Almost ten years ago we started Foxnice with 300 €

This December I've been waiting for a notary.

Which, it turns out, is a great time to think about where you came from.

The plan was simple. Foxnice would operate as a limited company from 1 January 2024.

The paperwork wasn't. In mid-December our advisers told us the notary was taking longer than usual. The law on company transformations had changed, and we weren't creating a company from scratch. No signed deeds, no tax ID.

Yeray kept pushing to get that tax ID in time, so the invoices going out on 1 January could carry the new company's details. Like someone holding the lift doors open with one hand.

And me? I started thinking about how all this began.

A website before selling websites

I built my first website at 12.

In November 2012, Yeray and I were talking about selling websites to businesses. He asked me something I still remember: isn't it a bit strange to go and sell websites when we don't even have one ourselves?

He was right. We agreed to make our own first.

In spring 2013 I registered as self-employed. I didn't have a trade name ready. In the description of the activity I included "software as a service". I'm not sure I fully knew what that meant yet. I just knew it was where I wanted to go.

And in 2014, Foxnice started. With 300 €. No investors, no outside money.

300 € doesn't buy much

The honest version isn't a heroic one.

300 € buys you a little time to find the first client. And then you'd better find the second.

When the money is small, every decision is small too. You can't hire, so you learn. You can't buy every tool, so you improvise. You can't afford to lose a client, so you answer everything.

It's easy to envy people who raise money. They can hire, try things, fail with someone else's cash.

But looking back at this year alone, I can see what we got instead. We decided to rebuild sites when they weren't good enough. We offered to fund a club's website ourselves. We set our own pace for PagoCRM.

Nobody had to approve any of it.

Starting with almost nothing means everything you build after is yours.

If I could send one note back to 2014, it wouldn't be a list of rules. It would be something like this. Listen when someone points out the gap you're avoiding, because in 2012 Yeray saw ours before I did. Write down where you want to go, even if it sounds too big for a self-employment form. Let client work pay for the thing you really want to build. And find a partner who pushes where you don't. This month it was the tax ID. In June it was a better fix the morning after my late-night one.

Freedom before size. I think every time we've chosen it, it's been the right call.

Same thing, more structure

Becoming a company with a capital S and L feels like closing a chapter.

It isn't a new start. It's the same thing we started with 300 €, with a little more structure around it.

The money is still patient. The goal is still to build things we own, at a pace we choose.

Almost ten years ago it was 300 € and a simple question.

The questions still matter more than the money.

P.S. Twelve-year-old me, building his first website, would have had no idea what "software as a service" meant. The 2013 version of me wasn't much better. He wrote it down anyway.