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If the goal of Tarsnap is to grow, the north star is Tarsnap's growth rate.

Well, Tarsnap's goal isn't to grow. I mean, growth is nice, but I'd be perfectly happy if it stayed at its current size; my priority is to have a good product.

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I am curious; how do you come to the conclusion that staying small is better than growing the product/business and taking over as some suggest?

I said that Tarsnap's goal wasn't to grow, not that Tarsnap's goal was to not grow. What it comes down to is that Tarsnap is large enough now to be easily self-sustaining (it pays me more than I would expect to earn anywhere else), and my goal from the start was "build the service I want to use", not "become rich".

That's how I run my game project as well. Except that I haven't gotten to a point where it can sustain working on it full time. Have you written about the history of Tarsnap like how you started it, how long before you were able to use it as a living, etc...?

I haven't written any sort of history like that, although you can get a few bits of history from looking back at my older blog posts. Tarsnap has always been my full-time job, though; when it was still very small I supplemented it by doing some consulting, but mostly I lived off my savings.

I deeply admire anyone who does business like you.

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