Today marks the first birthday of Reinvented Software, I released KIT 1.0 on August 3rd 2004. This is entirely consistent with Wil Shipley’s belief that every programmer’s first project is some kind of media database. It was a good launch with more sales than I’d expected in the first month – but it didn’t last long.

The business only really got going when Feeder was released some six months later. There were some extremely bleak days in the meantime and I nearly packed it all in. I applied for a number of jobs and almost got some of them too, but something would always go wrong at the last minute. This would leave me partly relieved and simultaneously filled with dread, because I knew I’d have to go through the whole cycle again. I only ever wanted to do this.

By the time Feeder was released in February, I somehow knew it was going to do well and that was my last hope. I came up with the idea in late October but didn’t get it started for another two months due to those job interviews and other distractions. My thinking was that with RSS due to go mainstream on the Mac thanks to Safari 2.0 in Tiger, people without blogs or content management systems would want RSS feeds on their sites.

In the meantime podcasting was gaining momentum, but I had no idea if podcasters would want to use Feeder. I built in some convenience features for them anyway. My research indicates that around 50% of Feeder users are podcasters and this seems to be rising quickly since iTunes 4.9 was released. I don’t think anyone imagined podcasting would get this big in such a short space of time but that is testament to how compelling it is.

One year on, things are going well and I’ve only just begun. I have big plans for my applications and a ton of other ideas. My biggest problem is time and juggling all the various aspects of the business – I do it all. Being an independent software developer is thrilling and exhausting all at the same time, but it would mean nothing without the people who buy my software, plug it on their web sites and in their podcasts and use it to do some amazing things. Thank you!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 at 2:35 pm by Steve Harris and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.