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published 2020-12-16
I haven't posted anything here for 6 months so I thought it would be a good idea to post a personal news update before the end of 2020.
I haven't posted about it here yet, but my co-founder Julien and me decided to shut down Chilli [1] at the end of last year, in agreement with eFounders. Basically, some of our initial hypotheses about the state of the market we were in (french SMBs) were wrong and the business couldn't be profitable enough.
In retrospect, it was an interesting experience. I really appreciated being part of eFounders [2], I do recommend it for people who want to start a B2B SaaS company.
However, I wanted to get out of my comfort bubble too much with this one, by tackling a problem in a market I didn't know. Because of that, I had to rely on others regarding core business choices, and while that was fine with me initially it ended up being frustrating in the end when things didn't work well and I couldn't help much. So if I start another company someday, it will be one where I know the problem domain better.
1: https://blog.separateconcerns.com/2019-04-23-spicing-things-up.html
After we shut down Chilli, I decided to join a small startup editing a SaaS CRM and ticketing solution for property managers called Inch [3], only available in the French market for now.
I didn't pick Inch randomly, I have known one of the founders for years since he was a Moodstocks [4] user! Fun fact: at the time, I had met him and he was looking for a technical co-founder for his project [5]. I told him he should learn to code instead and gave him Ruby sample code... and this is why I am back to Rails today. Karma? :)
Anyway, I had been following Inch with interest since its creation, because it is the company I like: solving a real need in a market where tools were either terrible or non-existent. Now they have a unique place in the market and some interesting technical challenges to solve, so I decided to join and help.
4: https://blog.separateconcerns.com/2013-06-20-three-years-proprietary-projects.html
5: https://fr-fr.facebook.com/Qrators/
And here comes the last piece of news: despite all the madness that happened this year, the biggest change for me is that I am now a father! My son was born last week, and I took a holiday until the end of the year to spend time with him and his mother. I don't intend to post too much personal news here, but this one deserved it. =)