On this day in history, one short year ago, Many Tricks re-opened for business with Rob firmly in control of public relations and the business side of things. Rob already looked back at his first year as an indie software guy recently, and since he usually does things very thoroughly, there’s not a lot I can add to that. That’s a good thing, too, since I’ve been having slight difficulties with typing recently. So I have two excuses to keep this short, but I still want to make a couple of remarks.

Work has never been more fun, and it’s never been more economically sound than during this past year. Although Rob’s and my discussions about both important decisions as well as negligible matters of taste can be exhausting, there hasn’t been a single instance when I wasn’t convinced that the energy spent there would ultimately yield a better result. It’s downright comical how different we are in almost every aspect of daily computer usage, but this helps us keep an open mind and come up with solutions that work not just for us, but for lots of users as well.

Speaking of users, what more could we hope for than customers who consider our support life-affirming? If anyone benefits more from Rob’s work than I do, it’s you, the customers. And you seem to be very aware of it, judging from the amount of positive feedback I see in the occasional support ticket I read.

So in case any fellow indie developers read this, here’s my advice: If you haven’t done so already, find yourself a Rob. (No, you can’t have mine.) Even though you won’t be able to act quite as spontaneously as you did before, you’ll find that you’ll actually feel more independent. Your customers will be happier. You’ll be able to move faster when confronted with somewhat unexpected events like this year’s pre-Lion Mac App Store opening. You’ll be more efficient, because you can concentrate on things you’re good at. And just in case you like money, you’ll make more of that, too.

Anyway, it’s been a great year. Rob already said so in the anniversary blog post I linked to above, but it bears repeating: Thank you everyone! And thank you Rob, for making a career choice that must have seemed incredibly risky to a family man. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve never felt better about being an indie developer than I do these days, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 at 5:13 am by Peter Maurer, and is filed under Behind the Scenes, Company News, Developer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.