Starting a Company

So that’s that, Mat and I have officially started a company. It’s a Rails / Javascript / anything else consulting company named Mashion. We officially start tomorrow, but we’ve been working the past two weeks to build up a little bit of business.

Companies Are Work

As I’m starting to find out, running a business is hard work. Over the past two weeks, Mat and I incorporated a company, started discussions with potential clients, got a company credit card, and started to plan our strategy at night while finishing our final two weeks at our old jobs as developers at Hoopla. It feels like we’ve had a meeting every night for the past two weeks with yet another person looking for some Rails or Javascript help. I’m really looking forward to next week, when not all of our client discussions have to be done on off hours.

As you may imagine, starting a company and finding clients really comes down to task management. To stay on top of things, it’s absolutely essential that you have a good customer relationship management tool into which you put every last bit of customer data. We’re using Highrise, and it totally rocks. After spending 7 months developing applications for Salesforce, Highrise is a breath of fresh air. So far, its strongest two features are that it’ll properly file anything you email to it and it puts pictures next to client names. I love having a picture next to a name (which you can see over to the right), because it really helps me think of these names on a webpage as people that I know.

I’m Terrified

Starting a company is completely terrifying. We’ve lined up a few weeks of work now, but I’m still afraid that the pipeline will dry up on a moment’s notice. We’re currently a small fish in a giant pond, where a number of successful companies are already established. Outside the stress of competition, the economy could always decide to tank again. I try not to think about that, but it’s a pretty real possibility. So yea, this could completely blow up in my face, and that has me scared pretty shitless.

We’re Qualified

However, I’m not going to let the fear drive me away. I think we can beat (or better yet: work with) the big guys in certain cases. We’re a tiny company, but we’re extremely talented. When a client needs a chisel instead of a sledge hammer, we’ll be there.

We’ve spent the past our lives learning everything we can and subconsciously preparing for this moment. The talks I’ve given, the books I’ve written, and work I’ve done have all lead to this. We are definitely Rails and Javascript experts, and we’ll help any team learn to perform at its full potential.

Our Future

With our future starting now, our primary focus is on finding more clients. We want companies and teams that need help improving their development process or kickstarting a new product and think that we can give them the boost they need. If you’re interested, email me.

After lining up some clients, we also want to spend a little time on products. Simulchart has been sitting neglected for the past month and is in need of some development love. Our hope is to turn it into a for pay product by the end of the year. After that, we’ve got a million other small product ideas in mind, and I can’t wait to show them to you.

The Beginning

Overall, this feels like the best career decision I’ve ever made. It’s simultaneously terrifying and exciting, but I can’t think of a better reason to live with permanent butterflies in my stomach. No matter what happens, Mat and I are going to make the best of this experience and come out better for it. Besides, if all else fails, at least I’m going to get to work on some cool stuff. Isn’t that what all programmers dream of anyway?

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