I have a hard time making the 40 hours work week my friend and my ally. It and I seem to be playing a game of chicken: who gives up first. Right now, we are at a stalemate: we agree to disagree.

First of all, I am only considering this in the context of “creative industries” where people are expected to dream up new things, to come up with elegant solutions to problems, to go the extra mile and deliver superior, innovative results, constantly— the exact opposite of the context where it first appeared, in the Industrial Revolution.

Secondly, let me get some things off the table, right from the start. An 80 hours work week is insane, bordering on cruelty; it should only be an unfortunate exception commanded by the mother of all emergencies. 70, 60 hours per week are not very far away either — it’s 10–12 hours a day, 6 days a week; I find it hard to see how doing this on a regular basis could lead to anything but burnout and poor quality of work. Now back to our 40 hours.

The tagline “40 hours a week is plenty”, so rightfully portrayed by someone who I look up to and admire — Jason Fried from Basecamp, sounds so clear and full of decency: decency for work-life balance, for one’s sanity, for one’s physical and mental health, for giving time to ideas to breathe and germinate. I can’t argue with it. So why am I then at a stalemate with this idea? The real insight lies in this comment from the same Jason Fried:

Think of 40 as a representation of a “fair’s day work” rather than exactly 40 hours. But definitely not much more.

A fair’s day work is something I can relate with; it is much more personal and adaptable to one’s current professional state of affairs; it implies merit and results, dedication and quality, a balance between your personal perception and the one of your peers.

Recently, in a documentary, I’ve heard something that really reverberated in me as it provided the key to making sense of a lot of conflicting thoughts and ideas: the origin of the word amateur as opposed to professional. Most of the time, calling another person an amateur is done (or perceived) with ill intent, with condescendence, dismissiveness, malice if you will. It turns out, the term was originally intended to depict someone who does something just for the pleasure of it. I like that a lot.

All of us creative “professionals” start out as amateurs, people full of passion and desire to leave our mark on the world, people with wits and grit to tackle things way beyond our reach, people confident that with enough energy, thought and effort any problem can be solved. We are so so lucky to have this leeway. The problem is this initial state of wonderful agitation doesn’t last. That flame burns too brightly to be sustainable in the long run.

We need to make small but confident steps towards being a professional, for our own sake and for our team. We need to understand ourselves better, to be more aware of our physical and mental limitations, to know when to pause and when to speed up — it’s what people call experience. But it doesn’t come simply with the passage of time. You can’t say I’ve done this work for 10 years, hence I have experience. If you haven’t developed a certain work wisdom during those 10 years, I feel sorry for you. You are probably in a worst spot professionally than someone just starting out.

What do amateurs and professionals have to do with the “40 hours work week”? In my mind, a great deal. That “fair’s day work” is much closer to fairness when it comes to a true professional than it is when we talk about an amateur. That is why, for me, taking only the number of hours, sticking to them and see what you can cram in there is a fallacy, at best.

A saner, more down-to-Earth approach is to be mindful of yourself, your self-expectations, weigh in the requirements of the team you are part of and find the balance that pushes you forward, today. If that sweet spot is for you 40 hours or less, I salute you — you are luckier than you realize. But if it’s 50, 55 hours a week that is ok too. Just remember to constantly reassess and don’t mistake long hours with steps towards being a professional. In certain stages of your journey, fewer hours is exactly the right thing to do; in others, no hours a.k.a. vacations are absolutely essential.

Just don’t put the cart before the horse and “act professionally” timewise without being there in wisdom also. You will only stall your own progress and disappoint the ones looking to work with you. Stay mindful of yourself and where you are heading, forget arbitrary numbers.

Ever since I’ve deep-dived head-first no-safety-line into this adventure of co-founding Pixelgrade my life has changed, in unexpected ways. Little did I know at the time I would be taking the ride of my life, that I will be fulfilled and energized beyond my wildest dreams while being stretched and challenged to breaking point and beyond. It’s probably for the best as some things should not be known from the start.

Some would think a founder brings its experience and knowledge and sets to purposely give shape to this thing we call a business. It hasn’t worked like that for me as I had no prior experience and little knowledge of what a team, let alone a business, needed to look like. Frankly, I still don’t have a turn-key solution to this day — maybe when I’m gray and old.

What me and my brother George brought at the drawing table was just ourselves, two twenty so years techy guys with grit, open hearts, and clear sights. We’ve drafted this whole thing to our image. Anything else felt wrong or without meaning (sounds an awful lot like the definition of narcissism, right?). In reality, a devilish thing happened: Pixelgrade defined me just as I helped define Pixelgrade.

The Hatless Head

In the early days, my head was a thing of beauty: perfect proportions, perfect haircut, perfect nose, perfect jaw, perfect in every single way. Then tragedy struck, and it became, almost overnight, the head I have today. Now that’s off the table, let’s focus on what was inside that (perfect) head of mine.

First and foremost, there was hope and faith that everything will be just fine. It was self-confidence that I would plow through everything that might come my way. It was patience as good things happen to those who wait. There were passion and energy to last you a lifetime. I also had my fair share of foolishness or child-like playfulness to keep me fresh and on the move.

There was one more thing lurking in there, the bedrock if you will: trust, in people. If it were a Buddhist monk’s head, it would babble all day long: Have faith in people! Trust people! I know it sounds like I’m exaggerating, but the reality of my beliefs was not far off. I genuinely believe in the huge potential that rests in each of us and that if only it would be given the right setting it would blossom into something worthy to behold.

But what is a founder’s hatless head? The perfect place to put a hat, of course. Luckily, or unfortunately — I am still not sure, there was no shortage of hats willing to do the job.

Hat #1: The Dreamer

This hat suited my head just fine like it was made for me. A hopeless optimist with a love for intellectual tug-of-war and the world at large seemed to be just the right person to look ahead and guide the ship.

I wear this hat with pride and joy, but also with a deep sense of responsibility as I am fully aware that everyone else is counting on my ability to spot opportunities and perils ahead. Unfortunately, there is a dark side to this hat: it can be quite lonely up there on the mast. And with loneliness comes detachment from the rest of the crew — a deeply scary thought for me.

Hat #2: The Craftsman

Yet another hat that my head will gladly wear. This one is extra-special as it was shaped throughout my whole life — it’s what makes me a doer. I owe this hat to my family and to my teachers, to everyone that taught me the value of doing something from nothing, of using my creativity and perseverance to achieve meaningful results, the value of overcoming highs and lows just to see something done, properly.

Understandably, it is easy and fulfilling to wear this hat. It allows me to dive deep into technical issues and pound them into submission, to explore novel, more elegant ways of solving old problems. It’s my comfort zone, where I am able to feel in control.

This spell-like nature makes it dangerous if worn too often for too long. It’s too easy for me to lose myself in the doer mode while ignoring my other responsibilities towards the ones around me and the organization as a whole.

Hat #3: The Father

This is a hat I haven’t wished for, but somehow grew on my head. I was always under the impression that I had a flower-power-friend hat, or at least a teammate hat. But no, I actually had this paternal hat and its weight started to take its toll on me. It’s not the sexiest hat on the catwalk, it’s infused with all the wrong perfumes, it’s old-school, commands respect and authority, but of the wrong kind.

I look to be respected for my merits, for the skills and insights I bring to the table, not because I take care of everyone and make sure that I keep things as easy as possible. And what authority I can muster I wish to ground it in mutual understanding that it’s for the better of all, not as a direct result of me “giving birth” to Pixelgrade.

Hat #4: The Banker

I am not the son of a financier nor did I inherited an insane amount of wealth, but nonetheless I have this weird pointy hat in my closet. I am generally OK with money: I understand them, I know their proper value, I can handle them by the truckload or in bite-sized chunks. I’m not overly impressed by them, nor do I disregard their power and meaning.

So what’s the problem? Stop bitching and enjoy your pointy hat, you lucky bastard!

I wish it were that simple. In reality, this hat is stuffed with unseen late-night worries, constant struggles to prioritize spending and find new ways to keep the flow going, hopefully with an upward trend. Over time I’ve learned to cope with these, to some extent.

As you would expect, something else was going on under there, and it wasn’t what I wished for, again: it makes it too easy for others to stamp me with the “boss” tag. I am asked to put a price on my teammates’ work and convey my reasoning behind that. Easier said than done especially when people have such varied relationships towards money and what they stand for. The fact that, statistically, most of us believe we are above the average performance of those around us doesn’t help me either.

Hat #5: The Architect

This is a cool hat, right? It has such a nice ring to it. I guess this is part of the reason I graduated Architecture School. All fallacies aside, I am a systems kinda guy — I enjoy discovering the inner workings of things, their true logic and meaning. I generally try to avoid shallow observations and go beyond the first impression as I believe we live in a complex world where everything and everyone are connected. This sense of endless possibilities fuels my hope for a better future.

For a long time, I’ve been delusional and foolish as I’ve underestimated the complexities and hurdles involved in managing people systems — teams. I convinced myself that a system is a system is a system. What is so different from designing the place a family lives or the way part of the city should function, and designing the way a small group of people should work wonderfully together? As it turns out, an awful lot.

My first mistake was to think one can design the way a team works. Sure, you can do it in an academic setting and imagine things. But the reality is that a team just is, from the moment at least two people decide to work together towards a common goal. There is no undo button, no rewinding of time. You got to live with the consequences of all of your decisions and do the best you can today as tomorrow’s team will be different.

My second mistake was to overshoot my trust in the power of good intentions: as long as each team member’s heart is in the right place all will play out just fine. So I wore this hat every so often without really owning it, with a sense of fear and shame actually as I didn’t want people to see me as a God-like creature that’s playing Sims — Business Edition. I struggle with this to this day.

The Hatfull Head

The count doesn’t stop with these five hats. There are other smaller, less visible hats in my closet, some that I am not even aware of. Not to mention the hats I need to wear in my personal life: husband, father, son, brother and the list could go on. Someone is playing tricks on me.

Sticking to these five hats, the reality is I can’t pick and choose when to wear them. There is always someone around that expects me to be wearing one of those hats — so I end up wearing them all, all the time, whether I like it or not. I am built to cope with many things on my plate so I should be fine, at least to some degree.

The trouble is these hats demand quite different mindsets to function well. Shifting mindsets all the time is not sexy, nor is it efficient for the end result. It is also a sure way to disappoint and piss people off either because they’ve caught you with the wrong hat, you haven’t really worn that hat for a while, or you are having trouble shifting mindsets. It’s a game I for one feel that it can’t be won — and I hate losing, much less playing when I know I can’t win.

The Sane Head

Ideally, there would be a single hat for every head, but that is just not feasible and possible in real life situations. So there is no point in wishful thinking.

What one can do is first become fully aware of its hats, their implications, their requirements and see how can they be grouped together in compatible, meaningful, fulfilling ways. Those are the hats that should be kept and cherished.

Secondly, we should try and surround ourselves with people willing to wear more than one hat so we can share a closet or give away hats to them — they may very well be more capable and happier to wear them. It’s a win-win situation.

Thirdly, everyone should be empowered and helped to lead from where they stand. You don’t need a special hat to make small decisions, to spot things worth improving, or to give someone your feedback. You just need to be willing to lend a helping hand and work towards the greater good — we are all in this together.

Early on in this process I’ve been confronted with a soul shaking paradigm: “Guys, in the end it’s Up or Out!” Say what ?!?! Just like that? You are talking about people here, about my teammates, about my second family. My first (inner) reaction was one of rejection as this elephant-idea laid siege at some of my deepest convictions.

After all, these were the beliefs that saw us through the previous 4 and a half years. Have I been so wrong? To give you a little bit of context, me and my brother have started Pixelgrade with no prior business training or experience. We were two passionate, decent guys that wanted to build something meaningful. Common sense was the guiding principle:

• we will care for and treat each team member fairly, just like we would like to be treated and cared for — we would be one happy family;
• we will trust them and give them the freedom to pursue their passions;
• we will work together towards the same goals;
• we will all share the ups and downs;
• we will not be bogged down with bureaucracy and corporate nonsense;
• we will not pursue growth for the sake of it — we will keep the team as small as possible so each could have a meaningful impact on the path ahead;
• passion and grit will prevail in the end — we will find people that share our drive and willingness to do things, beautiful things.

This was, and to a great extent still is, the “manifesto” that helped us stay on track. We never thought about writing it down as we knew people will hear it from us and see us living it day in and day out. That would be more than enough. In the end, it was just common sense right? How hard can it be to live by it?

As it turns out, quite hard. And it was equally hard to understand why. Those pesky three little words have been nagging me for the past nine months and each time I sat down to write this story something didn’t make sense, some fundamental insight was eluding me. How could I reconcile “Up or Out” with my deep belief that people are inherently good, that given the right context each can reach new, unexpected heights?

After thinking and reading plenty (maybe too much?) about management, culture, organizational logic, motivation, work environment, I feel quite confident that I’ve managed to make sense of this paradigm. It all comes down to applying personal life concepts to a professional environment without any adaptation.

The hardest blockage to overcome was us being a family. We are not, at least not in the classical term. This mindset does more harm than good as it slowly, but surely, allows us to get soft, to lose our hunger for improving ourselves. We definitely want people to feel a sense of belonging, that they are surrounded by others who truly care about them, who will forgive their mistakes.

But unlike a real family who is forever bound by blood, a team is bound by something much weaker and delicate: values and expectations. As a consequence, one must live by those values and meet those expectations if he is to be part of the “family”. Unlike blood, as we grow older we can shift our values, we can refocus onto new directions — and that is OK! What is not OK is to expect the team to accept that you’ve changed in incompatible ways and keep you on board.

The second hurdle to overcome was the obvious one: why in the world one must go up, constantly? In the beginning, “Up or Out” got me thinking of greed, workaholism, hamster wheels, corporate ladders, perpetual insatisfaction, growth for the sake of it, and ultimately lack of happiness. I would have none of that. What I needed to come to grips was that we are not a family, but a team — and a team is a different kind of beast.

A team is a complex, living, breathing organism with an intricate web of connections amongst its members — and to top it all up, on multiple layers. As part of a team, we are constantly assessing ourselves in relation to the others, we give and receive feedback (verbally and non-verbally), we have expectations towards the others (even if we don’t communicate them), we get encouraged or discouraged by our peers and their evolution.

On top of all this human interaction comes the mother of all commodities: time. It’s in limited supply, has no shelf life, and we need to spend it for everything we chose to do. Just about anything can be reduced to its human-time value: from love to the pencil you scribble your thoughts with.

In the context of a team, time is an overarching presence: we use it to assess work, make decisions about strategy or pricing, to set priorities and focus our efforts. But more importantly, on a personal level, we rely on time to attribute authority to our peers, to gauge their efficiency, passion, commitment and dedication. We can’t help it as time is too important to each one of us and it all comes down to merit.

So, what do we expect our peers to do with the passage of time? Sure as hell we don’t expect them to waste it and stand idle. No, we expect them to improve: expand and build upon their skills, take on new responsibilities, be more experienced and share that experience for the benefit of those that lack it, have a deeper understanding of things and share their insights with those that have a hard time making sense of it all. We naturally expect them to go up! One may have lower expectations from itself, but when it comes to others we are far less lenient. It’s just the reality of human nature.

So you see, I had to reconcile my common sense with the realities of life: it is crucial for the good health of the team that everyone goes Up! Anything else is a recipe for a two class system: on the one hand the achievers, the thinkers, the rock stars if you like, and on the other hand the workers, the ones that endlessly do just about the same thing. I will have none of that! It’s just wrong from every conceivable angle, especially in an environment as vibrant as the web. Each one’s life is too precious and short for that.

I will leave it at that, but I am keen on hearing others’ thoughts and feelings about this. I am only human after all.

How can you start with NO and then move to YES? The proper, decent, sane business approach would be to start with one or more YESes (just to stay positive) and then, when the need arises, with NOs. That’s just good customer relations and ultimately good business.

You would probably think so but I would beg to differ (I tend to differ on many things ☺). My focus is not selling sodas, toothpaste or cars here — my concern is the creative business of digital products on the web. In this realm, the rules are somewhat broken (actually a whole lot, but what the hell, it’s the web right?).

In the web realm the rules are somewhat broken, actually a whole lot!

The creative world, and more so the digital one, is for me a place where old ways are much less prone to hold you down. So, if you need to break things to make a change for the better, go right ahead. Be as funky as you like, but don’t lose your focus!

With this perspective of the web, we feel free to challenge us and our customers to shift to a different mindset:

• One that is focused on quality and not quantity who can bring joy to all parties involved.
• And one that embraces NO and is wary of YES.

I’ve summed this up to “Start by saying NO so you can say YES”. Allow me to explain this in some more detail before you start saying “100 NOs to you. This can’t be!” ☺

You Only Have So Many YESes

Let’s say you present the designer with a brand new challenge: the next big thing. You lay down what you expect from the product and how much should it cost. From the start you have done the same thing you are going to complain later on — you have started with a series of NOs. It must not cost more than this, it must not take more than this, it must do this but not this, and so on.

This is perfectly reasonable as the whole deal with being creative is tackling a series of external constraints as beautifully and wisely as you can while trying to solve a problem.

Unfortunately for the designer, and you alike, he can’t abide by your NOs without introducing some of its own. It’s a game of mutual respect.

Being the professional in the house, a designer has a much deeper understanding of the bigger picture than you. He understands much better the relationships and implications between each of the parts that make the project tick. That’s his job after all.

One should not think that the designer will take a NO or a YES lightly. He knows well the benefits and traps of both, and he has learned through years of experience to tackle them elegantly.

The YES is actually the devil in the house

But as with anything with a deadline and a budget, you can only stretch so much. A YES is usually the costlier option and it should come attached with a series of NOs to keep everything in balance. The YES is actually the devil in the house, having much more implications and ramifications than a NO. Adding things can be far more damaging than removing them.

So, dear customer, please be wary of hearing (or wanting to hear) too many YESes. You (and us) will be paying for them big time in the long run. Show NO some love from time to time.

Learning The Power And Beauty Of A Proper NO — The Hard Way

PixelGrade started with mine and my brother George’s freelancing experience but due to the rigors and constant turmoil that come with relying on small, frequent projects/clients, we’ve decided early on to steer to a more agency approach in deciding what clients and what projects we would take on. In about half a year we were filled with projects and doing just fine.

We’ve had a couple of clients that asked us for custom web apps, built from the ground up to their specific needs. It was a little out of our league but we’ve never been shy of taking on a new challenge, as long as it felt rewarding professionally and monetarily. This is where things get tricky.

At that time, we just welcomed a new team member. Backend developer with all the bells and whistles. He was so prolific at learning new languages and techniques that we felt confident we could handle the projects. With a solid experience on freelancing and a man that promised a lot — wouldn’t you be?

We were eyeballing the prospects of trying our hand at some web services for some time but lacked the expertise on the backend. So we thought: What a way to learn — let’s do it!

We were confident and everything went quite well at the start. We’ve detailed as much as we could with our clients, made a plan, budgeted the time plus something extra for something unforeseen and the client agreed to our price.

About half way through things started to deteriorate. On the one hand, we kept missing our internal deadlines due to our blind focus on getting everything right and a constant search for doing things even better. On the other hand, the clients started to push for new features or change what we have agreed upon.

Inexperienced and eager to impress we started making concessions to the plan and said YES to these, thinking that was a one off. Boy were we wrong!

These projects swiftly spiraled out of control becoming a burden as they were over budget and seemingly never-ending. Luckily our other smaller, regular projects were keeping us afloat. But it was infuriating that we were supposed to make money on these big projects, not bleed us dry.

Why haven’t you quit? Just tell the client that you can’t go on with his project.

NO NO NO. We would not do that. We gave our word and said YES. So it will stay a YES because our clients were counting on us. If it’s one thing we hold dear, is not letting our clients down, even if we disappoint ourselves. We are grownups. We live with our choices and face the consequences. So quitting is not part of our thinking.

With much delay and money lost we’ve completed those projects, loosing a team member in the process (the details of the internal struggle generated by those projects will probably make the subject of a different story). Seeing our colleague leave was probably the hardest thing to stomach.

So how about saying NO? We could have saved ourselves a whole lot of trouble and misery by having the gut to say NO both to our client’s extra requests and to our own inclination to put personal ego before “getting shit done” (now there’s a poster in our office with this mantra).

You might say: “well the best thing for you would have been not to accept those projects in the first place”. I would disagree. Taking on those projects may well be one of the best things we have said YES to.

From the utter failure that they were (for us as a team, as the web apps turned out just fine) we’ve learned more than we could’ve hoped for. It was the hard way for sure. Even better, we won’t forget them so easily.

So there you have it. A short story about dancing in the creative world of YES and NO, or NO and YES, how the title implies. Do yourself, and your project, a favor and don’t take NOs personally.

We are in this together and we all want the same thing.

If you have any thoughts or questions, hit me up on Twitter @vladpotter. I would love to hear your take on this.

This is the story of our ongoing endeavor into the web, making a living off it and retaining some common sense and decency in the process.

The lessons I am trying to pass around here should be taken with a pinch of salt as they are quite subjective, based on years of trial and a whole lot of errors. And that’s just fine for us.

The web is buzzing with marketing talk, business insight, the next big thing, how to make it, what not to do, investor’s advice, growth, scaling, and, my personal favorite category, “how to go from zero to millions in ten easy steps”.

Well we are not like that and we are constantly trying not to give a fuck about that (although it gets to you in some sneaky, covert kind of way).

Getting Inc.’ed And Retaining The Joy

PixelGrade started as a small web shop founded by me and my brother, George. It was meant to bring together our years of freelancing experience and allow us to relax a little bit and get some structure into our work (and personal lives).

Neither of us had any business training or prior experience. We learned as we went along what the whole deal with running your own company was about. Right from the start we knew we didn’t want PixelGrade to become just another web agency with a corporate mentality. Were’s the fun (and sanity) in small guys forcing themselves to play by the big one’s rules? That’s just plain stupid.

You might call us “anti-corporate” and you would be right.

Whenever in our decision-making process we’ve sensed the “corporate vibe” crawling it’s way, a big red bulb light up and we stepped back and reassessed what we were about to do. You might call us “anti-corporate” and you would be right. We aim to stay lean and mean not from a financial standpoint (although it helps), but from an organizational and mental one. This is a constant struggle to this day.

Aware of our freelancing inertia (ongoing clients, the lure of doing what felt comfortable), we knew we had to pull away as fast as possible if we are going to get some benefits from this whole “Inc.’ing” deal. After about half a year we were clear from freelancing and having enough client work to keep busy and add some new members to our small team.

But after a year or so the client work started to make its mark on our joy of coming to work every day. The occasional nasty client started to make us question if we saw ourselves doing that for years to come. We certainly didn’t.

Thankfully, between projects we have been exploring other ventures, among them creating and selling WordPress themes. We have started small (and quite timidly to be honest) just to allow ourselves to get a taste of what it meant to be master of your own products. It turned out beautifully. We’ve managed to pull some decent numbers and the diverse client feedback raised our interest even further.

So here were are today focusing only on our own products (mainly premium WordPress themes) and having the leeway to make our own mistakes at our own expense. The risk has gone way up but so has our satisfaction and joy. It’s a liberating feeling. You should definitely try it.

Don’t Be Afraid To Lose For The Right Reasons

Sometimes you need to take a hit. You know you are going to get hit and you do it anyway. You see it coming and you don’t budge.

Now that doesn’t make a lot of sense right? At least not from a business or market sense point of view. But it does from our own and that’s all it matters.

While we started focusing exclusively on building our own WordPress themes, we decided to sell them through the biggest marketplace of this kind, ThemeForest.net. It was inviting, hard to get items accepted and the quality seemed pretty decent. We could do our thing and reach a good deal of potential customers.

At the beginning, the going was rough: long waiting times for review, multiple steps to get an item approved, a rejected theme, some design nonsense from the reviewers… you get the picture. But we’ve persevered and did things our way, managing to put together a decent portfolio of small, focused WordPress themes we could be proud of.

The sales were decent also ☺. Not stellar, but enough to put money problems near the bottom of the stack and allow us the luxury of having different kind of problems: building a team, how and why we do what we do.

But for some time a worrying trend started to develop on ThemeForest: the bloated all-in-one theme, the One Theme To Rule Them All (starting to sound like Lord Of The Rings here). More and more of such themes started popping up and some of them made some serious bucks (they still are), at the same time gaining a status of invincibility.

Most authors jumped in and started delivering what the doctor ordered

Many authors started to see their sales dwindle as the all-in-one themes gathered more and more followers. Most jumped in and started delivering what the doctor ordered. Ludicrous amounts of features, premium plugins for free, tens of different designs bundled into one, unlimited this, unlimited that. You get the picture. “You must be stupid if you don’t buy this” sort of feeling came to be the norm.

The rest of us started screaming from the sidelines that this is not fair game, what about standards, “decisions not options” (a fundamental WordPress mantra), catering to the client’s needs, and so on. The snowball was rolling and there was no stopping it.

From early on we’ve decided we’re gonna sit this one out and focus on making products aimed at certain niches that we found interesting to explore. We knew we would have a hard time selling them but that was just fine. There were times when we’ve questioned this decision, as the sales on the other side were just too good to be true. I am glad that common sense prevailed.

We would train ourselves for the days when the market would come to its senses and people would realize that they’ve been sold a lie, a promise impossible to keep: that you can get more for less (remember the 2008–2009 crisis?).

No sir, at best you get what you pay for. Not a cent more. If you are not careful you get way less, all wrapped up to look bigger. But hey, I guess it’s just human nature to get sucked into deals and discounts. Not blaming anyone here. This is just how things work and we’re just fine with that.

The Customer Is Not Always Right. We Are

What a cocky thing to say, right? The poor customer ☹

Not exactly. This is actually our commitment to doing the hard work so our customers don’t have to since most of the time they simply have no idea about what is right for them. And that’s just fine. Actually, it’s how things should be.

Wouldn’t you find it strange if someone who is having it’s house built thinks he knows more about it than the architect and the builder combined (except when he is one of these two, but we’ll dispose of that for the sake of argument)?

How about if someone would buy a painting from a gallery and then complain that he could have made it better? Why buy it in the first place? And since you don’t have any artistic training whatsoever why are judging the work of a passionate professional?

We don’t believe all professionals are created equal. Surely the web industry has it’s share of bad apples. But we are not one of them.

We respect our customers so much that we believe we know better what’s good for them.

This way of thinking has served us well throughout the years as it allowed us to filter the people we had worked with and, at the same time, have a much healthier relationship with the ones we did. It kept both sides much happier by introducing a need for respect and trust from the start.

This is not something you can foster and encourage while, at the same time, thinking in all those Silicon Valley terms (investors, marketing, growth, potential markets, scaling up, and so on). Focus on your customers and they will come. That’s a promise. But really focus, no playing around.

You Need To Stay On The Edge To See The Other Side

Since the early days, a constant battle has been unfolding in us as a team, and I would like to believe in me and each of my colleagues. It is a battle between getting something done and shipped out there, and that joyful, delightful craziness of going one step further.

Staying on the edge is something you do on purpose, something you set yourself to do, something you try to plan for, apart from the sheer joy of succeeding against all the odds (like I’ve said earlier, we’re not keen on falling off).

But this playfulness does come with a price, especially when you are starting out. Often our level of efficiency in getting a working product out the door was disarming. It would beg the question: aren’t we fooling ourselves with this pretty high bar we have set? What is the point in going all ninja here if we can’t impose self-discipline?

We are struggling with this to this day (and it doesn’t seem likely it will go away anytime soon). Would we have it any other way? Most likely not, because the alternative is no fun whatsoever. We value staying fresh and on the edge more than personal and business comfort.

Staying on the edge is your insurance policy

Faced with a deluge of products, with an market ready to explode due to dwindling values (both professional and moral), we believe the constant push to play at the edges of technology (and taking our customers for the ride with all the ups and downs) is our insurance policy that we will be still doing what we love next year and the years to come.

There will surely be times when we would have failed and get sucked in by the wrong ideas or fear for the future. But I like to believe that common sense will prevail in each of us.

This has been a story about some of the ups and downs me and my teammates at PixelGrade faced over the years, about what we believe in and what has kept us alive and kicking, both on the outside and the inside.

Even if we don’t give a fuck about market sense, we certainly care deeply about common sense.

If you have any thoughts or questions, hit me up on Twitter @vladpotter. I would love to hear your take on this.