terrbear.org

In December of last year, Jeremiah and I started a company, Navoty. We’ve learned a ton since then. Here’s a few items:

Time is valuable 

Neither of us realized this at first, and were putting in 30-50 hours on top of our full time jobs to power Navoty. This leads to a few things: burnout (who can sustain 70-90 hour weeks?), angry families (wives and kids need attention!), and unrealistic expectations. We were doing lots of work and getting paid for it, but the short term income boost was met with the realization that we were fairly strapped and there was no growth plan. That’s discouraging. Solution: we’ve started treating our time as billable, even when it isn’t. We now look to delegate more often than not.

Freebies hurt 

We did mockups, wireframes, lots of feature requests, and travel, for free. We’ve stopped doing lots of that now. Making good mockups and wireframes takes a lot of time, just like doing well written features. Doing those for free hurts our bottom line. Further, people are more likely to dismiss your work if you’re too willing to offer it for free. Solution: no more freebies. 

Taxes hurt worse

“Thanks for making jobs and boosting the economy. Don’t forget to send me half of your revenue. Thanks!” - Government. Solution: ouch. 

Not all money is worth taking

At first we would take any job we could get. $200? Sure. What we didn’t realize is that people who offer too little money often have unrealistic expectations for what the money can get them, because their nephew out of college can do the site for less. We’re not trying to compete with those nephews. Solution: only take jobs that understand the value we’re delivering. 

We’re here to deliver value, not just code

We used to just think about time spent coding, but really, we’re delivering a lot more value than that. We’re familiar with open source frameworks, web services, and other consultants who can help out. That’s value. Solution: make our value proposition more obvious when meeting clients. 

Most consulting shops are mediocre, at best

Everybody we’ve talked to has had horrific experiences with outside software shops. This makes our job much, much easier. We talk about how we keep clients in the loop, and they say, “wow, that’s a really good idea.” Exactly. Solution: keep being too good to ignore (courtesy of Steve Martin).

Add value on the top, not from the bottom

We’ve actually learned this over the years, but it needs reiterating. There are very few problems presented in the tech world where a solution hasn’t already been mostly created. This means that the correct solution is to take the previous solution and customize it to work for the new client. If you’re building a POS or CMS from scratch, you’re doing something wrong.