Five years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company.

For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. None of them earned more than a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, and they all had negative profits.

Halfway through my third year, I created a device called TinyPilot. It allows users to control their computers remotely without installing any software. The product quickly caught on, and it’s been my main focus ever since.

Five years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own bootstrapped software company.

For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. None of them earned more than a few hundred dollars per month in revenue, and they all had negative profits.

Halfway through my third year, I created a device called TinyPilot. It allows users to control their computers remotely without installing any software. The product quickly caught on, and it’s been my main focus ever since.

Highlights

• TinyPilot is facing a supply shortage that will drastically limit its sales for 2023.
• Running leaner might not be such a bad thing.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:

I’m a fan of Mat Ryer’s work, and his blog posts have had a significant impact on the way I program in Go. I found the book hit or miss. Some chapters were fascinating and taught me valuable Go lessons, while others felt boring and got too bogged down in the minutiae of third-party libraries. Overall, I’d still recommend it to anyone who considers themselves a beginner or intermediate Go programmer.

Highlights

• TinyPilot generated $112k of monthly revenue, breaking the six-figure mark for the first time ever.
• I grossly overestimated how much spare capacity TinyPilot’s fulfillment team had.
• Long-term tasks can be a canary for impending resource exhaustion.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals: