Ten Million Pounds.
I've been toying with the idea of picking up and relaunching Moodlogger, this time for real. Moodlogger has been out of the app store for months now because my Apple developer account expired, and I haven't worked on the Android version since I got my job at Potato.
Because my job at Potato keeps me so busy I don't feel like thinking about coding in my free time at all, or only very rarely. It's hard to muster up the motivation to try my hand at a project the size of Moodlogger. I will make no excuses for that. But every once in a while I get a really good idea of something that Moodlogger could do, and I'll be thinking about how I would implement that idea and how I could make it work. I find myself still very excited to work on it, and I think that if I could focus on it full-time, Moodlogger and Moodlogger alone are what could motivate me to be a success.
And when I say success, I don't mean something silly such as changing the world. I'm talking about money. The simple fact is: I've been working for over 6 years and I've got nothing to show for it. If I had no job I would last months, perhaps a year, in the real world. I am not in a position to say "I only want to work on what I like". And I want to be.
That, for me, is the main motivating factor. I hate sounding like an old fart, but I've done a lot of coding in the past; both personal and professional. Only the ideas that you are both truly motivated for, and have the time for, become something interesting. From my perspective, Moodlogger is my only lifeline right now that could make it possible for me to solve my financial troubles.
So that's my goal. I will write a pitch and then find investors who can give me the minimum amount of money to keep me going for a year or two, probably in the range of 50,000 pounds. This may sound like a lot, but I like to bet on the safe side, and an extremely frugal lifestyle isn't going to help my programming mood either. I'll also have to spend a fair bit on creating the necessary infrastructure (servers, domains, etc.) Never spend more money than you need to, but don't use too little either.
From there on it's simple: start coding, build a user base, sell the company. I'd claim higher ethics and 'improving the world' nonsense here, and that I want to do Moodlogger forever, but I simply don't have the luxury to believe in that just yet. Perhaps if I had a more comfortable monetary base to start from, I would, but I'll save that for my next project. First, it's time to bootstrap.
I don't know if this will be a success. Perhaps there are other ways of bootstrapping myself into becoming a 'free' programmer. I've got a few options lined up in the near future, but if I am perfectly honest, the only person I trust is myself, and I think my chances of becoming successful are the best if I am in complete control of the project that I am truly motivated to do. Right now, Moodlogger is the only thing that qualifies.
What I really wanted to do was write this post.