It was more than 4 years ago that John and I quit our corporate jobs at Microsoft and HP to start our Two-Bit Operation. My how time flies (or does it). It’s interesting to think back to what you can learn in 4 years of college vs. 4 years of running your own business – one full of academic theory and one packed with practicality. One is not necessarily better than the other, but there were times these past years when I said to myself “I wish I paid more attention in <that> class.” But, alas, nothing good ole Google can’t teach us.
As a small business it’s always important to celebrate the milestones and that’s something we haven’t been good at, but we have definitely been better at celebrating than updating this blog. Some high level notables:
- Menuism.com continues to chug along profitably.
- The Wedding Lens continues to grow and have very happy customers.
- PickFu, being a lean service, is profitable on it’s own. We could use more growth here, so let us know if you have an ideas or want to try out a beta account.
- A couple side projects that bring in money but we’re not ready to share
What’s interesting about this milestone is that it feels like an eternity on the Internet and it’s surreal to watch other similarly aged companies fold due to lack of profitability or pressure from VC investment. People ask us if taking or not taking VC investment was a hard decision for us. In fact, it wasn’t a decision for us. Not taking it was sort of the point of the whole venture. We didn’t want to work for anyone else and we wanted to run our own business. Sure we haven’t had the budgets of our competitors but we get to work on:
- what we want – restaurant review sites, online wedding photo albums or a/b testing services
- when we want – passion for projects run hot and cold; if interest drops on one, we just work on the other.
- where we want – at home in LA for Justin, at home in SF for John (and some China last year)
Flexibility and owning your own destiny is an amazingly empowering feeling. Here’s to 4 more years!
Justin
