Nearly 10 months after telling my partner I wanted out, I have finally
exited the electronics business, having negotiated enough for my half
that I will have made approximately minimum wage. Frankly, I think
the business is worth ap proximately -400, the cost of dissolving it,
so I'm happy I got what I did.
<p>Of course the business <em>could</em> turn out to
be quite successful under its remaining owner. I'm betting against
it, but it is not yet a foregone conclusion. In any event, it was
extremely unpleasant in many ways, but undeniably a <lj-cut text="a
valuable learning experience">valuable l earning experience.
<p>One of the major things it suffered from was "This Time For
Sure" syndr ome under Alex's guidance. Although each product line had
failed to make a prof it, the <em>next</em> one, which we
were ideally positioned to devel op due to our past experience, was
going to make us a killing. After the third time wasn't the charm, I
saw the pattern. He hasn't seen it yet; in my last business
conversation with him, the day I traded him a stock certificate for a
cert ified cheque<sup>1</sup>, he was still talking about
his <em>n ext</em> big idea which was going to
<em>really</em> make money this time - at least, it was
as soon as he sunk some more capital into R&D so he could build
it, of course.
<p>I made a series of bad investment decisions, based on Alex's
assessment of the situation which I was careless about independently
verifying. I'm not s ure why being <em>less</em> diligent
in investing money into a tiny company I owned part of than I would
have been in buying stocks seemed like a go od idea. It was a
sufficiently painful lesson, at least, that I doubt I shall h ave to
learn it again, at least not in exactly the same form.
<p>Another thing I learned is personally taking small-value
orders and shi pping products directly to customers is pure hell. I
do not intend to start ano ther business on the basis of personally
shipping small orders. If we can't rai se enough capital to hire
someone else to do that immediately, the business is a no-go. If I'm
doing it myself, my cutoff is $1,000 or more per transaction, an d
preferably to "ship" software instead of tangible goods. Having done
both, I assure you that the latter involves far less suffering.
<p>It's important to be respected by one's associates. I don't
know where this went wrong; I think I was respected at the beginning,
but wasn't anymore b y the end, leading to a rather hostile
negotiation in which I was not perceived as credible and therefore had
to follow through on several threats in order to b e taken seriously.
This remains an enigma; I can point to a time when there was respect,
a couple years ago, and a time when there wasn't, but I can't tell you
a story about the process of going from the one to the other. I'd
like to unde rstand this better, but acquiring more information about
the past, when one was already there in person as a participant and
still doesn't understand, is unlike ly.
<p>Debugging failed circuit boards actually can be fun, provided
one is no t doing it in the middle of the night, on a tight schedule,
with a headache from the flux fumes, and a stiff neck from wearing the
respirator in an attempt to g et rid of the headache. One also needs
to have adequate information about what the boards are supposed to be
doing (for example, by having designed them onesel f). For the most
part, however, this activity pays poorly unless one <em>
is</em> the original designer, so in a way it works out. In a
"repair by : board replacement" world, it is a refreshing change to be
able to make repairs a t a component level.
<p>All in all, working in electronics has been less enjoyable
for me than working in pure software. Although it had the satisfying
aspect of being able t o deliver hardware, this was more than
compensated for by all the headaches of h aving to deliver hardware.
In the future I shall most likely focus elsewhere fo r my primary
source of revenue, and do the occasional electronics project as a h
obby, or the occasional firmware consulting job if there is a market
for it.
<p>It's useful to keep track of how much time you spend by
writing somethi ng down at least once per day. Subsequent
recollection is susceptible to system atic over or underestimation,
and you want to have the information about how muc h time you spent on
the last project when you're trying to figure out how much y ou need
to charge for the next project.
<p>A lesson which I have applied already to my next venture is
that it is important to agree in advance upon benchmarks for the
minimum achievement level required to continue operating the business,
so as to make it less likely to get into a situation where some
partners want to continue and others do not.
<p>Realistically, I do not think that having learned these
things will act ually make any of my subsequent endeavors more likely
to succeed. I do think, h owever, that it will reduce the cost of
failure, and that in turn will make me m ore likely to eventually
succeed by conserving resources and permitting for more tries.
<font size=-1> <p>[1] The Firefox spell checker doesn't
accept this spelling of "cheque". Perhaps next it will deny that
"doughnut" is a word. Oh my. I thought I was joking, but it just
refused "doughnut" in the previous sentence as well! Perhap s in the
next revision they can continue the newspeakification by accepting
"lol " and "<3" as words. To make matters worse, the configuration
option which i s supposed to disable this reprehensible excuse for a
"spelling checker" does no t work.