From the start, I knew I wanted to work on our own products. Client work can be great, but ultimately there's nothing more satisfying than building something for yourself, especially when you're solving your own problem. In our case, we were looking for as solution to track all the estimates we were sending. We built a simple internal system to track estimates and invoices, and it ended up turning into Ballpark.
I did it for less than $30,000. I designed the whole product and did most of the front-end development, and I hired a student developer (still with the company) part-time to build the rails app.
I started building it in 2008, so just one year into starting the company. It was difficult because I was already insanely busy, but I just worked on it slowly for a couple hours every night. Gary Vaynerchuk puts it best: Want to do something great? Stop watching LOST.
From the start, I knew I wanted to work on our own products. Client work can be great, but ultimately there's nothing more satisfying than building something for yourself, especially when you're solving your own problem. In our case, we were looking for as solution to track all the estimates we were sending. We built a simple internal system to track estimates and invoices, and it ended up turning into Ballpark.
I did it for less than $30,000. I designed the whole product and did most of the front-end development, and I hired a student developer (still with the company) part-time to build the rails app.
I started building it in 2008, so just one year into starting the company. It was difficult because I was already insanely busy, but I just worked on it slowly for a couple hours every night. Gary Vaynerchuk puts it best: Want to do something great? Stop watching LOST.