At one point I thought I'd never make the jump from being an employee to being self-employed. The software I had written was selling, but not enough to support my family. At the time, we had 3 children aged 5 and under. It seemed a safer bet to accept a job offer with TurboPower, an established Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and learn what I could from their business.
And so we packed up and moved from St. Louis to Colorado Springs.
Three years later, the picture changed. TurboPower's engineers were shifted from working on TurboPower products to working on software for the parent company. There was a small group of people that moved from Colorado Springs to the headquarters in Las Vegas.
We saw some writing on the wall: Go to Las Vegas or find another job.
At the same time, a couple of guys at TurboPower had made contact with Lino Tadros, owner of Falafel Software. He had started two successful training and consulting companies. As things went, he and a few TurboPower guys decided to start a new ISV. I fell in with the lot.
We had no funding and, unlike 3 years earlier, I had no secondary income.
So what changed in those years that led me to make the jump? There were some savings that would help my family through 3 or 4 months. There was this group of people who wanted to make something happen. Better yet, we were associated with Lino who had proven himself in business to a greater extent than we. We had dreams of writing a couple of products and raking in the sales within 2 to 4 months. We'd seen it happen at TurboPower, so it'd happen for us. Isn't that the way it works?
No way, dude! It's one thing to ride the coat tails of an established ISV and another thing to start from scratch. Starting ComponentScience was more difficult than expected.
When times get rough, the surface reasons for doing something get burned away.
The real reason for making the jump helped me hold on. I think the same could be said for the other guys and hopefully they'll talk about it one of these days.
The real reason for making the jump is that at some point, enough is enough. I'd reached the point where it was either time to follow my dream or give up on it. Following the dream had some life in it for me. Giving up had some death. I chose the dream.