All facts are still the same, but the overall impression of BCC now is that it is a small, declining and time-consuming business. Patrick himself actually struggles with money, like all of us.
Patrick definitely has (had?) the power of optimistic spin in his stories.
TFA says is best:
- small: "BCC was generating “a meaningful amount of money” (low tens of thousands in profits a year) without requiring a heck of a lot of work for it."
- declining: true, but based on not investing in it
- time-consuming: "BCC was not taking up much of my time (thanks to Sugar handling most of the support) but it was taking more than zero of my mental cycles every year."
"It was not entirely accurate because the weight of what I had done hit me, all at once, when I was writing that. I cried actual, physical tears.
I think every founder has their own relationship with their business. My history with BCC was pretty intense. It was one of the only things keeping me going in my dark days as a salaryman. It got me out of that situation. It was a cornerstone of my public image for years and, sometimes, even my identity. I was The Bingo Guy.
Not being The Bingo Guy? That adjustment took quite a while but had mostly already happened. Admitting it? Oof, that hit like a ton of bricks."
The change in impression did not happen overnight though. Earlier posts were much more optimistic, with slow decline of optimism over the years.
The thing is, even the same earlier years of BCC growth do not look as rosy anymore as they were at the time of that growth.
Why? He stopped actively focussing on the business years ago. Of course it's going to decline. Few recurring revenues businesses, if any, are truly "build it once, sell it forever". They need upkeep and growth plans.
Patrick's growth efforts went elsewhere.
My point is about growth in ~2008-2012.
Back then in Patrick's stories that growth looked impressive. The same ~2008-2012 years of BCC business do not look as impressive anymore.
Now we can see how BCC was time-consuming business with profits that are not really exciting for software developer.
That said, the learning aspects of BCC for all of us still look great: baseline for our businesses, realistic expectations, and relevant know-how.
But he had other, better opportunities.
If you thought if looked more impressive then, maybe you hadn't actually looked at the numbers, or were confusing his consulting revenues for BCC numbers? The numbers were never that high. But the point was that they let him leave his work at a Japanese company, and develop expertise he could use to consult for others. And he could have kept going at BCC and grown that instead, of course.
In 2014, it was bringing in $4,000 an hour [0]. Sure, that hourly rate doesn't scale, but it was only 4-5 hours work for the entire year.
It's not surprising that sales weren't anywhere near the level they were when more time was invested in sales and marketing.
To me, it seems not so much that BCC was time consuming, it was that everything else consumed Patrick's time and there wasn't time for BCC except the bare minimum required to keep it up and running.
[0] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...
With the facts - yes: open and honest.
But interpretations and impressions Patrick created with these facts are not as reliable.
Consider a major change Patrick applied to the Bingo Card Creator at the height that business:
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/08/06/stripe-and-ab-testing-ma...
Not only did the 8 card limit absolutely crush the 15 card limit (99% statistical confidence, 1.89% conversion rate instead of 1.04% conversion rate from free trials to paid accounts on a sample size in the 5,000s range)
However the interpretation is missing a very important point: that "8 card limit" (instead of "15 cards limit" previously) made free version of BCC much less attractive, which, in turn, decreased visibility of BCC web site in Google search results and sent BCC business into long term decline.
The other is that Patrick has the courage to be honest with the whole thing even though I'm quite sure he's aware that that blog post is almost kind of painfully honest.
I think the consulting gigs were not constant. Those were the high points. He had a high income, just not so high as if you multiply $15,000 * 52.
I'm writing this as a fan of Patrick's. Just clarifying your answer based on my recollection of his writings. It's pretty plausible he didn't have a massive savings buffer.
Speaking as an entrepreneur, there's always conflict between saving money vs. investing more of it in businesses. I imagine a lot of value is locked up in appointment reminder. This last paragraph is entirely speculation and not based on anything I remember Patrick writing.
One possible interpretation of that statement is that he had inadequate savings and was struggling with money.
I think there are other equally valid interpretations that could be made, but if you read this post from a negative viewpoint, it's easy enough to reach the conclusion that if Patrick has decided to convert an asset into real money that must be a bad thing.