Bare Naked App

As you probably now know, Carson Systems is just two full-time employees right now: Gill and I. For the past two years, we’ve partnered up with amazing freelancers to help us out with everything from design to Linux system administration.

Well, after two years, I was getting kind of sick of the hassle of finding freelancers. Let’s face it, it’s a ton of work and it’s a pain in the ass. Here’s the 5-step process:

1. Put together a shortlist of talented people
2. Ask those people if they’re interested
3. Ask those people if they’re available
4. Ask those people how much they’ll charge
5. Pick one

Argh… It would be so much easier if we just had a fulltime developer who could just get working. Why do I mention this? Well, we were really close to hiring a fulltime developer and then we had a conversation with Jason Fried of 37signals. He was explaining how it was a full year until Basecamp was bringing in enough cash to pay for a developer.

Then it hit me. DropSend is doing great, but it hasn’t reached a level where we can justify hiring a fulltime developer to look after it. We were looking to hire a developer just because Carson Workshops was profitable enough to enable us to afford one, not because we really needed one. Bad Ryan! Thankfully Gill realised this and challenged me on it. We wanted a fulltime developer because it would be convenient, not because we needed one. When you’re a small company like us, you can’t justify spending large amounts of cash unless it’s vital to your success.

So … we decided to go the freelance route.