My Entrepreneurial Portfolio
As of 2022-12-31 Saturday
This page is a portfolio of all the various products or projects that I’m working on.
There’s a healthy tension between two forces:
be open to experimentation and course correction — don’t wait to tell people until all my ducks are lined up
treat potential customers right — not willy-nilly kill off stuff especially when other people depend on them. E.g. Google Graveyard
Because of this, I want to broadcast how I experiment, course correct, and sunset ideas in the right way.
I expect to make mistakes from time to time, so I promise to do my best to avert and correct them when they inevitably occur. All I ask in return, is you assume mistakes were committed in good faith. Assume my incompetence rather than malice.
Revenue Stages and Morale
At the personal level, regardless how my portfolio is spread across various projects and revenue streams, together they need to sum up to move the needle in my life.
Sadly, other than revenue stats, the rest are more subjective such as state of mind and morale. Starting in 2023 January 2nd, I will also track the subjective feelings whether if I feel it has been a good day or week and add to the stats I’m tracking.
For now, I will use some proxy stats in place.
The various levels from selling products/services:
🎉 Zero to One — make at least 1k in revenue in past 90 days
🍜 Ramen Profitable — make at least 5k monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in past 6 months
🚀 Escape Velocity — pay myself at least 10k monthly recurring salary (MRS) in past 6 months
Currently, I’m at Ramen Profitable since about Feb 2020. So that’s 34 straight months of Ramen Profitable status.
My worldview shifted permanently since Sept 2022 when I deeply realized how much possibility there is in remote work, and async-first communications. Since then, I have looked harder at how I can redesign my work around my life rather than the other way round.
A proxy stat I track this change in my state of mind is count how many weeks I have gone for at least one self-indulgent activity during office hours like tennis. So, it has been 15 straight weeks of hobby indulgence during office hours since late September 2022.
For 2022, the average number of hours worked per week is 37. Q4 averaged about 39.8 hrs per week.
Maturity Stages
Because I want to make my portfolio sufficiently public, not all are equal in terms of maturity. Some are not directly comparable. E.g. a book vs a SaaS product. One way to compare across all types is to have a maturity status. This is a legend of four kinds of maturity.
Regardless of type, I call them all as product-idea.
🌱 Seedlings for very rough and early product-ideas.
🌿 Budding for product-idea I've cleaned up and clarified. Shows traction.
🌳 Evergreen for product-idea that is reasonably complete (though I still tend these over time). Shows revenue.
🥀 Deprecated for product-idea that's no longer maintained (though it might have also been superseded by something else).
Latest Portfolio Update
As of 2022-12-31 Saturday,
🌿 Budding — Entrepreneurial Engineer — media brand/newsletter/media outlet
URL: https://entrepreneurial.engineer
you’re reading it right now :)
idea is to make this my permanent home/digital garden for various ideas I have
Resources I heavily rely on: Substack, Newsletter Launchpad community
Some stats I’m tracking:
approx +50 subs (now 53 subs) since taking media as leverage seriously starting in September 2022
approx +68 (now 646) followers on Twitter in the same period
published 12 weekly newsletters starting in 18 Sept or 12 in 16 weeks
🌱 Seedling — GreenDeploy.io — SaaS
Easiest way to build and deploy a web app for entrepreneurial engineers who can code, but prefer to focus on product and business
Why this? I’ll write about it in a separate post in future
Some stats I’m tracking:
Attended 17 mastermind meetings with MicroConf group since 14 July or about 17 in 25 weeks
Submitted 91 weekly updates on Pioneer.app
Discovered 6 table stake features via daily work and helping friends
🌱 Seedling — Django for Excel — book
manuscript currently at 4 chapters
Resources I heavily rely on: Part Time Author community, Write Useful Books community, Amazon KDP
Why this? I gained a lot of experience using Django for Excel whilst Building Workflow Software to Process Business Documents for MNC Customer, so why not parlay some of that experience into a book?
Some stats I’m tracking:
Drafted 6 chapters. Final chapter count is unknown.
Still on version 1 of manuscript
🌳 Evergreen — Building Workflow Software to Process Business Documents for MNC Customer — service
main revenue source that pays for everything else
system I build and still adding features processes over 1 billion in revenue for MNC customer
Some stats I’m tracking:
MRR is above 5k (after I convert to USD. I invoice in SGD)
New rates is expected to go live by 1st April 2023 and will backdate to Jan 2023 after compliance has approved the new rates. Customer verbally promised a Bridging Purchase Order to cover the Jan - Mar 2023. Current contract ends on 31st Dec 2022.
Customer’s lifetime revenue processed in Singapore via my system is 1.4 billion in SGD since going live in 2013 April.