In about 4-5 months it looks like I'll be able to work full time for my main startup if things carry on as they are. I'm so excited!

So after spending a few hours looking at spreadsheets, analyzing finances and plotting charts the projections are looking good. I will be able to work full time for Project Bubble in September if the trends continue as they are. I can't express how much this means to someone who has spent his whole career working for other people doing what they want me to do.

In 2008 I decided I wanted to stop working for clients and instead develop my own applications which I could sell as SaaS so that I could basically earn money while I slept and not have to send out another quotation ever again.

The Struggle

It's been nearly three years now of really hard work (lots of bootstrapped startup founders will identify) and I've had a lot of scary times along the way.

I remember chatting to my wife about six months in and she was telling me about how much we need to be making compared to what we were actually getting in. I had just taken a few weeks off to do a load of development on Project Bubble and get a new feature built and we had just started charging for it, but when you're developing your startup it means you're not getting paid for any contract work and therefore the bills start stacking up.

After our chat we realized that basically unless Project Bubble started making us loads of money (which it wouldn't for quite a long time because it didn't even make enough money to afford an SSL at the time), then I would have to go back to contract work which I did.

The frustration of not being able to work for your own project when you've tasted what it's like to be able to work full time (albeit a few weeks) is extremely hard to bear. However it's something I just had to do, because that's life.

I would work for Project Bubble as often as I could, evenings, weekends, and whenever I didn't have any contract work on. I was also doing some work for some other cool startups around the time such as usability consultancy, and Halogy builds and support. I always loved the times I booked out just to work on a new Project Bubble feature and I loved the joy this would bring to those in the Project Bubble Beta community, even though these booked times were quite rare and very work intensive.

Then comes the time when your startup can actually afford to pay for its own bills, like servers, SEO, SSL certificates and video hosting. This happened after about six months of charging and I remember how awesome it felt to be able to afford my own dedicated server with Rackspace.

The Rewards

A couple of years later and with really steady growth, the opportunity finally came when I could work 2-3 days a week for Project Bubble. This time came about a couple of months ago but I haven't really been able to appreciate it until recently because I've been busy with lots of other little projects and a house move.

Now I'm sitting here in my nice office in London and writing a blog post while on Project Bubble time, and effectively getting paid for it. It's a great feeling.

With the time that I now have to work part time for Project Bubble I can develop stuff that's long over due (in my opinion, not my customers), such as the API and language translation instead of bug fixes and critical updates that I would squeeze in to an evening. It also means that I get to appreciate weekends with my wife and work less evenings. I haven't been able to do that for a long time.

The Future

So in September I'll be able to work full time for Project Bubble as managing director and lead developer. Who knows, a few months after that we may even be able to make our first hire, such as another programmer to extend and develop the backend and the more technical aspects which aren't really my strong point.

The challenges of MD will then shift to a completely different level as I have to worry about managing a team and perhaps the expectations of investors. Nevertheless, challenges I'm looking forward to.

I was chatting to a guy I'm working for at the moment and his startup has its own team and office. He has the awesome opportunity to cultivate his own distinct culture for his startup and team. They already have something really cool going on there, in particular I love the free cookie jar and unlimited supply of Moam sweets!

It's things like that which I think are really exciting aspects to building a startup beyond just you sitting on your own in the spare room with your laptop. You are not just giving yourself an awesome reason to go to work that day, but you are doing it for a whole team of people too who also believe in the product that you have built.

So these are exciting times and I'm looking forward to embracing the challenges as well as the highs. Sometimes when you are on top of the mountain you just need to look back and take a photo.

Snap.