From the start you should know — are you creating a company with a team or do you plan on keeping it a one man shop? This is a very personal decision but if you don’t decide up front, adding people to your team will be significantly harder. You’ll have to determine how your team will communicate, how to handle payroll and taxes, how to hire talented people, etc. If you start on your own and don’t plan for these changes, you may catch yourself in a tough spot. Adding people is a big task, and you’ll have to tackle it while keeping the company going. Your day to day flow will change significantly. You need to be prepared for this change, and knowing from day one will give you ample time to prepare.

There are advantages either way, and there’s no wrong decision. When FadingRed started, I was the only one working full time. This lasted for approximately 6 months, then Brittany came on full time. We worked from home for another 12 months before Sara came on and we moved into a dedicated office. We’ve just finished recruiting, and have two more developers who will join us next summer. The last two years have given me a great perspective on what it’s like working in different environments, and I’d like to share a little about each.

Working Solo

The best thing about working on your own is that you can really choose your own schedule. If you want to work from 3 in the afternoon until midnight, there’s no one stoping you. If you’re really working in solitude (no kids around, no pets, etc) you’ll be able to work without interruption as an added bonus. All of this is great, but working whenever you want can easily land you in a workaholic or slacker rut. You’ll want to avoid this type of rut because no matter who you are, you need to have a balance between work and life. You need balance for your health. When your schedule is constantly in flux, you’re throwing off this balance. This may not be an issue if you’re able to define boundaries for yourself.

For me, defining my own schedule was tough. I started working almost immediately after waking up. I’m not necessarily a morning person, but getting email handled right away felt good. What this translated to, though, was that I didn’t really give myself a chance to relax and enjoy a little bit of the day before starting work. On most days, I would stop after I got a good amount done, but sometimes I would find myself working a little past dinner to solve the last problem of the day. Days when I worked longer than I should have affected the next day. The workaholic in me brought out the slacker in me. I’d spend a bit of time the following day catching up on a TV show while working. I’m not nearly as productive while multitasking in this way. This all can become somewhat cyclical.

Now none of this was really bad. I still loved every day of work, but I think that if I had continued working solo that I would have needed to better define a schedule for myself.

At Home

Working from home is great. I had the luxury of working from home when it was just me, as well as when Brittany started working full time for FadingRed. Having zero commute time is wonderful.

I don’t have much to say about working from home that hasn’t already been said. What I do think is important is that you have an office in your home. The reason being that work can feel like it’s taking over your life if you aren’t able to close the door on it when it’s over.

Small Team

A lot changed for me when I was no longer the only one in the room each day. The first thing was that my schedule became more well defined. It was still flexible, but there was definitely more structure. This change was very good for me. I felt like my productivity and focus increased and I had a much better balance between work and life. That last sentence is really important — both my productivity and focus increased. I don’t really know what caused it, but it is definitely related to working with others around you. Maybe subconsciously people feel that they need to be productive if everyone around them is productive. Regardless, this is a very positive side effect of working with others.

The biggest change you’ll experience when switching from working on your own to working with even just one more person is the addition of communication. Communication is great if used effectively, but it’s a burden if done poorly.

Good communication leads to new ideas and improvements to ideas that you really just can’t come up with when it’s one person banging his head against the wall. One way to achieve this is through brainstorming. There’s really a lot to be said for bouncing ideas off of other people before you go ahead with them. You waste less time on bad ideas.

On the other hand, communication can get in the way. Structured communication (aka meetings) are monotonous. The way to avoid this is to just allow communication to be unstructured, but what you’re left with is interruption. Interruption is the arch nemesis of productivity. When one person interrupts another, it’s great for the interrupter; they get the information they need right away. The person who is being interrupted, though, has to switch her focus to address the other person, concentrate to respond meaningfully, and then re-focus on her task. This can be very frustrating and can take a lot out of you mentally. Managing communication effectively is something that many teams struggle with, and it’s because there isn’t a singular solution. The solution will be different for every team and even for different members within the team. Just know this ‚Äî no matter how well you know your co-workers, you will always be working to improve communication.

Office Life

These days I wake up and leave home to go into the office. FadingRed has a small office in downtown Chicago. After working at home for nearly a year and a half, an office is an adjustment. I know a lot of people who work from home and love it. In conversations I’ve had recently, these people kind of wrinkle their faces at the idea of switching back to office life. For me, it’s been great.

My commute is short. I live downtown and walk to work. I no longer have a home office. My work is totally separate. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, but working all day every day just leads to burn out. Now it’s easier to focus on other interests in the evenings and on the weekends. Work isn’t there peeking out at me from the home office. I still work from home occasionally, so it’s really the best of both worlds.

For me, this is what I imagined from the time that I started. I never thought that working by myself cooped up at home all day would work long term. For others, that might be the right choice.

Plan It Out

These have been my experiences. Whatever you’re thinking, set yourself on the right course on day one. Think about where you see yourself and your company in the future. You don’t need to have a 5 year plan (or even any plan at all). Just an idea. Even small decisions can have a lasting impact. If you think you’ll have a team, imagine them there with you at the beginning. The transition will be easier if you don’t have to change everything all at once.

Find

You’ll find it randomly. There’s no telling how your perfect job will materialize. You might find it from a job posting. Maybe it was a website that you ended up browsing some day. How you found it doesn’t matter, but when you do, your thoughts will be:

This is where I want to work.
It’s my dream job.
I have to get it.
I need this job.
I’ll do whatever it takes.

Apply

What you need to do is simple — apply to work with people. A company is nothing more than the people who work there. Learn what you can about them. Online social networks have made it incredibly easy to learn about people. Find out what makes them tick; you’ll probably find something that makes the company even more intriguing. Absorb this information.

Before you apply to the company, really think about everything you’ve learned. For a long time. This is your dream job, remember? Talk to your friends and family about it. Listen to what you’re saying because it’s these thoughts that you need to express in your application. Talking about it should be something that just happens because you’re excited — if not, it’s probably not the right job for you.

Now you’re ready to apply. There’s only one thing you need to do; you need to convince someone who you’ve never met before that you’re telling the truth. This is the hardest part. The rest of your application is easy. Skills, experience, whether you’re a hard worker — these don’t matter. If you’re applying for this job, it’s because you know you’re capable of performing the work. Put your energy into telling your story.

This story is all about you and your relationship with the company. You’re in love with the company, and you have to convince the people who work there to love you back. How did you find out about the position? Why is it different from what you’ve done in the past? What makes it perfect for you? If you really want the job, don’t re-use something you wrote before; start from scratch. Make it good, then proofread it seven times. You can tell your story in an email or a more formal cover letter — it doesn’t matter — the content matters. Think about it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know you. Does it convince them you’re perfect for the job? Is it genuine? Make sure it says what it needs to and nothing more. Keep it focused.

We have a small team. Right now it’s three people. When you send in an application it goes to all of us. We all look at it. There’s no human resources barrier to get past. Your story will be read. Make it count.

Face to Face

Once you get an interview, it’s time to start over. Repeat your research. You want everything you know about the company in the front of your mind when you start meeting people, and there may be new information to learn. Every second your with these people will be time that you’re evaluated. If it’s a small company like ours, make sure you know everyone’s names.

Once you’re in the door, put some of your research to work. “I read on your blog that you want to build a company where all customers are given first-class treatment, and I really respect that.” Share why this is important to you. This is relevant and shows that you’ve spent your time researching the company. Just be sure that you don’t end up being creepy. “I read on your Facebook profile that you enjoy playing tennis and I think it’d be cool to play tennis with my co-workers.” This has nothing to do with the job. It may also feel a little invasive.

The actual interview is always difficult. You will feel nervous. You will stumble at some point, but it’s okay. Your interviewer will be forgiving. Interviews are high-stress situations, and no one is able to perform at one hundred percent. Let it pass. Clear your mind and move on. Remember that interviews are a two way street. You are interviewing the company; make sure you have good questions to ask. Even if you think you know the answer, ask anyway. You need to get your interviewer engaged. You need conversation. At the end of the day, your interviewer needs to know that she enjoys conversing with you.

Follow-up. There’s no better way to screw up an interview than to fail to follow-up with your interviewer. If there’s more than one person you interviewed with, follow-up with all of them. In order to do this, you need to make sure you get their business card. If all you get is a business card from someone in HR, email the HR person to say thanks, and ask for the email addresses of the people with whom you interviewed. This is a lot of work. Do it. Remember, you’re applying to work with people. People appreciate and expect your etiquette.

Rinse and Repeat

If you’re lucky, this section will not apply to you. For many people, though, a career has become a series of job changes. You’ll repeat the whole process a number of times. Those of you who are lucky enough to have found a job and a company you love, cherish it.

Best of luck!

It’s been a year and a half now since FadingRed became a registered LLC. A year and a half — that’s not very long — you must be a startup, right? No.

The term startup is usually used to describe young companies in technology. In general, startups have relatively small teams and a reputation for being fun, hip companies where people love to work. This is exactly the kind of environment that we’re working to create, so why is this not a startup?

There’s a couple of commonalities that you’ll find with startups. First, they are seeking or have already found someone to invest in their company. Many startups even receive funding before anything has been built; they have an idea that an investor believes in. When more money is needed, an additional percentage of the company can be sold. Because investors are involved, return-on-investment becomes a key part of the business. Investors are hoping for high returns because the company is growing rapidly.

Growth is intriguing because the real goal is for revenue growth. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught watching the number of employees grow and anticipate that revenue will follow. Regardless, once hiring begins, startups add many new team members quickly. I’m not talking hundreds of people, but it’s likely that they may grow from five people to fifty in less than a year. Such fast paced hiring often leads to startups bringing in an executive with experience to help manage.

The first employees who work for a startup are compensated with stock (in addition to their base salary). These employees clock crazy hours because they love what they’re doing. What’s more exciting than working on or having just completed a 1.0 product? Working a little extra at the end of the day or on the weekend is no big deal because it’s so much fun. There’s a culture of energy and excitement!

Everything could change — for better or for worse — in a split second. So much is happening so quickly that it’s hard to control and mold your company into what you really want it to be.

While much of the what’s written above are generalizations, it fits with what comes to mind when a company is described as a startup. There’s too much, though, that just doesn’t fit with what we want our company to be.

For as long as I’ve been developing software for the Mac, developers who either work for themselves or small companies have been referring to themselves as indie developers. This, of course, is short for independent developers. Independent is a great way to describe our company — we think independently about how our company should operate.

We don’t have investors. We don’t work late or on the weekends. We don’t focus our energy on growing rapidly just for the sake of growing. We think outside the box.

When we started, our company didn’t have anything in the bank; we didn’t even have a bank account. A small operational overhead has allowed us to get off the ground without outside funding. For us, this was an ideal starting point. Starting from zero allows you to really understand how much revenue you need to support your business. Our revenues have been good, and we’ve built up to the point of being able expand our team. Expanding makes sense for us now because we have more work than our team can handle. We are growing because we need to grow not because we can.

We don’t work on the weekend because we don’t want to. That’s personal time. No one wants to feel like their entire life was spent working. We plan things out so that nothing critical happens at the end of the week, so there’s nothing to worry about during the weekend. Everyone should relax and enjoy life outside of work, and the weekend is your time.

What we’re building is a place where we love what we do, where everyone who works for our company loves what they do. Decisions are made based on what is best for business and our happiness. We don’t report numbers to investors to determine our success. Our success is based on the quality of what we create.