Bootstrapping a $30k profit/month company from our internship earnings (Part 2)
blog.fiplab.com
blog.fiplab.com
Congratulations to the team for remaining philosophical though, and winning on quality and timing. They truly are real artists.
† They were negotiating to sponsor the app, the developers sent them a roadmap of their plans, all went quiet and then, a year later, Barclays released their own app.
Barclays ... develop[ed] their own app ... even went so far
as to add ‘fiplab’ as a keyword in their app description!
Thanks for writing out Part 2 this quickly though now I want to read Part 3 where what I expected to read in Part 2 is presumed to be after discovering I was on a multi-part post when I read Part 1 and was disappointed I had to wait to finish the story.
Me too. But I also like the tease.
Their motivation to make money was social? Their friends had jobs so they felt inadequate?
I've never heard that one before.
I guess it's been a LONG time since I first forged out on my own, but every year I take on new risks and search for new opportunities, and never do I think, gosh, what will my friends think?
I'm not sure if this is somewhat off topic, or if I'm asking if this is a common way of thinking, but I'm a little shocked that one entrepreneur's drive to make money was only because their friends were earning good salaries.
I had kids before I even had a chance to know what it was like to be a young single guy out of college, and I started my company when my first son was 1, and my motivation was to be a success in his eyes at the time. Still is. I started developing games because I wanted my kids to see that no matter how far-fetched it may seem, go after your dreams, succeed on your own terms.
But I can see how having money for beer might have been a motivating force when I was 21 and if I had no children at the time.
EDIT: I'm being sincere. That read-back as dickish, but I'm serious. I'm far removed from that world, but I respect anyone's motivation for becoming a success on their own terms, I just don't always grasp it right away.
Just different ways of looking at it
Sadly, quite often, people here in London seldom respect you when you say you're running a startup, thinking you're probably just unemployed and can't find a proper job.
I guess in the end, the fact that we couldn't contemplate failing really pushed us to devise innovative strategies to succeed on the App Store with very little money (we'll explain this in detail in part 3).
That said, there's an old adage that does tend to hold true, which is that your salary is almost certainly going to be an average of the five people you commiserate with the most. Look around. The people you work with/hang out with/have a beer with...how much do they make? Is it close to what you make?
It almost certainly is. In fact, in my own life I can recall many great pals that I used to talk to all of the time that I haven't spoken to in years. I'm not better than they are, and I certainly liked being their friend, but somewhere along the way I started taking a different path, and slowly started making more money than they did. A lot more.
If everyone in our circle is working hard to get ahead, then chances are, we will be even more inclined to do so.
Even if you are totally blind to attire, there are plenty of things. They are small, subtle and additive.
I would even be willing to bet the perceived stigma was partly self-inflicted. It can be hard not to feel like a failure when your friends are doing well and you're still broke.