Deciding on the future of VuxByte
The journey and goals of VuxByte
When I quit my job at Meta in June 2023, I started out releasing my bill splitting web tool SplitMyExpenses and then hopped straight into Chatty Butler. My goals were to have fun, build cool products, and be close to AI technologies. The end goal was for it to be my final job, working for myself in a bootstrapped manner. Good news is I'm happy with what I've built and how I've done it, the bad news is the financials for the company aren't anywhere close to where I want it to be, but that's okay.
When I made the leap of faith to quit, I knew I could always come back to a Software Engineering job at a tech company. To be honest, I liked working on software no matter where I worked, so it's not a downgrade for me to join a company again, but there is always more fun building products that you created, so I had to scratch that itch for at least 12 months. I completed that and I'm not at the point where I can live off VuxByte's financials, so I'm going to be finding a job soon.
Profit and loss for the company
VuxByte expenses weren't too high, the company spending was decently efficient since I was bootstrapped putting in my own saved funds and I didn't roll any crazy web architecture. However, the revenue over the past 12 months has also been low. Building profitable businesses takes time, having a large success in one year would be incredible and quite lucky, but I went for it. The company lost a few thousand dollars in the entire year, which is not bad at all, you need to spend money to make some money. I wouldn't change much here, I could have tried to get funding, but I wanted to be responsible for it all and the products I was building weren't the large scale unicorn ideas that places like YC wanted, so bootstrapped was the way to go for me and my LLC.
Next steps in my career
Due to the company financials, I've started my job search to join a tech company as a Software Engineer. Since I'm self employed, I have much much more time to dedicate to finding the right gig for me and I plan to interview at a lot of places across the board: startup, small/mid, large company. I'm not exactly sure what I want, but likely a iOS focused SWE role, which is what I was doing at Meta before I left. I expect it to take a few months, but I am putting VuxByte on pause as I dedicate 100% of my time to job search, preparation, and execution. No job announcement to report yet, but stay tuned!
Next steps for VuxByte
Since I'm going to be joining a company by the end of this year (TBD on start date), I want to get VuxByte and the products SplitMyExpenses and Chatty Butler in good spots to pause active 9-5 development. Once I'm working full time at a company, my development time shifts back to side projects timing: nights & weekends. Due to this, you won't see many new features added, I'll mostly be fixing critical bugs. Good news is I believe both products are in good spots right now. I really want to get the SplitMyExpenses mobile app shipped and done, but I'm not sure how realistic it will be with how much I have left today. Crossing my fingers I can get there, but if not, it will come out eventually and be high quality.
Thank you for supporting me, my company, my career & wellbeing, and my products, it is an experience I will never forget. I don't regret my journey nor the bumps and bruises along the way. I'm excited to continue to see SME grow month over month, and can't wait till the mobile app is out and in user's hands!