In an oddly-worded and overly-obvious twist of a personal-info-styled update: I’m going indie full-time.
Last Wednesday was my last day with RxEOB.com. The team I worked with in Richmond was absolutely fantastic, some of the best people I’ve ever written on whiteboards with, they continually made me feel like the dumbest guy in the room.
RxEOB does some amazing stuff in trying to fix what’s broken with our healthcare system in this country and I know they are going to continue to do well. The products we built together were some of the best I’ve ever made and sometimes I have trouble rectifying the fact that I had a hand in them at all.
While I was there I kept finding myself thinking of the projects I was working on as my-own. I was allowed to feel a sense of ownership over the work I was doing and it was inspiring.
Over the last few years since leaving Coalmarch I’ve been involved in a couple of different adventures. Chief among those is Mutiny, LLC a company that myself and a few others started-up to make independently produced games and software.
At last check Harvest tells me that I’ve spent just over a full year in after-hours time (and weekends) working on Mutiny related projects since we started. This is staggering. Thinking about the work I’ve done for Mutiny, and the potential for doing even more meaningful work, is the primary reason I’ve decided to go indie full-time.
Ultimately I’m excited to do this because it boils down to my core belief that:
- Making software is freaking awesome.
- Making software in a team sucks-less.
We recently got a message on our Facebook page thanking us for writing Gridus. The person was coming at using the app from a direction that I don’t think anyone would have ever predicted and that tiny bit of gratitude was like rocket fuel.
I’ve reached a point where it’s possible for me to make a move. I think I owe it to myself to give it a shot. I know that if I can put as much effort, energy and time into this as I have both the day job and my after-hours work over the last two and a half years, there’s no other option but success.
One of the things I often say is that I like to look at making decisions from the perspective of the story you’d tell about the event five years later. When I think of this decision, all that it brings with it, this is the only logical choice.
To quote one of the bigger career inspirations of mine:
@brentsimmons: I am ridiculously, staggeringly, over-the-moon excited.
Look for more amazing stuff very soon!
ps. Because I found his article so moving I’ve copied the format he used for his announcement. I’m hoping he doesn’t mind too terribly much.