Friends in business
My good friend James Hill, owner of Libre Systems, Ltd. in Manchester, UK sent me this article about his recently-established, growing Taxi Academy. He started this with Kashef Ahmed when they discovered the shortage of taxi drivers. At the time, James was working on a related startup idea -- that's another story to tell.
Contrary to what the article says, James doesn't actually drive a cab. His day job involves working as a system admin for a Manchester ISP. From across the Atlantic, we more or less egged each other on to form our startups. Like a number of other entrepreneurs, we didn't actually get to where we had set out to go. We meandered -- going through partners, products, and services. Seeing your friends grow keeps you on your toes -- you congratulate them and share in their success, while at the same time moving forward with your own plans so that you won't embarrass yourself in front of your peer.
About a month ago, he has asked me to help him complete an internal CRM for his Taxi Academy. He wanted it done in Rails, and got stuck on a particularly hard has_and_belongs_to_many join. In retrospect, I could have used a has_many :through association. while it is not much to look at, I wrote it in about three days.
I also got a ping from my local friends, UG Wilson and Travis Warlick of Operis Systems, LLC about Ruby Rock Stars. And from there, a short hop to RentACoder where I started picking up projects -- including the about-to-be completed modification to Typo called Flouzo.
A year and a half ago, I discovered Paul Graham's seed funder, YCombinator. I devoured his writings. I've since stumbled across people who severely disagree with his opinions, though I don't think they are people who have sold a company for $49 million. Paul Graham places a great deal of weight on who is founding the company with you, and where you are located. If the environment is saturated with startups, you're much more likely remember why you even tried at all, as you stare into the LCD screen full of code with grit-filled, hyper-caffeinated, severely-dehydrated eyes at 4 in the morning. It is for that, I'm grateful for my friends in business.