930 Solutions

In 2012, I went after and achieved one of my lifetime goals: to start my own business.

My goal is actually to create two companies.  The first company is a one that is a 1 man consulting firm that can consistently cover my cost of living.  The second company is where I will focus my creative energies on creating mobile and web apps that I believe will cover a niche market need.  In an ideal world, company one would fund me while company two becomes a reality.  But this post is really about company one.

After two years a great up-and-coming consulting firm, and several years at various software companies, I felt that my experience in industry was solid and that if I wanted to achieve the goal, I needed to start taking steps toward it.  After doing some research, I realized that being in independent software developer wasn’t really that hard.  You needed someone willing to pay you for your services and the usual corporate registrations. 

As a software developer, I am fortunate to be in a good market. Though I realized that it took about two months to finalize the terms of my deal, I did end up with two options for clients.

The usual corporate registrations are where things are still a bit of a learning experience.  I’ve managed to set up health care and a 401k for all of my ‘employees’.  Further, I am incorporated and am paying taxes at the federal level down.  But taxes are still about as clear as mud to me.  At the federal level you write a check for what you *think* your taxes will be every quarter and settle up at the end of the year.  Hopefully, I won’t be too far off.  Moreover, I hope that then I will finally see the benefits of all the deductions you get as a corporation; because I am very familiar with the fees.

The next challenge for me will be to build out a pipeline of opportunities.  To be able to successfully line up clients such that I stay in contact when I am too busy to work for them and am effective about lining up my next gig.  My father always tells me that, ‘the last two people to be let go at any company are the guy who makes the widgets and the guy who sells them.’  My career has been based on making widgets, so it is going to take some personal growth to sell them as well.

But there is a lot of fun to be had in starting a company.  First, there was the branding exercise.  I decided to go with ‘930 Solutions’ as the name of my company as an homage to an aspirational engineering project.  That said, my friends have come up with a lot of alternative meetings (‘won’t show up until 930 PM’, ‘it won’t be done until 9:30 PM’ , ‘no matter where we are in the course of the project, after I have solved problem #930 under this corporation, I am retiring’, etc).  It is also pretty nice to dodge corporate politics and just be responsible for providing quality work.  And of course the greater influence you have on the path of your career is exhilarating.

As great as this experience has been, I am already off to my next adventure.  A friend of mine has recruited me to lead the development efforts of an early stage start-up.  Hopefully this experience will make me a more well-rounded member of the team.