Divvs Blog

So tomorrow morning Michael and I are unveiling, at least in a limited sense, Divvs to the world.  Its been quite a trip to get here and I’d like to talk a bit about the journey and some of the more memorable events or non-events. This post will be the first of three on our experiences.

1. Starting a company is scary. I could list a ton of reasons for why this is the case, and most of them are obvious, but I think that its best explained by an anecdote of Michael’s that happened just the other day. Michael goes to a church retreat every year called SUUSI, and acts as a counselor to lots of high school kids. One of the kids asked him how he got clients (for our consultancy Ivey and Brown). The response was mostly through word of mouth and reputation. The next question was the kicker though, “What happens if you don’t get any clients?” The response to that was, “Well Billy, I guess I starve”. This last month or so this one has started to weigh heavier and heavier but I’m finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
2. Its also been a great ride. Even if we fail miserably, I’ve been happier these last few months being able to do what I want and if we fail, I’ve got no one to blame but myself….. and Michael, I can always blame Michael. But the freedom that I’ve had was something I’ve not enjoyed in many years. And its very different from just working in a startup, which I’ve done many times. Being one of the founders means that there is no one else that’s going to pick up your slack, because there is no one else. This is, at the same time, a terrifying and liberating thing.
3. This has truly been an education in how much my programming skills have slipped over the last few years as I have done more security and played more of an architect role. My perl-fu is still strong, but the true Ruby way continues to evade me for now, I guess my mind just thinks better in Perl. But I am having a hell of a lot of fun practicing anyway, and have even started to pick up soem Erlang too. Along the same lines, my math skills have gotten so rusty as to have been nearly non-existent. I remembered almost no calculus or geometry and even had to look up some basic notation. Truly a wake up call for continued education, even if it is purely self-directed.

to be continued over the next few days….