Back in the Saddle

Six months ago we sold the company that I co-founded (www.imaginelearning.com).  Two months later and exactly ten years after we started at Imagine Learning, with harvest capital in hand, Russ Zimmerman (the best programmer I know) and I set out on a new adventure. We chased the entrepreneurial dream once again, and started working full-time at our app development company: Awesome Geekness (www.awesomegeekness.com).

I'm hoping to share some of the thoughts that we've found helpful in the hopes that other indie developers may find some use for them.

Since we developed Tiki Kaboom (www.tikikaboom.com) 6 years ago, we have been keeping a Trello board of all of our app and software ideas.  Some of them are crazy, some are probably ridiculous, and some of them are pretty good.  We decided to start with an app to remember people's names.

The resulting product of 4 months of hard work, Name Shark (www.nameshark.com), was submitted to itunesconnect on Wednesday.  Finding myself with some time while we wait for the app to be approved, I figured I'd share some of the things we hope might make this app successful.

I have truly appreciated the many developers and entrepreneurs who have shared their stories, challenges, solutions, tough questions, and brilliant answers through blogs, Stack Overflow, forums, and websites.  Our story is one of hundreds of thousands that are probably even more awesome.  But we're having so much fun, I thought I could share what makes our geekness truly awesome.

Here are a couple photos of our little space, complete with mini-fridge, foosball table, snack cabinet, 60" TV, 5.1 surround, sofa, and Quirky Aros smart A/C unit:

Foosball Tip: If you need a foosball table, the best table on the planet is the Tornado T-3000 Platinum Coin-op table, and the best place to get one is to get a tournament-used table from Charles at tornadofoosball.com.  You'll pay $600 less than a new table costs, and they will have only used it at one tournament.  We absolutely love our table.  We also love the Gamma Supreme wraps.

So there's the inside, and here's the view out our window: