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 →I want to build something that works without me
For eleven years, Foxnice has worked mostly because I was there. That's not a company. That's a job with a logo. Here's what I'd like to build instead.
The most dangerous person in my company is me.
Not because I do things badly. Because I do too many of them.
The founder as a single point of failure
I made my first website when I was twelve. I taught myself at night, with free online courses, in a family where nobody had ever run a business. That kind of start leaves a habit: if something needs doing, you do it yourself. There's nobody else.
The habit survived long after it stopped being true.
Foxnice has been running since 2014. And for a lot of that time, a worrying amount of it worked because I was awake. Emails in the middle of the night. Decisions made between two other decisions. Knowledge that lived in my head and nowhere else.
In engineering there's a name for that. A single point of failure. The one piece that, if it goes down, takes everything with it.
We spend our days protecting clients from single points of failure. Backups, monitoring, redundancy. And then the company itself depends on one person's inbox.
The irony isn't lost on me.
If your company only works when you're there, you haven't built a company. You've built a very complicated job.
Distance is a good teacher
Since last year, I've been running a good part of Foxnice from Thailand. Different time zone, different rhythm.
That forces honesty. When you're several hours ahead of your clients, you can't be the person who fixes everything the moment it breaks. Either things work without you, or they wait for you. And clients don't like waiting.
So distance has been showing me, quite precisely, where I'm still the bottleneck. Every time something stops until I wake up, that's a note: this should not depend on me.
What "without me" actually means
I don't want to disappear. I like this work. I don't dream of a beach and a passive income dashboard.
What I want is more modest and, I think, harder:
- Products that run on their own, so a club's fees get collected whether or not I'm looking.
- Rules written down, so the same decision doesn't need me every time.
- A partner who can decide without asking. Luckily, Yeray already does, and he's a better counterweight than any board would be.
That's the difference between a company and a founder with helpers. In the first, the founder is a part. In the second, he's the engine, the steering wheel and the brakes at the same time.
Why it matters to freedom
I talk a lot about freedom. No investors, no clock, no obligation to be the biggest.
But there's a kind of freedom investors can't take away from you, because you take it away yourself. Being indispensable. It feels like importance. It's actually a cage with your name on the door.
A company that works without me is the only kind that really lets me choose. To work more, or less. From Girona, Morocco or Thailand. On the product, or on nothing for a week.
I'm not there yet. Some days, not even close.
But I know the direction. The most dangerous person in my company is me.
The goal is to become harmless.
P.S. If you write to us and I'm the one who answers at 1 a.m., that's not dedication. That's a bug we haven't fixed yet.