are going. These little things make the world of a difference on those shitty days.
I often dreamed of things happening one after another. I would start a company. Eventually be very well off. Then, help lots of people. What a happy ending.
Now if things didn’t go according to plan, I planned again. Same format. First, do this. Then, this. Then, that. I was always putting the thing I wanted to do most all the way at the end. Why? Fear of failure. I was sure that I needed the first two things in order to achieve the last one. Might be worth asking for yourself: what are you putting off?
Recently, I tried asking a question to my family: if you could do one thing before you die and money was no object, what would it be? Whatever the answer was, I then asked them what 0.01% of that dream looks like? Maybe laughable to your imagination and your big dreams. But satisfying and perhaps a very educational experience.
Maybe you love the feeling of it. Maybe you hate it. It’s enough to give you a taste of what’s more to come.
This was an unlock for me because I felt like I was slowly working towards and experiencing that big ambition.
As for philanthropy, my founders and I decided to dedicate monthly recurring revenue to causes we believed in. 1% for each founder to a charity of our choosing. In the beginning, the numbers felt small. But it was a start. It was the planting of seeds. Over the years, now the sum donated per year exceeded the revenue we made from the product in the early years. Things compound quickly. Baby steps soon become a jog and then a run.
Takeaway: Pick a dream. Feel the 0.01% version of that dream. Start small. Feel the difference. Appreciate the growth over time. It gives you perspective of what you have, where you have been and maybe gives you hope of where you are going. These little things make the world of a difference on those shitty days.
I often dreamed of things happening one after another. I would start a company. Eventually be very well off. Then, help lots of people. What a happy ending.
Now if things didn’t go according to plan, I planned again. Same format. First, do this. Then, this. Then, that. I was always putting the thing I wanted to do most all the way at the end. Why? Fear of failure. I was sure that I needed the first two things in order to achieve the last one. Might be worth asking for yourself: what are you putting off?
Recently, I tried asking a question to my family: if you could do one thing before you die and money was no object, what would it be? Whatever the answer was, I then asked them what 0.01% of that dream looks like? Maybe laughable to your imagination and your big dreams. But satisfying and perhaps a very educational experience.
Maybe you love the feeling of it. Maybe you hate it. It’s enough to give you a taste of what’s more to come.
This was an unlock for me because I felt like I was slowly working towards and experiencing that big ambition.
As for philanthropy, my founders and I decided to dedicate monthly recurring revenue to causes we believed in. 1% for each founder to a charity of our choosing. In the beginning, the numbers felt small. But it was a start. It was the planting of seeds. Over the years, now the sum donated per year exceeded the revenue we made from the product in the early years. Things compound quickly. Baby steps soon become a jog and then a run.
Takeaway: Pick a dream. Feel the 0.01% version of that dream. Start small. Feel the difference. Appreciate the growth over time. It gives you perspective of what you have, where you have been and maybe gives you hope of where you are going. These little things make the world of a difference on those shitty days.
I often dreamed of things happening one after another. I would start a company. Eventually be very well off. Then, help lots of people. What a happy ending.
Now if things didn’t go according to plan, I planned again. Same format. First, do this. Then, this. Then, that. I was always putting the thing I wanted to do most all the way at the end. Why? Fear of failure. I was sure that I needed the first two things in order to achieve the last one. Might be worth asking for yourself: what are you putting off?
Recently, I tried asking a question to my family: if you could do one thing before you die and money was no object, what would it be? Whatever the answer was, I then asked them what 0.01% of that dream looks like? Maybe laughable to your imagination and your big dreams. But satisfying and perhaps a very educational experience.
Maybe you love the feeling of it. Maybe you hate it. It’s enough to give you a taste of what’s more to come.
This was an unlock for me because I felt like I was slowly working towards and experiencing that big ambition.
As for philanthropy, my founders and I decided to dedicate monthly recurring revenue to causes we believed in. 1% for each founder to a charity of our choosing. In the beginning, the numbers felt small. But it was a start. It was the planting of seeds. Over the years, now the sum donated per year exceeded the revenue we made from the product in the early years. Things compound quickly. Baby steps soon become a jog and then a run.
Takeaway: Pick a dream. Feel the 0.01% version of that dream. Start small. Feel the difference. Appreciate the growth over time. It gives you perspective of what you have, where you have been and maybe gives you hope of where you are going. These little things make the world of a difference on those shitty days.
Start small on
big ambitions
It’s so easy for digital businesses to feel like a game. You sit at home. Revenue is notified through app notifications.
Green is good. Red means bad.
It’s so easy to forget that there are humans with human problems on the other end of the screens.
Find the passionate souls that adore your product and would pride themselves in having their fingerprint on it. Having them at arm's length has been such an incredible experience for us. Since our virtual office was on Slack, we created a customer slack to field questions and test new ideas with. This turned out to be a huge boost to our morale. File this under one of the things we wish we did in year 1 instead of year 3!
We love talking about customer obsessed companies. But the process of being customer centric is really messy. Customer meetings are crucial.
This is easy advice to ignore once you think the product has a stride and you start experiencing some initial success. Make it a habit to ask questions and share progress with customers on a call. Even if you don’t have any questions. Make it a habit.
Takeaway: Meet with your highest value customers every month to learn how they are growing in their usage. Ask: If they had a magic wand, what would you want magically done? After the initial giggle from the customers, you get to the human problems. The real ones. The ones that once solved, they become true fans.
It’s so easy for digital businesses to feel like a game. You sit at home. Revenue is notified through app notifications.
Green is good. Red means bad.
It’s so easy to forget that there are humans with human problems on the other end of the screens.
Find the passionate souls that adore your product and would pride themselves in having their fingerprint on it. Having them at arm's length has been such an incredible experience for us. Since our virtual office was on Slack, we created a customer slack to field questions and test new ideas with. This turned out to be a huge boost to our morale. File this under one of the things we wish we did in year 1 instead of year 3!
We love talking about customer obsessed companies. But the process of being customer centric is really messy. Customer meetings are crucial.
This is easy advice to ignore once you think the product has a stride and you start experiencing some initial success. Make it a habit to ask questions and share progress with customers on a call. Even if you don’t have any questions. Make it a habit.
Takeaway: Meet with your highest value customers every month to learn how they are growing in their usage. Ask: If they had a magic wand, what would you want magically done? After the initial giggle from the customers, you get to the human problems. The real ones. The ones that once solved, they become true fans.
It’s so easy for digital businesses to feel like a game. You sit at home. Revenue is notified through app notifications.
Green is good. Red means bad.
It’s so easy to forget that there are humans with human problems on the other end of the screens.
Find the passionate souls that adore your product and would pride themselves in having their fingerprint on it. Having them at arm's length has been such an incredible experience for us. Since our virtual office was on Slack, we created a customer slack to field questions and test new ideas with. This turned out to be a huge boost to our morale. File this under one of the things we wish we did in year 1 instead of year 3!
We love talking about customer obsessed companies. But the process of being customer centric is really messy. Customer meetings are crucial.
This is easy advice to ignore once you think the product has a stride and you start experiencing some initial success. Make it a habit to ask questions and share progress with customers on a call. Even if you don’t have any questions. Make it a habit.
Takeaway: Meet with your highest value customers every month to learn how they are growing in their usage. Ask: If they had a magic wand, what would you want magically done? After the initial giggle from the customers, you get to the human problems. The real ones. The ones that once solved, they become true fans.
It’s so easy for digital businesses to feel like a game. You sit at home. Revenue is notified through app notifications.
Green is good. Red means bad.
It’s so easy to forget that there are humans with human problems on the other end of the screens.
Find the passionate souls that adore your product and would pride themselves in having their fingerprint on it. Having them at arm's length has been such an incredible experience for us. Since our virtual office was on Slack, we created a customer slack to field questions and test new ideas with. This turned out to be a huge boost to our morale. File this under one of the things we wish we did in year 1 instead of year 3!
We love talking about customer obsessed companies. But the process of being customer centric is really messy. Customer meetings are crucial.
This is easy advice to ignore once you think the product has a stride and you start experiencing some initial success. Make it a habit to ask questions and share progress with customers on a call. Even if you don’t have any questions. Make it a habit.
Takeaway: Meet with your highest value customers every month to learn how they are growing in their usage. Ask: If they had a magic wand, what would you want magically done? After the initial giggle from the customers, you get to the human problems. The real ones. The ones that once solved, they become true fans.
Stay close to
customer stories
Chances are that you know where your weaknesses are. Ours was marketing. We tried to make our product naturally viral. In order to use it, you had to invite other people. But we didn’t put enough training wheels there right away.
What we did know how to do was make amazing product. We understood our customers. Their problems. We knew what the balance between simple and useful was. A fine balance that one. We knew what would delight people. Marketing. Not so much.
Between finance, operations, customer service, design and technology, find the weakest link quickly. Hire or put automations in place to make it strong enough to not let it drag. This was a hard lesson. One that we keep learning to this day. The point is not to brood over it, but to put time and dollars in place to fortify every corner of the business.
Takeaway: Find the weak spots of the business. These are the riskiest parts that will eventually be bigger problems later. Your attempts might feel tiring, but once you get the hang of it, you can bring in someone way better than you to take that domain to the next level.
Chances are that you know where your weaknesses are. Ours was marketing. We tried to make our product naturally viral. In order to use it, you had to invite other people. But we didn’t put enough training wheels there right away.
What we did know how to do was make amazing product. We understood our customers. Their problems. We knew what the balance between simple and useful was. A fine balance that one. We knew what would delight people. Marketing. Not so much.
Between finance, operations, customer service, design and technology, find the weakest link quickly. Hire or put automations in place to make it strong enough to not let it drag. This was a hard lesson. One that we keep learning to this day. The point is not to brood over it, but to put time and dollars in place to fortify every corner of the business.
Takeaway: Find the weak spots of the business. These are the riskiest parts that will eventually be bigger problems later. Your attempts might feel tiring, but once you get the hang of it, you can bring in someone way better than you to take that domain to the next level.
Chances are that you know where your weaknesses are. Ours was marketing. We tried to make our product naturally viral. In order to use it, you had to invite other people. But we didn’t put enough training wheels there right away.
What we did know how to do was make amazing product. We understood our customers. Their problems. We knew what the balance between simple and useful was. A fine balance that one. We knew what would delight people. Marketing. Not so much.
Between finance, operations, customer service, design and technology, find the weakest link quickly. Hire or put automations in place to make it strong enough to not let it drag. This was a hard lesson. One that we keep learning to this day. The point is not to brood over it, but to put time and dollars in place to fortify every corner of the business.
Takeaway: Find the weak spots of the business. These are the riskiest parts that will eventually be bigger problems later. Your attempts might feel tiring, but once you get the hang of it, you can bring in someone way better than you to take that domain to the next level.
Chances are that you know where your weaknesses are. Ours was marketing. We tried to make our product naturally viral. In order to use it, you had to invite other people. But we didn’t put enough training wheels there right away.
What we did know how to do was make amazing product. We understood our customers. Their problems. We knew what the balance between simple and useful was. A fine balance that one. We knew what would delight people. Marketing. Not so much.
Between finance, operations, customer service, design and technology, find the weakest link quickly. Hire or put automations in place to make it strong enough to not let it drag. This was a hard lesson. One that we keep learning to this day. The point is not to brood over it, but to put time and dollars in place to fortify every corner of the business.
Takeaway: Find the weak spots of the business. These are the riskiest parts that will eventually be bigger problems later. Your attempts might feel tiring, but once you get the hang of it, you can bring in someone way better than you to take that domain to the next level.
Place training
wheels faster
There is no greater feeling than doing something you think you could do for decades.
The passion you will speak with will resonate with whoever you come across. My deep admiration for any creative pursuit can be felt in conversation. I know and respect the journey they are on. You combine that with building things online, you can email anyone and give them their flowers genuinely. It’s the best way to connect and grow your community. If you keep pursuing your ideas, do you like the people you attract into your life?
The world you occupy with your creative work is so small and these little interactions can turn into wonderful relationships. You might start a business with them. Or become close friends. You add to your tribe. Over the years, I’ve found a group of tinkerers and I’m forever grateful to have their respect and their friendship. It would be a misstep to focus so much on your own projects that you don’t see the movement happening around you. I met people online and never met them in person and did business together.
Cold emails have sparked every pivotal moment in my career. It was the most impactful lever I controlled. A new way to reach out to someone new with an idea. If a conversation was greenlit from an email, a new opportunity was born.
I lucked out with my partners; they had the right temperament for a longer road of company building. You never want to feel like you’re dragging people to do things. My dad had a saying growing up: You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. If someone is inherently feeling lazy to do something, they won’t do it. People that are also open minded. This trait is what convinced me to work with my partners. When I was pitching them to work together, we created a space for a few weeks to actually design and build something together. No money. A simple exchange of trust. If we didn’t feel good about it, we agreed to walk away with no hard feelings. A green flag. Someone that is long term minded versus looking for a short squeeze. Our first product discussion was around a feature they had in the initial product that I thought could have been different. We were able to have a conversation about that feature as if we were designing it for the first time. That made me very happy and it’s a feeling I take to new people joining our team. Have an open mind to entertain open questions. Finding alignment in north stars with partners is super important.
Takeaway: There is no point grinding out your business with people you don’t want to be around. It’s already hard to build things. When you do something you have deep respect for, you will look up to a few people in that space. Audit your heroes. Reach out to them with your progress. Update them every 6-12 months via email of your progress. Your progress will inspire respect and you can find ways to help them eventually. You last long enough in a space, you will attract long term people and build amazing relationships.
There is no greater feeling than doing something you think you could do for decades.
The passion you will speak with will resonate with whoever you come across. My deep admiration for any creative pursuit can be felt in conversation. I know and respect the journey they are on. You combine that with building things online, you can email anyone and give them their flowers genuinely. It’s the best way to connect and grow your community. If you keep pursuing your ideas, do you like the people you attract into your life?
The world you occupy with your creative work is so small and these little interactions can turn into wonderful relationships. You might start a business with them. Or become close friends. You add to your tribe. Over the years, I’ve found a group of tinkerers and I’m forever grateful to have their respect and their friendship. It would be a misstep to focus so much on your own projects that you don’t see the movement happening around you. I met people online and never met them in person and did business together.
Cold emails have sparked every pivotal moment in my career. It was the most impactful lever I controlled. A new way to reach out to someone new with an idea. If a conversation was greenlit from an email, a new opportunity was born.
I lucked out with my partners; they had the right temperament for a longer road of company building. You never want to feel like you’re dragging people to do things. My dad had a saying growing up: You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. If someone is inherently feeling lazy to do something, they won’t do it. People that are also open minded. This trait is what convinced me to work with my partners. When I was pitching them to work together, we created a space for a few weeks to actually design and build something together. No money. A simple exchange of trust. If we didn’t feel good about it, we agreed to walk away with no hard feelings. A green flag. Someone that is long term minded versus looking for a short squeeze. Our first product discussion was around a feature they had in the initial product that I thought could have been different. We were able to have a conversation about that feature as if we were designing it for the first time. That made me very happy and it’s a feeling I take to new people joining our team. Have an open mind to entertain open questions. Finding alignment in north stars with partners is super important.
Takeaway: There is no point grinding out your business with people you don’t want to be around. It’s already hard to build things. When you do something you have deep respect for, you will look up to a few people in that space. Audit your heroes. Reach out to them with your progress. Update them every 6-12 months via email of your progress. Your progress will inspire respect and you can find ways to help them eventually. You last long enough in a space, you will attract long term people and build amazing relationships.
There is no greater feeling than doing something you think you could do for decades.
The passion you will speak with will resonate with whoever you come across. My deep admiration for any creative pursuit can be felt in conversation. I know and respect the journey they are on. You combine that with building things online, you can email anyone and give them their flowers genuinely. It’s the best way to connect and grow your community. If you keep pursuing your ideas, do you like the people you attract into your life?
The world you occupy with your creative work is so small and these little interactions can turn into wonderful relationships. You might start a business with them. Or become close friends. You add to your tribe. Over the years, I’ve found a group of tinkerers and I’m forever grateful to have their respect and their friendship. It would be a misstep to focus so much on your own projects that you don’t see the movement happening around you. I met people online and never met them in person and did business together.
Cold emails have sparked every pivotal moment in my career. It was the most impactful lever I controlled. A new way to reach out to someone new with an idea. If a conversation was greenlit from an email, a new opportunity was born.
I lucked out with my partners; they had the right temperament for a longer road of company building. You never want to feel like you’re dragging people to do things. My dad had a saying growing up: You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. If someone is inherently feeling lazy to do something, they won’t do it. People that are also open minded. This trait is what convinced me to work with my partners. When I was pitching them to work together, we created a space for a few weeks to actually design and build something together. No money. A simple exchange of trust. If we didn’t feel good about it, we agreed to walk away with no hard feelings. A green flag. Someone that is long term minded versus looking for a short squeeze. Our first product discussion was around a feature they had in the initial product that I thought could have been different. We were able to have a conversation about that feature as if we were designing it for the first time. That made me very happy and it’s a feeling I take to new people joining our team. Have an open mind to entertain open questions. Finding alignment in north stars with partners is super important.
Takeaway: There is no point grinding out your business with people you don’t want to be around. It’s already hard to build things. When you do something you have deep respect for, you will look up to a few people in that space. Audit your heroes. Reach out to them with your progress. Update them every 6-12 months via email of your progress. Your progress will inspire respect and you can find ways to help them eventually. You last long enough in a space, you will attract long term people and build amazing relationships.
There is no greater feeling than doing something you think you could do for decades.
The passion you will speak with will resonate with whoever you come across. My deep admiration for any creative pursuit can be felt in conversation. I know and respect the journey they are on. You combine that with building things online, you can email anyone and give them their flowers genuinely. It’s the best way to connect and grow your community. If you keep pursuing your ideas, do you like the people you attract into your life?
The world you occupy with your creative work is so small and these little interactions can turn into wonderful relationships. You might start a business with them. Or become close friends. You add to your tribe. Over the years, I’ve found a group of tinkerers and I’m forever grateful to have their respect and their friendship. It would be a misstep to focus so much on your own projects that you don’t see the movement happening around you. I met people online and never met them in person and did business together.
Cold emails have sparked every pivotal moment in my career. It was the most impactful lever I controlled. A new way to reach out to someone new with an idea. If a conversation was greenlit from an email, a new opportunity was born.
I lucked out with my partners; they had the right temperament for a longer road of company building. You never want to feel like you’re dragging people to do things. My dad had a saying growing up: You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink. If someone is inherently feeling lazy to do something, they won’t do it. People that are also open minded. This trait is what convinced me to work with my partners. When I was pitching them to work together, we created a space for a few weeks to actually design and build something together. No money. A simple exchange of trust. If we didn’t feel good about it, we agreed to walk away with no hard feelings. A green flag. Someone that is long term minded versus looking for a short squeeze. Our first product discussion was around a feature they had in the initial product that I thought could have been different. We were able to have a conversation about that feature as if we were designing it for the first time. That made me very happy and it’s a feeling I take to new people joining our team. Have an open mind to entertain open questions. Finding alignment in north stars with partners is super important.
Takeaway: There is no point grinding out your business with people you don’t want to be around. It’s already hard to build things. When you do something you have deep respect for, you will look up to a few people in that space. Audit your heroes. Reach out to them with your progress. Update them every 6-12 months via email of your progress. Your progress will inspire respect and you can find ways to help them eventually. You last long enough in a space, you will attract long term people and build amazing relationships.
Internet friends
are awesome
When all is said and over, stories remain. The people you worked with. How you led to their growth. How they felt working with you. How you made your customers feel. Those are the moments we wish we cherished more and captured along the way. Take the photos. Take screenshots of what you did. The little milestones. Looking back at the early days of any project gives me so much joy. They also make me cringe. They make me feel so silly for taking things so seriously. It’s not that serious.
Have fun. Once you pay your bills with your company, you already won. The rest is art.
When all is said and over, stories remain. The people you worked with. How you led to their growth. How they felt working with you. How you made your customers feel. Those are the moments we wish we cherished more and captured along the way. Take the photos. Take screenshots of what you did. The little milestones. Looking back at the early days of any project gives me so much joy. They also make me cringe. They make me feel so silly for taking things so seriously. It’s not that serious.
Have fun. Once you pay your bills with your company, you already won. The rest is art.
When all is said and over, stories remain. The people you worked with. How you led to their growth. How they felt working with you. How you made your customers feel. Those are the moments we wish we cherished more and captured along the way. Take the photos. Take screenshots of what you did. The little milestones. Looking back at the early days of any project gives me so much joy. They also make me cringe. They make me feel so silly for taking things so seriously. It’s not that serious.
Have fun. Once you pay your bills with your company, you already won. The rest is art.
When all is said and over, stories remain. The people you worked with. How you led to their growth. How they felt working with you. How you made your customers feel. Those are the moments we wish we cherished more and captured along the way. Take the photos. Take screenshots of what you did. The little milestones. Looking back at the early days of any project gives me so much joy. They also make me cringe. They make me feel so silly for taking things so seriously. It’s not that serious.
Have fun. Once you pay your bills with your company, you already won. The rest is art.
Capture the moments
5 years of building a million dollar business.
14 lessons I learned along the way.
Hi, I'm Aloke. I design and build products at my studio, Chachu. 5 years ago, I co-founded a software company, Pastel, with the goal of creating financial freedom to pursue more personal projects. Over the past few years, I kept notes of the things I wish I knew earlier. I turned those notes into this book. Here are 14 lessons I learned while building an independent million dollar software company.
If you found this helpful or need any help on your journey, drop me a note. You can find more of my work on my studio page. Peace and love.
Aloke Pillai
Chachu Studio
5 years of building a million dollar business.
14 lessons I learned along the way.
Hi, I'm Aloke. I design and build products at my studio, Chachu. 5 years ago, I co-founded a software company, Pastel, with the goal of creating financial freedom to pursue more personal projects. Over the past few years, I kept notes of the things I wish I knew earlier. I turned those notes into this book. Here are 14 lessons I learned while building an independent million dollar software company.
If you found this helpful or need any help on your journey, drop me a note. You can find more of my work on my studio page. Peace and love.
Aloke Pillai
Chachu Studio
5 years of building a million dollar business.
14 lessons I learned along the way.
Hi, I'm Aloke. I design and build products at my studio, Chachu. 5 years ago, I co-founded a software company, Pastel, with the goal of creating financial freedom to pursue more personal projects. Over the past few years, I kept notes of the things I wish I knew earlier. I turned those notes into this book. Here are 14 lessons I learned while building an independent million dollar software company.
If you found this helpful or need any help on your journey, drop me a note. You can find more of my work on my studio page. Peace and love.
Aloke Pillai
Chachu Studio
5 years of building a million dollar business.
14 lessons I learned along the way.
Hi, I'm Aloke. I design and build products at my studio, Chachu. 5 years ago, I co-founded a software company, Pastel, with the goal of creating financial freedom to pursue more personal projects. Over the past few years, I kept notes of the things I wish I knew earlier. I turned those notes into this book. Here are 14 lessons I learned while building an independent million dollar software company.
If you found this helpful or need any help on your journey, drop me a note. You can find more of my work on my studio page. Peace and love.
Aloke Pillai
Chachu Studio