Back Office Exposed: Bingo Card Creator

"But if you say you’re booked solid with your children and yet you still find time to watch television and play online poker, then it is time to have a frank discussion about your true priorities in life."

Besides the very honest and insightful write-up (thank you!), this last sentence is worth its weight in gold. It's too easy to make excuses for not following your goals and blame something other than your own lack of motivation/focus.

And no credit for fixing his httpd.conf configuration :(

<3 patio

I think that sentence is unfair. If you have a job and small children, it's easy to be so exhausted after putting them to bed that there is no energy left to think about anything important.

It's true of course that children are the handiest excuse around. But it's also true that once you start down the job-and-family highway it can be exceedingly difficult to get onto an exit. The implication here -- that if you're not pursuing some major third thing, it's because you're lazier or care less than people who (under considerably different circumstances) are pursuing that thing, is glib.

While there are ways out of this dilemma, they require more than re-sorting your todo list and cutting back on the online poker. Failing that, the default rule seems to be "Job, family, school, startup, pick two".

For all those reading this thinking, man, I could never do this or be successful at my own business, follow his advice, JUST DO IT!

It isn't that hard, it is especially not that hard if you approach it like he did and grow very slowly and keep your costs down. I did the same thing with my best friend years ago, starting off while still having a job, then making a leap when things were slightly vetted.

Best decision of my life. I've travelled the world, set my own schedules, always worked on what I wanted to work on and had a far more interesting set of challenges than I would have staying coding at another startup.

The key is not to aim for the moon, aim to pay the bills. We reduced our expenses to $5k (pre tax) a month, then set that as our goal our first year. It was achievable, but more importantly we eventually grew to making far, far more than that. But I've still always kept my expenses low because I've always wanted the freedom to do what I wanted.

I'm now in Africa, doing a startup here because it is new and exciting and satisfies my need to do good. Never would have been here if I had stayed at the day job.

DO IT!

This was the best exchange in the interview:

  Q: Can you share the key metrics you watch on a   
     daily basis? Why are they important to you?

  A: I have published a variety of stats but I don’t watch
     metrics on a daily basis because I don’t make    
     metrics-based decisions on a daily basis, and absent 
     making decisions watching metrics is only as     
     productive as playing WoW.