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by ansible
4737 days ago
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> By this time I had added in for-pay features to the free product to augment advertising and was making well over $1000 per day. I started plugging some of this into advertising to accelerate the growth but most of it was being distributed to me as the only shareholder. Things were going peachy until the servers crashed again. What was stopping you from hiring a couple full-time devs (and devops) at this point? And going full-time yourself? It didn't sound like you need VC / angel investment at this point. It sounds like you had enough money to self-sustain. |
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It took me a long time to get over the fear of others relying on me to support their family/lifestyle. I think deep down inside I felt like my business was a fad and since I didn't have a clear vision of where it would be in 3-5 years I didn't feel comfortable having others reliant on it for their livelihood.
I started it when I was 19 and since it wasn't on purpose and I couldn't envision myself working on it in 5 years I didn't feel like I could ask that of someone else. I wasn't passionate about the project, it was just the first thing I'd done that had gotten so much traction.
I liked the freedom of being able to travel the world without feeling beholden to others back at home. Since I was only accountable to myself I could work 10 hours a week from anywhere on the globe and there was nobody to tell me to get back to work.
At one point I remember saying "I don't want this to be what I'm remembered for." I still feel that way; I want to solve a big problem with my next company someday (bud I didn't and still don't don't know what that will be yet). But that shouldn't have precluded me from going big on this project. I was rushing things, trivializing what I was currently doing, in search of my next big thing.
I eventually did invest a significant portion back into the company to hire a couple developers, designers, etc. But I should have done this much, much sooner.