What would you do if I gave you $1 million today on the condition that you invest it entirely in the stock market? First off, you’d probably find someone who knows way more about investing and get some professional advice. But in lieu of that, you’d divide your money among a variety of bets: Stable companies with a history of profitability, growth-stage companies with a high tolerance for risk, and maybe a few companies you just personally believe have potential.

For the past five years, I’ve done all of my software development in virtual machines (VMs). Each of my projects gets a dedicated VM, sparing me the headache of dependency conflicts and TCP port collisions.

Three years ago, I took things to the next level by building my own homelab server to host all of my VMs. It’s been a fantastic investment, as it sped up numerous dev tasks and improved reliability.

Highlights

• TinyPilot generated $3,800 in revenue with zero marketing.
• I went from zero to a complete, custom manufactured product in 26 days.
• I’m still struggling to manage my inventory.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:

Sell 60 TinyPilot kits and power connectors

• Result: Sold 29 kits and power connectors.
• Grade: C+

The limiting factor here was manufacturing the power connectors. I wasn’t able to produce enough to keep up with demand. I sold everything I manufactured, but I couldn’t make them quickly enough.

Highlights

• I paused TinyPilot sales to address a design problem.
• I’m manufacturing a custom USB power connector for TinyPilot.
• Revenue across all my projects was among my strongest ever, at $3.6k total.

Goal grades

At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:

Sell 30 TinyPilot kits

• Result: Sold 16 TinyPilot kits
• Grade: C

I was on track to beat my goal, but then a wrench got caught in the gears, and I had to pause sales.

This book was thoroughly underwhelming. Dozens of people have recommended it to me in the past couple of years, and I don’t understand the hype. It has some insightful ideas, but they’re buried under questionable advice and poor writing.