The Inspiration
You will remember Steve Jobs because he gave you your iPod, or iPhone.
We will remember Steve Jobs because he gave us a career.
I will remember Steve Jobs because he gave me a sense of entrepreneurship, design, taste, and product. He made the change he wanted in the world. He was truly inspiring.
Shipping
A few months ago I shipped my first product, TimeTable. It was a wonderful experience finally getting a product out the door and into the hands of people that wanted to use it, while simultaneously putting a little extra money in my pocket. It’s difficult to foresee the future when your vision is clouded by the effort of getting a product out the door. I put my life into TimeTable for about a year to get to where I am today, and even with all its flaws and shortcomings I can honestly say I’m very proud of the product I’ve brought to market.
Over the course of the last year and a half I rewrote TimeTable 3 times, the first time I was almost ready to ship when I realized TimeTable was no longer the application I was hoping for. It had turned into just another web application. Around the same time I realized this I saw 280North give their first demo of their interface builder for Cappuccino applications called Atlas. They had recently released their latest version of Cappuccino which included a beautiful new theme called Aristo designed by SOFA. I had experimented with Cappuccino in the past concluding that debugging Objective-J was too difficult and that’s where my experimentation with Cappuccino stopped. Atlas just like 280Slides blew my mind. I was faced with the decision to drop everything I spend the last several months writing and pick up something I was totally unfamilar with or continue with what I already created.
I discussed the decision with Francisco Tolmasky and reluctantly I dove head first into Cappuccino. What I didn’t realize at the time is how much it would help me later on in the future. I won’t go into that here though.
I think most developers would agree it’s easier to learn something if you have a goal to accomplish. My goal was TimeTable, and boy did I learn. The problem with that philosophy is evident when you look at the code supporting the application you’re writing… IT SUCKS. I looked at TimeTable and noticed while the application was much better than what I had originally, it still wasn’t what I had hoped for. Moreover the code was completely unmanageable. So I decided to rewrite the application for the 3rd and
I still remember staying up until 3am only to get up for an 8am class. It’s amazing how much work you can get done when no one else is awake. This hard work paid off, as I was able to finally get my product out the door. It was a nerve racking experience trying to get complete strangers to pay for something you’ve created. I consulted a few friends and a local business that specializes in getting startups off the ground. The advice I heard everywhere: “SHIP”. Get users as soon as possible and get something out the door to start making some money. I knew the time was right to put version one of the product out there. The biggest hesitation I had was whether or not to file for a LLC. My gut told me yes, but I also wasn’t sure if it was going to be right for me. However, I chose to go ahead and make my business official by registering RCLConcepts as a LLC.
So it has been three months since I shipped TimeTable and I’m happy with the response. Shipping a product is a major feat and I hope I have many more in the future. TimeTable has made me question my ambitions for the future. I now wonder if my dreams were ambitious enough. I couldn’t have ever imagined how far I’d come in a single year, and I hope the progress I’m making as a developer, businessman, student, and open source contributor doesn’t end any time soon. Time will only tell.
-Randy
