Success On Your Own Terms
summary
Bootstraps a software business that becomes TrackJS, doubles take‑home pay, then learns time is the real currency and chases guacamole money by moving from hourly contracting to product. Key lessons: define what success means, prioritize building relationships over more technical skill, ship an embarrassingly small MVP instead of falling into over-engineering, and validate demand before scaling — a later attempt at requestmetrics fails until refocused on Core Web Vitals and web performance.
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chapters (16)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:06Success means different things
- 3:35Car accident first lesson
- 8:09Grad school lessons
- 12:03Career shift to consulting
- 16:37Leap into consulting
- 20:56Key skill: relationships
- 23:47From time to product
- 26:33Dangers of over-engineering
- 32:14Building TrackJS
- 38:33Dark side of company
- 41:26Don’t go it alone
- 45:00Reflecting on success
- 47:46Failing fast
- 51:38Core Web Vitals pivot
- 55:28Painful lessons recap
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