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 →Surviving isn't a strategy, but in 2020 it was mine
Every business book says survival isn't a strategy. They're right. This year I didn't have another one, and I'm not ashamed of it.
Every business book agrees on one thing.
Survival is not a strategy.
They're right. And this year, it was the only one I had.
In January I had plans. Normal ones. Grow a bit. Build a bit of product. Raise prices where it made sense. The sort of list you write with a coffee and the illusion that the year will ask your permission.
In March, the year didn't ask.
The year of the short horizon
I'm not going to retell the whole year. You lived it too. Each of us in our own version, all of us with the same news on in the background.
What I want to talk about is the horizon.
Before, I thought in years. Where will we be in three? What do we want to build? This spring, the horizon shrank to a week. Sometimes to a day. Answer the client. Keep the websites up. Don't make a decision today that can wait until tomorrow.
It felt like failure at the time. Like we'd stopped being a company with a direction and become two people bailing water.
Looking back, I think it was the right size of horizon for the year we had.
When the fog is this thick, the plan is the next step. The rest is decoration.
What surviving actually taught me
Three things. Not a framework. Just what stuck.
The first: boring money is the best money. Services, maintenance, small recurring fees. Nobody brags about them. This year, they're what kept the lights on. I've stopped apologising for them.
The second: being small is an advantage when everything changes at once. No board, no investors, no plan to justify. Just Yeray and me, deciding and adjusting. If we'd had a clock ticking, I suspect this year would have felt very different.
The third: survival isn't passive. From the outside it looks like standing still. From the inside, it's a thousand small decisions a week. Which client to call. What to postpone. What not to sign. Surviving well is a skill. Nobody teaches it, because nobody wants to admit they needed it.
What I'm taking into next year
Not a big plan. I've learned my lesson about January plans.
A few intentions, written in pencil.
Keep the company small and free. Keep the services paying for the products. Keep building things that come from problems clients keep repeating, not from ideas I had in the shower. Keep the habit of letting big decisions rest for a day, and keep a partner who acts as a counterweight when I'm in a hurry.
And maybe, if the year allows, lift the horizon a little. From a week to a month. From a month to a season.
The books are right. Survival isn't a strategy.
But you can't have any strategy at all if you didn't survive the year first.
We did. That's the whole review.
P.S. I've already written my plans for next year. In pencil. With an eraser close at hand.