Every client invoice is a small investment in our product
We've had investors since day one. They just never asked for equity. How 300 € and client invoices paid for every product we've built.
Leer más →2023, the year we started acting like a company
For years Foxnice was two people who happened to invoice together. In 2023, for the first time, it started behaving like a company. It wasn't glamorous. That was the point.
There's a difference between two people who invoice together and a company.
For years, I'm not sure we knew which one we were.
This year, I think we started to find out.
Nothing dramatic happened
If you're expecting a big moment, there wasn't one. No round. No launch party. No viral post.
What there was is harder to tell and, I think, more important. A lot of small decisions that all pointed in the same direction.
PagoCRM stopped being an idea we explained and became something clubs used. Real fees, real families, real mistakes to fix.
We started looking for clients instead of waiting for them. Cold emails, written from Olot, with a question and nothing to sell.
We had hacked websites, infected sites and a forgotten server that bit us. Each one ended with the same conclusion: fewer things, better looked after.
And we started turning Foxnice into a limited company. Right now we're dealing with paperwork, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds.
In January I wrote that I wanted a more boring company. I didn't get it completely. But I got closer.
What changed in me
The company changed. So did the person running it, a little.
I learned that being fast is only useful if someone is allowed to slow you down. I'm the accelerator. Yeray is the one who asks the awkward question. This year I stopped seeing that as friction and started seeing it as the system working.
I learned that saying no is something you train. I think I said it more this year than ever. Still not enough.
And I learned to stop apologising for being small. A company that pays its own bills doesn't need to explain itself to anyone.
A company isn't what you register. It's what you keep doing when nobody is checking.
What I didn't fix
I'd be lying if I made this sound tidy.
I still send too many emails at hours I shouldn't. I still say yes to things I should turn down. I wrote our rules down for the first time this year, and the first thing I discovered was how often I break them.
And everything still passes through too few hands. Two people, a lot of clients, a growing product. That's a balance that won't hold forever without changes.
I don't have the answer to that yet. I just know it's next year's problem, and I'd rather name it now than discover it in a crisis.
Why it was worth it
None of this year needed anyone's permission. No grant to wait for, no investor to convince.
The money came from clients. Patient money. It made us slower than some, and freer than most.
Almost ten years in, I don't think we're a bigger company than we were in January.
We're just more of one.
P.S. Next year we'll have two more letters after our name. I'm told that doesn't make you twice as serious. I'm checking anyway.