Reading List
The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.
TinyPilot: Month 29
New here?
Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people.
Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall.
Highlights
- TinyPilot generated $112k of monthly revenue, breaking the six-figure mark for the first time ever.
- I grossly overestimated how much spare capacity TinyPilot’s fulfillment team had.
- Long-term tasks can be a canary for impending resource exhaustion.
Goal grades
At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:
TinyPilot: Month 28
New here?
Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people.
Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall.
Highlights
- TinyPilot had a new record month in sales, reaching $92k in revenue for October.
- I think I’ve found a third-party logistics vendor that’s a good match for TinyPilot.
- I’m scrambling to produce more cases before they become a sales bottleneck.
Goal grades
At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:
On Migrating from Cypress to Playwright
Cypress is an open-source tool for testing web applications end-to-end. I first saw Gleb Bahmutov demo Cypress at a 2018 web dev meetup in New York, and I was blown away.
I’ve been using Cypress since I saw it demoed at a dev meetup in 2018.
Before discovering Cypress, I had begrudgingly used Selenium. Cypress was a refreshing leap forward, as it offered elegant solutions to tons of pain points that made Selenium impractical to use.
TinyPilot: Month 27
New here?
Hi, I’m Michael. I’m a software developer and the founder of TinyPilot, an independent computer hardware company. I started the company in 2020, and it now earns $60-80k/month in revenue and employs six other people.
Every month, I publish a retrospective like this one to share how things are going with my business and in my professional life overall.
Highlights
- I’m doing a thought exercise about whether TinyPilot could function without a physical office.
- Thinking about outsourcing forces me to recognize inefficiencies in our current workflows.
- The Playwright end-to-end testing tool has won me over.
Goal grades
At the start of each month, I declare what I’d like to accomplish. Here’s how I did against those goals:
Should I Invest in iBonds?
In a recent Hacker News thread about preparing financially for a possible recession, a commenter suggested investing in iBonds.
iBonds are one of those investments I’ve seen in passing every time I read a personal finance book, but I’ve never paid much attention to them.
When I saw that iBonds are currently paying 9.62% interest, I decided to give them a closer look.
What are iBonds?
iBonds are the colloquial name for Series I Treasury savings bonds. They’re a savings bond whose rate of return is based on the current rate of inflation.