Highlights

• TinyPilot had its best sales month ever, with $69k of total revenue.
• I’m now five months and $32k over budget on a website redesign.
• I launched PicoShare, and it’s the fastest-growing project I’ve ever published.

Goal grades

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

Publish TinyPilot Pro 2.4.0

• Result: Released TinyPilot 2.4.0 on schedule
• Grade: A

The latest release adds support for multiple users, which customers had requested for a while. We also eliminated an annoying bug that generated frequent support requests.

Highlights

• I hired TinyPilot’s first support engineer.
• I learned that hiring a support engineer is even harder than I expected.
• I’m evaluating platforms for paying international contractors.

Goal grades

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

Launch Voyager 2: PoE Edition

• Result: I finally launched Voyager 2 PoE
• Grade: A

Oh, boy. This took way longer than I expected. I looked back at the original design document that I wrote in early April 2021. I estimated that we’d have 200 units ready by May 15, 2021. In other words, I estimated six weeks, and it took 11 months.

Highlights

• I published my fourth annual retrospective about being a bootstrapped founder.
• TinyPilot sales continue running strong despite a delay in launching our next product.
• I analyze how I’m spending my time and figure out ways to allocate my hours better.

Goal grades

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

Launch Voyager 2: PoE Edition

• Result: Delayed the launch a few weeks due to a manufacturing issue
• Grade: D

I had to delay the launch because we discovered that the first manufactured batch of PoE hardware is behaving differently than our prototypes. We should be able to fix the boards, but it’s going to take a few weeks.

Four years ago, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own self-funded software company.

For the first few years, all of my businesses flopped. They all operated at a loss, and none of them earned more than a few hundred dollars per month in revenue.

Halfway through my third year, I created a network administration device called TinyPilot. It quickly caught on, and it’s been my main focus ever since. TinyPilot generated $460k in 2021, its first full year in operation.

Highlights

• I’ve launched a new TinyPilot product and debuted a new logo.
• TinyPilot’s revenue finished the year strong at $55k for December.
• I’ve learned to manage design projects more aggressively.

Goal grades

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

Launch the Voyager 2

• Result: Launched the Voyager 2
• Grade: A

After many months of hard work, I finally launched the Voyager 2 last month.