A bootstrapped founder reflects on his eighth year running independent software businesses after leaving Google. He earned $8.2k profit on $16.3k revenue, primarily from pre-sales of a technical writing book for developers that took much longer than expected to write. The year brought renewed enjoyment through finding business alignment with personal interests and values, proving that parenthood and indie founding are compatible. Despite missing financial goals, he discovered that meaningful work comes from businesses that match domain interest, leverage existing skills, facilitate work-life balance, and align founder-user incentives.
Table of contents
Previously on… 🔗︎How finances went 🔗︎So you’re still taking a break? 🔗︎Finding alignment with my business 🔗︎Do I still love it? 🔗︎Lessons learned 🔗︎Grading last year’s goals 🔗︎Goals for next year 🔗︎All annual reviewsSort: