The idea of social capital has interested me for a long time, but when I finally sat down to read this book, it was painfully dry. It offers an eye-opening investigation into the many ways that civic engagement has declined in the US, but it was a real slog to get through.

Highlights

• TinyPilot hit $10k in revenue. That’s a record high for me and exceeds my total revenue for all of 2019.
• I interviewed several IT consultants and business owners about what TinyPilot features would be useful to them.
• I tested several new marketing channels and realized I’m failing to measure results accurately.

Goal grades

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

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.

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

• 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.