In 1998, before people had much of clue about what represents success and how big things can get given time, I built a software product and posted it to the net. Within a week or so there had been a handful of sales at $100 each.
That looked like failure to me at the time - "that's a trickle of money - extrapolating maybe $25,000 per year? Not enough to pay my bills. I need to get a job".
Today that sort of start looks like a whopping success.
I've been trying to replicate that start ever since.
The upside is that I did go and get a job, and through that job met the woman who I had kids with..... if that's that path to getting my fabulous kids then I don't regret it.
Man that last paragraph is the kind of success to keep in mind. I have loads of regrets on businesses and opportunities missed since 98 as well, but a huge number of them would not have lead to my family today.
A more spiritual approach to the decades is how I am hoping to live in the future - that and still plenty of coding.
The internet is becoming a bigger and bigger playground. Even getting that first bit of attention is extremely meaningful now. There are so many different services and other attention-suckers out there at this point that everything really does matter.
What type of software product did you make back then that warranted $100 sales?
Back then, every software product cost that much. Well OK maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but certainly anything that was B2B focused. 'Personal' sales would be $25 for something really simple, $50 for something established that people would use a lot.
Car expense tracker for Palm - $19.95. Today if you even want to charge $1.99, you'll be competing with several free (ad-supported) ones.
That looked like failure to me at the time - "that's a trickle of money - extrapolating maybe $25,000 per year? Not enough to pay my bills. I need to get a job".
Today that sort of start looks like a whopping success.
I've been trying to replicate that start ever since.
The upside is that I did go and get a job, and through that job met the woman who I had kids with..... if that's that path to getting my fabulous kids then I don't regret it.