Running a Business, Demystified
summary
After six years running Test Double the story gives concrete numbers and lessons: about 45 people serving ~14 clients, a hiring cadence described as cautiously opportunistic, painful turnover peaking at 5 of 20 in 2015 then dropping to one across 2016–17, and tools like Pipedrive plus open‑source work (testdouble, Scripty, Suture, nodenv). It explains remote‑first tradeoffs (tax complexity, semiannual retreats, a coffee time pairing robot), branding choices, a thrown‑away “Make Ruby Great Again” marketing misstep, and explicit fixes for hiring and management.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Start
- 5:58How long should I wait before quitting my day job? When is the right time to "launch" my company?
- 16:16How do you find clients? What's been the most successful source of lead generation?
- 21:14Passing Test
- 22:14Internal branding
- 23:55How should founders split responsibilities when starting up? How does the structure change over the years and why?
- 24:24What do all new businesses lack?
- 28:31What happened?
- 30:51How do you manage open source contributions? Is it based on employee interest or does it have a conscious business focus?
- 32:16A mocking lib for every language?
- 35:08Make Ruby Great Again
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