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 →Long-term thinking is paid for with short-term discipline
Everybody likes to talk about the long term. Nobody likes to talk about what it costs on a Tuesday afternoon.
Thinking long term is free.
Acting long term is not.
The bill arrives every day, in small amounts, and it's always due today.
The long term is a Tuesday
I like the long term. I talk about it all the time. Patient money. Products that grow slowly. A company that doesn't need investors because it can wait.
It all sounds very wise when you say it in a sentence.
The problem is that the long term never shows up as a big decision. It shows up as a Tuesday afternoon. A client asking for something small that isn't in the plan. An hour you could spend on the product or on a quick job that pays this month. A shortcut that would save a day now and cost a week later.
Nobody sees those decisions. There's no announcement for "today I didn't take the shortcut". But that's where the long term is actually decided. One boring choice at a time.
The long term isn't a strategy. It's what's left after a thousand short-term decisions you didn't mess up.
What discipline looks like for us
I don't mean waking up at five and taking cold showers. I've tried neither and I'm in no hurry.
I mean something duller. Keeping the rules we wrote down when it would be easier not to.
Support doesn't include development, even when the request is tiny and the client is nice. Service hours finance the product, so every hour of client work has to earn its place. We don't do discounts, except on the rare occasion we're sure. And when we decided to specialise in WordPress maintenance, that meant saying no to work that was perfectly fine, just not ours.
None of these is hard once. All of them are hard every week.
Why it costs more without investors
A company with a funding round has external discipline. Someone checks the numbers every quarter. There are targets, reports, a board. It's a clock, but at least it's a clock somebody else winds.
We don't have that. Nobody is going to tell us we drifted. Nobody will notice if we spend six months on things that pay today and build nothing for tomorrow. Except us, too late.
That's the hidden price of freedom. You don't have a boss, so you have to be one. To yourself. On the days you don't feel like it.
I'm not always good at it. I've written plenty of emails in the middle of the night that a disciplined person wouldn't have written. That's where having a partner helps. Yeray is the counterweight, the one who asks whether we're keeping the rule or just getting tired of it. Discipline is easier when there are two of you and you're not both tired at once.
The boring payoff
Here's what I've noticed after more than ten years of Foxnice. The payoff for short-term discipline isn't dramatic either.
It's a product that's still standing. Clients who stay because things work. Rules that save you from having the same argument for the hundredth time. A company that can wait, because it didn't spend its patience on shortcuts.
That doesn't make a good headline.
It makes a good Tuesday.
P.S. If you ever hear me say "it's just a small exception", remind me of this post. Kindly, if possible.