Cogitu

You may have noticed a lack of updates from me over couple of months. Sorry for the lack of updates, but a lot has been going on and I wanted to let things settle down before I made this post.

The Decision

When I last posted, I mentioned I was looking into other alternatives - specifically going back to a full-time job or at least doing some contracting. I did end up taking on a small contract to test the waters. I don't have anything against contracting, but I just can't see myself doing it as a sole means of income. So, I'll be rejoining the workforce with a full-time job with a Fortune 500 company as of July 6th. I spent a lot of time thinking through this and it became obvious that I need to refocus my goals. I'm not going to post my whole rationale right now, but the short version is that I can be just as happy working on things I'm passionate about on the side while working a full-time job (which also involves things I'm passionate about). On top of that, I really need to make a much larger time & money investment than I'm willing to make to keep things going on the indie route. I also want to take some time to focus on some bigger picture items in my life...which is pretty hard to do as an indie or even as an employee at a questionably stable small company.

The Products

The products that I've published thus far - Pinball Mini & Budgee - will stay on the store, but I don't know how much further they will evolve. Budgee does have an update waiting for Apple's review (it updates the DB code so it doesn't crash on iOS 4 due to a quirk with a sqlite call). Additionally, there is one more update for Budgee that is still coming - it would have been part of this update, but I got sidetracked with a contract gig and wanted to get the crashing fix up ASAP. This update will add database backup/restore and will support copying categories between budgets. I still have a feature backlog with a few more items for Budgee, but I can't promise more updates will come after this second update goes live...it's not out of the question, but no promises either way.

The Company

As far as Cogitu goes, I'm going to keep the LLC alive and focus on one particular product that I've been working on even before I went indie. It's a personal finance product but much larger in scope than Budgee. I had planned on this being the "big" product for Cogitu anyway, but I'm not releasing it until I'm really happy using it myself. I'm not shooting for perfection, but I don't want to release a scaled down version for 1.0 either. If/when I have something to show, I'll post here, but I'm not ready to say all that much about it right now. I'm also going to keep the door open for a bit of contract work on the side...but I don't see myself taking on too much at the moment.

The End / The Beginning

This was a pretty crazy journey and I do want to thank all of my friends including those I know in real life and those that are from Twitter and other corners of the internet. Your support has really meant a lot to me. I hope that my results with this experiment don't discourage others from trying. I'm slowly writing up a lessons learned post that Will eventually find it's way here someday, but I definitely believe it is possible to succeed as an indie (even flying solo)...it just takes a very specific person and specific circumstances for it to work out in an acceptable way. I don't have the least bit of regret for trying the indie thing out - I knew it could go either way when I started this journey. I'm extremely glad I tried this and I've gained a lot from this experience. This is the end of my indie journey, but it's the start of something much bigger.