Thomas and Erin invited me to be CEO of a company that I was (and am) very, very excited about - fix dev hiring by writing video games! I’m so in! This meant for my other businesses: I’m so out!įinally, like disposing of any asset, money was a consideration. Starfighter was also coming down the pipe when I sold BCC. Content was not getting added to the website for years, due to a freelancer quitting and me not spending enough time to identify and onboard a replacement. Any CS request getting past Sugar (say, a request for a refund) took a non-deterministic amount of time - sometimes a day and sometimes a week or more. I hadn’t made a significant change to BCC for years.

BCC was not taking up much of my time (thanks to Sugar handling most of the support) but it was taking more than zero of my mental cycles every year.Īnd what was that getting BCC customers? In round terms, well, nothing. The biggest reason was focus: every year I found myself saying “Hmm, I totally neglected BCC this year, but next year I will try to reverse its slow decline.” And every year I found myself drawn into other projects instead. People often ask me why I sold Bingo Card Creator. It’s basically the root cause of anyone on the Internet knowing who I am. I blogged extensively about running BCC from 2006 through 2014, with rather fewer posts since 2012 or so. BCC historically had a profit margin of around 60%. In good years it sold nearly $60k of software. Against all expectations, I got very good at organic SEO and AdWords optimizations for BCC. The business model was always a one-time purchase, most recently for $29.95. Since 2009 it’s been almost exclusively a SaaS app running on Rails. It makes bingo cards for elementary schoolteachers.

I started it in 2006 as something between a hobby and a dare. It’s possible that some of you have never heard of this, so a quick story in-a-nutshell:īingo Card Creator was my first business. I sold it last year, and wanted to tell you a little of what I learned. I’ve been probably best known for running a teeny tiny little business called Bingo Card Creator.

If you’re still interested in getting emails from me about making and selling software, great! What I Learned Selling A Software Business

Free bingo card generator for teachers