I left my job at the start of January 2013. I decided to take the plunge and try out being self-employed for a while. Below are a list of things I’ve achieved, the things I’ve learned and what I hope to do in 2014.
Milestones:
- Officially started the company
- Launched 2 client projects – 1 was a client web site and one a Windows application
- Became a Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (3 exams!)
- Got the company accepted onto the BizSpark program
- Have pretty much worked for 12 months straight with very few days off!
- Created our very own pair of symbol fonts
- Have kicked off development on several of our own app ideas.
Its been hard work, no doubt, but when you are trying to get your business from a point of not existing to the point of being successful then hard work is pretty much rule number one. I’ve really enjoyed it and I’ve learned a huge amount and become a much better designer and developer because of it.
What I Learned:
- Starting a company with little to no business or accounting knowledge is difficult but totally achievable. I did a two week ‘Start your own business’ course with the Dublin City Enterprise Board at the start of the year and it was invaluable. Check with your local Enterprise Board to see if one is happening near you.
- Build up your own portfolio, don’t wait for client work to help you do it, create your own work based on things that interest you.
- If you are a .Net developer starting a business, apply for BizSpark; our MSDN subscription and Azure credit has saved us a small fortune.
- Get signed up to a cloud based accounting service. We recommend Bullet if you are an Irish Start-up.
- You will probably make very little money in the first year, so make sure you have some money saved up!
- As of 2013, you don’t need to know Photoshop to be a Web Designer anymore. As someone coming from a software developer background this shift in process has made the adjustment much easier.
The Year Ahead:
- Clients – More client projects
- Products – Release 2-3 apps of our own
- Speaking – Go to some conferences – one day I’d like to speak at one of these myself but I guess I should go to one first!
- Share – Create more open source projects – One of the more enjoyable things I’ve don’t this year is contribute to GitHub projects as well as create my own. We have our own Design Frameworks/Boilerplates (for WordPress, MVC and pure HTML) that we work off at Hover Craft and we will look at making them available to the design community in 2014.
- Teach – I am currently in the process of starting up a CoderDojo in my home town. Hopefully we can kick this off sometime on the next month.