Item — HN Reader

Focus.

It takes a lot of effort to keep multiple projects in the air. Even something that "runs itself" never really does. I've got Draft going while I work on Highrise, and Draft works very well on its own, but I still have to deal with support requests, downtime, upgrades, refunds, and more.

The guy wants to focus on his other projects. Patrick's never hidden the fact that selling Bingo Cards isn't as lucrative as his other projects. He's super honest and open about what goes down. https://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats Tons of good lessons he's learned that he's now applied to other business via consulting, Appointment Reminder, and now at Starfighter (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/03/09/announcing-starfighter/)

Look at 37signals. They decided they needed to focus on Basecamp to make it as good as they want. http://37signals.com/

We all should be shedding more and more stuff in our lives to focus on the bits we want to grow and see further through. Nothing at all wrong about that.

1 comments

Well according to Patrick's own year in review, BCC is a pretty sizable % of his total annual revenue...

I find it interesting that his goals for 2015 seem to be focused on selling his courseware, etc. on optimization, etc.

This is where the Tim Ferris comment comes from...

Well how much makes a 'sizeable percentage'. 10%, 20%? 30%?

Looks like close to ~30% last year (after seeing ARR fall by 30%). [1] I think higher in prior years.

He claims to have spent only a handful of hours on BCC last year. So spending less than say 20 hours on a project and having it generate ~30% of revenue, passively, seems like a pretty good deal.

Another poster mentioned focus, but that doesn't really seem to be the case here.

Of course all this is conjecture.

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/12/22/kalzumeus-software-year-...

Patrick is not reporting his full income from AppointmentReminder, he excludes the Enterprise deals.

"Focus" is a very valid reason. Even assuming just one hour per week, that's 52 hours he can spend on something else. Plus having BCC around is a mental burden. Even while you're not working actively on it, you're thinking about it.

At $19,000 of net profit per year, I'd be startled if it was anything more than 20 percent. He was pulling in $30,000 a week[1] doing consulting.

[1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/