Jekyll2023-01-25T22:16:36+00:00/feed.xmlMatt Bearman’s BlogRamblings about anything that interests me - mainly Music, Cars and Programming.🥭2023-01-25T00:00:00+00:002023-01-25T00:00:00+00:00/mango<p>I’m writing this on my phone as there is a cat on my lap. Her name is Mango, she’s 7 years old, and she spends most of her time on my lap these days.</p>
<p>Mango is dying, and I think she knows. She has renal lymphoma (cancer of the kidneys), and likely has 2 - 3 months left. Chemotherapy was an option, but not a very good one. The specialist said it might extend her life by a few months. We decided it wasn’t worth the additional stress it would put on Mango. So she’s taking steroids that will give her the best quality of life.</p>
<p>I’m not sure why I’m writing this, or if I’ll ever publish it. Partly I just want to gather my thoughts, and partly I want the world to know about Mango, and what a perfect companion she’s been.</p>
<p>She’ll be survived by her brother, Monkey. An equally awesome cat, I really fear for how he’ll deal with losing his sister.</p>
<p>We adopted them as 8 week old kittens, long before we had any human children. To this day my wife and I think of the cats as our children - siblings to our human kids.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/mango/kittens.JPG" alt="Mango and Monkey when we first adopted them" />
<em>Mango and Monkey when we first adopted them</em></p>
<p>Mango, like her brother, is incredibly affectionate. As many cats are, contrary to the stereotype. I adore them both, but have always had more of a connection with Mango, just as my wife has more of a connection with Monkey. They seemed to choose their favourite human, settling on our respective laps the second day we had them.</p>
<p>A favourite memory of mine is when I had my first covid vaccination it left me feeling pretty rough. I spent most of the afternoon dozing on the sofa. Mango curled up next to my stomach and stayed with me for hours.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/mango/post-vax.JPG" alt="Mango keeping me company while I sleep post vaccination" />
<em>Mango keeping me company while I sleep post vaccination</em></p>
<p>She and monkey could tell when my wife was pregnant, taking it in turns to sleep on or near her stomach.</p>
<p>Mango is a beautiful fawny ginger colour, unusual for a female. She has little tufts on her ears, and leopard spots on her belly, which she will gladly let me rub for hours on end. She also loves chin tickles and head scritches, closing her eyes and lifting her head for latter as if to try and get more. She purrs hard and often, it has a sort of croaky quality to it.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/mango/head-scritch.JPG" alt="Mango enjoying head scritches" />
<em>Mango enjoying head scritches (and distracting me from work)</em></p>
<p>She has character, and loves to eat, and yells at us incessantly while we prepare her food, especially if it’s wet food.</p>
<p>She likes to climb, and I can always tell when she’s bitten off more then she can chew, and is unsure of how to descend from the lofty height she’s attained, as she does what I call the “tonguey meow”. It has a specific sound to it, but more distinctive is the way she puts her tongue between her bottom canine teeth. It’s adorable. I’ve just realised I don’t think I have a photo or video of this, and now I probably never will.</p>
<p>She frequently sleeps in our bed with us. She can take up a huge amount of space for a small animal, but it’s worth it for the relaxing sound of her purring, as well as the additional heat in winter.</p>
<p>I always thought our cats would live long lives, seven years isn’t enough. I love her company, and wish I could have seven more years of it. My youngest human child probably won’t even remember Mango existed, but she’ll definitely hear a lot about Mango when she’s old enough to understand.</p>
<p>She’s always spent a lot of time on my lap, I regularly feel her kicking and twitching as she dreams. I’ve heard pets likely dream about their humans, I hope she has sweet dreams.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/mango/last-days.jpg" alt="Mangos final days" />
<em>One of last pictures I have of her</em></p>
<hr />
<p><em>I deliberately didn’t really proof-read or edit this post. With the exception of adding pictures and this little foot note, it is exactly as I wrote it - on my phone’s notes app with Mango sleeping on my lap.</em></p>
<p><em>Mango passed on Monday 7th November, 2022. I miss her everyday. Her brother Monkey predictably had a period of mourning. He still has days when he seems a bit lost, however he’s doing much better now.</em></p>
<p><em>Adopting an animal is a strange thing - we love them like children even though we know in all likelihood we’ll out live them. Yet I wouldn’t trade the time I had with Mango for anything.</em></p>I’m writing this on my phone as there is a cat on my lap. Her name is Mango, she’s 7 years old, and she spends most of her time on my lap these days.Thoughts on working a four day week after six months2022-10-05T00:00:00+01:002022-10-05T00:00:00+01:00/four-day-week-after-six-months<p>It’s a great time to be a software engineer, demand is high, as is compensation. This presents a great opportunity for anyone who values free time over disposable income. People like me. For the last six months I’ve been working a four day work week, taking a 20% pay-cut and essentially becoming part-time.</p>
<p>The point of this post is to discuss how I came to be a part timer, and more importantly discuss the pros and the cons of doing so.</p>
<h2 id="how-it-started">How it started</h2>
<p>I’ve seen this question pop up a few times on sites like Hacker News, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32544315">how can an you work a 4 day week as an employee?</a></p>
<p>Of course it’s easy if you’re a founder or freelancer, but how do you get management buy-in when you’re an employee?</p>
<p>For me the change coincided with changing jobs around a year ago. I was very upfront with every company I interviewed with that I would like to work a four day week. To my surprise none of them seemed to have any issue with this. I ultimately joined <a href="https://krystal.uk">Krystal</a>, and while they were happy with my desire to work a four day week, they did require me to work a full five days for the first six month probationary period, which I was happy to do. And true to their word as soon as my probation was over, I dropped down to a four day week.</p>
<p>This actually fell under their flexible working policy, which only kicks in after probation, hence the delay. Had I stayed with my previous employer, I would have also been able to drop down to four days there as well, as they had a very similar flexible working policy. So if you are looking to make that change I’d recommend looking into your employers flexible working policy if there is one.</p>
<p>Failing that, the main thing to do is just ask. Software engineers are in high demand at the moment, so take advantage of that. Most managers will recognise that it’s better long term to keep you for 80% of the time, than to lose you completely to a more forward thinking company. If you do get a hard no, and the four day week is something you <em>really</em> want, then it’s time to dust off your CV, there are plenty of companies that will oblige you. Just be upfront about your requirements from the start.</p>
<p>Of course, all of this is coming from the perspective of a senior Ruby engineer in the UK. Your mileage may vary depending on skill set/seniority/location/etc.</p>
<h2 id="how-its-going">How it’s going</h2>
<p>Awesome. I’ll cover this in more detail in the <strong>pros</strong> section, but I can’t recommend it enough. There are some cons that I didn’t see coming, however the pros outweigh the cons by an order of magnitude.</p>
<p>If you are in the fortunate position of being able to live comfortably on 80% of your current salary then go for it.</p>
<h2 id="pros">Pros</h2>
<h3 id="you-gain-more-than-you-lose">You gain more than you lose</h3>
<p>Changing to a four day week cost me 20% of my salary, but in return I get an extra <em>50%</em> in time off (my two day weekend became a three day weekend). It almost feels like I’ve cheated the system somehow.</p>
<p>Another aspect to this perk is taking time off work. When I worked a five day week, if I were to take four days off work, I’d have at most 6 days off in a row. Eg: If I took Monday to Thursday off, I’d then not be working from Saturday to Thursday - six days.</p>
<p>Now if I take four days off I get ten days off in a row. <strong>Ten days!</strong> That’s a 66.6% increase, at the cost of just 20% salary. It’s a no brainer.</p>
<p>Of course a flip side is it didn’t just cost me 20% of my salary, it also cost me 20% of my holiday allowance, however I still come out on top. As a full time employee I had 31 days of paid holiday a year. Now I have 24.8 days paid holiday, except I don’t work <em>any</em> mondays. There are roughly 52 Mondays in a year, so really I now get 76.8 days holiday a year.</p>
<p>As the numbers show, you really do gain more than you lose.</p>
<h3 id="more-time-for-family-and-projects">More time for family and projects</h3>
<p>This was my primary motivation for wanting a four day week. I have two young children, an awesome wife, a house to improve, and too many hobbies and projects. Now I get an extra 52 days a year for all these things.</p>
<h3 id="bad-news-buffer">Bad news buffer</h3>
<p>Another advantage of a flexible working policy is I can change my working arrangement more than once - in my case at most once every six months.</p>
<p>This means if something unexpected and expensive happens - like maybe an corrupt cuntservative government causes runaway inflation while tanking the value of the pound with their fiscal incompetence (hypothetically, of course) - I can return to working five days a week, giving myself a 25% pay rise in the process.</p>
<p>It great to know I have this option, although I hope to never need it. In the event of a one-off unexpected large expense that clears out our savings, I could work five days a week until we’re back in a good financial position, and then drop back down to four again.</p>
<h3 id="the-weekend-comes-round-fast">The weekend comes round fast</h3>
<p>This is another case where the 20% difference punches above its weight. My work week is only one day shorter, however it seems the weekends rush up on me at lightning speed. Since changing to a four day week I’ve never found myself willing the weekend to hurry up and arrive. My wife has made a similar observation.</p>
<p>There is also a down-side to this, which I’ll cover in the next section.</p>
<h2 id="cons">Cons</h2>
<h3 id="tuesday-morning-brain-fog">Tuesday morning brain fog</h3>
<p>You know that feeling when you take some time off work, and when you return you can’t remember what the hell you were doing and it takes some time to ramp up again? I feel that at the start of every week.</p>
<p>I assume this is more of a “me” problem, and it’s likely different for other people, however I’ve learned that three days is the threshold for this brain fog to set in. Maybe I was previously fine with a two day weekend because I was used to it, however I’m six months in and the brain fog persists, so I suspect it’s not something I’ll ever get over.</p>
<p>It doesn’t take long for the fog to clear, so it’s not a great loss, but it’s not a great way to start every week. I could also solve this by taking a single extra day off mid-week, and sticking to a two day weekend, but I’ve no interest in doing that.</p>
<h3 id="awkward-conversations">Awkward conversations</h3>
<p>This was something I never thought about - I find it a little awkward telling my co-workers I no longer work Mondays. I worry if they’ll think I’m lazy and/or overpaid. Admittedly that’s some projecting on my part - I <em>am</em> both lazy and overpaid. It’s not just me though, I’m 100% convinced all software engineers salaries are obscene (that’s a subject for another post). Of course I’m not going to turn down an obscene salary when it’s offered to me, especially for doing something I enjoy and have no moral issues with.</p>
<p>It’s particularly awkward when a meeting or something is proposed for a Monday and I have to interject and remind everyone that I won’t be available. On the plus side this happens less frequently now most of my co-workers know and remember that I’m only in Tuesday to Friday.</p>
<h3 id="the-weekend-comes-round-fast-1">The weekend comes round fast</h3>
<p>Occasionally when I’m getting stuck into a nice juicy project, I’ll suddenly find it’s Friday afternoon but I’m still in the zone and not ready for a three day break. Of course that used to happen when I worked five days as well, but now not only is it more frequent, but I have to wait even longer before I can get stuck in again.</p>
<h2 id="the-future">The future</h2>
<p>As I’m sure you’ve guessed I have no intention of going back to a five day week unless I absolutely have to. If finances allowed it I’d take it a step further and drop down to three days. No matter how much I like my job and the people with whom I work, I can’t imagine ever working more than I need to. There’s just too many other things I want to do during my brief stint on this earth. I’ve always felt this way, however becoming a father has definitely intensified this feeling - I’ve got two awesome children now, I want to minimise my chances of missing time with them because I have to work.</p>
<p>I’m acutely aware of how privileged I am to be in this position, and I constantly remind myself that however unlikely, the computing industry could implode and my run of luck could end. So I’m damn sure going to make the most of this while I can. For some that may mean working long hours to save lots of money for the future, and there’s nothing wrong with that - I can certainly see the appeal of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement">FIRE</a>.</p>
<p>For me it’s all about time - I’d rather have the time now while I’m young(ish), able bodied, and have small children to watch grow up. If this whole industry goes to shit in ten years time and I have have to start working six days a week doing what ever work I can get to keep a roof over our heads, I’ll have no regrets.</p>
<p><em>– Matt</em></p>It’s a great time to be a software engineer, demand is high, as is compensation. This presents a great opportunity for anyone who values free time over disposable income. People like me. For the last six months I’ve been working a four day work week, taking a 20% pay-cut and essentially becoming part-time.Selling my startup - one year on2021-06-24T00:00:00+01:002021-06-24T00:00:00+01:00/selling-my-startup-one-year-on<p>It’s been a little over a year since I sold Saber, my SaaS website feedback tool. I was Saber’s founder, creator, and only employee. It was hard to let my baby go. But was it the right decision?</p>
<p>Yes, yes it was.</p>
<p>Before selling I definitely had some fears and concerns:</p>
<h3 id="what-will-they-do-to-my-baby">What will they do to my baby?</h3>
<p>This was my biggest concern about selling in general. Luckily this fear was mostly put to rest before I’d even signed anything. From speaking to Steve (Saber’s new owner) before agreeing to sell I was happy with his plans and confident he would stick to them.</p>
<p>I’m happy to report my confidence was well deserved. Here we are 14 months later and externally Saber has barely changed at all. Steve and his team have given the home page a much needed refresh and fixed some issues behind the scenes, however most of his effort has been rightfully focused in marketing.</p>
<p>I’ve heard many stories of small SaaS tools like Saber being bought, bled dry, and then shut down. I wouldn’t have sold to anyone who I thought might do that and I’m happy to report my initial impression of Steve was spot on. I don’t think I could have found anyone better to buy Saber.</p>
<h3 id="will-i-miss-the-freedom">Will I miss the freedom?</h3>
<p>This one is little more tricky - I do miss the freedom over my time. However I’d already been working full time for FreeAgent for a few months before I sold Saber, so that ship had already sailed. From the ages of 22 to 34 I was almost entirely working for myself, setting my own hours with total freedom. Having lived that way for so long it’s a challenge to stick to someone else’s arbitrary schedule.</p>
<p>I’ve recently moved on from FreeAgent, I now work full time for <a href="https://krystal.uk">Krystal</a>. FreeAgent was a great place to work and <a href="https://www.freeagent.com/careers">I’d recommend it to anyone</a>, however Krystal is more suited to me. I’ll be working four days a week at Krystal, which will give me some more free time.</p>
<p>There’s another aspect to freedom - financial freedom - and that’s been awesome. The combination of selling Saber and working for a company with a good salary has given my family a level of financial freedom we’d never previously known. We’ve been able to very quickly save a deposit to buy our first house and live comfortably on my salary alone.</p>
<p>There’s a balance to be struck and I’ve been feeling that side project itch lately, but for now being a full time engineer is what’s right for me. I’ve no doubt that at some point in the future I’ll be taking all the lessons I learned from Saber and applying them to a new project.</p>
<h3 id="will-i-miss-working-on-saber">Will I miss working on Saber?</h3>
<p>This wasn’t so much of a fear for me. Having spent 8 years working on Saber I was pretty bored of that one code base. I built it all from scratch and knew it inside out. Working for FreeAgent and then Krystal meant throwing myself into their unfamiliar codebases. I’ve learned so much more than I would have working on Saber.</p>
<p>After the sale I continued working on Saber as a freelancer for a few hours a month. That’s come to an end now and I can honestly say I don’t miss it.</p>
<p>I do miss some of the non-coding aspects. At FreeAgent I was a back-end engineer only. At first I thought that was great, but over time I found I missed being a full-stack guy and learning many disciplines. It’s one of the reasons I decided to change jobs. With Krystal I’m still primarily a Rails engineer, but it’s much more of a full-stack role.</p>
<h3 id="in-summary">In summary</h3>
<p>Overall selling Saber has been a positive experience and something I’m very glad I did. It was never my plan to build a business up to sell, but I have no regrets.</p>
<p>This will be my last post on the subject of Saber. I know the majority of my readers originally found this blog through the <a href="/saber-journey/">side project to profitable startup</a> series, but it’s time to move on. I don’t want to be that guy who constantly writes about the business he <em>used</em> to run. There’s new stuff on the horizon and I hope you’ll enjoy following along with my future projects as much as my time running Saber.</p>
<p><em>– Matt</em></p>It’s been a little over a year since I sold Saber, my SaaS website feedback tool. I was Saber’s founder, creator, and only employee. It was hard to let my baby go. But was it the right decision?How WhatsApp convinces you to give it your contacts2021-01-08T00:00:00+00:002021-01-08T00:00:00+00:00/how-whatsapp-gets-contacts<p>The Internet is currently ablaze with the news that WhatsApp will soon be requiring more user data to be shared with Facebook. This reminded me of another nefarious thing WhatsApp does that I haven’t seen anyone else talking about:</p>
<h4 id="whatsapp-uses-dark-patterns-to-coerce-you-into-giving-it-access-to-your-contacts"><em>WhatsApp uses dark patterns to coerce you into giving it access to your contacts</em></h4>
<p>While WhatsApp will work without access to your contacts, the user experience is deliberately degraded. Without access to your contacts, WhatsApp prominently displays each participant’s phone number above their message, with their display name shown next to it, almost as an afterthought:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/whatsapp-contacts/message.png" alt="WhatsApp Message" /></p>
<p>The name is very low contrast compared to the background, where as the phone number is listed first, in larger text, and a high contrast colour. Your eye is immediately drawn to the phone number, making it hard to see at a glance who’s talking. The display name will also be truncated if it’s too long for the available space.</p>
<p>Even worse is the list of chats, which <em>only</em> displays the phone number for non-group chats, no names in sight:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/whatsapp-contacts/chats.png" alt="WhatsApp Chats" /></p>
<p>You do at least get the user’s profile picture here, but not everyone adds a profile picture, and even if they do, they may choose one that is not easily recognisable.</p>
<p>There’s no good reason for WhatsApp to treat privacy conscious users this way. The name field is <strong>required</strong> when setting up a WhatsApp account, so every user has a name that could be displayed here instead of just the phone number.</p>
<p>While writing this, I decided to install Signal, to see how it handles labeling chats without phonebook access. I wasn’t surprised to learn Signal choses the user friendly and logical option - displaying the participant’s name, with the phone number below it in smaller text:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/whatsapp-contacts/signal.png" alt="Signal Chats" /></p>
<p>Signal also helps distinguish between chats with users who haven’t added a profile image, by generating a uniquely coloured circle containing their initial. This isn’t unique to Signal, or even a new idea, it’s a tried and tested pattern. Compared with WhatsApp’s “generic bust”, it presents further evidence that WhatsApp is made deliberately hard to use if you don’t give it access to your contacts:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/blog/whatsapp-contacts/signal-vs-whatsapp.png" alt="Signal vs WhatsApp default profile pictures" /></p>
<p>When I first installed WhatsApp I didn’t give it access to my contacts, as I tend to err on the side of minimal permissions, and I couldn’t see why it would <em>need</em> access. However, it didn’t take long for me to become frustrated with this user experience. I was constantly struggling to find conversations, or identify who was talking in group chats.</p>
<p>I asked a friend with more WhatsApp experience if there was a way to make it show names instead of phone numbers. Their response was <strong><em>“Oh, that’s easy. You just need to give it access to your contacts.”</em></strong> This wasn’t the solution I was hoping for, and I resisted for as long as possible. Yet eventually the dark pattern wore me down, and I granted WhatsApp access to my contacts.</p>
<p>I joined WhatsApp in late 2014, at which point they’d already been acquired by Facebook. I find myself wondering if this was a preexisting pattern, or something that happened after the acquisition, possibly at the behest of Facebook.</p>
<p>Using display names as the primary identifier would be a vastly improved experience for those who chose not to give WhatsApp access to their contacts. Instead WhatsApp provides this unnecessarily worse experience, in an attempt to gain access to user’s contacts. And it works.</p>
<p>I’d love to be able to say that I’ll be replacing WhatsApp with an alternative like Signal, but WhatsApp’s network effect is a strong one, and it’s currently how I keep in touch with my family.</p>
<p><em>– Matt</em></p>The Internet is currently ablaze with the news that WhatsApp will soon be requiring more user data to be shared with Facebook. This reminded me of another nefarious thing WhatsApp does that I haven’t seen anyone else talking about:Full-time web developer vs being a full-time dad2020-10-31T00:00:00+00:002020-10-31T00:00:00+00:00/web-developer-vs-full-time-dad<p>For the last 13 years, I’ve been some form of professional web developer, and for the last 21 months, I’ve been a dad. We’re lucky enough that my salary means Sophie (my wife) is able to be a stay at home mum. We both love this arrangement, as we don’t need to sort out child care, and as I work remotely from home, our daughter gets to spend a lot of time with us.</p>
<p><em><strong>Note:</strong> We decided before she was born that we didn’t want our daughter to have an online presence until she was old enough to decide for herself. This is why I won’t be referring to her by name. My apologies if that makes this a little awkward to read.</em></p>
<p>In August this year, Sophie had to be rushed into hospital for life-saving surgery, which thankfully was successful. She did however have a long recovery period, so for two weeks after the surgery, I didn’t work.</p>
<p>I spent that two weeks being a full time dad, carer, and house husband.</p>
<p>Under normal circumstances, I work 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to Friday, while Sophie looks after our daughter and the house. Outside of those hours we share the housework and childcare. One downside to this is that Sophie gets to spend a lot more time one-to-one with our daughter than I do.</p>
<p>However, during those first two weeks of Sophie’s recovery, I did all the childcare, and all the house work. My days started at 7:00am, and usually didn’t finish until 8:00pm, when we’d had dinner and I’d done the washing up. I’d get a couple of hours off in the afternoon when our daughter was napping, although that was often spent doing house work. And this was seven days a week.</p>
<p>It was the longest days I’d ever worked, and by far the hardest job I’ve ever had. But it was also the most rewarding.</p>
<p>This new routine also highlighted the effect my usual sedentary lifestyle was having on my health and fitness, as at the end of the first few days of being a full time dad, I’d lay down in bed with aching legs. I’d not done anything specifically strenuous on those days. Simply running round with a very active toddler all day was far more exertion than my puny legs were used to. It’s prompted me to get back into running, as well as look into setting up a sit/stand desk (I did have a standing desk for a while, but ultimately abandoned it. That’s s story for another post).</p>
<p>I loved getting to spend so much time one on one with our daughter, and we definitely connected more. She’s such a joy to be around, at an age where she’s putting a lot of small, adorable, and often hilarious sentences together. This also means she is able to express how she feels, and even engage in something resembling a conversation.</p>
<p>I also had a lot of learning to do, things like what washing machine setting to use when washing bedding, and how to time preparing our daughter’s meals. One of the most important lessons for me was learning more of her abilities, and just how much she is able to do now. As a result, I feel more at ease when she is experimenting and exploring. I’ve always been the more cautious parent, which I think is in part because I don’t spend as much time with our daughter, so I’m less aware of her capabilities.</p>
<p>We also learned new ways of making each other laugh, which often ends up in a positive feedback loop turning from giggles into uncontrollable laughing fits.</p>
<p>I enjoy programming, and I love my job, but at the end of those two weeks, when Sophie was feeling well enough to return to a more normal routine, I honestly didn’t want to go back to work.</p>
<p>I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do the job I do. It’s physically easy (although often mentally exhausting), the pay is great, and I can do it from the comfort of my own home.</p>
<p>That being said, if money wasn’t a factor, I’d chose being a full time dad every time. It’s the best job I ever had.</p>
<p><em>– Matt</em></p>For the last 13 years, I’ve been some form of professional web developer, and for the last 21 months, I’ve been a dad. We’re lucky enough that my salary means Sophie (my wife) is able to be a stay at home mum. We both love this arrangement, as we don’t need to sort out child care, and as I work remotely from home, our daughter gets to spend a lot of time with us.Why I sold my startup for £100,0002020-04-12T00:00:00+01:002020-04-12T00:00:00+01:00/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-52<p>I launched <a href="https://www.saberfeedback.com">Saber</a>, my website feedback tool, as a side project in 2011 - back then it was called BugMuncher. Four years later I decided to stop working as a freelance web developer, and put all of my time, and savings, into trying to grow Saber to the point it could pay all my living expenses, and turn a profit.</p>
<p>I documented my progress with <a href="https://www.saberfeedback.com/blog/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-1">complete transparency on Saber’s blog</a>, and after a little over a year of working full time on Saber, I achieved my goal. Saber was profitable.</p>
<p><strong>This is the final entry in my transparent blog series, as from 1st April 2020, Saber is no longer mine. I have officially sold it.</strong></p>
<p>To anyone who’s been following my progress taking Saber from a side project to a profitable startup, my decision to sell Saber may come as a bit of a surprise. After all, a lot of my previous writing has been singing the virtues of being a bootstrapped, solo founder.</p>
<p>For the last couple of years Saber had been stagnating. I’d reached an equilibrium between growth and churn, and had never quite been able to break thought the $5k MRR barrier. This was a little disheartening, as nothing I tried seemed to make any difference, but I was happy to keep trying, as the revenue Saber brought in was enough for me to live fairly comfortably.</p>
<p>That all changed when I became a father at the end of 2018. Suddenly the goalposts had been moved, and the revenue Saber was bringing in wasn’t really enough. We were scraping by, but only just, and were no longer able to put any money aside for savings. Sophie (my wife) and I really wanted to buy our first house, but that was never going to happen if we were unable to save up for a deposit.</p>
<p>The money wasn’t the only problem. The truth is I was bored. I’d been working on Saber for eight years, four of those as my full-time job. I was craving a new challenge. I think this was exacerbated by the fact website feedback was never a passion of mine. I created Saber because it was something other people said they wanted, not because <em>I</em> wanted it. I broke the first rule of starting a business - I wasn’t my own customer. I wasn’t dogfooding.</p>
<p>That’s why In July 2019 I started looking for something else, and very quickly found a perfect looking opening for a senior engineer at FreeAgent. It was a remote job, a new challenge, and a salary of nearly double what Saber was able to pay me. So when I was offered the job, it was a very easy decision - Saber got downgraded to side-project again, and for the first time 8 years, I was working a normal day job.</p>
<p>I’m happy to report it’s a decision I don’t regret. I love the work, the people are awesome, and the salary has allowed us to live comfortably, <em>and</em> save towards buying our first home.</p>
<p>There was only one problem. I was still having to find time to work on Saber. Except with a full time job, a family, and other hobbies, I found myself giving Saber less and less of my time. I’d put Saber in “maintenance mode”, ie: no marketing or new features, just bug fixes and support. Even so, I started to resent Saber, and the time I had to spend working on it. What was once my pride and joy started to feel like burden, a chore. I decided it was time to let it go.</p>
<p>The first thing I did was reach out to the guys at <a href="https://www.usersnap.com">Usersnap</a>, as although they were technically a <em>competitor</em>, I’d been in contact with them throughout my journey. They even sent their congratulations when I achieved profitability, and are just all round great guys. Unfortunately Usersnap weren’t looking to make any acquisitions at the time, and recommended I try <a href="https://feinternational.com">FE International</a>, a service that brokers the selling of online businesses.</p>
<p>While I was looking into FE International in December 2019, I received an unexpected email from a long time follower of my progress with Saber named Steve. In the email, Steve asked if I’d be interested in selling Saber to him. The timing couldn’t have been better, and of course I told him would be delighted to sell as long as the price was right. I instantly liked Steve, and his plans for Saber. He is also a solo founder of a bootstrapped startup, and he wanted to keep running Saber as it is, with the goal of growing it.</p>
<p>Before any money was mentioned, I already had a number in my head. That number was £100,000 - roughly 3 x Saber’s annual revenue. I arrived at this number because 3-5 x ARR is usually quoted as the standard guide price for a SaaS business, and as Saber had been stagnating for a while, I felt the low end of that scale was more realistic. £100,000 would also allow us to put a deposit down on a house, and have good portion left over for future projects.</p>
<p>Knowing that, I could scarcely believe it when Steve’s opening offer was in fact 3 x Saber’s annual gross profit. As Saber has super low overheads, that worked out to be $134,151, or roughly £103,000 at the time. Not only had the offer to buy Saber come at exactly the right time, but the offer was also for exactly the right price. It was almost enough to make me believe in fate…almost. I loved that Steve made such a reasonable offer, and didn’t try to low-ball me. Perhaps I could have got a little more with some negotiating, but the offer was very fair, and even slightly exceeded what I was looking for, so I was more than happy to accept it.</p>
<p>Over the next three months there was due diligence, contracts, and asset transfers, which takes us to today. Saber is no longer mine, and I couldn’t be happier. Although my life isn’t totally Saber-free quite yet, I’ll be working with Steve over the next 6 months to help with the transition, and of course I’ll be interested to keep up with Steve’s progress in the future. Full disclosure - the deal actually worked out to be worth around £110,000 in the end, as the pound had weakened against the dollar over that three months. A nice little bonus, but as I was willing to accept £100,000, that’s how much I feel I sold Saber for, even though an extra £10,000 ended up in my business bank account.</p>
<p>So what now? The plan for the money is:</p>
<ul>
<li>20% will be saved to pay my next corporation tax bill (it’s gonna be a doozy)</li>
<li>40% will be taken out in dividends to use as a deposit on a house.</li>
<li>40% will be kept to fund future projects.</li>
</ul>
<p>I’ve already got my next project lined up, and those of you who were readers of the Saber blog may be surprised to know it doesn’t involve programming, and isn’t any kind of tech startup. Keep an eye on this blog if you’re interested to see what that is, and how it goes.</p>
<p>- Matt</p>I launched Saber, my website feedback tool, as a side project in 2011 - back then it was called BugMuncher. Four years later I decided to stop working as a freelance web developer, and put all of my time, and savings, into trying to grow Saber to the point it could pay all my living expenses, and turn a profit.August 2019 Income Report2019-09-05T00:00:00+01:002019-09-05T00:00:00+01:00/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-51<p>August was my first full month with Saber in “maintenance mode”, and it went pretty well. I had my first week working for FreeAgent on the 5th August, which I spent working in their offices in Edinburgh. Conveniently there was very little that I needed to do to Saber during that week. However, my first week working from home seemed to be more of a test, as bugs and support requests came in thick and fast. I think I spent at least half an hour every morning working on Saber that week. At least since then it’s all settled down quite nicely.</p>
<p>In terms of the figures, August was a bit of a shit one. I don’t know if there was an increase in cancellations due to the news that I’d no longer be working on Saber full time, or if it was just a coincidence, but there was a lot of churn.</p>
<h2 id="the-figures">The Figures</h2>
<table class="table table-striped audodiff">
<thead>
<tr>
<th> </th>
<th>August 2019</th>
<th>July 2019</th>
<th>Change</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Monthly Recurring Revenue</th>
<td>$4,030</td>
<td>$4,136</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Paying customers</th>
<td>50</td>
<td>54</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Personal Plan</th>
<td>12</td>
<td>16</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Startup Plan</th>
<td>27</td>
<td>27</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Corporate Plan</th>
<td>11</td>
<td>11</td>
</tr>
<tr data-uniques="">
<th>Unique users on landing page</th>
<td>589</td>
<td>753</td>
</tr>
<tr data-signups="">
<th>New Free Trial sign ups</th>
<td>11</td>
<td>19</td>
</tr>
<tr data-signup-rate="">
<th>Free Trial sign up rate</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr data-new-paying="">
<th>New Paying customers</th>
<td>1</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr data-less-is-more="true">
<th>Lost Paying Customers</th>
<td>5</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr data-conversion="">
<th>Free Trial to Paying conversion</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr data-end-to-end-conversion="">
<th>End to End conversion</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Support Tickets Closed</th>
<td>8</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Bugs fixed</th>
<td>1</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Once more I’ve made some changes to the table. First, as I’m no longer taking a salary from Saber, I’ve removed the profit row. I’ve also added two new rows, to help me track how much work is involved when Saber is in maintenance mode. I’ll also be tracking actual time spent starting in September.</p>
<p>As I mentioned before, I had an influx of support emails around the middle of the month, and one fairly difficult bug to fix, but other than that, it was a fairly easy month.</p>
<p>Thankfully most of the churn was from the bottom plan, so revenue loss wasn’t <em>so</em> bad, and I’ve still managed to stay above $4k MRR. <s>Free trial signups were surprisingly bad, especially considering page views were up.</s> I forgot to exclude the blog-only traffic, so actually traffic was bad, and signups were just ok.</p>
<h2 id="revenue--growth">Revenue & Growth</h2>
<canvas id="revenue-graph" width="750" height="400"></canvas>
<h2 id="life-at-freeagent">Life at FreeAgent</h2>
<p>Of course, I’m still very much in the “honeymoon period”, but my first 4 weeks working full time for FreeAgent have been <strong>amazing</strong>. I’ve been able to get really stuck into their frankly gargantuan code base, and already been able to deploy a bunch of fixes and updates. I’ve also been able to learn a load of new things, particularly regarding CD/CI and more advanced git stuff, ie: the kinds of things I didn’t <em>need</em> to know when working as a solo developer.</p>
<p>I’ve also loved being able to be <em>just</em> a developer. In the last four weeks I’ve had to do zero marketing, design, server administration, copywriting, or any of the other bullshit I have to do for Saber. What I <em>have</em> done is write code, read code, review code and learn about code. More importantly, even as a remote employee, I’ve always got people to talk to, to learn from, to ask for advice, and to offer my help.</p>
<p>Basically, it’s exactly the job I didn’t realise I was looking for, and I love it.</p>
<p>- <em>Matt</em></p>
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<script src="/assets/js/journey.js"></script>August was my first full month with Saber in “maintenance mode”, and it went pretty well. I had my first week working for FreeAgent on the 5th August, which I spent working in their offices in Edinburgh. Conveniently there was very little that I needed to do to Saber during that week. However, my first week working from home seemed to be more of a test, as bugs and support requests came in thick and fast. I think I spent at least half an hour every morning working on Saber that week. At least since then it’s all settled down quite nicely.July 2019 Income Report2019-08-02T00:00:00+01:002019-08-02T00:00:00+01:00/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-50<p>Back to normality after <a href="/blog/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-49">yesterday’s big announcement</a>, here’s July 2019’s income report:</p>
<h2 id="the-figures">The Figures</h2>
<table class="table table-striped audodiff">
<thead>
<tr>
<th> </th>
<th>July 2019</th>
<th>June 2019</th>
<th>Change</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Monthly Recurring Revenue</th>
<td>$4,136</td>
<td>$4,165</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Paying customers</th>
<td>54</td>
<td>55</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Personal Plan</th>
<td>16</td>
<td>17</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Startup Plan</th>
<td>27</td>
<td>27</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Corporate Plan</th>
<td>11</td>
<td>11</td>
</tr>
<tr data-uniques="">
<th>Unique users on landing page</th>
<td>753</td>
<td>595</td>
</tr>
<tr data-signups="">
<th>New Free Trial sign ups</th>
<td>19</td>
<td>16</td>
</tr>
<tr data-signup-rate="">
<th>Free Trial sign up rate</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr data-new-paying="">
<th>New Paying customers</th>
<td>0</td>
<td>3</td>
</tr>
<tr data-less-is-more="true">
<th>Lost Paying Customers</th>
<td>1</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr data-conversion="">
<th>Free Trial to Paying conversion</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr data-end-to-end-conversion="">
<th>End to End conversion</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Profit</th>
<td>£1,091.49</td>
<td>£-115.26</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Well, that was a pretty dismal month, but then, I had been preoccupied with getting a job. I was surprised to see a slight surge in impressions, but zero conversions is pretty disappointing. On the plus side it was a great month for profit, which is simply because I had a customer change from monthly to annual payments.</p>
<h2 id="revenue--profit">Revenue & Profit</h2>
<canvas id="revenue-graph" width="750" height="400"></canvas>
<canvas id="month-revenue-graph" width="750" height="400"></canvas>
<h2 id="goals">Goals</h2>
<p>Well, I didn’t stick to last months goals at all. I did start working on re-doing the documentation, but didn’t get a chance to finish it. I’ve also abandoned all marketing now, so I didn’t make any changes to the PPC campaign.</p>
<p>I also don’t really have any goals for this month now, other than finish the documentation. Everything’s a bit unknown at the moment, I’d still like to move these posts on to a personal blog, so maybe I’ll try to get that set up.</p>
<p>Thanks for reading.</p>
<p>- <em>Matt</em></p>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/Chart.js/2.2.2/Chart.min.js"></script>
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<script src="/assets/js/journey.js"></script>Back to normality after yesterday’s big announcement, here’s July 2019’s income report:From Side Project to Profitable Startup and back to Side Project again2019-07-30T00:00:00+01:002019-07-30T00:00:00+01:00/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-49<p>Ladies, gentlemen and Smizmars - I’ve been living a lie. From the 5th of August I’ll no longer be a bootstrapped solo founder. I’ll be a 9-5 working stiff. A salaryman.</p>
<p>Normally I practice total honesty and transparency on this blog, but in this case I decided I wouldn’t mention anything about applying for a job unless I got said job.</p>
<p>Which I did!</p>
<p>I’m sure you have a few questions, and I’ll try to preempt them here:</p>
<h2 id="why">Why?</h2>
<p>Good question. I’ve spent literally years singing the praises of being a bootstrapped solo founder on this very blog. So what happened?</p>
<p>There were three main factors involved in this decision:</p>
<h3 id="1---looking-for-a-new-challenge">1 - Looking for a new challenge</h3>
<p>I’ve been working on BugMuncher/Saber for nearly 8 years now, I know the entire codebase inside out. So of course the idea of working on something new is appealing. It’s why I’ve tried (and failed) to launch a few other side-projects over the last few years.</p>
<h3 id="2---more-ruby-less-javascript">2 - More Ruby, less JavaScript</h3>
<p>I love programming, I love programming in Ruby (and Rails) even more. I’m not a big fan of programming in JavaScript, and I hate programming in EmberJS.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for me, a large part of Saber is JavaScript, and the entire control panel is EmberJS. You may wonder why I decided to write Saber’s control panel in EmberJS when I don’t like it, which is the subject of <a href="/blog/do-you-really-need-a-javascript-framework">a separate blog post</a> but the short version is I didn’t hate EmberJS initially, I’ve grown to hate it over time.</p>
<h3 id="3---more-money-and-stability">3 - More money and stability</h3>
<p>This is the big one, as 1 and 2 have been factors in my life for a long time, but those alone weren’t enough to make me seek employment.</p>
<p>Saber is still earning enough to afford me a comfortable life, and for that I’m incredibly grateful. However, since having a baby, life has predictably become more expensive.</p>
<p>In terms of stability, as things currently stand, if Saber lost 2 of the top plan customers, I’d be up shit creek with out a paddle. Previously that wouldn’t have bothered me too much, but with a family to support, suddenly I’m a lot more concerned about this possibility.</p>
<p>Even with the combination of these three factors, I wasn’t specifically <em>looking</em> for a job. However, I had found myself perusing the monthly Hacker News who’s hiring threads, to see if anything piqued my interest, which it never did.</p>
<p>Until June this year.</p>
<h2 id="where">Where?</h2>
<p>The short answer is <a href="https://www.freeagent.com">FreeAgent</a>, which is an accounting app for freelancers.</p>
<p>When I saw their post on Hacker News I was instantly intrigued, as it ticked all my boxes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Remote work</li>
<li>Ruby on Rails</li>
<li>Product that interests me</li>
</ul>
<p>I then went to check out their careers page, and thought it sounded like an awesome place to work. They have a company culture of learning and personal development, as well as excellent benefits and work-life balance. Combined with a salary of significantly more than I’m able to pay myself now, I had to go for it.</p>
<p>Although first I had to make a CV, as I hadn’t applied for a <em>real</em> job since 2010.</p>
<p>With a CV and covering letter created, I applied. The very next day I received an email from FreeAgent asking to organise a phone interview. Over the next month I went through the phone interview, coding challenge, video chat with two of their developers, and finally an on-site interview in Edinburgh. Two days after I returned from Edinburgh, I received and accepted a job offer.</p>
<p>It may sound like a long, complicated interview process, but I actually liked it. I got to meet a few of the FreeAgent team, and learn about their code style and requirements. It’s also important to consider that I live in Devon, which is just about as far as one can live from Edinburgh without leaving the UK, so it’s important to be confident I’d be a good candidate before I travel all that way for the interview.</p>
<p>I’m going to be working as a Senior Engineer on the Growth Team, starting on the 5th August, and I’m really excited about it.</p>
<h2 id="what-happens-to-saber">What happens to Saber?</h2>
<p>Mostly nothing. I’m going to be putting Saber into “maintenance mode”, that means I’ll still be offering my awesome support, and fixing bugs, but new features will be few and far between.</p>
<p>FreeAgent will be 9-5, Monday to Friday. However, since my daughter was born I generally start work between 8:00 and 8:30, so I’ll have at least half an hour every morning for Saber, to handle support requests and fix small bugs. I’ll also use occasional evenings and weekends if there are any big bug fixes required, or if I want to add a new feature.</p>
<p>I’m also going to be giving up on trying to market Saber. All my efforts have basically failed anyway, and I don’t enjoy marketing, so it’s quite a relief to know I won’t be doing marketing any more.</p>
<p>I’m hoping Saber will at least continue to maintain its current $4k MRR, as it has been for the last year or so, but there’s a good chance MRR will slowly drop, and a small chance it could actually grow. The risk of MRR shrinking doesn’t really concern me, as I’m no longer dependent on Saber for my income. I’m intrigued to learn what will happen to Saber when I stop trying to grow it.</p>
<p>And of course, FreeAgent are aware of my situation, and are happy for me to keep working on Saber outside of my working hours.</p>
<p>I’ll be keeping up with the income reports, with the next one due very soon.</p>
<h2 id="have-i-failed">Have I failed?</h2>
<p>Ah, time to dig out an outdated meme format:</p>
<p><img src="https://i.imgflip.com/36u2ux.jpg" alt="meme" /></p>
<p>In a word - yes - this <em>is</em> failure. Bet you weren’t expecting that answer.</p>
<p>When I started this blog, I set myself the goal of earning enough money to support myself. In that I succeeded.</p>
<p>However, I then upped the stakes when my wife and I decided to have a baby. At which point the goal became “Earn enough to support my family”. And in that, I have failed.</p>
<p>I see no shame in that, I’ve <a href="/blog/timeline-of-failures">previously written about my plethora of failures</a>, as each one is a learning experience, and I definitely feel I’ve learned a lot from Saber. Maybe one day I’ll find myself running a new startup, and I’ll be able to use everything I’ve learned from Saber. I say <em>maybe</em>, as although I’ve always been “entrepreneurial”, right now, I’m just excited to work on something interesting, with other people, and to just be a coder, rather than wearing all the hats.</p>
<p>I’ve got loads of ideas for side projects, some of which may even see the light of day, but right now I’ve no desire to start a new business. It’s a freeing feeling to know if I do launch a new side project, monetization isn’t such a big deal. I can create something just for the fun of it, and not worry about how, or if, it can make money.</p>
<p>- <em>Matt</em></p>Ladies, gentlemen and Smizmars - I’ve been living a lie. From the 5th of August I’ll no longer be a bootstrapped solo founder. I’ll be a 9-5 working stiff. A salaryman.June 2019 Income Report2019-07-08T00:00:00+01:002019-07-08T00:00:00+01:00/from-side-project-to-profitable-start-up-part-48<p>Aha! Not quite so late this month. In terms of financials, June was a slightly better month than May. But to be fair, that wasn’t a hard target:</p>
<h2 id="the-figures">The Figures</h2>
<table class="table table-striped audodiff">
<thead>
<tr>
<th> </th>
<th>June 2019</th>
<th>May 2019</th>
<th>Change</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<th>Monthly Recurring Revenue</th>
<td>$4,165</td>
<td>$4,097</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Paying customers</th>
<td>55</td>
<td>53</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Personal Plan</th>
<td>17</td>
<td>16</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Startup Plan</th>
<td>27</td>
<td>26</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th> - Corporate Plan</th>
<td>11</td>
<td>11</td>
</tr>
<tr data-uniques="">
<th>Unique users on landing page</th>
<td>595</td>
<td>587</td>
</tr>
<tr data-signups="">
<th>New Free Trial sign ups</th>
<td>16</td>
<td>22</td>
</tr>
<tr data-signup-rate="">
<th>Free Trial sign up rate</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr data-new-paying="">
<th>New Paying customers</th>
<td>3</td>
<td>1</td>
</tr>
<tr data-less-is-more="true">
<th>Lost Paying Customers</th>
<td>1</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr data-conversion="">
<th>Free Trial to Paying conversion</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr data-end-to-end-conversion="">
<th>End to End conversion</th>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>Profit</th>
<td>£-115.26</td>
<td>£83.31</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Lots of green, which always makes me happy. Sign ups and Sign up conversion are both down, but still better than the average from before the new homepage layout, so I’m not too bothered about that.</p>
<p>Profit is the other area where June seems to be bad, but in actual fact, I paid a corporation tax bill of £2,965.52, which is still more than Caffe Nero, Vodafone, Gap and EE combined, who all paid nothing. You’re welcome. So with that considered, only losing £115 this month is quite the success. Conveniently I had a couple of annual subscriptions renew in June.</p>
<p>As I mentioned last month, for most of June the bottom level ‘Bootstrap’ plan was priced at $19 with basically no features, and to my surprise, people still bought it. Both of the bootstrap subscriptions this month were when it was still at $19, so it looks like raising the price to $29 has had the desired effect.</p>
<h2 id="revenue--profit">Revenue & Profit</h2>
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<canvas id="month-revenue-graph" width="750" height="400"></canvas>
<h2 id="ppc-advertising">PPC Advertising</h2>
<p>Armed with all my newfound knowledge of Google Search Ads, I was super optimistic about running a successful PPC campaign and taking over the world. That optimism may have been somewhat misplaced.</p>
<p>This very morning I paused my campaign, due to spending £150 and not even managing to achieve a single sign up. In fact, through the life of my campaign, clicks from ads have seen a 94.44% bounce rate. Clearly I’m doing something wrong. Not to mention unsustainable in terms of cost.</p>
<p>Initially I was running with ‘website feedback’ related keywords, eg: ‘website feedback tool’, ‘website feedback widget’, etc. But I found that there wasn’t much traffic for those keywords. Also, a lot of the traffic was irellevant, yet still seemed to get clicks. For example, I got a click for the search query “asda online feedback form”. How someone saw my advert, which didn’t mention ‘Asda’ (a well known UK supermarket chain) and thought it was the result they were looking for, I’ll never know. People are idiots.</p>
<p>After about a week of this, I changed tack, by streamlining my keywords, adding a bunch more negative keywords, and trying some new, higher traffic keywords. Those being “Net Promoter Score”, and “Voice of the Customer”, which respectively saw around 10x and 2x more search traffic than all my old keywords combined. I also added keyword specific landing pages for these keywords. Unfortunately the only result of this was spending my budget faster.</p>
<p>I’ve tried to ensure that the searches for “Net Promoter Score” aren’t from people looking for information about NPS using negative keywords. I think NPS isn’t working as it’s just a feature of Saber, searches are more likely seeking a full-featured NPS tool, rather than a feedback tool that offers NPS collection and analysis.</p>
<p>Regarding “Voice of the Customer”, that’s exactly what Saber is, but I suspect people searching for VoC are expecting more enterprise level tools, as it’s a very ‘enterprisey’ way of saying feedback tool.</p>
<p>My next plan is it go back to focusing on website feedback type keywords, but keep refining and adding negative keywords, and just accept that I won’t get much traffic or clicks.</p>
<h2 id="goals">Goals</h2>
<p>Holy shit! This marks three months in a row in which I achieved my goals. I fixed some bugs, tried to optimise the PPC campaign, and completed the multiple form feature (although I still need to do its documentation).</p>
<p>Goals for this month are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Re-work the PPC campaign as described above.</li>
<li>Completely re-do the documentation, as it’s currently shit, and a bunch of features are currently undocumented</li>
<li>Work in improving SEO, aiming for 1,000 non-blog uniques in a month.</li>
</ul>
<p>That should more than keep me busy, thanks for reading.</p>
<p>- <em>Matt</em></p>
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<script src="/assets/js/journey.js"></script>Aha! Not quite so late this month. In terms of financials, June was a slightly better month than May. But to be fair, that wasn’t a hard target: